NASA Names New Director Of Human Spaceflight Operations
Douglas Loverro, a veteran manager with broad experience in national security space operations, has been selected by NASA to lead the agency’s human space flight programs. He takes over at a critical moment as the agency assesses the readiness of new commercial crew ships amid a full-court press to land astronauts on the moon in 2024.
Loverro is “a respected strategic leader in both civilian and defense programs, overseeing the development and implementation of highly complicated systems,” NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine said in a statement.
Read more at: CBS news
Parachutes, Abort Engines Are Key Challenges for SpaceX’s Crew Dragon Capsule
Standing in front of a Crew Dragon spacecraft crawling with busy technicians, NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine joined SpaceX CEO Elon Musk and two NASA astronauts last week at the company’s headquarters in here to discuss the scheduling challenges of SpaceX’s first crewed flights to the International Space Station (ISS).
It was the first appearance of Musk and Bridenstine together since the two space titans traded seemingly critical comments after Musk’s recent appearance touting his Starship Mars-colonization craft. At that time, Bridenstine tweeted congratulations to SpaceX on the company’s Starship progress but noted that the Commercial Crew program was dramatically behind schedule, adding, “It’s time to deliver.”
Read more at: Space.com
Astronauts Christina Koch And Jessica Meir Successfully Complete First All-Female Spacewalk
NASA astronauts Jessica Meir and Christina Koch conducted the first all-female spacewalk outside of the International Space Station. The spacewalk officially began at 7:38 a.m. ET and lasted for seven hours and 17 minutes, ending at 2:55 p.m. ET. The spacewalk went well, according to both astronauts, and they were even able to accomplish some get-ahead tasks on the station.
Failed Battery Charge/Discharge Unit Replacement Complete During Historic EVA
NASA astronauts Christina Koch and Dr. Jessica Meir exited the International Space Station to begin an Extravehicular Activity – EVA, or spacewalk – on Friday that largely saw the duo replace a failed Battery Charge/Discharge Unit on the Station’s P6 truss structure.
The unit failed to reactivate after the first two of a five spacewalk sequence to replace 12 old batteries with six new and improved Lithium-ion batteries. The replacement work was successful.
Read more at: NASA Spaceflight
Dream Chaser Structure Arrives At Factory For Outfitting
The composite structure of Sierra Nevada Corp.’s first space-rated Dream Chaser space plane has arrived at the company’s Colorado factory for integration with computers, a heat shield and mechanical systems before launch to the International Space Station in late 2021.
The spaceship has been more than 15 years in the making for Sierra Nevada — also known as SNC — a family-owned, privately-held company based in Nevada with a space unit headquartered in Louisville, Colorado, near Denver.
Read more at: Spaceflight Now
After Musk’s Pot Escapade, NASA Paid for SpaceX’s Safety Review — But Not Boeing’s
NASA forked out $5 million to SpaceX to help the company do a mandatory investigation of employees after CEO Elon Musk smoked weed on comedian Joe Rogan’s podcast last year, according to a media report. Meanwhile, NASA ordered Boeing, SpaceX’s competitor, to complete the same safety review — and to foot the bill with no help from NASA.
NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine himself had ordered both SpaceX and Boeing to complete the safety review, which included conducting employee education and making sure all federal contractors follow firm guidelines for drug use.
Read more at: Space.com
Alabama Test Firing Shows Orion Capsule Escape Motor Works
“It’s 40,000 pounds of awesomeness in 1.2 seconds, so please focus,” Aerojet Rocketdyne’s Cheryl Rehm told an audience today in Huntsville, Ala.
Laughing on cue was a group of Huntsville community leaders, congressional representatives, officials from Johnson Space Flight Center and NASA Langley Research Center and two NASA astronauts.
“I flew F-18′s back in the Marine Corps and even with full afterburner and both engines, that was only 32,000 pounds,” astronaut Randy Bresnik said. “I’m very excited about more thrust. You can never have too much of it.”
Read more at: al
Boeing Starliner Commercial Crew Delay: ~3 Years
On March 26, Vice President Mike Pence went to Huntsville, Ala., to declare that the Trump Administration would use “any means necessary” to accelerate the return of American astronauts to the surface of the moon by 2024 — four years earlier than planned.
Pence was putting Huntsville-based Marshall Space Flight Center and prime contractor Boeing on notice to get the delayed, over budget Space Launch System (SLS) being built to accomplish that goal back on track. If they didn’t, the administration would find other rockets to do the job.
