Daily Archives: March 16, 2024

SpaceX launching third Starship test flight in Texas: What to know – Austin American-Statesman

Posted: March 16, 2024 at 10:16 am

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SpaceX launching third Starship test flight in Texas: What to know - Austin American-Statesman

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SpaceX Starship achieves new milestones its third test flight, ITF-3 – Florida Today

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SpaceX Starship achieves new milestones its third test flight, ITF-3 - Florida Today

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SpaceX gets E-band radio waves to boost Starlink broadband – SpaceNews

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TAMPA, Fla. SpaceX has secured conditional approval to use extremely high-frequency E-band radio waves to improve the capacity of its low Earth orbit Starlink broadband constellation.

The Federal Communications Commission said March 8 it is allowing SpaceX to use E-band frequencies between second-generation Starlink satellites and gateways on the ground, alongside already approved spectrum in the Ka and Ku bands.

Specifically, SpaceX is now also permitted to communicate between 71 and 76 gigahertz from space to Earth, and 81-86 GHz Earth-to-space, using the up to 7,500 Gen2 satellites SpaceX is allowed to deploy.

SpaceX has plans for 30,000 Gen2 satellites, on top of the 4,400 Gen1 satellites already authorized by the FCC.

However, the FCC deferred action in December 2022 on whether to allow SpaceX to deploy the other three-quarters of its Gen2 constellation, which includes spacecraft closer to Earth to improve broadband speeds.

The regulator also deferred action at the time on SpaceXs plans to use E-band frequencies, citing a need to first establish ground rules for using them in space.

In a March 8 regulatory filing, the FCC said it found SpaceXs proposed operations in the E-band present no new or increased frequency conflicts with other satellite operations.

But the order comes with multiple conditions, including potentially forcing SpaceX to modify operations if another satellite operator also seeks to use the radio waves.

Starlink satellites use Ku-band to connect user terminals. In October, the FCC allowed SpaceX to also provide fixed-satellite services from Gen2 spacecraft using V-band spectrum, which like E-band is also extremely high frequency (EHF) and in its commercial infancy.

Higher frequency spectrum bands promise more bandwidth and throughput as they become increasingly subject to weather attenuation and other issues.

Last year, SpaceX said using E-band radio waves for backhaul would enable Starlink Gen2 to provide about four times more capacity per satellite than earlier iterations, without elaborating.

There are currently around 1900 Starlink satellites launched under the Gen2 license in orbit, according to spacecraft tracker and astrophysicist Jonathan McDowell about two-thirds of these satellites are significantly larger and more powerful than Gen1 but smaller than full-scale versions slated to launch on SpaceXs Starship vehicle. Around 3,600 separate satellites in orbit are classed as Gen1.

The FCC continues to defer action over whether to allow SpaceX to deploy the other 22,500 satellites in its proposed Gen2 constellation.

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SpaceX gets E-band radio waves to boost Starlink broadband - SpaceNews

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Review: Tripping on Utopia Complicates the History of Psychedelics – AOL

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Grand Central Publishing

In one common account of modern psychedelic culture's origins, LSD was initially monopolized by the national security state, which saw such drugs as tools for "control of human behavior." The results included MKULTRA, an infamous CIA program that experimented on people without their consent. But in the 1960s, the story goes, the establishment lost control of these tools. Suddenly, utopian individualists like Timothy Leary were urging people to use drugs to seize control of theirownconsciousnessand the deep state was less interested in deploying LSD than in cracking down on its unauthorized use.

Benjamin Breen'sTripping on Utopiacomplicates this tale. The book focuses on the anthropologists Margaret Mead and Gregory Bateson, who in the 1930s developed their own utopian visions of fluid identities and resistance to psychological manipulation; while psychedelia was not at the center of their work, it was in their constellation of sources. They also developed strong ties to the national security state during World War II, and in the early Cold War their social circles included people directly tied to MKULTRA. Bateson backed away in horror, but Mead maintained her CIA connections for years.

Some of the book's conclusions have been disputed, with Bateson's daughter Nora arguing that Breen misconstrued archival documents and otherwise botched his facts. But no matter how that debate plays out,Tripping on Utopiamakes it clear that these two conceptions of psychedelic drugsas tools of liberation and as tools of controlwere uncomfortably entwined well before the 1960s. The '60s crowd does not always come off well here either, but I'll say one thing for Leary: For all his overstatements and opportunistic personal behavior, which Breen recounts unsparingly, he believed it was just as wrong to coercively "alter the consciousness of thy fellow man" as it was to "prevent thy fellow man from altering his own consciousness."

The post Review: Tripping on Utopia Complicates the History of Psychedelics appeared first on Reason.com.

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Review: Tripping on Utopia Complicates the History of Psychedelics - AOL

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SpaceX’s Crew-7 capsule returns 4 astronauts to Earth with predawn splashdown (video) – Space.com

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The four astronauts of SpaceX's Crew-7 mission returned to Earth early Tuesday morning (March 12), with their homecoming broadcast live.

Crew-7's Dragon capsule, Endurance, splashed down at 5:50 a.m. EDT (0950 UTC) off the coast of Pensacola, Florida. The recovery crew arrived at the capsule around three minutes later, with thermal cameras tracking the recovery operations.

