All Questions

A collection of photos in posts by Miles Lumbard there is a page titled Mercury Retro Pack Walk Around Page 1 (spotted here in reference to the thermal zebra stripes) can be found nine images with the ...

When SpaceX launches a CRS mission to the ISS, what altitude do they target at orbital insertion? If the ISS is 400 km above ground, do they target 400 km at SECO? Or do they target a lower number---...

Suppose I discover an uncatalogued crater on the lunar surface, and decide to name it. How would I submit my proposed name to the IAU?

Unmanned probes can be sterilized, but when humans begin occupying Mars in large quantities, how can contamination of possible Martian microbes with Earth microbes be avoided?

Since Starship uses cold liquid oxygen and methane fuel in its header tanks, how will these cryogenic tanks been kept full and cold on long missions in space?

I'm attempting to build a rocket with 8 fins (four on bottom and four smaller ones towards the top). The four fins near to the top will be attached to servo motors and programmed to stabilize or guide ...

Can the Space Shuttle land on Mars if it had a paved runway? Can the Space Shuttle use aerobraking and will its control surfaces provide attitude control? Can the parachute and braking systems stop ...

Is the Soviet spacecraft Luna 16 still working and transmitting temperature & radiation levels? Attempts to Google the results of Luna 16 have failed, possibly because the results are in Russian.

I'm curious about rocket dashboards. Separation events are big things and they depend on pyro bolts detonating and linear charges or pneumatic pushers firing immediately afterward. There must be ...

Ars Technica's There are an insane amount of cool space things happening in 2021 mentions: This year, Made in Space's "Industrial Crystal Facility" should also fly to space. This will serve ...

In the TV series The Expanse, a sci-fi space-engine called the "Epstein Fusion Drive" is a thruster capable of performing constant acceleration (up to and beyond "20g" (about $200 ...

So I can't exactly find out what angle should the converging part of the rocket chamber be or why different angles are chosen for engines (varies by about 15°). Are there any guidlines on the angle or ...

There are a lot of things in space now that require the use of space tugs. Many companies are developing their space tugs. For several years there has been talk of a nuclear space tug. Are all these ...

I just started flipping through Handbook of Space Engineering Archaeology, and Heritage Space Hardware Ann Darrin & Beth L. O'Leary, Eds. 2009, CRC Press, Boca Raton, 1035 pages It looks as though ...

Sometimes one sees discussions about hypothetical CubeSats with impressive abilities that seem to be assume that CubeSats are cheaper to launch (not merely individually, but by mass) than larger ...

I am going to go ahead and apologize for my ignorance surrounding this topic, as my background is Aerodynamics, and not Electrical Engineering. From what I understand, CubeSats typically generate ...

I have two related questions about geophysical processes related to talus* fans on Mars: How were talus fans on Mars formed? (like Valles Marineris or Kasei Valles) What is the role of these fans or ...

Do astronauts drink each their own pee or is there a common pee container where all pee get collected and processed? It's clear to me that the obtained water must be sterile, but even then, I imagine ...

Is the engine gimbal check done before or after ignition? Also curious: How many seconds does the check take? What does it consist of? Do they gimbal each engine separately, or do they gimbal all ...

A comment to this answer makes the claim humans are so impaired in space that their ability to repair anything is ridiculously low (hours of preparation and debriefing even for a five-minute EVA, and ...

There are a lot of challenges with space habitation. Gravity, radiation, fuel for reactions to maneuver, water, atmosphere, food, etc. etc. NASA and many others are working on all kinds of solutions ...

I have read how a sun sensor can help find the orientation of a spacecraft, but I wasn’t sure how many are required, e.g. if one is needed on each face of the Cubesat. (Any additional information is ...

I was thinking about the effect of a near-miss with an asteroid upon the orbit of the earth around the Sun. My goal is to figure out a formula I could use for a visualization I'd like to build to get ...

May somebody guide me what exactly determines the length of a launch window? When doing the (basic) celestrial mechanics caclulations for e.g. a transit from Earth to Venus, one usually assumes point-...

I came across the above image on Nakka's page about fins and what I understood is that rockets will turn into the wind during the thrust phase, and will drift slightly with the wind after burnout. But ...