Read more at: Parabolic arc
NASA Unveils High-Tech Spacesuits For Upcoming Artemis Moon Program
NASA showed off new spaceflight suits and red, white and blue moonsuits Tuesday that astronauts will wear when launching into deep space aboard the agency’s Orion capsules and walking about on the moon during planned Artemis missions to the lunar south pole starting as early as 2024.
The next-generation suits will replace the bulky shuttle-era spacesuits currently used by spacewalking astronauts aboard the International Space Station, providing better comfort, improved mobility and greater flexibility while providing a safe haven in the vacuum, extreme temperatures and radiation while working on the dusty surface of the moon.
Read more at: CBSnews
NASA Chief: Spacex And Boeing Have Critical Tests Ahead But Could Fly Astronauts In Early 2020
SpaceX and Boeing are each in the final stages of developing the spacecraft needed for the U.S. to once again fly astronauts, with NASA’s leader estimating launches may happen as early as the first months of 2020.
“I think both systems could be ready in the first quarter of next year,” NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine told CNBC on Thursday.
But, while SpaceX and Boeing may be close to completing work on their respective Crew Dragon and Starliner capsules, Bridenstine emphasized that the current timeline is very fluid given the critical nature of the final tests.
Read more at: CNBC
Brilliant Midnight Fireball Lights Up Sky Over Northeast China
What appears to be a dazzling meteor lit up the sky over northeast China on Friday (Oct. 11), appearing as a brilliant fireball in surveillance videos of the event.
The meteor occurred at about 12:16 a.m. Beijing Time, turning night into day and casting dark shadows as it streaked through the sky, according to the state-run CCTV. Videos of the fireball were captured by surveillance cameras in the city of Songyuan in the province of Jilin, as well as by many residents across northeast China, CCTV reported.
Read more at: Space.com
LeoLabs’ New Radar Tracks Tiny Space Debris
LeoLabs today announced a unique radar for tracking space objects, based in New Zealand to improve monitoring of satellites and debris over the Souther Hemisphere — where even DoD has limited satellite tracking ability.
“It’s got a number of ‘firsts’,” CEO and co-founder Dan Ceperley told Breaking D, including being “the first phased array radar for space in the Southern Hemisphere, where collision prevention isn’t as good, especially over the South Pole.” The radar is based in the Central Otago region (famous for its pinot noir wines) of New Zealand’s South Island.
Read more at: Breaking defense
With More Rocket Launches Comes More Cleanup
When two rockets crash-landed during test launches at a remote spaceport on Alaska’s Kodiak Island in 2018, the unspent fuel on board bled into the ground at the launch site, contaminating more than 230 tons of soil. As the commercial space industry booms, the botched launches illustrate another complication the industry will have to figure out: how to clean up the trail of pollution it leaves behind.
The rockets quickly came down where they launched at the Pacific Spaceport Complex. That’s where Astra Space, a relatively new venture that also goes by the name Stealth Space Company, held its first attempts at a suborbital launch in 2018, and both failed
Read more at: Verge
Japanese Satellite Re-Enters Atmosphere After Experiments In Ultra-Low Orbit
An experimental Japanese satellite has ended its mission after proving it could operate at super-low altitudes, testing an Earth-imaging camera and using ion propulsion to fight against aerodynamic drag at an altitude of 112 miles (181 kilometers).
The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency’s Tsubame satellite, named for the Japanese word for barn swallow, re-entered the atmosphere Oct. 2 after a nearly three-year mission.
Read more at: Spaceflight Now
Spacex Submits Paperwork For 30,000 More Starlink Satellites
SpaceX has asked the International Telecommunication Union to arrange spectrum for 30,000 additional Starlink satellites.
SpaceX, which is already planning the world’s largest low-Earth-orbit broadband constellation by far, filed paperwork in recent weeks for up to 30,000 additional Starlink satellites on top of the 12,000 already approved by the U.S. Federal Communications Commission.
The FCC, on SpaceX’s behalf, submitted 20 filings to the ITU for 1,500 satellites apiece in various low Earth orbits, an ITU official confirmed Oct. 15 to SpaceNews.
Read more at: Spacenews
Scientists Propose New Satellite Tech to Dodge Space Junk from Megaconstellations
If a disastrous space junk chain reaction ends up surrounding Earth with a belt of destructive shrapnel, state-of-the-art infrared cameras and gel-based rockets just might help future satellites dodge such debris, a new study finds.
