Today was supposed to be the day SpaceX flight tested the Starship from its facility in Texas, but less than 10 minutes before the launch a problem with the Super Heavy booster put everything on hold.
The Starship is a key part of NASA’s Artemis III mission to place astronauts on the Moon, so the tests are crucial to move that project forward.
SpaceX will need to wait at least 48 hours before attempting another launch.
The Chinese balloons that causes so much trouble a few months back appear to be nothing new, according to recently leaked Pentagon documents. The Chinese have been using them for years to spy on American military positions. And on closer inspection, the contraption being carried by these balloons looks a lot like a normal satellite, with solar panels, antenna, sensors, and more (see the image above).
So why use balloons and not normal satellites? As noted in earlier press stories, the balloons are cheaper, easier to launch, more difficult for US intelligence to detect when launched, fly closer to targets, and linger longer over those targets. These are many of the same reason the US and many other countries continue to use balloons for scientific reasons as well.
The leaked documents are simply confirming what we already know. UFOs are all over and as far as we know to date man-made. I know it is still hard for many to believe that the crashed object in Roswell, New Mexico back in the 1947 was just a US military surveillance balloon. Real life can be boring at times.
A new series is coming to HBO Max on April 20th.
The series, Fired on Mars, is described as an “Existential workplace comedy set on the Martian campus of a modern tech company.” It stars Pete Davidson. It’s animated. And HBO Max seems to be doing the bare minimum to advertise it. Or, more to the point, it is doing nothing to advertise it.
Does that peek your interest of scare you away?
I am more in the latter category, but I will watch the first episode to see that I think.
Update: I watched the first few episodes and decided that was enough. It really has very little to do with Mars. The planet is just a backdrop to an office drama that is not very interesting. If you want a good science fiction office drama you would do better watching Severance on Apple TV+.
Earlier today, the European Space Agency’s (ESA) Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer (Juice) mission successfully launched from French Guiana. It is the start of a long trip to the Jovian planet and its moons. The spacecraft will not reach Jupiter until July 2031. You can watch of video of the launch here. ESA has numerous other videos on the mission here.
ESA Director General Josef Aschbacher stated:
ESA, with its international partners, is on its way to Jupiter…Juice’s spectacular launch carries with it the vision and ambition of those who conceived the mission decades ago, the skill and passion of everyone who has built this incredible machine, the drive of our flight operations team, and the curiosity of the global science community. Together, we will keep pushing the boundaries of science and exploration in order to answer humankind’s biggest questions.
It is another great step forward in the exploration of our home solar system as we scan the skies for other more distant systems.
This week’s image is an illustration showing what scientists believe the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope has detected, though it initially showed as only a smudge. The dramatic illustration tells a fascinating story, as described by NASA’s Hubblesite
There’s an invisible monster on the loose, barreling through intergalactic space so fast that if it were in our solar system, it could travel from Earth to the Moon in 14 minutes. This supermassive black hole, weighing as much as 20 million Suns, has left behind a never-before-seen 200,000-light-year-long “contrail” of newborn stars, twice the diameter of our Milky Way galaxy. It’s likely the result of a rare, bizarre game of galactic billiards among three massive black holes.
