The continent is ravaged with civil wars, disease, poverty and starvation, but Africa is using space programs more and more to combat those problems. Several countries have launched initiatives to use satellite technology and have set up astronomy programs. Let’s take a look at all space initiatives of ‘the forgotten continent’. South Africa By far the country with the largest space program on the continent. South Africa has a large and active space sector which is both government and privately funded. The country utilizes several satellites for remote sensing purposes
Read More Blue Origin heeft zijn sub-orbitale raket voor de derde achtereenvolgende keer gelanceerd. Het bedrijf wil uiteindelijk een raket bouwen die mensen naar de ruimte en weer terug kan brengen voor een flink bedrag, al is het nog niet bekend hoe hoog dat wordt. Maar zijn er eigenlijk wel mensen die veel geld willen betalen om door een gevaarlijke raket te worden gelanceerd? Heeft ruimtetoerisme wel een toekomst? De competitiestrijd voor ruimtetoerisme begon met het Britse Virgin Galactic, één van de vele ondernemingen van excentrieke miljardair Richard Branson. Virgin wil ruimtetoerisme
Read More Blue Origin claims its sub-orbital rocket has made its third consecutive flight. The company’s goal is to eventually create a rocket that can take people into space and back for a fee, though it’s not yet sure how much that will be. But are there actually people who want to pay a lot of money to blast off on a dangerous rocket? Is there a future for space tourism? The real competitions race for space tourism really took off with the British Virgin Galactic, one of the many undertakings of
Read More SpaceX lanceert vanavond de Falcon Heavy. Als die lancering succesvol is is het niet alleen een vooruitgang in rakettechnologie, maar vliegt er ook een rode auto door het zonnestelsel. Dat laatste is een vulgaire publiciteitsstunt die niet alleen niets toevoegt, maar die een belangrijk vraagstuk ondermijnt. De payload van de Falcon Heavy die vanavond wordt gelanceerd is de cherry-rode Roadster van SpaceX- en Tesla-oprichter Elon Musk, met aan boord een crash test dummy. Er worden 3 camera’s op de Roadster gemonteerd, wat ongetwijfeld voor spectaculaire beelden gaat zorgen. Maar hoe
Read More For the past 17 years, humans have been a continuous presence in space. Every day since november 2000, at least three people have been orbiting Earth in the International Space Station at all times. But now NASA and the other participating countries are looking toward what’s going to happen to the station in the future. Spoiler alert: Nobody knows. The International Space Station has been in orbit since 1998 when the first Russian module was launched. Over the years, the station has grown considerably by adding dozens of modules, docking
Read More SpaceX is going to the moon. In 2018, Elon Musks enterprise wants to be the first private company to not only put people in space, but also to take them beyond low Earth orbit (LEO) for the first time in 45 years. The plans are very exciting, but there’s still a lot of work to be done before the mission will take off. When SpaceX says it’s “going back to the moon”, it doesn’t mean quite something similar to the Apollo-missions (at least the landing-missions from Apollo 11 and up).
Read More SpaceX has rounded off its investigation of the rocket that exploded somewhere last year. The company is back on track to ‘Return To Flight’, but what exactly happened with the Falcon 9 that blew up during a static fire test? What happened exactly? On September 1st, 2016, a Falcon 9-rocket exploded during a routine test. The rocket was scheduled to lift off 2 days later, carrying the Israeli made Amos-6 communications satellite. But during the static-fire engine test (a routine procedure before SpaceX-launches), a huge explosion destroyed the top half
Read More Een raket van SpaceX is ontploft tijdens een test. Dat kan grote gevolgen hebben voor de toekomst van SpaceX’ lanceerprogramma, maar wat precies? We kijken naar de gevolgen van de mislukte test, en naar wat er precies is gebeurd. Wat is er precies aan de hand? Een Falcon 9 van SpaceX is ontploft tijdens een ‘static fire-test’ op het lanceerplatform bij Cape Canaveral. SpaceX sloot vorig jaar een lease af met NASA om dat platform te gebruiken. De ontploffing vond plaats tijdens een test die SpaceX standaard uitvoert vóór iedere
Read More Great Britain has voted to leave the European Union, a decision that will have significant economic consequences. What about the country’s space program, which relies heavily the on ESA? Let’s look at what ‘Brexit’ means for the UK space program. The UK is a member of ESA, which furthermore consists of 21 other countries. ‘Brexit’ does not necessarily mean anything for the relationship between the two, because the European Space Agency is an independent body which isn’t a part of the European Union. That means there’s no immediate reason for
Read More Russia finally launched its first ever rocket from the country’s new base: The Vostochny Cosmodrome. The country’s happy, but the construction of the controversial spaceport wasn’t without its problems. Let’s take a look at what Russia needs a new spaceport for anyway. Vostochny is the name of a brand new spaceport in the East of Russia. In fact, the name literally means “Eastern” in Russian. The port lies Far East of the country on the 51st Northern Parallel, in the Amur Oblast region. Maiden voyage Russia has been building the
Read More