SpaceX's green demo-1 launched while Virgin enjoys a brief three-man crew aboard VSS Unity • The Register

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Roundup Scientists refined their vision of Ultima Thule last week, while three other Virgins from space had made their appearance in the trade aboard SpaceShipTwo, while Elon Musk revealed the fate that He had planned for the Falcon 9 of last week.

I'm ready for my close-up, Dr. Stern

The New Horizons team celebrated the latest data dribble from the distant probe with the sharpest image ever recorded of 2014, MU69, aka Ultima Thule. The images were captured six and a half minutes before the closest approach to the probe and have a resolution of 33 meters per pixel.

The Long Range Telephoto Recognition Imager (LORRI) was used to maximize the scientific data received by the team, who wanted to get as close to the surface as possible. The operation was a bit risky and required calculating the exact position of the Ultima Thule and New Horizons satellites.

With the probe one billion kilometers beyond Pluto and at more than 51,500 km / h, the mission's lead researcher, Dr. Alan Stern, explained: "It was a much harder observation than anything that we had tried during our flyby of Pluto in 2015, "after publishing an" exuberant Bullseye! "

The gang also noted that the images had the highest spatial resolution ever achieved by the probe, as it flew about three times closer to the 2014 MU69 than to Pluto's in 2015.

NASA gives SpaceX green light for Demo-1

Away from the strange surface of Ultima Thule, NASA's bigwigs have signed the launch of SpaceX's demo-1, albeit with some reservations.

NASA Associate Administrator William Gerstenmaier, responsible for human exploration and operations, said there were some problems on the Crew Dragon spacecraft. Gerstenmaier has described it as "not completely qualified" but hey, that's why people are testing after all. He went on to say that the team was waiting to learn new things from the flight.

Of course, the potential for changes to the Crew Dragon between now and the first crewed mission (scheduled for July) has left NASA's advisory board panties a little grim, but NASA intends to continue with a launch at 2:48 am EST on March 2nd. Backup options exist in the following days.

Mr. Gerstenmaier also noted ongoing efforts to understand the implications (how it might explode) of SpaceX's Composite Booster Tank (COPV) design before a crew could be floated.

A specific objection from Russia was also raised, with the Moscow team wanting a separate electronic box to handle an abortion in the event of a breakdown of the Dragon's computers when approaching the International Space Station. After all, HTV cargo ships from Japan and ESA ATV are both equipped with technology.

Gerstenmaier said NASA was confident that everything would be fine.

Russia, of course, has experience in the field of uncontrollable spacecraft, having punctured the Mir space station during a mismatched docking experiment with its own autonomous spacecraft, the Progress.

If the launch is successful, SpaceX will then demonstrate the abandonment capability of the Crew Dragon using the Falcon 9's successful launch and landing last week, according to CEO Elon Musk.

This will be the fourth flight for this rocket and probably the last, as Musk observed, probably would not survive the supersonic abortion trial.

The abandonment test will feature an upper flight stage on the Falcon 9, but with a mass simulator instead of the Merlin engine. Musk thinks the poor will have "Fragmented" by the forces involved in abortion.

Performance problems prevent Russia's first launch in 2019, but Fregat saves the situation

While SpaceX launched an Israeli spacecraft on the moon, Russia launched its launch campaign in 2019 by sending EgyptSat-2 into orbit aboard a Soyuz-2 1b. This went wrong because the initial reports had it delivered on poor orbit due to an apparent underperformance of the third phase of the rocket or a problem with the Fregat space tug.

Fortunately, the Fregat had enough room to transport the satellite to the right place, but, as the saying goes, these Soyuz problems are beginning to "accumulate a bit".

Due to this problem, Arianespace delayed the launch by Soyuz of the first six OneWeb satellites at 21:37 UTC on February 27, pending the results of a review of the readiness of the launch of the day before.

Virgin makes her second flight in space

Far from the orbital antics of Russia and SpaceX, Virgin Galactic has sent SpaceShipTwo into space once again (or at least beyond the last definition of the beginning of space).

The fifth motorized flight of VSS Unity reached a peak of 295,007 feet following a kick fired by its hybrid rocket engine, accelerating it to Mach 3.04. The spacecraft is then returned to a landing that will bring a tear to the eyes of nostalgic thieves.

In addition to numerous experiments, the flight also carried a passenger: Beth Moses, Virgin's chief astronaut instructor, who was able to detach and float in the cabin for a few minutes to check the contents before the first paying customers. .

The flight earned him, chief pilots Dave Mackay and co-pilot Michael "Sooch" Masucci, their commercial astronaut wings.

Naturally, Virgin Galactic boss Richard Branson was surprised to see SpaceShipTwo continue to push the limits of performance. He did not, however, specify the date of the first long-awaited flight of the "future astronauts" of the company. Instead, Bearded One said, "The next few months promise to be the most exciting to date." ®

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