SpaceX’s most powerful rocket returns to flight and nails synchronized landing

4rd Edition International Research Awards on Science, Health and Engineering, New Delhi, india, 23-01-2023

Online Nomination: x-i.me/veershen shen.sciencefather.com/awards/ youtube.com/channel/UCzfY7

SpaceX's Falcon Heavy rocket takes off from Kennedy Space Center in Florida on January 15.

Joe Skipper/Reuters

CNN —

SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy rocket, the towering launch vehicle known for its boosters’ aerial acrobatics and synchronized landings when returning to Earth, took to the skies Sunday, delivering national security payloads to orbit for the US military.

The mission, called USSF-67, took off at 5:56 p.m. ET from Kennedy Space Center in Florida, marking the fifth successful flight of the rocket recently dethroned as the world’s most powerful operational launch vehicle. This mission was initially advertised to launch on Saturday, and the reason for the one-day delay was not immediately clear.

The Falcon Heavy debuted to much fanfare in 2018 when SpaceX CEO Elon Musk attached his personal Tesla Roadster as a test payload on the launch. The car is still in space, taking an oblong path around the sun that swings out as far as Mars’ orbital path.

The rocket followed up that test mission with two launches in 2019 before taking a three-year hiatus; the vast majority of SpaceX’s missions don’t require the Falcon Heavy’s amped-up power. On the other hand, SpaceX’s workhorse Falcon 9 rocket launched more than 60 times in 2022 alone, sending two groups of astronauts to space as well as Starlink satellites and a variety of other spacecraft.

But SpaceX is now making good on lucrative military launch contracts it signed for the Falcon Heavy years ago. The rocket returned to flight in November with the launch of the US military’s USSF-44 mission, and Sunday’s liftoff was a follow-up to that display.

“USSF-44 included six payloads on one satellite that advance communications, space weather sensing, and other technologies into near-geosynchronous orbits,” according to the military’s Space Operations Command.

Comments

Wiggling worms suggest link between vitamin B12 and Alzheimer’s

Worms don’t wiggle when they have Alzheimer’s disease. Yet something helped worms with the disease hold onto their wiggle in Professor Jessica Tanis’s lab at the University of Delaware. In solving the mystery, Tanis and her team have yielded new clues into the potential impact of diet on Alzheimer’s, the dreaded degenerative brain disease afflicting more than 6 million Americans. A few years ago, Tanis and her team began investigating factors affecting the onset and progression of Alzheimer’s disease. They were doing genetic research with C. elegans , a tiny soil-dwelling worm that is the subject of numerous studies. Expression of amyloid beta, a toxic protein implicated in Alzheimer’s disease, paralyzes worms within 36 hours after they reach adulthood. While the worms in one petri dish in Tanis’s lab were rendered completely immobile, the worms of the same age in the adjacent petri dish still had their wiggle, documented as “body bends,” by the scientists. “It was an observa...

‘Massive-scale mobilization’ necessary for addressing climate change, scientists say

A year after a global coalition of more than 11,000 scientists declared a climate emergency, Oregon State University researchers who initiated the declaration released an update today that points to a handful of hopeful signs, but shares continued alarm regarding an overall lack of progress in addressing climate risks. “Young people in more than 3,500 locations around the world have organized to push for urgent action,” said Oregon State University’s William Ripple, who co-authored “The Climate Emergency: 2020 in Review,” published today in Scientific American. “And the Black Lives Matter movement has elevated social injustice and equality to the top of our consciousness. “Rapid progress in each of the climate action steps we outline is possible if framed from the outset in the context of climate justice – climate change is a deeply moral issue. We desperately need those who face the most severe climate risks to help shape the response.” One year ago, Ripple, distinguished profess...

Ancient Shell Sounds

Abandoned at the mouth of your shelter you quivered apprehensively at our approach, crying out to be held as we proclaimed the exception of your discovery. Sighing wearily as we consigned you to the dusty silence of our archives. But now When I hold you in my hands, I see the face of your purposefully speckled complexion. When I lift you to my ear, I hear the sound of an ancient sea lapping at your shores. When I place you at my lips, I feel the heartbeat of your creator pulsing to my breath. I close my eyes, as you call out to all that you have lost. The shell that was recovered from the Marsoulas cave in the Pyrenees of France (Image Credit: C. Fritz, Muséum d’Histoire naturelle de Toulouse). This poem is inspired by recent research , which has discovered that a large seashell that sat in a French museum for decades is actually a musical instrument used around 18,000 years ago. In 1931, researchers working in southern France unearthed a large seashell at the entr...

International Conference on Science, Health and Engineering

Search This Blog