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SpaceX Launch of "GoreSat" Planned For Today, Along With Another Landing Attempt
The New York Times reports that SpaceX will again attempt to recover a Falcon 9 launch vehicle, after the recent unsuccessful try; the company believes the lessons from the earlier launch have been learned, and today's launch will be loaded with more hydraulic fluid. This evening, the rocket is to loft the satellite nicknamed "GoreSat," after Al Gore, who envisioned it as a sort of permanent eye in space beaing back pictures of Earth from afar. The purpose of the satellite has evolved, though: Writes the Times: The observatory, abbreviated as Dscovr and pronounced “discover,” is to serve as a sentinel for solar storms: bursts of high-energy particles originating from the sun. The particles from a gargantuan solar storm could induce electrical currents that might overwhelm the world’s power grids, possibly causing continent-wide blackouts. Even a 15-minute warning could let power companies take actions to limit damage.
Since it's not a question of if, so much as when one of these solar storms will damage Earth's electrical grid.
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The Falcon 9 is made up of two parts: a 138-foot-tall first stage, which burns for the first few minutes of flight, lifting the craft up to an altitude of about 50 miles before separating and falling back to Earth, and a smaller, 49-foot-tall second stage, which burns for another five minutes or so, carrying the spacecraft into orbit before disconnecting and falling back down to earth as well.
Normally, both of these stages — as well as the stages that make up other rockets in general — break up into pieces as they plummet downward, eventually sinking in the ocean and becoming unusable. But on Sunday, as the first stage falls back to earth, SpaceX will fire its engines in order to stabilize and guide it in for a controlled landing.
The plan is to land it on an autonomous uncrewed barge, which is being stationed about 370 miles east of Cape Canaveral. As the rocket descends, steerable fins affixed to its outside will help guide it and slow it down. As it nears the barge, a set of legs will unfold from the bottom of the rocket, and if all goes to plan, it'll slow down to a speed of about 4.5 miles per hour before gently landing on them, fully upright.
To solve the problem from the last attempt, the rocket will be carrying more hydraulic fluid.
http://www.vox.com/2015/2/8/79...
Which Red Diaper Baby named the satellite after the son of the Racist Senator from Tennessee and climate dilettante and general idiot, algore?
I wonder how long it will take for the magnitude of that achievement to be noticed, let alone to sink in with T.C. Mits. I have a feeling that it will get mentioned, and Bill Nye will share a few words on CNN, but that it won't get much play in the mainstream press. We'll find out soon enough, I guess.
Keeping fingers crossed... ;-)
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i was confused about how the satellite could continuously watch the earth and the sun at the same time. Turns out it's positioned at the L1 lagrange point, which is in between sun and earth at about 170,000 km from earth (geostationary is 22k, for comparison). At this point, the pull from the earth will cancel out the pull from the sun, and the satellite will effectively stay positioned exactly between the earth and sun as the earth rotates around. look down from the satellite, you see the fully lit earth, and look up, and you see the sun. pretty cool, huh? wikipedia ftw.
speaking of cool, did anybody else see that solar movie Sunshine? that was an awesomely gorgeous movie. its cool if you went to a theater and looked up at the audience in some of those scenes where the entire screen was bright white.
Right, except he didn't claim to invent either of those things.
So if you put a big enough satellite at L1, it will shade the planet andreduce global warming.
You'd need to make it out of graphene so it would be light enough.
If you made it like a venetian blind you couldcontrol the amount of sunlight the earth recieves.
Close the blinds when its daytime in asia, open them again when its daytime in the americas.
You could rule the world [evil laugh]
Hello, Europe chimes in (not the 2001 Space odyssey one):
What's this hate towards Al Gore? He ran the USA for 8 years in the background, while Bill C. was busy inserting his saxophone into the various body cavities of sexy females. Those 8 years were a period of spectacular economic and technological development for the USA, a true golden age. All other countries of the world watched in amazement, as Russia and co. struggled for survival on the ruins of recently collapsed USSR, while America skyrocketed and revolutionized modern life yet another time, with infocomms, etc..
