Weekly Links
Down to Earth
The latest SpaceX resupply craft to visit the space station successfully departed and splashed down yesterday morning, returning a large supply of science to NASA scientists.
The picture below is not from the Dragon splashdown but instead an attempt to return a rocket fairing after a Falcon 9 launch earlier this year.
Firefly Aerospace, a young space company out of Austin, has made a deal with the USAF to use a launch pad at Vandenberg Air Force Base in California.
United States Vice President Mike Pence visited JPL in California.
Some new issues emerged this week regarding the preparations for the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) for its long-awaited launch.
Hundreds of United Launch Alliance employees are on strike as of Sunday.
In Orbit
Only two orbital launches in the last week:
- May 3 – China launched a Long March 3 rocket carrying a communications satellite.
- May 5 – United Launch Alliance launched an Atlas V rocket from Vandenberg carrying NASA’s InSight Mars lander. Check out this post from Phil Plait to learn about the lander’s mission.
The astronauts on the ISS have been finding time to post many views of Earth on their Twitter feeds. Here are some of their best from the last week.
Let your soul and spirit fly into the mystic
– Van Morrison pic.twitter.com/R8TDg2fYoN— Ricky Arnold (@astro_ricky) May 1, 2018
Jamming on @Space_Station! pic.twitter.com/FEwnthrtee
— Scott D. Tingle (@Astro_Maker) May 1, 2018
On Monday, I captured this amazing image of all the places I called home for the first 32 years of my life. Many of my family and friends are in this photo, somewhere. #Michigan #Indiana #Ontario #Quebec pic.twitter.com/EVqPSdhxua
— A.J. (Drew) Feustel (@Astro_Feustel) May 2, 2018
Снова пролетали над великим Байкалом. Лёд тает на глазах!
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Once again we flew over lake #Baikal. The ice is melting every day. pic.twitter.com/DpcoLQqxhx— Anton Shkaplerov (@Anton_Astrey) May 4, 2018
The smoldering cauldron of Mount Etna on the island of Sicily. #Italy pic.twitter.com/BJwHxBHPzM
— Ricky Arnold (@astro_ricky) May 4, 2018
The @SpaceX #Dragon CRS-14 cargo ship after undocking from the @Space_Station pic.twitter.com/0UwB2g3nCv
— Oleg Artemyev (@OlegMKS) May 6, 2018