International four-person crew returns after nearly four days flying a 90-degree polar orbit and observing Earth’s poles from orbit for the first time.

Why have no astronaut went beyond low earth orbit since 1972? What about the moon, there is nothing valuable there? If there isn´t then why did astronauts go there six times between 1969 and 1972? Wouldn´t one be enough?

In central FL I was able to see something entering the atmosphere. I’m curious if anyone here knows what it might’ve been.

So I’m coming from Canada and headed to Florida for some warm weather and vacationing with my family for the next ten days and they just updated the launch schedule!

April 5/6 Starlink April 9 ULA Atlas 5 launch

I’m looking for the best recommendations for viewing this (staying in the Kissimmee area). I could drive up to cocoa beach or a friend of mine also mentioned playalinda?

Any advice or spots to go would be forever grateful to fulfill my inner nerd

Thanks !!

All the news outlets say the FAA received investigation reports from both companies and has accepted their findings. But I can't find the actual reports on any of their public-facing websites.

Shouldn't these be publicly available? Anybody have a link to them?

Hi everyone I am working on my game, which uses Kepler equation for the 2D orbits. It works well for my 2-body problems. But recently I am thinking if I should push it further to have some fun stuffs like Lagrange points. I know theoretically it impossible as it needs two forces to balance the centrifugal force to make Lagrange points possible, but I am working on a game, what I need is just some stationary points or some regions, which may or may not be the exact Lagrange points. For simplicity I am just looking to the restricted 3-body problem, i.e., the spacecraft is negligible compared to the two celestial bodies (a planet and its satellite).

I just want to stick to my current Kepler equations as I don't want to work again on things like the integration for n-body problems, so I am thinking if there are ways to use dv perturbation on the Kepler orbits. One idea I have tried is to add dv based on the total force (two forces from the celestial bodies and the centrifugal force). It did give me a funny orbit but not really looks like what I want. Am I missing anything or my approach fundamentally problematic?

Thanks in advance for any suggestions!

Just in case, you might check the game store page if you are interested:) It's a simulation game about ISRU on asteroids and orbit mechanics https://store.steampowered.com/app/3605470/

In the past weeks I made a little browser rocket orbiting simulator inspired from my countless hours in Kerbal Space Program.

You can play at https://vibespaceship.com/

It Is coded with heavy support from AI tools as I am not a game Developer. Just a normal developer.

You can fly and land again on earth. Can reach and orbit the moon, can also maybe land on the moon.

If you have feedback can post them here but it would be greatly appreciated if you posted on https://vibespaceship.featurebase.app , there eisnno need to login. So I can track them better and people can vote between apps.

Holy crap! I was shuddering reading this, thinking of myself in Butch and Suni's position. Those are some brave folks. I think we all knew that, but there can be absolutely zero doubt in their steely nerve ever for the rest of time

PPHHEEWWW!! What a damned close call!!

I've never been one to ever believe in conspiracy theories at all. However, the only one I could get behind is the 1969 Moon Landing being fake. America would have had good reasons to fake it. The only evidence I have found from people trying to prove it was real is stuff that has to do with the flag waving and the stars thing. So is there any scientific, irrefutable evidence that the lunar landing was not faked? Once again, not a conspiracy theorist, I don't even really believe it was faked, just curious. Thank you so much!

https://x.com/astropeggy/status/1907057632935882974?s=46

Could the modules withstand the force of rockets to launch a few modules to Mars? Make a space station a spaceship.

I hadn't heard anything about the Fram2 flight until I clicked on YouTube and saw the livestream of their launch. Question - How were they able to launch into a polar orbit from Kennedy? I thought Vandenberg was the only place you could launch into polar orbit from the continental US.

I'm aware that ion propulsion is too weak to do things that involve changing velocities quickly (like launching a spacecraft from the surface of a planet) but what about plasma propulsion?

Chemical rockets can create thrust measured in kilo-newtons for a few seconds but plasma propulsion can exert around 1-10 Newton's of thrust per engine for a lot longer than chemical rockets. So would it be possible to use plasma propulsion but just let it burn for longer to make up for the low thrust?

The Astronauts who are present on the beloved International Space Station (ISS) find ways to incorporate educational and cultural messages into a short video intended to edify the curiosity of the everyday folk for the Holidays, sparking interest for the sciences in future Astronauts.

Can someone explain to me why we haven’t figured out rockets yet? They seem to crash or explode quite frequently but we’ve been making these for a long time now, I mean we went to the moon decades ago. I have absolutely no knowledge on this topic btw so this could be a very stupid question.