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Falcon 9 Moon Impact, Tabletop Gravity Waves & Mars Polygons
Audio is available on Spreaker — see link below.
A spent Falcon 9 stage is set to strike the Moon on August 5th — and for the first time ever, Earth observers may watch the plume live. Plus a tabletop gravitational wave detector breakthrough, Curiosity's honeycomb Mars terrain, and major military launch contracts.
Audio is available on Spreaker — see link below.
A spent rocket stage is on course to hit the Moon on August fifth, and for the first time in history, observers on Earth may actually watch it happen. The object is a Falcon 9 upper stage, left over from an earlier mission.
Shift from the Moon to something smaller and, in a different way, just as consequential. Researchers at the University of Birmingham have published a design for a tabletop gravitational wave detector capable of probing the milli-Hertz frequency band.
On Mars, Curiosity has rolled into something unexpected. The rover entered a valley called Valle Grande and found the ground covered in a honeycomb-patterned fracture field stretching across the entire landscape.
On the commercial side, military launch spending is concentrating fast. The US Space Force awarded SpaceX one point six billion dollars in new task orders covering eighteen Falcon 9 missions for Space Based Sensing and Targeting programs, running through end of twenty twenty-seven.
Two shorter items to close. Rocket Factory Augsburg, the German launch startup, has confirmed its RFA One rocket will miss the August tenth launch window.
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