Spaaaaace (Part 1)

Budget space flight is on the horizon (heh).

Or rather “budget” ($125,000) “space” (not technically space) flight

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New company, same people.

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We can beat that price. And you get a free set of steak knives!

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Firefly software snafu sends Lockheed satellite on short-lived space safari

A software error on the part of Firefly Aerospace doomed Lockheed Martin’s Electronic Steerable Antenna (ESA) demonstrator to a shorter-than-expected orbital life following a botched Alpha launch.

[…]

As it turned out, the Lockheed team completed their primary mission objectives. The payload was, after all, designed to demonstrate faster on-orbit sensor calibration. Just perhaps not quite that fast.

Software issues aboard spacecraft are becoming depressingly commonplace. A recent example was the near disastrous first launch of Boeing’s CST-100 Starliner, where iffy code could have led, in NASA parlance, to “spacecraft loss.” In a recent interview with The Register, former Voyager scientist Garry Hunt questioned if the commercial spaceflight sector of today would take the same approach to quality as the boffins of the past.

[…]

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Follow-up:

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softwarefehler, kann man nix machen /s

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giphy

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Odysseus: “Welcome to the moon”

The Odysseus lunar lander, nicknamed “Odie” or IM-1, is on the moon’s surface and transmitting, Intuitive Machines CEO Steve Altemus just announced on the webcast.

WooHoo!

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NASA warns as huge solar flare threatens comms, maybe astronauts too

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Today on “Delusions of Grandeur”:

https://orbitaltoday.com/2024/02/21/uk-manned-space-mission-a-pipe-dream-or-potential-reality/

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Pre-GPS satnavs. The title is a bit clickbait-y; some of the satellites had RTGs, that’s all.
Very interesting nevertheless.
https://www.thespacereview.com/article/4740/1

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ETA:

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8559220a-a927-48b4-8a65-5b7d3b2f95db_text-2358657856

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from that one box:

miraculously revived

the sun! how does it work??

sun GIF

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