Tag Archives: launch

Blue Origin, founded by Bezos, plans to finally return with a long-awaited launch next week

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blue origin aims to finally end the more than 15-month grounding of its New Shepard suborbital rocket, with the company today announcing it will fly unmanned missions as early as Dec. 18.

The company confirmed its release social media accounts Followed by Bloomberg reporting Content of internal email for new target date. The mission, called NS-24, will carry 33 scientific research payloads and other cargo.

The new Shepard has been grounded since September 2022, when an engine nozzle problem triggered an automatic shutdown and released the unmanned capsule from its booster. The capsule landed safely. The booster was destroyed upon crashing to Earth. (This mission was also unmanned.)

The Federal Aviation Administration formally closed its investigation into the crash in September and directed Blue Origin to take 21 corrective actions, including redesigning engine and nozzle components and “organizational changes.”

This new launch date means Blue Origin has implemented all measures and received a revised launch license from the FAA. The amended license expires in August 2025 and is limited to launches only from Blue Origin’s West Texas facility, according to the regulator’s website.

Blue Origin has ambitious projects in development, including a heavy-lift rocket called New Glenn, which aims to take flight late next year, and a lunar lander called Blue Moon, for which it is seeking a $3.4 billion contract from NASA. The Shepard Flight Program is the only one currently in operation. To date, the vehicle has flown over his 22 flights, taking 31 people (including CEO Jeff Bezos himself) to the edge of space and back.

Source: techcrunch.com

Bluesky, X’s competitor, reaches 2 million users; federation to launch in early next year

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Bluesky is a company building a decentralized alternative to Twitter/X. announced It now has 2 million users, an increase of another 1 million since September, despite still being an invite-only app. It also revealed deadlines for other important goals, saying it plans to have a public web interface up and running by the end of this month and start federation by early next year.

The latter is one of the most important differentiators between Bluesky and X, as it allows Bluesky to function as a more open social network. This means it works more like Mastodon, where users can choose which servers to join and move their accounts around freely. This is what Bluesky today claims is “billionaire-proof” and criticizes Elon Musk’s ownership of Twitter, now known as X.

“Rather than being bound to the whims and black-box algorithms of private companies, you have the freedom to choose (and exit) at any time.” Explained in company blog post. “And wherever you go, your friends and relationships will be there too,” it states.

Similar to Mastodon, a decentralized service, federation allows anyone to run their own service and connect to other services running the same protocol. For Bluesky, this is done like this: AT protocol The company is also developing consumer services and mobile apps in parallel. But his other major decentralized social network, Mastodon, uses an established protocol, his ActivityPub, which has grown significantly in the months since Musk’s acquisition of Twitter. It is attracting attention.

Since then, other companies have adopted ActivityPub and Mastodon, including Mozilla, Flipboard, Medium, and Automattic (WordPress.com’s parent company). Unless Bluesky makes the AT protocol and ActivityPub interoperable in some way, there could be challenges regarding Bluesky’s ultimate reach. Bridging Maybe the two of you Technically It’s possible, but it’s more likely to be in the future, not in the near future.

Meanwhile, Bluesky is working to make its services more accessible, including launching a public web interface later this month. This will allow anyone to view his Bluesky posts, even if they don’t have an account. This could make the network more promising in terms of being a true competitor to X in breaking news and conversation, but it could expose Bluesky users’ posts to the outside world in ways they are not ready for. There is also. (This app currently does not have an option to set your profile to “private” like Twitter/X does. some users is not Happy about this. )

Despite its growth, Bluesky’s reluctance to drop its invite-only status and open its network to more users has allowed other competitors of X to gain a foothold. Last month, for example, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced that Instagram Threads, an alternative to X, had just under 100 million monthly active users. He believes he can reach 1 billion users in the next few years. Threads also plans to interoperate with ActivityPub in the future.

Bluesky’s announcement follows Threads’ rapid release of features to make the app more competitive with X, including a chronological feed, support for displaying likes, search, and (free) Includes an edit button, web version, voting, GIF support, and more. , topic tags, and soon a developer API. Mastodon also took advantage of the opportunity presented by the Twitter acquisition and launched an easier-to-use version of its service in September of this year. However, Mastodon currently has 1.6 million monthly active usersHowever, it is much smaller than a thread.

In addition to today’s news, Mr. Bluesky also provides mobile push notifications, shareable user lists, email verification, advanced feed and thread settings for sorting and filtering posts, a media tab in user profiles, and a user profile for your own users. We also mentioned other recently released features, such as a Likes tab for profiles. , the suggestions below, and various accessibility improvements.

Bluesky started life as a Twitter project under Jack Dorsey, but the company was spun off from Twitter. $13 million How to start research and development. Mr. Dorsey sits on its board of directors. This year, the company raised an $8 million seed round led by Neo to further its development and transformed from a public benefit LLC to a public benefit C Corp.

Source: techcrunch.com

Astrobotic Lunar Lander Set for ULA Launch on Christmas Eve

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based in pittsburgh astroboticULA’s first lunar lander is scheduled to take off on Christmas Eve aboard United Launch Alliance’s new Vulcan Centaur rocket, ULA CEO Tori Bruno said.

Bruno told the audience at the CNBC Technology Executive Council Summit that the company is targeting its first Vulcan launch between Dec. 24 and Dec. 26. “The reason it’s Christmas Eve today is science: orbital mechanics,” said Tori Bruno, CEO of ULA.

The rocket will carry a payload hosted by Astrobotic’s Peregrine robotic lander and Celestis, a company that partners with launch companies to send parts of cremated remains into space as memorials. ULA, a joint venture between Boeing and Lockheed Martin, has a backup period in January in case the rocket fails to take off in December.

Astrobotic’s Peregrine will launch as part of a $79.5 million NASA contract awarded in 2019 under the Commercial Lunar Payload Services initiative. The lander, which is just over 6 feet tall, 8 feet wide and has a payload of 120 kilograms, will deliver scientific payloads to the northern part of the moon on behalf of the space agency.

Although the mission date seems festive, Bruno said that’s partly due to Astrobotic’s mission requirements. “We’re going to parts of the moon where we have to control the lighting conditions very carefully, and we also have to maintain radio communication with the deep space network,” he explained. “This guy only gets a few days every month when you put the two together.”

This mission will take a long time. Astrobotic first announced that it had selected her ULA to launch its lander in 2019. At the time, both companies said the launch would happen in 2021.

However, the schedule has been pushed back due to numerous technical delays to Vulcan, including an accident in March of this year when the upper stage exploded during a test at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Alabama. Another explosion occurred during a rocket engine test of the BE-4 engine being developed by Blue Origin, further delaying the flight. Even before December, ULA still has work to do. Bruno told CNBC that the company is currently certifying Vulcan’s upper stage, and work should be completed in November.

This first mission, called Certification-1, is one of two certification flights that ULA must complete to meet Space Force requirements.

The mission will take off from Launch Complex 41 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida. ULA wants to rapidly increase the pace of Vulcan’s launches, with a goal of launching once every two weeks by mid-2025. Some of that demand will come from the government, but ULA also expects demand from private customers. ULA won a huge contract from Amazon to launch part of its giant Kuiper satellite internet mega-constellation in 2022, but the price of the launch contract has soared. Not disclosed.

Source: techcrunch.com