Recent Posts
By both mass and number, it is.
Washington State is already a really big satellite manufacturing hub, so it makes sense to locate satellite manufacturing there.
not really
Yup add that to the list of objections I started.But, any way it was measured, 5 mm is really really really good.It means "way it was measured" would end up being the major contributor to position error - basically the old precision vs. accuracy difference.
Specifically, 5mm positional precision could mean that the booster was commanded so exquisitely that it was within 5mm of its commanded pose during landing, but if the coordinate system they were using had larger error (e.g. GPS without a differential update) then the commanded position could have been meters from the desired actual position - in other words, the booster got within a few mm of where it though it should be, but where it though it should be was not where it actually was ("The rocket body knows where it is, because it knows where it isn't...").
With the catch tower not floating about and bobbing up and down, and being conveniently stationary relative to any dGPS system set up at the landing site, that measurement error should be capable to being clamped down to a few cm at most, even without the aid of active positioning system (e.g. approach RADAR, LIDAR, markerless optical tracking, etc).
There is no such thing as commercial mars anything. Its 100% government funded.
Wrong, it's not 100% government funded. For one thing, SpaceX self funded Red Dragon and early Raptor/Starship R&D.
Big win from for NASA will be a commercially available Mars Descent(lander), Mars Ascent, Earth Return vehicles. Any of which could be used for future missions at fixed price.What future missions? Every space agency's planetary missions are scheduled out years in advance. No one is budgeting a second sample return. No commercial market.
And what would collect the samples? US and European scientists ruled out simple grab and return missions, what 10-15 years ago? So you'd need to do another Perseverance style sample collection. I don't think anyone would want to do that until they see what the Perseverance samples can tell us. Perseverance was sent to the one place on Mars (that met engineering constraints) that the scientific community believed was the best to sample. Do another mission mission from the second best without seeing what samples from the best can tell you?
(I know that the Chinese mission is a grab and return, which is a good strategy if you want to study a broad region (as their lunar samples are doing). However, the US/European strategy is to look for carefully curated samples from highly local environments. Look at how carefully the Perseverance team has been in collecting samples of very local conditions.
The Chinese/broad region approach is valid, but the US/European science communities decided long ago that that would not answer the key questions about potential life/habitable sites on Mars. They ruled out a grab and return as not being enough science for the cost.)
Are there any more Atlas launches planned for this year? Or will it only be USSF-106 and USSF-87?
No more Atlas V launch for this year. As project Kuiper Mission 2 delayed to Q1 2025 as told by NSF's
@dpoddolphinpro
Correct
