The Space Roundup - Dec 5th, 2021
Hello, hello, my dear space lovers!
Are you ready for yet another week of space awesomeness?
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3, 2, 1, zero! Lift-off!
Commercial progress
NASA has awarded Blue Origin, Nanoracks and Northrop Grumman around $415M to develop three commercial space station concepts and has also awarded SpaceX three more commercial crew flights now that Boeing’s Starliner is delayed.
SpaceX, with its 27th Falcon 9 mission of the year broke last years’ record of 26 successful launches… how amazing is this? Reusability and a super-fast turnaround is making possible a launch cadence that was impossible to imagine just a couple of years ago.
But it’s not all good news to SpaceX. This very week, Elon Musk sent an email to all employees stating that there’s a potential risk of bankruptcy if they don’t increase production of Raptor engines to power Starships. This is the only way they can be sustainable if they want to keep up with the pace of satellites and payload they need to put into orbit to make their plans come true. Crossing fingers.
Space Innovation
The Indian company Skyroot successfully test-fired this week the first privately developed cryogenic rocket engine in India. They are 3D-printing a superalloy, reducing production time by 95%. Just Wow.
This week Rocket Lab shared the design of its next rocket: Neutron. The design is truly amazing and very innovative and if you hadn’t had the chance to watch the presentation video, I totally recommend it: jaw-dropping.
At the ISS, the heroic crew successfully replaced an antenna on an EVA after the debris nightmares of last week.
Oh, and the space mystery of the week is a Moon mystery. The Chinese Yutu-2 rover has found a estrange cubic object they have named “mystery house” and they are planning to go visit it soon… what could it be?? Look at the pic below
Pic of the week
This is not our planet. Nor any other planet: this cliff exists on a comet! The comet is called Churyumov-Gerasimenko (CG) and this pic was taken by Rosetta, a spacecraft launched by ESA that rendezvoused with the comet in 2014. Humanity amazes me…
Launches of the week
Busy week ahead! Enjoy :)
Sunday, Dec 5th - Atlas V 551 | STP-3
Monday, Dec 6th - Electron • BlackSky 12 & 13
Wednesday, Dec 8th - Soyuz • ISS 66S
Thursday, Dec 9th - Falcon 9 • IXPE
Sunday, Dec 12th - Proton • Express AMU3 & Express AMU7
And that’s it for this week!
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Cheers from sunny Spain!
Juan, the Curious Astronaut