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SpaceX Unveils its Starship Prototype that may Take People to The Mars Next Year

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Elon Musk is dreamy about making interplanetary possible for humans. And for that, he and his company SpaceX have been researching and developing things that possibly can help humans to start living in different planets and visit space whenever they want to. SpaceX completed 11 years since it first made it to the orbit on 28th Septemeber. Marking the date, on Saturday, the CEO unveiled the prototype of another rocket, Starship vehicle named Starhopper, that would take him and his company a bit closer to his dream.

On Saturday night, Elon Musk addressed a gathering of hundreds of people, including employees, local supporters, space enthusiasts and space reporters at the company’s South Texas launch site, where he showcased the new rocket’s prototype named mk. 1. The event was also live-streamed.

According to Musk the rocket still needs improvements in its design and working, but it may go into the orbit within six months. He also talked about the test flights the rocket will be having in one or two months. The test will be conducted at the highest altitude it can go to, like the tests were done for the Falcon rocket, with its prototype Grasshopper rocket. The company took multiple tests for Grasshopper to practice and perfecting its launching and landing. Till now, mk. 1 has completed two successful flights at a lower altitude.

starship rocket
Image Source: cbsnews.com

The company built the Mk. 1 during this summer on the South Texas coast and the same will take off from the very coast for the test flights. This won’t be a single rocket. But a fleet of Starship rockets will be developed at Texas and the Florida coast.

“What’s really kind of hard to grasp, at a visceral level, is that this giant ship will do the same thing that Grasshopper did. This thing is going to take off, fly to 65,000 feet, about 20 kilometres and come back and land in about one to two months. So that giant thing, it’s really going to be pretty epic to see that thing take off and come back.” said Musk during the event.

Musk also revealed that the Starship rockets can carry around 100 people and that too for long-duration flights to different planets. The company aims to help the governments to build cities on planets like Mars, such that its rockets would be taking of significant quantities of cargo and people to the other planets.

“Starship serves as a large, long-duration spacecraft capable of carrying passengers or cargo to Earth orbit, planetary destinations, and between destinations on Earth,” SpaceX said.

NASA collaborates with US based Space Agencies

NASA to Collaborate with Commercial U.S. Based Space Agencies to Advance Mars, Moon Technologies

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NASA is the first agency to land on the surface of the moon, and the world’s top space agency, too. But it seems to further extend its operations, NASA needs the support of other organisations as well. Leading to this, the organisation has announced a partnership with the long list of various commercial U.S. based space agencies, including SpaceX, BlueOrigin, and Lockheed Martin.

NASA has partnered with thirteen U.S. based space agencies and has formed partnerships on 19 different technologies that will help it advance its operations for reaching out and landing on other planets and extend its research on Mars and the lunar surface.

Through the Announcement of Collaborative Opportunity initiative, NASA had invited proposals from different space organisations. The agency had asked those organisations to submit proposals for the technology they want to work upon. On the basis of various factors, the agency has selected thirteen different organisations.

NASA collaborates with US based Space Agencies
Image Source: nasa.gov

With those agencies, NASA will be providing appropriate resources and support, such that they can continue their research work on the selected technology. The organisations will be working collaboratively on different operations, including landing on other planets, navigating over the surface of the Moon, transferring propellant in space, improving spacecraft operation, etc.

The Blue Origin, Jeff Bezos’s space company will work on a fuel cell-based power system to be used in the company’s Blue Moon lander. The company will be collaborating with NASA’s Johnson Space Center and the Goddard Space Flight Center. Along with that, the company will work on a new navigation system. The system will help in an accurate and safe landing of spacecraft on various parts of the Moon. It will also be developing a new power system, that will empower the landers on the Moon in the lunar nights or for at least two weeks.

On the other hand, SpaceX will be collaborating with the Kennedy Space Center. The two will be working on improving the technology that helps in verticle landing of bigger landers, at the place where the gravity is not that strong, like on the moon and other zero-gravity environments. Other than that, the company will work on improving the workability of the reusable rockets. With the new technology, the rocket propellent can be moved through one vehicle to the other efficiently, within the orbit.

The third biggest company, Lockheed Martin, will be working on robotics and autonomous technologies that would help in plantation and farming in the space so that it will be possible to harvest plants in the deep space in the coming future.

