AlphaRocketry

NASA's Artemis 1 moon mission completed a crucial preflight milestone today (June 20), wrapping up a two-day set of tests known as a wet dress rehearsal.  Those tests included fueling up Artemis 1's huge Space Lakunch System (SLS) rocket and performing a simulated countdown that took the vehicle and NASA's Orion capsule through most of the progressions they would endure on launch day before engine ignition. The simulated countdown reached its conclusion at 7:37 p.m. EDT (2337 GMT), bringing an end to the wet dress. Not everything went perfectly smoothly. The Artemis 1 team noticed a hydrogen leak during fueling today, and they intentionally "masked" data associated with the issue to let the countdown continue. (During an actual launch countdown, such data would have raised red flags, NASA officials said.) This change meant the countdown was halted at T-29 seconds before "liftoff," instead of T-9 seconds as originally planned. But that hiccup didn...

The Indian space agency is literally growing new wings as it gets ready to test a scaled down version of what can easily be described as the `swadeshi Space Shuttle'. The Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) calls it the `Reusable Launch Vehicle' or RLV. If all goes to plan very soon it will be seen flying over the Science City in Challakere, Karnataka, where the first landing experiment is being planned. S Somanath, Chairman, ISRO says "We are working silently on reusable rocket technology, with a very low budget, low cost and low investment." In the past USA and Russia have flown full-fledged winged space vehicles. Russia/USSR flew its vehicle called `Buran' only once in 1988 and the program was then shelved. USA made 135 flights of the Space Shuttle and in 2011 it was retired. Since then in a new burst of energy, USA, China and India are the only countries having an active program of re-useable rocket development. If all goes as per plan India's full...