The Footage of SpaceX's First Falcon 9 Reusable Flight Test is Gorgeous

You thought SpaceX's Grasshopper was impressive? Grasshopper was just the beginning. Behold, the first flight test of the company's Falcon 9 Reusable Launch Vehicle.

SpaceX currently uses a non-reusable version of the Falcon 9 to launch its Dragon capsules into low-Earth orbit, on commercial resupply missions to the International Space Station. In fact, the company made such a launch yesterday.

Making its Falcon 9 a reusable launch vehicle capable of vertical takeoff/vertical landing will save the company a lot of time, money and resources in the long run, and represents a major step on the company's path to commercial spaceflight supremacy.

Via SpaceX:

The F9R testing program is the next step towards reusability following completion of the Grasshopper program last year (Grasshopper can be seen in the background of this video). Future testing, including that in New Mexico, will be conducted using the first stage of a F9R as shown here, which is essentially a Falcon 9 v1.1 first stage with legs. F9R test flights in New Mexico will allow us to test at higher altitudes than we are permitted for at our test site in Texas, to do more with unpowered guidance and to prove out landing cases that are more-flight like.

As always, we're ever so pleased with the decision to shoot this most recent test launch from a hexacopter, which is fast becoming our favorite means of capturing vertical takeoff/vertical landing footage.

Source:io9

Will We Find Life on Titan?

With recent attention focusing on its sister moon Enceladus, Titan—Saturn’s largest moon, and the second-largest moon in the solar system—has been neglected as a possible source of extraterrestrial life. While its -179°C/-290°F surface temperature and methane-rich atmosphere would seem to preclude what Star Trek‘s Dr. McCoy might refer to as “life as we know it,” the possibility of methane-based life on the surface of Titan is both very real and entirely consistent with what we know of the planet’s atmosphere. So when can we send a probe there, and what’s the best way to explore the surface?

As Huygens fell to the surface of Titan, it recorded video of the planet’s surface and broadcasted it to us. This is the unprocessed footage:

And here’s a processed image from Huygens itself, following its landing. It is the only photograph ever taken from the surface of Titan:

The joint NASA/ESA proposal or a Titan Saturn System Mission (TSSM) would use an air balloon to survey the geography (very feasible, given Titan’s thick atmosphere), and a lake-lander called the Titan Mare Explorer (TiME) to examine the chemical composition of one of Titan’s many methane lakes. But the TiME lake-lander would have limited mobility, prompting Universe Today’s Michael Habib to ask yesterday: why don’t we take advantage of Titan’s dense atmosphere, and the low viscosity of liquid methane, by just depositing a sailboat on the planet’s surface and letting it explore?

Europa has taken precedence over Titan and Enceladus as targets of exobiological study, and even the Europa mission has a far-off 2030 deadline, but given recent interest in Enceladus as a possible habitat for extraterrestrial life it’s not completely implausible that we’ll send a probe to Titan within the next ten years—and what we find there may be worth the effort.

Source: MU

Is Saturn Pregnant?

Ice—about a half mile of it—has begun to gather on the edge of one of Saturn’s rings. And if astronomers are right about the way Saturn’s 62 existing moons have formed, we may be looking at a 63rd. This would tie Jupiter’s record for the largest number of moons in our solar system.

Sir Brian Cox, a physicist at the University of Manchester and host of the BBC’sWonders of the Solar System, explains Saturn’s ring system here:

You’ll note Cox’s remark to the effect that when ice clusters form around Saturn, they often collide with other clusters and break apart. But if this particular cluster doesn’t, and if it breaks free from the ring and achieves an independent orbit, Peggy—named (tentatively, at least) after its discoverer’s mother-in-law—is likely to orbit the planet for billions of years. We’ll have a better look in late 2016, as NASA’s Cassini probe will be in the neighborhood by that point.

Source: MU