Regrettably, most americans have never been abroad of their (admittedly vast sized) nation, so they cannot comprehend this feeling. They are remembering the dotcom-bust, while the world remembers the dotcom boom and the free GPS and a myriad of other benefits. Yankee think Albert was a red or at least a pink fellow traveller, while the world saw that he left the reds at standstill, driving America towards and into a better future.
I think people will remember al-Gore even in the distant future, not unlike Benjamin Franklin or even Charlemagne. He will have statues while the word Bush will mean nothing, but a piece of vegetation too small to be called a tree.
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Couldn't they name the satellite after a scientist that made actual contributions to science?
I wonder how long it will take for the magnitude of that achievement to be noticed, let alone to sink in with T.C. Mits. I have a feeling that it will get mentioned, and Bill Nye will share a few words on CNN, but that it won't get much play in the mainstream press. We'll find out soon enough, I guess.
Keeping fingers crossed... ;-)
It probably won't, but the fruits of it will be noticed. I think the general public will like ubiquitous cell and data coverage, even in remote areas, or centimeter-accurate positioning. All of this stuff will be worldwide by nature.
Those are just two things that would be possible if it was cheap to launch and maintain thousands of satellites.
I hope they can land the Falcon 9 this time. SpaceX's Hans Koenigsmann says this time the Falcon 9 will come in twice as fast as the January 10 attempt, and it will land farther offshore.
I'm beginning to think these people need some sort of deprogramming.
US military application of existing GPS satellites can already achieve fixes down to 5cm. Centimeter-accurate positioning will never be allowed for civilian use, no matter how many satellite constellations you put up there.
US military application of existing GPS satellites can already achieve fixes down to 5cm. Centimeter-accurate positioning will never be allowed for civilian use, no matter how many satellite constellations you put up there.
I don't know about that. Is there anything malicious that a person could do with centimeter positioning that they can't already do with meter positioning?
Hell, I doubt that that there has ever been an instance where someone has managed to commit a crime because their GPS was meter-accurate, as opposed to for example 10-meter accurate or 100-meter accurate.
If I'm not mistaken the accuracy restrictions are mainly there to prevent foreign forces from developing munitions such as these: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M..., but those restrictions will be extremely difficult to keep up when Russia, China, EU and others (India, Brazil, etc) have fully operational satellite constellations. You will pretty much need to get everyone to not compete on accuracy while there will be massive demand from the market for things like more accurate autonomous vehicles.
http://www.waaytv.com/space_alabama/watch-live-nasa-tv-coverage-of-spacex-dscovr-launch-second/article_a3456ace-ae3a-11e4-89c9-1ffb7e793dd7.html
Very proud to have contributed Flight Dynamics Ground System software to the DSCOVR mission!
Just yesterday I looked at the SpaceX website's news page specifically to find out when the next rocket recovery attempt would be, and it said nothing about this. I just happened to check /. in time to tune in to Nasa TV 5 minutes before launch time. (Incidentally, they've scrubbed the launch for today.)
Quattuor res in hoc mundo sanctae sunt: libri, liberi, libertas et liberalitas.
Had tracking station radar issues, so launch scrubbed for today. Attempt again tomorrow.
"Though it may take a thousand years, we shall be FREE."
Also: both this launch and the previous one (space station resupply mission) had an "instantaneous launch window", meaning that any delay at all means they scrub for the day. Why is that? What is so magical about their launch time that they can't accept a one minute delay? And how much does it cost to scrub a launch for a day?
Quattuor res in hoc mundo sanctae sunt: libri, liberi, libertas et liberalitas.
Sorry- but Al Gore is completely discredited.
Maybe not yet, but it's just a matter of time before we see mafia assassinations by drone if only because the cost of doing so has dropped so much.
Named after a leftist politico who was seeking to put hundreds of millions $$$ into his pockets via his carbon credit exchange scam using his 'warmist' hoax pushing ??
"The Debate is Over" - one of the stupidest statements made in the last century.
He doesnt deserve a bucket of excrement to be named for him.