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SpaceX is launching 60 more Starlink satellites Tuesday. Here’s how to watch live.
Link: https://www.space.com/spacex-starlink-3-satellite-launch-webcast.html
The private spaceflight company SpaceX will launch 60 new Starlink satellites to join its growing broadband internet megaconstellation in orbit today (Jan. 27), and you can watch it live online.
The goal of SpaceX’s Starlink project is to provide constant, high-speed internet access to users around the world through a massive constellation of broadband internet satellites operating in low Earth orbit. Users on the ground would then only need a small terminal that’s no bigger than a laptop to gain internet access.
“Starlink will provide fast, reliable internet to locations where access has been unreliable, expensive, or completely unavailable,” the company wrote in its Starlink mission description.
A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket will launch the Starlink mission from Space Launch Complex 40 at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida. Liftoff is scheduled for no earlier than 9:49 a.m. EST (1449 GMT).
You can watch SpaceX’s Starlink launch webcast here on Space.com, courtesy of SpaceX, beginning about 15 minutes before liftoff. You can also watch the launch directly from SpaceX here.
SpaceX has a 50% chance of good launch weather today, according to the 45th Weather Squadron of the U.S. Air Force, with thick clouds and “disturbed weather” as the chief concern.
If SpaceX is unable to launch the Starlink-3 mission today, the company has a backup launch opportunity on Tuesday, Jan. 28, at 9:28 a.m. EST (1428 GMT). That launch day has an 80% chance of good weather.
The goal of SpaceX’s Starlink project is to provide constant, high-speed internet access to users around the world through a massive constellation of broadband internet satellites operating in low Earth orbit. Users on the ground would then only need a small terminal that’s no bigger than a laptop to gain internet access.
“Starlink will provide fast, reliable internet to locations where access has been unreliable, expensive, or completely unavailable,” the company wrote in its Starlink mission description.
The majority of SpaceX’s missions in 2020 will consist of Starlink launches as the company works to expand its fleet of internet-beaming satellites, including at least one more batch of 60 Starlink satellites scheduled to launch before the end of January. SpaceX CEO and founder Elon Musk has said the company will need at least 400 Starlink satellites in orbit to offer “minor” broadband coverage, and at least 800 to provide “moderate” coverage.
SpaceX plans to operate its initial batch of 1,584 satellites 341 miles (549 kilometers) above Earth, hovering much lower than traditional communications satellites that operate out of geostationary orbit. Those satellites are too far away to provide the kind of lower-cost coverage SpaceX aims to establish, Musk has said
Update for 6:30 p.m. ET: SpaceX is now targeting no earlier than Wednesday (Jan. 29) at 9:06 a.m. EST (1406 GMT) for this Starlink launch “due to poor weather in the recovery area,” the company tweeted Monday night.
House legislators want to hand NASA’s human spaceflight program over to Boeing
Link: https://arstechnica.com/science/2020/01/house-bill-seeks-to-gut-nasas-artemis-plan-resurrect-journey-to-mars/
On Friday evening, a US House of Representatives committee released H.R. 5666, an authorization act for NASA. Such bills are not required for an agency to function, and they do not directly provide funding—that comes from the appropriations committees in the House and Senate. Authorization bills provide a “sense” of Congress, however and indicate what legislators will be willing to fund in the coming years.
The big-picture takeaway from the bipartisan legislation is that it rejects the Artemis Program put forth by the Trump White House, which established the Moon as a cornerstone of human exploration for the next decade or two and as a place for NASA astronauts to learn the skills needed to expand toward Mars in the late 2030s and 2040s. Instead, the House advocates for a “flags-and-footprints” strategy whereby astronauts make a few short visits to the Moon beginning in 2028 and then depart for a Mars orbit mission by 2033.
Moreover, Artemis recognized that spaceflight has changed in 50 years. The Artemis program included new players in the industry, such as SpaceX and Blue Origin, as well as up-and-coming companies like Maxar, along with the established aerospace giants like Boeing and Lockheed Martin. NASA’s plans, essentially, invited everyone to the table. Over time, the companies that provided the most reliable services at the lowest costs were likely to get more contracts.
