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Better late than never to the game, the Themis T1H (Themis - one engine - hop) reusable rocket prototype is now ready for its test campaign in Kiruna, Sweden. It is 30m high and 3.5m wide, and is powered by the Prometheus engine, which produces about the same amount of thrust as the Vulcain 2.1...

Just got the confirmation that Felix Baumgartner died in a paragliding accident in the Alps yesterday, at the age of 56. Maybe not quite the spaceflight name, but his stratospheric jump from a high-altitude balloon is IMHO close enough. Also he was the first human, who exceeded the speed of...

As written in the question, I stumbled about a mechanism and I can't find much about it in my mechanical engineering text book or in the internet. Can somebody with more engineering knowledge maybe help me there? It looks like that: Essentially, I just need to know how this mechanism would...

Since we don't have a special topic about them now and this is largely unrelated to ESA or EU, its time we give them their own thread. This should be about "commercial" spaceflight start-ups in Europe. Commerical in quotes, since despite largely following the footsteps of their US counterparts...

Since it was established that is 1984 again, the question is of course, what is your favorite Space Shuttle mission of 1984?

https://europeanspaceflight.com/italy-to-reopen-kenya-based-offshore-launch-facility/ Did somebody already do a visual update of the historic launch platform between Kenya and Madagaskar? The base is a part of Orbiters base markers since release 2003 at least.

Hello everybody, just like the thread title says, this question is about finding out what kind of changes in Orbiter and rendering clients would be necessary to support proper ellipsoid planets, like the WGS84 reference for Earth. One possible component that could need work might be how the...

I would like to see a Genesis Single Person Spacecraft in Orbiter, which is the continuation of NASAs Flexcraft concept. This document here contains many useful details, that could be used for getting the spacecraft some more feeling than being just a larger MMU...

I hope you have all done your emergency preparations well, this time it looks really like luck ran out for us. That NASA simulation looks really bad for us, its almost a bullseye hit on Earth. Just a few hours left. A really spooky event. And sadly too much cloud cover to see what will happen...

I started working on updating the old "Gemini-Titan 2 Version 4.5" add-on towards Orbiter 2016. The current sources can be found here: https://github.com/Urwumpe/gemini4orbiter My current work is mostly about the bureaucratic side of starting a new FOSS project. Contrary to my role in SSU, I...

The TESS space telescope, usually searching for Exoplanets, had discovered TYC 7037-89-1, a very beautiful star system made of three binary starsystems, https://exoplanets.nasa.gov/news/1672/discovery-alert-first-six-star-system-where-all-six-stars-undergo-eclipses/ The preprint to the...

I resumed working on a simple find_package script for finding the OrbiterSDK in CMake, in case somebody else needs it or has suggestions how to improve it, feel free to contribute. cmake_minimum_required(VERSION 3.17) # - Try to find OrbiterSDK # Once done, this will define # #...

Looks like there might be a bigger newsstory later today. http://astrobiology.com/2020/09/phosphine-detected-in-the-atmosphere-of-venus---an-indicator-of-possible-life.html A livestream of the presentation will be available here, in one hour from now:

Just found some information about that one. The current plans are just for a sounding rocket launch site near the equator, which also NASA wants to use. But such a place could sure also work well for orbital launches or be modified to contain a Orbiter standard VTOL launch pad. A few km to the...

A German company is starting to build small launchers, planned first launch is next year. The production plant was opened yesterday by the Bavarian minister president Söder in Ottobrunn, near Munich. The start-up is completely private funded (including a former SpaceX investor) and has 100...

Just saw the pictures and videos of the massive explosions at the port of Beirut, which happened a few minutes ago. What strikes me there is the rust-reddish explosion cloud, which I usually only saw on rockets using RFNA or similar during the Challenger accident by NTO. The origin of the...

There is a new biggest rock meteorite found in Germany, a 30.26 kg massive H4-5 chondrite found in Blaubeuren, 17 km west of Ulm. The owner stumbled over it already in 1989 in his garden and noticed its high iron content. But left it there until the beginning of 2020, when he thought twice...

The creator and long-term drawer of the Asterix comics, Albert Uderzo, has died because of a heart attack yesterday, at the age of 92. https://www.theguardian.com/books/2020/mar/24/asterix-creator-albert-uderzo-dies-at-92...

There is a ongoing situation at the airport of Madrid, a 767 of Air Canada had a burst tyre and an engine malfunction during take-off, the aircraft is currently circling over Madrid to reduce the landing weight while a F-18 of the Spanish airforce is inspecting the damage. They are preparing an...

Just heard of it after leaving the skunkworks here, the damage looks like a big disaster. https://edition.cnn.com/2020/01/24/us/texas-houston-explosion/index.html