In the APOD photo from May 14th, it is easy to imagine the rocket launching far away into the galactic disk. Sadly the rocket can’t traverse the thousands of light years to reach the distant stars, and is restricted to orbiting the Earth. Another beautiful part of this image is the technique involved in producing it. It required combining two exposures. The first, with low sensitivity to capture the orange rocket trail of the Falcon 9. The second with high sensitivity and a longer exposure time to capture the faint light of the Milky Way galaxy beyond. The result is...
As the capsule separates from the first stage rocket, the second stage booster takes over and sends Dragon into orbit around the Earth to rendezvous with it’s target a few hours from now. At this point the mission is a complete success from NASA’s perspective, but to Elon Musk and the rest of the SpaceX team, the real challenge is just beginning. They have to land that first stage rocket on a 300 x 170 foot barge in the vast ocean, or risk losing millions of dollars in their investment. Here’s how it went. Okay not so well, but arguably...
Last week, as the Dragon capsule successfully launched for the International Space Station under the watch of Space enthusiasts the world over. There was also a bit of chatter about a secondary SpaceX goal, to land the Falcon 9 rocket on a floating barge in the Atlantic Ocean as a new method of recovery. SpaceX CEO Elon Musk had tweeted at the time that the landing did not go well, implying a bit of damage to the landing pad. A few days later, a first picture surfaced of the landing pad showing a bit of charring and a few rocket...