Space debris might not sound dangerous until one realizes that in low Earth orbit — up to about 1,200 miles (2,000 kilometers) in altitude — such debris collides with an average speed of about 22,370 mph (36,000 km/h), according to NASA. At such speeds, even tiny pieces of space debris can inflict devastating damage.
Read more at: Space.com
Amazon Reports Collision Risk for Mega-Constellation of Kuiper Internet Satellites
For the first time, we have a complete, representative number for the overall orbital collision risk of a satellite mega-constellation.
Last month, Amazon provided the U.S. Federal Communications Commission (FCC) with data for its planned fleet of 3,236 Kuiper System broadband Internet satellites.
Read more at: IEEE
NASA Must Rework Planetary Protection Plans, Panel Advises
NASA rules that govern the potential spread of earthly microbes to other planets—and the potential return of alien life back to Earth—are often anachronistic and require broad rethinking, according to a report released today by an independent agency advisory panel.
Planetary protection, as such efforts are known, remains a worthy goal, the report emphasizes. But many of the ways it is implemented, which date back to rules conceived at the beginning of the space age, have driven costly and sometimes questionable efforts, and do not make sense given current scientific knowledge, says Alan Stern, a planetary scientist from the Southwest Research Institute in Boulder, Colorado, who led the 12-member panel reviewing NASA’s efforts.
Read more at: Science mag
NASA’s Planetary Protection Review Addresses Changing Reality of Space Exploration
NASA released a report Friday with recommendations from the Planetary Protection Independent Review Board (PPIRB) the agency established in response to a recent National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine report and a recommendation from the NASA Advisory Council.
With NASA, international, and commercial entities planning bold missions to explore our solar system and return samples to Earth, the context for planetary protection is rapidly changing. NASA established the PPIRB to conduct a thorough review of the agency’s policies.
Planetary protection establishes guidelines for missions to other solar system bodies so they are not harmfully contaminated for scientific purposes by Earth biology and Earth, in turn, is protected from harmful contamination from space.
Read more at: NASA
After A “Corrective Action,” Boeing Back At Work On SLS Rocket Core Stage
Nearly a month ago, NASA announced that Boeing had assembled the core stage structure that forms the backbone of its Space Launch System rocket. This meant that all technicians needed to do to complete the full core stage was bolt on four space shuttle main engines and connect their plumbing.
Completing the core stage at NASA’s rocket factory, the Michoud Assembly Facility in Southern Louisiana, would represent a significant milestone for the program. However, after assembling the core stage structure in September, two sources familiar with Boeing’s work at the factory said the company had to “stand down” operations due to some issues.
Read more at: Arstechnica
China Prepares For Space Station Construction
China is preparing for the upcoming high-density space missions to construct China’s space station, and the Long March-5B carrier rocket, set to launch capsules for the space station, is expected to make its maiden flight in 2020.
Zhou Jianping, an academician of the Chinese Academy of Engineering, has been appointed the chief designer of China’s manned space program, and Gu Yidong, an academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, has been appointed the chief space scientist of the program, according to the China Manned Space Agency.
Read more at: Spacedaily
Space Traffic Controller Not A Job, But An Adventure
In the not-too-distant future an international regulatory and enforcement agency may be looking for Space Traffic Controllers to fill hundreds of positions for well-trained professionals.
It is likely that these positions will be located in an international metropolis such as Washington, Paris, London, Hong Kong, Rome or Moscow. Applicants must pass a rigorous training program including many hours in class and in simulators. They will probably be required to have prior training in spacecraft dynamics and orbital mechanics.
Read more at: Spacedaily
Near-Earth Asteroids Spectroscopic Survey At Isaac Newton Telescope
The study of near-Earth asteroids (NEAs) is driven by both scientific and practical reasons. Because of their proximity to our planet, they can provide key information regarding the delivery of water and organic-rich material to the early Earth, and the subsequent emergence of life. On the other hand, these small bodies of the solar system have non-negligible long-term probabilities of colliding with the Earth, and can be targets of future space exploration.
In the framework of the EURONEAR collaboration, a group of astronomers performed a spectroscopic survey of NEAs using the Isaac Newton Telescope (INT) equipped with the Intermediate Dispersion Spectrograph (IDS).
Former FAA Official Calls For National Spaceport Policy
The former head of the Federal Aviation Administration’s commercial space office says the government should create a policy that promotes the development of spaceports as not just launch sites but also as hubs for economic development.