Other than these three companies, Advanced Space will be the part of NASA’s lunar navigation technologies research works and Vulcan Wireless will be helping NASA test the CubeSat radio transponder, and its compatibility with NASA’s Space Network.

Aerogel Technologies, Spirit AeroSystem Inc., Anasphere, Bally Ribbon Mills, Sierra Nevada Corporation, Maxar Technologies, Aerojet Rocketdyne, Colorado Power Electronics Inc., are the other companies that have been selected by NASA to work on its various operations, related to Mars and the Moon missions.

Elon Musk Neuralink

Neuralink : Elon Musk Finally Talks About his Secretive Company’s Brain Control Interface

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Elon Musk, the Tesla and SpaceX founder, is always up to something next level. He has been involved in some really big and unique projects, like an online bank, an electric car, a reusable rocket, etc. The CEO of one of the biggest tech giants also owns the secretive experimental company ‘Neuralinks’. Tuesday evening during an event in San Francisco, Musk gave a presentation on the projects that this company has been working on for the past two years.

The company was founded in 2017, and it mainly works on developing the data transmission system between humans and computers. On Tuesday, CEO Musk, on the behalf of Neuralink, introduced devices that can be implanted to a human brain, so that they can operate devices like computer and smartphones through their thoughts.

Musk explained that there will be threads thinner than a normal human hair, which will be connected with a processor inside the human brain. This processor will make the person able to operate various electronic devices through a Bluetooth connection.

Elon Musk Neuralink
Image Source: ingeniousexpress.com

During the presentation, the company demonstrated a computer receiving information from a rats mind. And, in future, the company seeks to get permission from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to start clinical trials on the human brains. If the company gets the approval, it will start the experiments by the end of the first half of the next year.

According to Musk, Neuralink is experimenting with such devices so that the paralysed people will be able to control through their mind, but with lesser damage made to their neural system than the other already available devices do.

The process of inserting the processor into a paralysed human’s brain will include drilling four 8mm holes into the patient’s skull and then implant the processor connected to 4 to 6 μm thin polymer threads. This will help them operate various devices only through their thoughts. The company intends to use a laser beam to get through the skull in future.

“We will painlessly laser-drill the holes into the skull, place the threads, plug the hole with the sensor, and then you go home. It’ll be an experience like getting Lasik,” said President Max Hodak.

According to a report by the New York Times, the company will be carrying out the early experiments with the neuroscientists at Stanford University.

“It’s not going to be suddenly Nueuralink will have this neural lace and start taking over people’s brains. Ultimately, the company wants to achieve a symbiosis with artificial intelligence. And that, even in benign scenario humans would be left behind.” said Elon Musk during the presentation.

Earlier in 2006, the scientists from the Brown University developed a similar system named BrainGate that enabled a paralysed person Matthew Nagle play Pong using only his mind. But, this was a way stiffer technology and is prone to cause more damage to the human brain.

But the technology used by Neuralink is more flexible. The company has also developed a robot who will insert those threads into the human brain that too six threads per minute.

SpaceX to Bring Free and Open Internet to All with the Launch of Starlink Project

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Last year, the aerospace transport agency SpaceX had launched the prototype satellite for its much-talked-about project, Starlink, a project that targets to provide internet to the whole planet through a network of the satellites. And now after a year-long wait, the company will finally be launching the first batch of satellites of Starlink’s “production” version with the help of SpaceX Falcon 9 today at 10:30 PM EDT.

SpaceX Starlink project
Image Source: futurist.com

The company will launch 60 satellites with the help of a Falcon 9 rocket, which will be launched from a launchpad based in Cape Canaveral. After the launch, the satellites will be arranged like a constellation to cover a part of the Earth like a blanket. Starlink project will be responsible to provide open, high speed and low-latency internet to anyone in the world.

The Starlink project revolves around the concept of low earth orbit (LEO) satellites. Once the satellites are positioned in the orbit, these will link to the small terminals on the surface of the earth. The satellites are able to easily make a connection with the ground terminals as the LEO satellites are positioned at a distance as close as 99 to 1,200 miles from the surface of the Earth. This way the internet speed will also be faster as compared to the conventional methods used to provide internet.

The 60 satellites have been placed like kernels on a corncob, and with the help of a spring, these will be sent to the orbit at a particular velocity.

The launch of those satellites is a challenge for the company, which if went favourably, will be a great achievement for the company. Otherwise, there are other rival companies of SpaceX too that are also looking forward to getting their hands on similar projects, including OneWeb and Amazon too.

