Weekly Links
Down to Earth
With no new NASA administrator named as of last week, NASA has now broken the record for longest transition period under a new presidential administration.
Virgin Orbit published a video of a full duration test firing of their Newton Four upper stage.
Blue Origin announced that it was build a new rocket engine factory in Huntsville, Alabama, as part of its contract with United Launch Alliance to supply engines for the future Vulcan Rocket.
In Orbit
On July 2, the Chinese space agency attempted to launch a communications satellite on their heavy lift Long March 5 rocket. Unfortunately, the second stage failed and the payload did not make it to orbit.
On July 5, SpaceX launched a Falcon 9 rocket carrying a commercial communications satellite for Intelsat. The satellite was delivered to geosynchronous orbit. Due to the high performance requirements of the mission, the first stage was disposable, rather than being recovered. This was their 10th launch of the year (the most of any year for SpaceX).
Meanwhile, up on the ISS on July 3rd, the Expedition 52 astronauts unberthed and released the visiting SpaceX Dragon capsule, which splashed down and was recovered that same day.
Monday its goodbye #Dragon 11 after working through 6,000 lbs of science/cargo-can’t wait to see what breakthroughs those samples may hold! pic.twitter.com/kIpFEK95qU
— Jack Fischer (@Astro2fish) July 2, 2017
And there goes #Dragon… Goodbye to our 1st return visitor since Atlantis in 2011–Come on back anytime, we’ll leave the lights on for you! pic.twitter.com/D55Hg4yAhd
— Jack Fischer (@Astro2fish) July 3, 2017
Around the Solar System
Engineers at JPL have uploaded new driving software to the Curiosity rover on Mars. The software underwent extensive testing on Earth before it was approved for use. NASA hopes the new algorithm will reduce wear on the rover’s wheels by 10 to 20 percent.