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Pumpkin Box 60, вулиця Січових Стрільців, 82, Kyiv (2025)

26/09/2023

The first ever satellite mission from the UK failed to launch last month because a rocket fuel filter had become dislodged, Virgin Orbit says.

A rocket engine overheated in turn, leading to the loss of the rocket and satellites it was carrying.

Virgin Orbit sent up a jumbo jet carrying the rocket from Cornwall on 9 January. The aircraft returned safely.

CEO Dan Hart said the company would "proceed cautiously towards the launch" of its next rocket.

"The data is indicating that, from the beginning of the second stage first burn, a fuel filter within the fuel feedline had been dislodged from its normal position," Virgin Orbit tweeted.

"Additional data shows that the fuel pump that is downstream of the filter operated at a degraded efficiency level, resulting in the Newton 4 engine being starved for fuel. Performing in this anomalous manner resulted in the engine operating at a significantly higher than rated engine temperature.

"The early thrust termination ended the mission, and the second stage and its payloads fell back to Earth, landing in the approved safety corridor in the Atlantic Ocean."

First satellite launch from UK soil ends in failure
At the time, Virgin Orbit said its LauncherOne rocket - launched from the Boeing 747 aircraft Cosmic Girl - had reached space but had fallen short of reaching its target orbit.The mission had been billed as a milestone for UK space, marking the birth of a home-grown launch industry. The ambition is to turn the country into a global player - from manufacturing satellites to building rockets and creating new spaceports.

The launch attracted an enthusiastic crowd, with more than 2,000 spectators and VIPs gathering at Cornwall Newquay Airport to watch.

Mr Hart said: "Intense disappointment gets quickly channelled into the motivation to dig into the cause, to understand all contributing elements and to thereby get back to flight with a better system and a wiser team."

He added that the investigation into the rocket failure was ongoing.

Virgin Orbit is headquartered in Long Beach, California, but was founded by British entrepreneur Sir Richard Branson.

01/09/2023

Everything "Percy" has seen since confirms to scientists the rover is in the perfect place to hunt for life.

It's not looking for any organisms that are alive today; the harsh environment on Mars makes their presence highly improbable. Rather, the robot is searching for the traces of a biology that could have existed billions of years ago when Jezero was filled with a lake.

This ancient history, scientists hope, is now recorded in the "amazing" rock samples that will be laid down in "a depot" in the next couple of months.

25/08/2023

A raging dust storm has been observed on a planet outside our Solar System for the first time.

It was detected on the exoplanet known as VHS 1256b, which is about 40 light-years from Earth.

It took the remarkable capabilities of the new James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) to make the discovery.

The dust particles are silicates - small grains comprising silicon and oxygen, which form the basis of most rocky minerals.

But the storm detected by Webb isn't quite the same phenomenon you would get in an arid, desert region on our planet. It's more of a rocky mist.

"It's kind of like if you took sand grains, but much finer. We're talking silicate grains the size of smoke particles," explained Prof Beth Biller from the University of Edinburgh and the Royal Observatory Edinburgh, UK.

"That's what the clouds on VHS 1256b would be like, but a lot hotter. This planet is a hot, young object. The cloud-top temperature is maybe similar to the temperature of a candle flame," she told BBC News.

Webb telescope reveals theatrics of starbirth
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VHS 1256b was first identified by the UK-developed Vista telescope in Chile in 2015.

It's what's termed a "super Jupiter" - a planet similar to the gas giant in our own Solar System, but a lot bigger, perhaps 12 to 18 times the mass.

It circles a couple of stars at great distance - about four times the distance that Pluto is from our Sun.

Earlier observations of VHS 1256b showed it to be red-looking, hinting that it might have dust in its atmosphere. The Webb study confirms it.

"It's fascinating because it illustrates how different clouds on another planet can be from the water vapour clouds we are familiar with on the Earth," said Prof Biller.

"We see carbon monoxide (CO) and methane in the atmosphere, which is indicative of it being hot and turbulent, with material being drawn up from deep.

"There are probably multiple layers of silicate grains. The ones that we're seeing are some of the very, very fine grains that are higher up in the atmosphere, but there may be bigger grains deeper down in the atmosphere."

09/08/2023

"[They] have identified sea-ice roughness and slush (melted snow and ice) as a key impediment for safe travel on the ice with the changing climate already negatively affecting these characteristics and causing increased travel accidents and search-and-rescues," he explained.