In an Oct. 10 presentation at the International Symposium for Personal and Commercial Spaceflight (ISPCS) here, George Nield took issue with the conventional wisdom that there is an oversupply of commercial spaceports in the United States.
Read more at: Spacenews
After Spaceport Leases Released, Nmpolitics.Net Settles Lawsuit
As a teen I photographed the moon through a telescope with my dad. I almost minored in astronomy in college. As someone who hopes to watch Virgin Galactic’s SpaceShipTwo fly into space with my kids, and who desperately wants my kids to have the option to find quality jobs in our community, I want Spaceport America to succeed.
The spaceport is a state government agency that’s funded with our money. Our ability to scrutinize the project is essential to its need to earn public trust and continued funding. So transparency is critical to the spaceport’s success.
Read more at: nmpolitics
China’s Private Reusable Rocket To Be Launched In 2021
A Chinese reusable carrier rocket that uses liquid oxygen-methane propellants made its first public appearance Friday at the ongoing 2019 Zhongguancun Forum in Beijing.
The rocket named the Hyperbola-2, will be launched for the first time in 2021. It may make up for China’s lack of reusable liquid-propellant rockets.
Read more at: Xinhuanet
‘Flawless’ Launch
Rocket Lab yesterday completed a “flawless” mission to put a satellite into orbit from Mahia, bringing the total number it has sent into space to 40.
Yesterday’s mission, named As The Crow Flies, lifted off from Rocket Lab Launch Complex 1 at Onenui Station at 2.22pm and “continues the company’s track record of 100 percent mission success for customers”, Rocket Lab said in a statement.
Read more at: gisborne herald
Virgin Galactic Shows Off The Suits Its Customers Will Wear During Joyrides To Space
This morning, space tourism venture Virgin Galactic showed off a line of custom Under Armour-designed flight suits that the company’s customers will wear on their short trips to suborbital space.
Dancers showed off the suits’ flexibility inside an indoor skydiving chamber in Yonkers, New York on Tuesday. During the presentation, Virgin Galactic founder Richard Branson also unveiled his own custom suit. Branson’s jacket features his face on the inner lining — naturally, made up of tiny spaceplanes.
Read more at: Verge
Humans Will Never Live on An Exoplanet, Nobel Laureate Says. Here’s Why.
Here’s the reality: We’re messing up the Earth and any far-out ideas of colonizing another orb when we’re done with our own are wishful thinking. That’s according to Michel Mayor, an astrophysicist who was a co-recipient of the Nobel Prize in physics this year for discovering the first planet orbiting a sun-like star outside of our solar system.
“If we are talking about exoplanets, things should be clear: We will not migrate there,” he told Agence France-Presse (AFP). He said he felt the need to “kill all the statements that say, ‘OK, we will go to a livable planet if one day life is not possible on Earth.'”
Read more at: Space.com
NASA Is Exploring Nuclear Propulsion — A Project Started By The Agency 60 Years Ago
With America’s eyes trained on the impending moon mission in the 1960s, NASA officials began quietly working on a project that could transform space travel.
They were trying to build a nuclear rocket engine, capable of getting astronauts to Mars in four months — about half the time of a conventional chemical rocket.
Read more at: Houston chronicle
Next Year, New Space Missions Will Test Technologies To Fix Busted Satellites In Orbit
Next year, the long-held dream of repairing satellites already in orbit around Earth will come a little closer to reality. Two new missions — from military contractor Northrop Grumman and a startup called Astroscale — will send spacecraft into orbit to rendezvous with other vehicles zooming around Earth to see if it’s possible for two satellites to delicately meet up with each other in space. If successful, these missions could mark a big first step toward cleaning up Earth orbit and making it a more sustainable place.
Read more at: Verge
Physicists Shed New Light On How Liquids Behave With Other Materials
Their findings, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), challenge the accepted wisdom on wetting and drying phase behaviour.
The authors provide a firm conceptual framework for tailoring the properties of new materials, including finding super-repellant substrates, such as expelling water from windscreens, as well as understanding hydrophobic interactions at the length scale of biomolecules.
Read more at: Spacedaily
Australia Joins US In Battle With China For Space Supremacy
When Australia announced a deal for $150 million Australian dollars ($102 million) to ensure its space industry’s participation in NASA’s Artemis mission, it was leveraging its 50-year collaboration with the U.S. space agency. It was also a show of shrewd but potentially risky space diplomacy as China readies to become America’s most powerful space adversary.