I want to access satellites' orbital parameters like inclination, right ascension of ascending node and argument of perigee. Unfortunately, I haven't been able to find this information. Is there a ...

Please don't bite my head off. If this is so stupid that it deserves to be squashed, I'm quite happy to delete the question. I mainly would like to know whether anyone's ever suggested this (I ...

Wikipedia sez: The orbiter is a 12-unit CubeSat but looking at the images in the new NASA video NASA 2021: Let's Go to the Moon I see artwork that shows Capstone as a square-based prism with the ...

The new NASA video NASA 2021: Let's Go to the Moon shows artwork for three very different spacecraft sitting on the lunar surface with the overlain caption Selecting A Human Landing System "...

Below At what altitude would I have to go in a lighter than air balloon to be above all wind and just have the earth rotate underneath me? there is a comment: If you want to be above all winds, you ...

A number of early spacecraft launched into orbits other than the intended one. For example, Explorer 1's apogee of 2550 km was much higher than intended, and Vostok 1's was too high to decay in the ...

Why are Rocket Lab's and other rockets painted Black? Shouldn't they be painted white to reflect most light and therefore absorb less heat from sunlight?

The SpaceX Raptor uses a 78:22 O2:CH4 ratio. It also has combustion chamber pressures higher than any other rocket engine ever built. My questions are: What's the math / chemistry that determines ...

There is a question How do astronauts turn in space?, and related questions here and on physics.stackexchange, that detail how astronauts might maneuver by spinning their upper and lower body ...

Reports say that SpaceX now aims to recover the Super heavy booster by catching it with the help of the launch tower. What are the engineering challenges for this and how will it benefit ? News ...

If we assume that a small scale rocket is launched perpendicularly to the ground and ignore the drag, how can I calculate the average acceleration given that I know the burn time, the average thrust, ...

I'm following Curtis's equation on interplanetary transfers. I'm confused by the direction of the entry Heliocentric velocity for a fly-by. If the assumptions is that orbits are: Coplanar, cofocal ...

In April-May 2019, the Parkes radio telescope, in Australia, received a weird signal while surveying Proxima Centauri. Is this signal available, ideally in some digitalized form? Where could I ...

Robotics is now well developed. Many programming languages allow you to work in real-time. Also, a new era of space missions and research is in full swing. So here's the question: Why is the physical ...

Science Alert's These Are 7 of The Strangest Experiments Humans Have Ever Done in Space talks about two tortoises that flew aboard Zond-5 spacecraft on 2 September 1968, then later goes on to say: We'...

Does the payload capacity of a rocket include the satellite and the adaptator or is it just the satellite ?

This statue, "Sam", in Riga, Latvia, is dedicated to the animal cosmonauts who perished during space flight experiments. As far as I know, there were a lot of dead dogs on space flights, ...

Professor and former astronaut Takao Doi does many things, including being a Space Shuttle mission specialist, an amateur astronomer and discoverer of two supernovae 2002gw IN NGC 922 and Supernova ...

Under what circumstances can a blackhole emit enough heat to allow life on an orbiting planet?

Would it be better for Starship to have a separate set of small fuel tanks dedicated to landing the ship, maybe controlled separately or plumbed differently.

When a rocket engine is loaded into a test stand is it tested once before removal or is it allowed to cool and then tested again. Is every liquid-fueled rocket motor that flies to space first tested ...

Did Darksat's visor like coverings to its parabolic antennas reduce the brightness or was it a failure. Or is SpaceX devoleping any other mechanisms or manuveres to counter this problem?

A recent non-answer to an unrelated question stated that the ISS crosses 16 time zones during New Year's Eve, which is obviously incorrect, the actual answer being "around 200". But this ...

Credit: NASA/JPL/University of Arizona HiRISE ESP_025334_2035 For a closer view, click on the image, and then, click again. This pair of similar craters is located in the northern part of Oyama crater,...

Whilst writing this answer about the PSLV, on this informative page about its Secondary Injection Thrust Vector Control system, this image (cropped) is displayed, showing that for the Core Alone ...