Space News & Blog Articles

There are few things in this world that brings feelings of awe and wonder more than a rocket launch. Watching a literal tower of steel slowly lift off from the ground with unspeakable power reminds us of what humanity can achieve despite our flaws, disagreements, and differences, and for the briefest of moments these magnificent spectacles are capable of bringing us all together regardless of race, creed, and religion.

The nation was in love with the Saturn V in the 1960s and 70s as it successfully sent 24 men to the Moon with 12 of them walking on its surface. From the 1980s to the 2000s, the Space Shuttle captivated our hearts and imaginations. But after the Space Shuttle retired in 2011, there were no rocket launches that really grabbed us until SpaceX started launching stuff into orbit and especially when they started landing their own rockets on ocean barges or landing pads.

The Apollo 11 Saturn V rocket launch vehicle lifts-off with astronauts Neil A. Armstrong, Michael Collins and Edwin E. Aldrin, Jr., at 9:32 a.m. EDT July 16, 1969, from Kennedy Space Center’s Launch Complex Pad 39A. (Credit: NASA)

The Space Shuttle Discovery and its seven-member STS-120 crew head toward Earth-orbit and a scheduled link-up with the International Space Station on October 23, 2007. (Credit: NASA)

The real showstopper has been watching SpaceX launch people back into space from American soil, as the private space company has made seven crewed launches into orbit using their Crew Dragon spacecraft, the most recent being Crew-4 to the International Space Station. To go with their crewed missions, SpaceX also frequently launches their Starlink satellites into orbit, along with military payloads, as well. Overall, SpaceX launched 31 rockets into orbit in 2021, and has already reached 26 launches for 2022, which is on pace to absolutely shatter last year’s mark. The pioneering company is also preparing to launch its Starship prototype sometime in the future, which they hope to eventually bring people to Mars.

NASA says it’s finished with having to do full-scale dress rehearsals for the first liftoff of its moon-bound Space Launch System rocket. But it’s not finished with having to make fixes.

“At this point we’ve determined that we’ve successfully completed the evaluations and the work that we intended to complete for the dress rehearsal,” Thomas Whitmeyer, NASA’s deputy associate administrator for common exploration systems development, told reporters today.

NASA’s assessment came after a dress rehearsal that reached its climax on June 20 with the loading of the 322-foot-tall rocket’s supercooled propellant tanks. The rehearsal, which followed some less-than-fully-successful trial runs in April, marked a milestone for launch preparations because it was the first time that the team at Kennedy Space Center in Florida had fully loaded all of the tanks and proceeded into the terminal launch countdown.

Mission managers had hoped to get as far into the countdown as the engine start sequence at T-minus-9.34 seconds. But during this week’s rehearsal, launch controllers encountered a hydrogen leak in a quick-disconnect attachment that’s part of the fueling system. The team tried to fix the leak by warming up the attachment, and then cooling it back down to realign a seal, but the fix didn’t work. In the end, the count was stopped at T-minus-29 seconds.

Even though the rehearsal at Launch Complex 39B ended slightly earlier than originally planned, NASA officials said they were satisfied with the objectives that were achieved — including practicing the procedure for unloading propellant from the rocket. “Our Artemis launch team has worked quickly to adapt to the dynamics of propellant loading operations,” Charlie Blackwell-Thompson, Artemis launch director at Kennedy Space Center, said in a news release.

Remember Mechazilla, that tall launch tower at the SpaceX Starbase in Texas that will stack Starships and “catch” spent Super Heavy boosters? SpaceX began constructing an identical launch tower at Cape Canaveral in Florida, where Starships will also be launching from soon. This tower is taking shape alongside SpaceX’s Launch Complex-39A (LC-39A) facilities at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center. Once complete, the launch tower will stand about 146 meters (~480 ft) in height, making it the second-tallest space-related structure on the East Coast, second to NASA’s massive Vehicle Assembly Building (VAB).

Like the launch tower at Boca Chica, the assembly process is moving rapidly and could be finished in just a few months. However, the crews have adopted a different building strategy based on the lessons learned from Boca Chica. When assembling Mechazilla, the construction crews stacked all nine of the tower’s prefabricated sections before integrating all of its hardware (like the tower’s “T-Rex” robotic arms). While this approach allowed for rapid assembly, it also led to several months of additional, highly complicated work.

For the launch tower at Cape Canaveral, SpaceX is taking a different approach to minimize the disruption to the surrounding launch complex. SpaceX has been assembling and outfitting the first six of the nine prefabricated tower sections for the past three months before stacking them together. These sections are already equipped with almost everything they’ll need to catch and stack Starships, such as railings, elevator shafts, walkways, fuel lines, and other preinstalled components. SpaceX is also busy assembling the launch pad’s orbital launch mount, where Starships and Super Heavy boosters are placed between launches.

The ground crews will still need to connect this hardware once the tower is assembled, but this post-stack work should take much less time. They are also making progress on the giant robotic arms (the two catching/lifting arms and the refueling arm) that will eventually be installed on the tower. The components for these “chopstick arms” are already arriving at the Kennedy Space Center. SpaceX will also need to install a new tank farm near the tower to accommodate its stores of liquid methane – the propellant used by the Starship and Super Heavy launch system – since LC-39A is not equipped for methane fueling.

A lot of work needs to be done before “Starbase Florida” is up and running, but they are making significant progress. In addition, the optimized process they are following for the launch tower’s construction will ensure that all the work around the launch pads will cause minimal disruption to their ongoing launch efforts – consisting of Falcon rockets regularly deploying new batches of Starlink satellites. As the busiest launch complex in the world, SpaceX also hopes to avoid disrupting NASA missions and other launch providers.

The Orion Nebula is a well-known feature in the night sky and is visible in small backyard telescopes. Orion is a busy place. The region is known for active star formation and other phenomena. It’s one of the most scrutinized features in the sky, and astronomers have observed all kinds of activity there: planets forming in protoplanetary disks, stars beginning their lives of fusion inside collapsing molecular clouds, and the photoevaporative power of massive hot stars as they carve out openings in clouds of interstellar gas.

But supernova explosions are leaving their mark on the Orion Nebula too. New research says supernovae explosions in recent astronomical history are responsible for a mysterious feature first formally identified in the night sky at the end of the 19th century. It’s called Barnard’s Loop, and it’s a gigantic loop of hot gas as large as 300 light-years across.

In 1894, American astronomer and astrophotographer E.E. Barnard published his observations of Orion in Popular Astronomy. Remarkably, he was experimenting with the lens from a “cheap, oil-projecting lantern”—in his words—that he used at the Lick Observatory. In his article, he explained what he’d found. “On my drawing, I have marked a portion of the nebulosity, from one degree to two degrees east of Tau, with dots, as it is so feeble at this point that I cannot be certain of it.” He added that “It is brightest near 56 and 60 Orionis.” (Barnard also acknowledged that he wasn’t the first to see it.)

In our more modern times, we simply point our browsers and gorgeous images of Barnard’s Loop quickly pop up on our screens.

Astronomers’ understanding of Barnard’s Loop has progressed along with our observational power and our growing knowledge of everything in nature.