The AU$150 million deal, spread over five years, was the minimum Australia would give its small but ambitious space sector to supply components and services to the Artemis mission.
Read more at: Nikkei asia
Japan will Participate in NASA Lunar Gateway Project for the Artemis Program
Japan has officially announced that it will participate with NASA’s Lunar Gateway project (via NHK), which will seek to establish an orbital research and staging station around the Moon. The Lunar Gateway is a key component of NASA’s Artemis program, which aims to land the first American woman and the next American man on the surface of the Moon by 2024.
Japan’s involvement was confirmed on Friday at a meeting of the country’s Strategic Headquarters for National Space Policy, at which Japan Prime Minister Shinzo Abe was present.
Read more at: Techcrunch
Lawmakers Question NASA’s Plan For A 2024 Moon Landing
Amid questions from lawmakers about the cost of the Trump administration’s proposal to accelerate a human return to the moon’s surface to 2024, the chairman of the House subcommittee responsible for helping write NASA’s budget said this week he favors keeping to the space agency’s earlier schedule for a crewed lunar landing by 2028.
“I remain extremely concerned by the proposed advancement by four years of this mission,” said Rep. José Serrano, D-New York. “The eyes of the world are upon us. We cannot afford to fail. Therefore, I believe that it is better to use the original NASA schedule of 2028 (for a human landing on the moon) in order to have a successful, safe and cost-effective mission for the benefit of the American people and the world.”
Read more at: Spaceflight Now
ESA To Request $13.9 Billion Budget From Member States
The European Space Agency will ask its 22 member states to commit to funding a budget of 12.5 billion euros ($13.9 billion) for the next three years.
ESA Director-General Jan Woerner told a news conference Oct. 17 that the proposal will be put to the next ESA Ministerial Council to be held Nov. 27-28 in Seville, Spain.
The November conference will see member states discuss ESA’s future work and funding. If finalized and accepted, the commitment would be an increase over the $12 billion secured at the previous triennial ministerial in 2016.
Read more at: Spacenews
Framing Laws For Outer Space
Recently it was reported that the “world’s first space crime” may have been committed by a NASA astronaut, Anne McClain. She is suspected of signing into the personal bank account of her estranged spouse from a computer aboard the International Space Station (ISS). The law which is applicable to the case is the International Space Station Inter-Governmental Agreement (IGA). The drafters of this agreement had made provisions to meet such a contingency. Article 22 of the Agreement concerns itself with criminal jurisdiction and states that countries which are mentioned in the agreement may exercise criminal jurisdiction over personnel in flights who are their respective nationals. Hence, the laws of the U.S. will be applicable in this situation concerning the first space crime.
Read more at: Hindu
100% Foreign Ownership: UAE Launches Economic Free Zones For Space Firms
The UAE has launched economic free zones and infrastructure for space firms, with 100 per cent ownership, to attract more space investment into the country.
This is part of the National Space Strategy 2030 and Space Investment Plan, which has now been approved by the government and is in effect.
The UAE Space Agency made the announcement on Tuesday and officials said the new strategy aligns with the regulatory and legal framework in the UAE’s space sector.
Read more at: Khaleeji times
‘Translators’ and Cross-Disciplinary Work Needed to Solve Space Problems
Space is not only an interdisciplinary business, but one that is in urgent need of artificial intelligence “translators” who can work across different fields, says the chair of Canada’s space advisory board.
Marie Lucy Stojak, who is also executive director of Mosaic-HEC Montreal, said in a talk Thursday (Oct. 10) that these translators will not only be comfortable in developing artificial intelligence algorithms, but can also talk with people who are willing to translate these ideas into business potential.
Read more at: SpaceQ
Space May Soon Become A War Zone
At a summit in early December, NATO is expected to declare space as a “warfighting domain,” partly in response to new developments in technology.
If it does declare space a war zone, NATO could start using space weapons that can destroy satellites or incoming enemy missiles. But what is this technology and how could it enable a war? In a recent first for space technology, Russia has launched a commercial satellite specifically designed to rendezvous with other satellites. The purpose of this vehicle is peaceful: It will perform maintenance tasks on other satellites in orbit.
Read more at: Spacedaily
The Air Force Has A New Secretary; Barbara Barrett Sworn In
Barbara Barrett was sworn in as the 25th secretary of the Air Force on Friday, two days after the Senate voted to confirm her 85-7.
