SpaceX Launch Feb 21, 8:45pm Eastern, Featuring Lunar Lander

Beresheet Lunar Lander
(Image Credit: SpaceIL)

Affordable spaceflight is enabling a new golden age of mankind going to the stars. This has been possible in tremendous part due to the extremely important innovation by SpaceX of reusable boosters which can land after launch, as we all know. As if this was not enough, a newly emerging trend in the launches we have been seeing is that of rideshare, where multiple companies launch their projects on a single flight, thereby further reducing the cost to each organization.

Tonight, SpaceX has a launch planned on of one of their workhorse Falcon 9 boosters, and this will be the third flight for this proven craft. Previously it flew the Iridium-7 mission in July 2018 and the SAOCOM 1A mission in October. This mission will feature three payloads, arguably the most exciting of which being an Israeli lunar lander! The Beresheet robotic lunar lander is a joint project between SpaceIL and Israel Aerospace Industries, and if successful will make Israel only the 4th country ever to land on the moon – ranking them among China, Russia and the United States. After the successful launch today, the craft will undergo an 8 week journey before landing on the lunar surface. In Hebrew, ‘beresheet’ means ‘in the beginning’.

The other payload on this ride share launch consists of the PSN-6 communication satellite from the Indonesian company PT Pasifik Satelit Nusantara as well as a U.S. Air Force satellite code named S5, intended to assist with identifying orbital debris which is an increasing problem.

The launch is scheduled for 8:45pm Eastern time, February 21st, from Cape Canaveral Air Force station (SLC-40), with a planned booster recovery on everyone’s favorite autonomous robotic droneship, Of Course I Still Love You!

You will be able to watch the launch live via the regular SpaceX production (embedded below) or on the SpaceIL Facebook page!

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Curiosity Makes Mountain out of Dusthill

Curiosity Rover on Vera Rubin Ridge
(Image Credit: MSSS/ NASA/JPL-Caltech)

The NASA Mars rover Curiosity is still out there, day in and day out, doing Science for us all! The latest discovery to come from this hard working and vastly in-extra-innings ‘bot centers around the 3 mile tall Mount Sharp, located in Gale crater on the Martian surface. Using an improvised gravimeter, rigged from the existing accelerometers on board the vehicle, they have found strong evidence that the towering mountain was created through a long process of stacking wind blown material as it was driven into the crater. This is the far less likely result, geologically speaking, but thanks to the new ability to measure the surprisingly low density of the material comprising Mount Sharp, the stacking model looks more likely than one of erosion over time.

The best takeaway here, is of course that it’ll still make a great ski slope in a few years, but may need a little firming up in places. Also, that Curiosity is still working hard, along with the Earth-side engineers who continue to wring valuable Science from our future spare home planet, every hour of the day!

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