Every week we cover the latest spaceflight news, discuss past, current and future exploration efforts, and take a look at upcoming events. Tune in to hear about how humans get to space, how they stay in space and how unmanned craft reach farther and farther into the universe around us.
https://theorbitalmechanics.com/show-notes/
Episode 192: DATA RELAY--Sea Dragon
This week in SF history
— 9 January 1990. Launch of STS-32 (wikipedia.org)
— Syncom IV-F5/Leasat 5 used a “Frisbee” deployment (youtu.be)
— LDEF, Long Duration Exposure Facility had a lot of experiments onboard (youtube.com)
Spaceflight news
— New Horizons rings in the new year! (spacenews.com) (nasaspaceflight.com)
— Preliminary science results (sci-news.com)
— OSIRIS-REx rings in the new year! (nasa.gov)
— M3A originally “bounced” the spacecraft orbital direction (PDF: nasa.gov)
Short & Sweet
— Demo-1 is imminent. (spaceflightinsider.com)
— Chang’e-4 landed successfully (spacenews.com)
— An Orbcomm satellite breaks up. (satnews.com)
Questions, comments, corrections
— Chris Birke et all via slack: static friction doesn’t change with gravity
— Marian via Discord: The people behind the dust experiments on the recent SpaceShipTwo launch have a podcast! walkaboutthegalaxy.com
Data Relay: Sea Dragon
— Research report presented to NASA by Aerojet-General Corporation (PDF: neverworld.net)
— Excellent recent animation of a launch (youtube.com)