Barrett, the fourth woman to serve as the Air Force’s top civilian leader, posted a video of her taking her oath of office at the Pentagon on her official Twitter account.
“I’m conscious of the extraordinary privilege of working with the men & women of the @usairforce,” she said in the tweet with her video. “We’ve got a lot to do & I’m ready to get to work!”
Read more at: Airforce times
China Launches Mysterious Geostationary Satellite
China successfully launched a satellite toward geostationary orbit Thursday aboard a Long March 3B rocket, but the spacecraft’s purpose remained a mystery.
The TJS 4 satellite lifted off from the Xichang space center in southwestern China’s Sichuan province at 1521 GMT (11:21 a.m. EDT; 11:21 p.m. Beijing time) Thursday. A Long March 3B rocket — China’s workhorse launcher for geostationary satellites — carried the TJS 4 spacecraft into space after flying east from the hilly Xichang spaceport.
Read more at: Spaceflight Now
2nd Space Operations Squadron Decommissions 22-year-old Satellite
The 2nd Space Operations Squadron decommissioned Satellite Vehicle Number 38, to give way to the next generation of GPS III satellites at Schriever Air Force Base, Colorado, Oct. 9, 2019.
First Lieutenant Kristina Brandes, 2nd SOPS chief bus system analyst, said the squadron was disposing of the satellite because it is at the end of its operational life.
“It’s one of our oldest satellites that launched 22 years ago,” she said. “Once we turn off the transmitter (one of the final commands), it will basically be dead in the air…it will be tracked as space debris.”
The satellite will be located at a specific disposal orbit called MEO, or medium earth orbit.
Read more at: AFSPC
Putin Watches Missile Launch During Nuclear Arms Drill
Russian President Vladimir Putin watched Thursday as the country’s armed forces tested missiles that can carry thermo-nuclear warheads.
The Grom-19 or Thunder-19 strategy games began Wednesday and involve 12,000 troops deployed on ships, planes and nuclear-missile-carrying submarines carrying out launches of long-range precision missiles, the defence ministry said.
Read more at: Spacedaily
16th Air Force Established As Cyberwarfare Unit
The newest numbered air force, the 16th Air Force, dedicated to cyberwarfare, has been established in a ceremony at Joint Base San Antonio-Lackland, Texas.
Lt. Gen. Timothy Haugh assumed command in a ceremony on Oct.11. The 24th and 25th Air Forces were inactivated and integrated into the new force, the Air Force announced this week.
The “16th Air Force (Air Forces Cyber),” created in March by the U.S. Air Force, is now the single headquarters for global intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance, cyber, electronic warfare and information operations.
Read more at: Spacedaily
How SpaceX Just Turbocharged The Space Race (Again)
In early 2004, an Air Force officer had the opportunity to visit a small rocket company—or, perhaps more accurately, a rented garage in El Segundo, California with a few engineers aspiring to become one. Greeting him on the steps was one of its newest employees and vice president, Gwynne Shotwell, who was brought straight out of the venerable Aerospace Corporation, the technical backbone of the government’s unmanned space launch program for the last fifty years. At the request of a few key senators, he was there to meet and take measure of a young entrepreneur named Elon Musk. Few had ever heard the name outside of the tech industry in Silicon Valley, including the colonel himself.
Read more at: Forbes
A Soviet Satellite Falls to Earth in ‘The Walking Dead’ Season 10. How Realistic Is It?
AMC’s “The Walking Dead” launched its 10th season last week to the delight of zombie fans everywhere, but the premiere also contained a space junk Easter egg that just might be a major plot point for the series: a Soviet satellite crashing to Earth.
The episode “Lines We Cross” ends with an old Soviet satellite crashing to Earth as a brilliant daytime fireball. It loses unmistakable sonic booms and a sparks wildfire in enemy territory (watch out for Whisperers!) that the show’s heroes must battle to save their hunting grounds.
Read more at: Space.com
Boeing Staff Texted About 737 Max Issue In 2016
Boeing employees exchanged instant messages about issues with the automated safety system on the 737 Max as it was being certified in 2016.
In documents provided by Boeing to lawmakers, a pilot wrote that he had run into unexpected trouble during tests. He said he had “basically lied to the regulators [unknowingly]”.
The safety system has been tied to two deadly crashes that killed 346 people.
Read more at: BBC
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