The Artemis Program also emphasized that NASA should be one of many customers, instead of the sole customer. It placed an emphasis on private investment in rockets and spacecraft—asking contractors to put more skin in the game. By opting for fixed-price contracts for the Human Landing System instead of cost-plus deals, the Artemis Program attempted to obtain services at lower costs while also giving contractors incentive to deliver on time.
The net effect of this is to shut down all potential competition and cost savings for the lunar lander. It is particularly telling that there is only one company—Boeing—that has proposed building an integrated lunar lander, has the contract for the Exploration Upper Stage, and is building core stages for the Space Launch System rocket.
US Navy submarine ‘encountered 500mph Nimitz UFO in ocean’ 4 years after sighting
Link: https://www.dailystar.co.uk/news/weird-news/navy-submarine-encountered-500mph-nimitz-21357187
EXCLUSIVE: A former United States Air Force intelligence expert claims he found reports of a Los Angeles-class submarine seeing an unidentified submerged object in “2007 or 2008” that travelled at 550mph underwater. It supposedly matched the description of the USS Nimitz UFO
The US Navy is still unable to explain the object, previously identifying it as an Unidentified Aerial Phenomena.
But Mike Turber, an intelligence expert who claims to have worked in the USAF, claims the craft was actually created by the US military.
He first made his bombshell comments on The Hidden Truth Show with Jim Breslo.
And in an exclusive chat with Daily Star Online, he suggested the craft is capable of hurtling at astonishing speeds in both the air and sea.
“There was a submarine situation – that report will probably come out further down the line,” he explained.
“It (the tic-tac object) was travelling at 550mph. As far as I know, it was a Los Angeles-class submarine.
“I believe it was around 2007 and 2008.
Physicists: Ancient life might have escaped Earth and journeyed to alien stars
Link: https://www.livescience.com/microbes-colonize-space-riding-comets.html
A pair of Harvard astrophysicists have proposed a wild theory of how life might have spread through the universe.
Millions or billions of years ago, back when the solar system was more crowded, a giant comet grazed the outer reaches of our atmosphere. It was moving fast, several tens of miles above the Earth’s surface — too high to burn up as a fireball, but low enough that the atmosphere slowed it down a little bit. Extremely hardy microbes were floating up there in its path, and some of those bugs survived the collision with the ball of ice.
These microbes ended up embedded deep within the comet’s porous surface, protected from the radiation of deep space as the comet rocketed away from Earth and eventually out of the solar system entirely. Tens of thousands, maybe millions, of years passed before the comet ended up in another solar system with habitable planets. Eventually, the object crashed into one of those planets, deposited the microbes — a few of them still living — and set up a new outpost for earthly life in the universe.
Which Religion Is Friendliest to the Idea of Aliens?
Link: https://gizmodo.com/which-religion-is-friendliest-to-the-idea-of-aliens-1841241730
Every major religion on Earth could easily accommodate the discovery of (intelligent) alien life, with one exception: Christianity.
Christians maintain that persons who have committed moral wrongs are in desperate need of divine salvation. The good news is that, out of grace, God will save many (according to universalism, all) human sinners. Christians also believe that Jesus Christ plays an essential part in God’s terrestrial work of salvation: Jesus was a divine incarnation whose atonement (suffering, teaching, good example…) will ultimately reconcile many (or all) human sinners to God.
While it might sound like the plot of a sci-fi novel, the idea that benevolent and highly advanced beings from other planets are secretly facilitating human evolution is common to a number of religions. Members of the Brazilian religion called the Valley of the Dawn (Vale do Amanhecer), for example, claim to be the spiritual descendants of a race of beings from the distant star Capella, sent by God to jumpstart Earth’s evolution.
On the North American continent, a related idea is central to Unarius, whose charismatic leader Ruth Norman, aka the Archangel Uriel, claimed to be in contact with the “Space Brothers”—highly evolved intelligences inhabiting other galaxies. Uriel promised her followers that the Space Brothers will touch down on Earth in their massive starships to usher in a new era of peace and unity, but only when human beings are ready to understand their message. Whether expressed in science fiction or religious mythology, our fascination with the possibility of extraterrestrial beings is a venerable one.
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