"Both are related to the thickness of the ice. Therefore, measuring throughout the full year the sea-ice thickness from space from Cryosat-2 but also Icesat-2 and other satellite sensors will eventually help provide better maps to the Inuit populations for safe travel over this rapidly changing terrain."

Dr Landy and colleague have published their new Cryosat approach in the journal Nature.

25/07/2023

This has left the UK team at aerospace company Airbus scrambling to find an alternative place to send their technology.

The prototype rover has been put through its paces in a Bedfordshire quarry.

Its cameras, combined with autonomous navigation software, allow it to pick a path and avoid obstacles without the intervention of a human operator.

Nasa's Mars rover collects 'amazing' rock samples
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A photographic mission to show us the Moon

10/07/2023

The US space agency Nasa is all set to bring home its Orion capsule.

The spaceship, which has been on a three-week journey around the Moon, is targeting a splashdown in the Pacific Ocean off California.

Uncrewed for this test flight, the capsule is expected to carry astronauts on its next outing, assuming everything works as planned in the coming hours.

The parachute-assisted drop into the sea should occur at about 09:40 local time (17:40 GMT).

The exercise is part of Nasa's Artemis programme, a quest to take people back to the lunar surface later this decade.

03/07/2023

Earth has taught us that life requires four essential inputs: liquid water, nutrients of some kind, an energy source, and time - an extended period of stability during which biology can get a foothold and establish itself.

We've long considered Mars to be the most likely candidate to host extra-terrestrial life, if not today then sometime in its distant past.

But for astrobiologists - scientists who study the possibility of life elsewhere in the Universe - the ice-covered moons of Jupiter and also Saturn are really starting to pique their interest.

21/06/2023

The top segment of Starship, also known as the ship, had taken flight previously on short hops, but this was the first time it had launched with its lower-stage.

This immense booster, called simply Super Heavy, was fired while clamped to its launch mount in February. However, its cluster of engines on that occasion were throttled back to half their capability.

If, as promised, SpaceX went for 90% thrust on Thursday, the stage should have delivered something close to 70 meganewtons.

That's double the thrust put out by the Saturn V rocket that famously sent men to the Moon in the 1960s and 70s.

30/05/2023

Computer simulations suggest that the objects collided at a speed of just 2-3m/s, as team member Kirby Runyon explained: "About the speed you might run into a wall."

In addition, the long and short axes - the imaginary lines running through the objects at planes perpendicular to one another - are remarkably well-aligned for both Ultima and Thule.

"It is very improbable that this would arise completely by chance," said Prof McKinnon. "The implication is that these bodies were almost certainly in orbit around one another."

25/05/2023

The intention is to launch the probe on the same rocket as Esa's Ariel space telescope when it goes up at the end of the next decade. This observatory won't use the full performance of its launch vehicle, and so spare mass and volume is available to do something additional.

And it's Ariel's destination that makes Interceptor a compelling prospect.

The telescope is to be positioned at a "gravitational sweetspot" about 1.5 million km from Earth. This is an ideal position from which to study distant stars and their planets - but it also represents a fast-response "parking bay" for any new mission seeking a target of opportunity.

19/05/2023

Aerospace giant Boeing has unveiled its proposal for a lander that could take humans to the Moon's surface.

Under a programme called Artemis, the White House wants to return humans to the Moon by 2024.

Its approach, named "Fewest Steps to the Moon", would use the huge Space Launch System (SLS) rocket.

The company says its plan reduces the complexity involved in sending several different bits of hardware into space on multiple launches.

For most robotic space missions, all the hardware needed for the mission is launched on one rocket. Likewise, the crewed Apollo missions to the Moon in the 1960s and 70s required only one lift-off.

16/05/2023

After its swing-by exploration of Pluto in 2015, Nasa's New Horizons spacecraft was sent after a different target in the distant Kuiper Belt, which lies beyond the orbit of Neptune. This belt is populated by thousands of primitive, icy objects that provide insights into the very beginnings of our Solar System.

Scientists settled on an object called MU 69, which had only been discovered in 2014. MU 69 (later called Ultima Thule, and now Arrokoth) turned out to be a 39km-long "contact binary", composed of two different icy balls that collided at low speed. The reddish colouration is caused by organic compounds called tholins on the surface.

Pumpkin Box 60

26/09/2023

01/09/2023

25/08/2023

09/08/2023

25/07/2023

10/07/2023

03/07/2023

21/06/2023

30/05/2023

25/05/2023

19/05/2023

16/05/2023

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