Today (June 30, 2020) is 112 years ago that a 100 mtr asteroid exploded in the atmosphere over the desolated Tunguska area in Russia. A forest area of 2000 km2 was instantly flattened.  Just 7 years ago, in the morning of  february 15, 2013, we were reminded again. An airburst of the Chelyabinsk meteor created an explosion of about 30 times the Hiroshime atomic bomb at an altitude of 30 km. This time, the casualties were not trees but windows, that shattered all over the place.

These events should explain humanity why the dinosaurs never celebrated Asteroid day. They were violently wiped out 65 million years ago by an asteroid, with a diameter of at least 10 km. The remaining Chicxulub crater in Mexico is still the remaining witness of this event.

Today (June 16, 2020) is 57 years ago that Valentina Tereshkova was the first woman to fly in space. She orbited the Earth 48 times, spent almost three days in space on board the Vostok 6. She still holds the record for youngest female, at age 26, in Space and remains the only woman to have been on a solo space mission.

As a symbolic tribute to the power of women, the second name of my daughter is also Valentina. I hope one day they could meet for a photo opp! 

Below some nice Russian propaganda about her fairy tale life ;-)

My latest Space Podcast is now available. Listen to the latest news (in Dutch) on Oneweb, Crew Dragon and the upcoming flotilla to Mars! 

All episodes from all seasons of the Eye On Orbit Space podcast can be listened back here.

"For every action, there is a reaction: that is the principle on which all space rockets operate, blasting propellant in one direction to travel in the other. But one NASA engineer believes he could take us to the stars without any propellant at all.

Designed by David Burns at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Alabama, the “helical engine” exploits mass-altering effects known to occur at near-light speed. Burns has posted a paper describing the concept to NASA’s technical reports server.

It has been met with scepticism from some quarters, but Burns believes his concept is worth pursuing. “I’m comfortable with throwing it out there,” he says. “If someone says it doesn’t work, I’ll be the first to say, it was worth a shot.”

To get to grips with the principle of Burns’s engine, picture a box on a frictionless surface. Inside that box is a rod, along which a ring can slide. If a spring inside the box gives the ring a push, the ring will slide along the rod one way while the box will recoil in the other. When the ring reaches the end of the box, it will bounce backwards, and the box’s recoil direction will switch too. This is action-reaction – also known as Newton’s third law of motion – and in normal circumstances, it restricts the box to wiggling back and forth (see video below)..."

https://www.newscientist.com/article/2218685-nasa-engineers-helical-engine-may-violate-the-laws-of-physics/

The launch of the Crew Dragon DM2 is often worded in a confusing way to the general public as the first commercial space launch. This Zapread post aims at putting this claim into some context.

The actual correct wording should be: the first commercially operated human orbital spaceflight launch. First of all, there is suborbital vs orbital space. Space kind of officially begins beyond 100 km altitude. Companies like Virgin Galactic are developing a Space Tourism service that would bring astronauts just over this treshold. Getting astronauts to actually orbit the Earth is a whole different ball game requiring much more potent rockets to reach an ISS altitude of 400 km and orbital velocity of 7.5 km/s. Secondly, commercial launches have been going on for many decades to put for example Telecom and Earth Observation satellites into orbit. 

The table below shows the evolution of Human orbital spaceflight together with some characteristics to demonstrate, that the DM2 mission is 'just' a little step towards a more economically sound way of bringing astronauts to Space. The next step, with a private citizen astronaut that is paying for him/herself, on-board a rocket operated by a commercial entity, would be the next step in the evolution. At this moment, Yusaku Maezawa is the most likely person to bring this evolution further.

"It lasted just 12 minutes, but history's first-ever spacewalk – 50 years ago today – took the first steps towards shaping the future of space exploration.

On March 18, 1965 at 4:35 a.m. EDT (0835 GMT), Soviet-era cosmonaut Alexei Leonov became the first person to leave the confines of his spacecraft while in orbit and float in the vacuum of space. Leonov, who with Pavel Belyayev was flying onboard the former-Soviet Union's Voskhod 2, accomplished the first extra-vehicular activity – EVA, or spacewalk – on what was only the 14th piloted spaceflight in history.

first-spacewalk-alexei-leonov-50th-anniversary

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An interactive 3D model of the Voskhod 2 spacecraft, with inflatable airlock deployed - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voskhod_2#/media/File:Voskhod_2_Deployed.stl

Update (May 29, 2020): Slated for launch on saturday May 30, 21:22 CET (wednesday May 27, 22:23 CET), the US will again be capable to bring humans into orbital Space. The US had grounded itself for nearly a decade, when on July 8 2011, the Space Shuttle Atlantis made a full stop on the massive Kennedy Space Center landing strip. Now, the SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule is ready to go with 2 astronauts to bring a visit to the International Space Station. An historic step in the heritage line that started with the Mercury, Gemini and Apollo programmes in the 60s, and continued from there onwards with the Space Shuttle programme. Now the US has embarked on a new, more commercially oriented, model for bringing astronauts into orbital Space. Where previous Human Spaceflight endeavours were fully executed by NASA staff and contractors, now the Human access to orbital space is bought by NASA as a service from SpaceX. I just wished they did the same thing for Deep Space Exploration and had motballed SLS by now.

