ruimtevaart Tag

“SpaceX gaat in 2018 naar Mars!” kopt het internet vandaag collectief. Dat is nogal eufemistisch als je ziet dat de honderden blogposts en artikelen zijn gebaseerd op slechts één tweet van het bedrijf. Wij gooien er daarom nóg zo’n blogpost bij door te kijken naar wat we wel en vooral niét weten over SpaceX’ illustere missie. Voor de duidelijk: Alle berichtgeving over SpaceX, alle analyses en speculaties, alles ‘wat we weten’ is gebaseerd op één enkele tweet: Planning to send Dragon to Mars as soon as 2018. Red Dragons willRead More

North Korea has claimed it launched another satellite into orbit, spreading anger throughout the international community. It’s not the first time the country has claimed a satellite launch, but how serious should we take the claims of the totalitarian state? Let’s take a look at North Korea’s controversial space program. North Korea has said it launched a satellite into orbit, using “a long-range rocket”, but it’s actually not quite clear what the object put into orbit was.  Kwangmyongsong The country itself has named the satellite Kwangmyongsong-4, the successor to threeRead More

SpaceX will be attempting to land a Falcon 9 rocket again after launching a satellite into space. As opposed to the company’s last landing, the Falcon will now land on a barge in the sea rather than back on land. The Falcon 9 v1.2 will lift-off at 13.42 CEST from Vandenberg Air Force Base. The launch will be of the Jason-3 satellite, an Earth observation spacecraft designed by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). The satellite will observe global ocean height levels together with existing American and European satellites.Read More

You’re 400 kilometers above the Earth, locked in a small space with your colleagues, far away from your family… It doesn’t sound very pleasant to be in space during the holidays, but even in the International Space Station astronauts celebrate Christmas. But how? The 6 astronauts currently aboard the Station aren’t the first to spend Christmas there – and they won’t be the last. The Station has been permanently manned since 2001, which means there have been quite a few Christmas parties. Decking the halls with jolly The ISS isRead More

Yesterday, SpaceX wrote history by sending six satellites into space, and then landing the same rocket upright so it can be used again. Quite an amazing feat, but let’s look at why exactly SpaceX’ rocket landing is so revolutionary. And what will this mean for the future of spaceflight? What actually happened The company launched the heaviest version of its self-produced and designed rocket, the Falcon 9 v1.1, on a mission that carried 11 ORBCOMM communication satellites to Low Earth Orbit. That was always the primary target of the mission,Read More

Being an astronaut is still a pretty dangerous profession, with a fatality rate of no less than 4% despite everyone’s intense efforts to prevent serious accidents. But what would happen though, if one of the astronauts in the ISS died now? What happens if you die in space? Turns out, there’s not really a protocol for that… Let’s start with The only deaths that (probably) occurred in space are those of the crew members of Soyuz 11, (Georgiy Dobrovolsky, Vladislav Volkov and Viktor Patsayev), who had died during their descentRead More

Exactly one year ago, ESA did something that had never been done before: It landed a small probe on a comet. The landing didn’t go exactly as planned, but hey, who cares? Philae taught us many things about comets, and about 67P/Churyumov/Geramisenko in general. What have we learned in those 12 months since that nail biting moment? 1. Landing on a comet is way harder than it looks Ok, maybe landing on a comet does look very hard, but Philae’s landing was far from ideal. The lander barely even madeRead More

The International Space Station turns 15 today. That means that for every single second of every single day for the past 15 years, there has been a human being into space. There’s been much discussion about the benefits of the station. A turbulent history The history of how the ISS came into being hasn’t always been easy. First proposed in 1984 under then-president Ronald Reagan, a ‘permanently manned space station’ was to be operational within the decade – meaning 1994. But budget strains have been hard on NASA since theRead More

Our first encounter with intelligent aliens is an interesting subject for many science-fiction movies. Are we going to use music to communicate? Or would They have some magical Babel Fish? The truth is, the question of what our first message to the Visitors will be is quite controversial. Humanity started to seriously think about sending messages into space in the early 70s, at about the same time when the SETI institute (‘Search for Extra Terrastrial Intelligence’) was founded. Massive telescopes searched the skies for that elusive beacon the ET’s might’veRead More

China gaat zijn eigen navigatiesysteem opnieuw uitbreiden. Het grootste nieuws is misschien wel dat China een eigen navigatiesysteem heeft… Wat is het voor systeem, en  is het anders dan GPS? GPS = Amerika Je staat er misschien niet altijd bij stil, maar GPS (‘Global Positioning System’) is geen universeel systeem. Het is Amerikaans – specifieker, het is van het Amerikaanse leger.  Het GPS-programma begon in 1989, toen de Amerikanen de eerste navigatiesatelliet lanceerden. Inmiddels zijn er 35 actieve GPS-satellieten, die ook periodiek worden vervangen door nieuwe. Dat betekent ook datRead More