The Blue Origin Blue Moon is a robotic space cargo carrier and lander for making cargo deliveries to the Moon. Designed and operated by Blue Origin for use on the Blue Moon mission aimed for 2024, Blue Moon derives from the vertical landing technology used in Blue Origin’s New Shepard sub-orbital rocket.
The lander is planned to be capable of delivering 4,500 kg (9,900 lb) to the surface of the Moon. The cargo vehicle could also be used to support NASA activities in cis-lunar space, or transport payloads of ice from Shackleton Crater to support space activities. The first projected mission for the craft would be a 2024 lunar south pole landing. It is proposed that a series of landings could be used to deliver the infrastructure for a Moon base.
Blue Origin began development work on the lander in 2016, publicly disclosed the project in 2017, and unveiled a mock up of the Blue Moon lander in May 2019.
The unpiloted SpaceX Dragon cargo craft arrived at the International Space Station May 6, two days after launch atop a Falcon 9 rocket from the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, Florida. Expedition 59 Flight Engineers David Saint-Jacques of the Canadian Space Agency and Nick Hague of NASA used the Canadian-built Canadarm2 robotic arm to capture Dragon before turning the operation over to robotic ground controllers who maneuvered Dragon for its installation to the Earth-facing port of the Harmony module where it was bolted into place for a month-long stay. Dragon is delivering almost three tons of supplies and scientific experiments to the orbital outpost.
The Vulcan rocket is an American heavy-payload launch vehicle under development since 2014 by United Launch Alliance (ULA), funded by a public–private partnership with the U.S. government. ULA expects the first launch of the new rocket to occur in April 2021.
United Launch Alliance had considered several launch vehicle concepts in the decade since the company was formed in 2006. Various concepts for derivative vehicles based on the Atlas and Delta lines of launch vehicles they inherited from their predecessor companies were presented to the U.S. government for funding. None were funded beyond concept stage.
In early 2014, geopolitical and U.S. political considerations involving international sanctions during the Ukrainian crisis, led to an effort by ULA to consider possibly replacing the Russian-supplied RD-180 engine used on the first stage booster of the Atlas V. Formal study contracts were issued by ULA in June 2014 to several U.S. rocket engine suppliers. ULA was also facing competition from SpaceX, then seen to affect ULA’s core national security market of U.S. military launches, and by July 2014 the United States Congress was debating whether to legislate a ban on future use of the RD-180.
In September 2014, ULA announced that it had entered into a partnership with Blue Origin to develop the BE-4 liquid oxygen (LOX) and liquid methane (CH4) engine to replace the RD-180 on a new first stage booster. The Blue engine was already in its third year of development by Blue Origin, and ULA said it expected the new stage and engine to start flying no earlier than 2019. Two of the 2,400-kilonewton (550,000 lbf)-thrust BE-4 engines were to be used on a new launch vehicle booster. ULA referred to the successor concept vehicle as a “next generation launch system” and used that descriptor into early 2015.
In October 2014, ULA announced a major restructuring of company processes and workforce to reduce launch costs by half. One of the reasons given for the restructuring and new cost reduction goals was new competition in the launch market from SpaceX. ULA planned to have preliminary design ideas in place for a blending of its existing Atlas V and Delta IV technologies by the end of 2014, to build a successor to the Atlas V that would allow the company to halve Atlas V launch costs. A part of the restructuring effort was described as the effort to co-develop the alternative BE-4 engine with Blue Origin for the new launch vehicle.
Astronomers have put together the largest and most comprehensive “history book” of galaxies into one single image, using 16 years’ worth of observations from NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope.
The deep-sky mosaic, created from nearly 7,500 individual exposures, provides a wide portrait of the distant universe, containing 265,000 galaxies that stretch back through 13.3 billion years of time to just 500 million years after the big bang. The faintest and farthest galaxies are just one ten-billionth the brightness of what the human eye can see. The universe’s evolutionary history is also chronicled in this one sweeping view. The portrait shows how galaxies change over time, building themselves up to become the giant galaxies seen in the nearby universe.
This ambitious endeavor, called the Hubble Legacy Field, also combines observations taken by several Hubble deep-field surveys, including the eXtreme Deep Field (XDF), the deepest view of the universe. The wavelength range stretches from ultraviolet to near-infrared light, capturing the key features of galaxy assembly over time.
Video Credit: NASA, ESA, G. Illingworth (University of California, Santa Cruz) and G. Bacon (STScI)
New Shepard had a great mission on May 2, 2019. This particular rocket has flown to space and back 5 times. The mission flew 38 payloads for a variety of schools, universities, government agencies and private companies.
Countdown and liftoff of the SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket with the company’s Dragon spacecraft onboard for the company’s 17th Commercial Resupply Services mission to the International Space Station. Launch occurred at 2:48 a.m. EST on May 4 from Launch Complex 40 at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida.
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