Human access to Space is a highly prolific achievement in the geopolitical context. I believe, if everything goes well with the Crew Dragon, Soyuz is doomed and tensions between US and Russia will rise further. Europe traditionally has declined to play a role in Human access to Space. From a practical point of view, the economic investment is too big and the economic and scientific returns are too marginal. Yet, from an inspirational and geopolitical dimension, it might just need to step into the game. Let's get Hermes to fly again!

Watch the launch live via YouTube!

Since last year, I started a fundraiser on Tallycoin, the Bitcoin Patreon challenger, to support my activities for Space Education & Outreach. It was a bit to try out new Lightning Network services, like ZapRead, and was actually dormant, untill I shared my Blockstream Satellite 2.0 set-up on twitter, and bitcoin twitter got crazy! In addition to new donations, I have gained tens of new followers within a day or so!

After sharing a video, Bitcoin twitter got even more crazy, and I even had the pleasure to interact with a BSV follower, who thought this was all just hobby for fun (I mean, in no way will we get gigameg blocks down every 10 minutes from Space). Well, partly he is right, it is a lot of fun to bring Blockstream Satellite 2.0 up- and running, and doing all kind of experiments.

It is this kind of fun that I also want to bring about in my Space Education & Outreach activities. Whenever this Corona lockdown is over and schools and events are up and running again, I want to go out and tell the public about the wonders of space and the universe. At the same time, I want them to interact with my mobile Blockstream Satellite 2.0 set-up, and my Lacuna Space IOT terminal. I even want to donate such set-ups so they can experiment themselves.

For these things, I look for donations as schools often don't have the means to finance my Space Education & Outreach workshops. So chip in for the crowdfunding at Tallycoin, also with LN microdonations, and make it happen for kids at schools and events!

My bitcoin node, on an old and grumpy Linux laptop, has been getting the latest bitcoin ledger blocks through Blockstream Satellite since 2018. Blockstream Satellite is a service that is enabled by 4 geostationairy satellites, to cover the largest part of the globe. These 4 satellites broadcast the bitcoin ledger on a continuous basis. As an add-on, there is a Lightning Network powered Blockstream Satellite API which can be used to broadcast data globally, for only a few satoshis.

Last week, Blockstream announced an upgrade to the service, that included new S/W that should provide higher datarates and higher datalimits for files to share with the Blockstream Satellite API. In addition, there are a number of new Blockstream products in store, amongst which the flat panel receiver is most interesting for me. One recurring challenge is always to point my dish exactly to the Telstar 11N satellite. Just mispointing 0.5 degree means totally missing that satellite's signal from an altitude 36.000 km above the equator. In addition, the LNB, in the focal point of my dish, has an offset that is sometimes bigger than the bandwidth of the signal. As such, the S/W doesn't recognise the signal, and you think the dish is not pointed well, while actually, it is pointing where it needs to be pointed. With a flat panel, this will be so much easier. Just place it roughly in a clear direction, and you should be done. 2nd on my list is one of those TBS 5927 DVB-S2 tuners. What happens now is that such a tuner is being simulated in my SDR USB dongle, and it becomes steaming hot.

I have been testing the new S/W now for a few days, and got it to work! An update of bitcoind from version 0.15 to 0.19 is needed, as there exists now a special Bitcoind Satellite edition!

One thing I noticed is that cable length between my dish and computer has a big impact on the performance. As this is not noticable with the good old Blockstream Satellite 1.0, this took some time to find out. Of course the higher datarates become, the higher the losses in the COAX cable become. There is a number of S/W and H/W updates that I still want to make before I have it exactly as I want, but I can recommend anyone running a bitcoin node to try this out! For little less than 100 euro you can get the equipment to make it work the DIY way, or you go immediately for one of the Blockstream Satellite kits of course.

My Blockstream Satellite set-up is also an integral part of my new company Bitlinq. Together with the Lacuna Space IOT terminal, I have created an off-grid internet access capability.

I wish you a happy 3rd halving! This morning, my node predicted it to be at 22:00 CET tonight (May 11, 2020).

Your message is 0.000071% of the way to Tau Ceti. Tau Ceti is the closest solitary yellow dwarf. It may possibly have five planets in orbit, two of which are thought to be in the habitable zone. However, due to the large amount of space dust around the star - ten time that of our own system, any planets in the system would face a higher chance of impact events than we do on earth.

I just found this website, it allows you to send a message to space. Pretty neat.

Your message is 0.00013% of the way to Gliese 876. Gliese 876 is a red dwarf in the constellation Aquarius, the water-bearer. At just over 15 lightyears away, it is the closest star with a multiplanet system.

Those distance updates are the most amazing part about it, Just realoaded the page and my message is 191,671,138 km away.
This site is from 2013, i'm sure many of you already know it. But I am amazed by this, think about it: You can spam aliens!