But since the company had test-launched similar satellite TinTin A and TinTin B successfully in the month of February, there are higher possibilities of the success of the Starlink project. According to Elon Musk, the founder of SpaceX those 60 satellites are the “production design”, and in future, the company plans to launch as many as 12000 satellites to achieve that constellation network. If the experiment goes according to the plan, people will be able to access high speed and free internet by the mid of 2020.

SpaceX Successfully Completes its First Falcon Heavy Commercial Mission

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SapceX falcon heavy
Image Source: orlandosentinel.com

SpaceX has finally launched its first commercial mission with the Falcon heavy carrying the Arabsat-6A, a high-capacity telecommunications satellite in its payload, on Thursday. The satellite is built by Lockheed Martin, for Saudi Arabian corporation Arabsat. The launch took place from the NASA’s Kennedy Space Center at 6:35 p.m. EDT, after a delay due to the bad weather.

Falcon is the most powerful rocket in the world. The launch on April 11 was its second flight attempt following a successful test launch in February 2018. After 9 minutes of launching Falcon, the three booster rockets, too, landed back on Earth, safe. The three core rockets will be ready for reuse in a few days. These core engines are capable of generating 5.1 million pounds of thrust together. In the previous launch, two of the three boosters had landed safe, but the third one had crashed into the ocean as ran out of fuel at 300 miles per hour.

Despite the delay due to the wind, the events took place as were planned. The two boosters landed at the LZ-1 and LZ-2, and the third, the core booster, landed on the “Of Course I Still Love You” drone-ship.

After the 34 minutes of the takeoff, the Arabsat-6A payload detached itself from Falcon and went into the orbit making the mission a success.

The satellite launched by Falcon is a communication satellite, which will provide the television, radio, Internet and mobile communications services to the people of the Middle East, Africa and parts of Europe.

Last year, the SpaceX had 21 successful launches for its customers. This year the company intends to take humans to space and has partnered with Boeing Co. signing a contract with NASA for its Commercial Crew program, to board American astronauts to the International Space Station.

SpaceX Successfully Launched the 1st Security Space Mission For the US Military

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SpaceX, breaking its own previous records, launched the first national security space mission rocket on Sunday. The company had won the US Air Force’s National Security Space (NSS) contract, in 2016, and was planning to launch the rocket earlier last week. But, due to some bad weather conditions, the launch got delayed and finally, SpaceX’s 21st flight took off on Sunday.

The two-stage rocket, Falcon 9, lifted off from Cape Canaveral, Florida, along with the first GPS III satellite from the US Air Force. Lockheed Martin has built this $500 million GPS III satellite. The GPS has been given the nickname Vespucci. The GPS is owned by the U.S. military and operated by the Air Force.

gps3
Image Source: spacenews.com

The secretary of the Air Force, Heather Wilson, said, “This next-generation GPS satellite is three times more accurate than previous versions and eight times better at anti-jamming. It’s the first in a series and nicknamed Vespucci after the 15th-century Italian explorer who calculated Earth’s circumference to within 50 miles (80 kilometres).”

The successful launch of the satellite can be considered as one of the victorious moment for Elon Musk as he had been trying hard to enter the market for military space launches dominated by Lockheed and Boeing Co, from years now.

In 2014, SpaceX had sued the US Air Force as it awarded the non-compete contract for 36 rocket launches, worth a multibillion-dollar, to United Launch Alliance. As a result, the Air Force agreed to open up competition for the next contract and in the next year, SpaceX won the $83 million contract for the GPS III after it demonstrated the reliability of Falcon 9 system and fulfilled all the certification requirements from the Air Force. The company dropped the lawsuit in 2015.

The GPS III contract will have a lifespan of 15 years. According to Lockheed spokesman Chip Eschenfelder, the satellite is the first to launch out of 32 in production by Lockheed under contracts.

The Col. Robert Bongiovi, director of the Launch Enterprise Systems Directorate at SMC, said, “This launch is a milestone for many reasons. For us, it marks the first competitively-awarded launch in over 10 years, the first national security space launch with SpaceX, and the first launch of a GPS III satellite. This really is an exciting time to be in the launch business.”

The other satellites in the series are still in the testing phase, and the next GPS III satellite may have its launch in the mid-2019.