Related: SpaceX Crew-7 astronauts undock from ISS for return to Earth

The parachutes that had guided Endurance back to Earth were recovered with the recovery crew checking for both pyrotechnic residuals and poisonous materials. After these safety checks, the Dragon capsule was lifted from the Gulf of Mexico onto a recovery ship at 6:13 a.m. EDT (1013 GMT) using a hydraulic lift.

The Crew-7 astronauts exited the Endurance Dragon capsule at 6:36 a.m. EDT (1036 UTC), with Andy Mogensen assisted from the capsule first. After 199 days in low-Earth orbit and their descent back to Earth, the crew will visit a medical facility to check their health.

Endurance undocked from the International Space Station on Monday (March 11) after the astronauts' 6.5-month stay on the orbiting laboratory to begin Crew-7's journey home.

Crew-7 consists of NASA astronaut JasminMoghbeli, Andreas Mogensen of the European Space Agency, the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency's Satoshi Furukawa and Konstantin Borisov, a cosmonaut with Russia's space agency,Roscosmos.

The mission launched to the ISS atop a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket on Aug. 26, 2023 and arrived at the orbiting complex a day later. The liftoff kicked off the first spaceflight for Moghbeli and Borisov and the second for Mogensen and Furukawa.

The Crew-7 quartet overlapped briefly with their successors, the four astronauts of SpaceX's Crew-8 mission, which arrived at the ISS last Tuesday (March 5).

As those mission names suggest, SpaceX has now launched eight operational astronaut flights to the ISS for NASA (plus one crewed test flight to the orbiting lab). The agency selected SpaceX for this job in September 2014.

Aerospace giant Boeing got a commercial crew contract back then as well, but has not yet flown an astronaut mission for NASA. That should change soon, however: The first astronaut flight of Boeing's Starliner capsule is scheduled to launch in early May.

That mission, called Crew Flight Test, will send two astronauts to the ISS for a roughly 10-day stay.

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SpaceX's Crew-7 capsule returns 4 astronauts to Earth with predawn splashdown (video) - Space.com

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‘Wildly Successful Test’: SpaceX’s Starship reaches orbit, biggest rocket ever made – Fox Business

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'Wildly Successful Test': SpaceX's Starship reaches orbit, biggest rocket ever made  Fox Business

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SpaceX Dragon splashes down during reentry, Crew-7 returns to Earth – USA TODAY

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SpaceX Dragon splashes down during reentry, Crew-7 returns to Earth - USA TODAY

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SpaceX Starship launch 3: Time, how to watch live, what to expect – Business Insider

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SpaceX Starship launch 3: Time, how to watch live, what to expect  Business Insider

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SpaceX’s Starship makes it into space but is lost during reentry – The Washington Post

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SpaceX launched its massive Starship rocket for the third time on Thursday from its private launch site in South Texas. The launch took place at 9:25 a.m. Eastern time. The spacecraft separated from its booster as planned and traveled further than it had on its previous test flights. SpaceX lost communication with the vehicle before it made it to its planned splashdown location in the Indian Ocean.

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Starship launch: Third flight reaches space but is lost on re-entry – New Scientist

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SpaceXs Starship taking off on 14 March

SpaceX

SpaceXs third and most ambitious Starship test flight appeared to be at least a partial success today as it reached space, carried out fuel transfer tests and travelled further and faster than ever before. But the craft failed to make its scheduled landing and appears to have either self-destructed or burned up in Earths atmosphere.

After lift-off from SpaceXs site at Boca Chica, Texas, the first and second stages separated cleanly and the first stage the booster that lifts it on the first part of its journey began descending for a landing at sea. SpaceX ultimately intends to recover and re-use both stages, but in these early test flights they are both destined for a safer and easier ocean ditching.

While the first stage steered itself on the descent it seemingly struggled to slow its fall as intended and appeared to hit the sea at speed.

The second stage went on to reach an altitude of around 230 kilometres and successfully opened and closed its payload door as a test. It also shuffled fuel from one tank to another as an experimental first step towards the eventual refuelling of one Starship by another, which will be vital for long-range missions.

But during re-entry the craft reached extremely high temperatures, with live video showing glowing plasma around its surface, and both video and telemetry data was lost.

The craft had been due to attempt to relight its Raptor engines which has never been done in space before for a controlled re-entry to Earths atmosphere starting at almost 27,000 kilometres per hour. But this re-light part of the mission was skipped by the company, and the craft was subsequently lost.

A view of SpaceXs Starship captured 9 minutes into the mission

SpaceX

The US Federal Aviation Administration granted permission for the test flight on 13 March, the day before the planned launch, and tweeted that SpaceX had met all safety, environmental, policy and financial responsibility requirements.

Starship is the most powerful rocket ever built. Its 121-metre length is made up of two stages: a booster and a spacecraft, both of which are designed to be reusable to keep costs low and enable fast turnarounds between flights.

The Starship heating up as it re-entered Earths atmosphere after about 47 minutes of flight, leading to the loss of the spacecraft

SpaceX

Todays launch was the companys third with Starship. It follows the first test in April last year, which exploded before the first and second stages could separate, and another in November that saw the second, upper stage reach space but self-destruct when it stopped transmitting data, with the first stage blowing up just after separation.

The ultimate aim of the project is to put humans on the moon and, later, Mars.

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Starship launch: Third flight reaches space but is lost on re-entry - New Scientist

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