SpaceX continued preparing for Starship Flight 13 this week with an incredible series of Pad 2 deluge tests, ongoing work at the Gigabay, Launch Pad 1 refurbishment, LC-39A proof testing, SLC-37 construction, McGregor Raptor testing, and activity across Massey’s Test Site.
This week we take a closer look at the massive water deluge system that will support future high-cadence Starship operations, progress on Florida’s launch infrastructure, and the mysterious covered structure at McGregor that continues to spark speculation.
🚀 In this episode:
• Pad 2 conducts an unprecedented series of deluge tests • Gigabay construction reaches another milestone • Pad 1 launch mount refurbishment continues • LC-39A \.
Starfall is SpaceX’s mass-produced reentry vehicle designed to autonomously transport valuable customer experiments and other payloads safely back from space to Earth, including for in-orbit manufacturing. Starfall is a cylindrical-shaped capsule approximately 0.75 meters tall with a diameter of 3.1 meters, weighing approximately 2,100 kilograms, and capable of carrying 1,000 kilograms of payload. It is designed to be carried on Starship flights.
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🔍 If you are interested in using footage captured by this stream, please review our content use policy: https://www.nasaspaceflight.com/conte… (NSF) delivers live rocket launch coverage, breaking spaceflight news, and in-depth reporting from around the world. NASASpaceflight is not affiliated with or does not represent the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). NASA initials used with NASA’s permission. Now in its 20th year, NSF covers all major players in space: SpaceX, NASA, Blue Origin, ULA, Rocket Lab, Relativity, Arianespace, Firefly, Stoke, Northrop Grumman, and more. From Starship test campaigns at Starbase to crew missions, infrastructure rollouts, and international launches, NSF delivers multi-angle livestreams, on-site reporting, and expert analysis from locations like Kennedy Space Center, Cape Canaveral, Vandenberg, Wallops, and Starbase. LDAPAABJRG2UMCU3 🎵 Intro song: New Way Out by Denis. Licensed via PremiumBeat. LDAPAABJRG2UMCU3 🎵 Music used on streams and in videos is licensed via EpidemicSound: https://share.epidemicsound.com/qvh38e.
NASASpaceflight (NSF) delivers live rocket launch coverage, breaking spaceflight news, and in-depth reporting from around the world.
NASASpaceflight is not affiliated with or does not represent the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). NASA initials used with NASA’s permission.
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XI’AN — Chinese scientists have taken a major step toward building a space solar power station, a giant power plant in space that could one day send energy back to Earth or to spacecraft.
A research team from Xidian University in Northwest China’s Shaanxi province has made significant progress on the Sun Chasing project, or “Zhuri” in Chinese. The team has developed a ground-based test system for wireless power transmission that can charge multiple moving targets at the same time.
In recent tests, the system achieved a wireless power transmission efficiency of 20.8 percent from direct current to direct current over a distance of 100 meters. It delivered 1,180 watts of power. The team has also built a wireless charging system for drones. In a test, a drone flying at 30 kilometers per hour was able to receive 143 watts of stable power from 30 meters away.
University of Florida researchers are exploring how lasers could help astronauts build structures on the moon using materials already available there, including lunar soil transformed into glass. The work, led by Victoria M. Miller, Ph.D., an associate professor in the Herbert Wertheim College of Engineering and researcher with the UF Astraeus Space Institute, recently completed a research phase focused on laser forming, a manufacturing process that bends materials without physical contact.
The team’s latest paper, published in Lasers in Manufacturing and Materials Processing, examined how different atmospheric conditions affect laser bending, an important question for future manufacturing in the vacuum of space. The long-term applications extend beyond space exploration and could also support flexible manufacturing efforts on Earth.
“It is also for Earth applications. We’re focused on flexible manufacturing for defense applications,” said Miller, who works in the Department of Materials Science and Engineering.
When the Space Shuttle retired in July 2011, the United States lost the ability to reach the very space station it had built — and for nearly nine years, American astronauts hitched rides on Russian Soyuz capsules at up to $90 million per seat. Then a private company that had failed its first three rockets quietly closed the gap.
We welcome proposals across a wide range of topics, including science, engineering, technology development, human factors, public policy, economics, and other key areas shaping the future of the Red Planet.
This global gathering will bring together scientists, engineers, policymakers, industry leaders, and space advocates to share ideas, research, and strategies for advancing human exploration of Mars. Whether your work is technical, conceptual, or interdisciplinary, we encourage you to contribute to the conversation.
Can humanity ever travel faster than light, or does every shortcut through spacetime break causality itself? We explore warp drives, wormholes, tachyons, and why the universe pushes back.
Get Nebula using my link for 50% off an annual subscription: https://go.nebula.tv/isaacarthur. Watch my exclusive video Nearby Supernovae: https://nebula.tv/videos/isaacarthur–… SFIA Merchandise: https://isaac-arthur-shop.fourthwall… 🌐 Visit our Website: http://www.isaacarthur.net ❤️ Support us on Patreon: / isaacarthur ⭐ Support us on Subscribestar: https://www.subscribestar.com/isaac-a… 👥 Facebook Group: / 1,583,992,725,237,264 📣 Reddit Community: / isaacarthur 🐦 Follow on Twitter / X: / isaac_a_arthur 💬 SFIA Discord Server: / discord Credits: The Physics of FTL Travel Written, Produced & Narrated by: Isaac Arthur Editor: Lukas Konecny Music Courtesy of Stellardrone & Chris Zabriskie Select imagery/video supplied by Getty Images Chapters 0:00 Intro 0:12 Faster Than Light Is the Wrong Question 4:18 Spacetime Engineering: Moving the Map Instead of the Ship 5:24 Warp Drives: Surfing Spacetime 11:46 Wormholes: Shortcuts with a Side of Time Travel 13:20 Hyperspace: Shortcuts Through the Bulk 15:11 Solitons: The Positive Energy Challenge 17:35 The Krasnikov Tube: Building a Star-Road 20:30 Natural Relativistic Loopholes: Cosmic Strings and Tipler Cylinders 25:05 Tachyons: The Simplest Way to Break Time 28:04 Vacuum & Time-Advance Effects: When Causality Bends, Just a Little 32:19 Quantum Red Herrings 35:42 Nebula 36:54 Why the Universe Pushes Back: Chronology Protection and Self-Defeating Physics.
🛒 SFIA Merchandise: https://isaac-arthur-shop.fourthwall… 🌐 Visit our Website: http://www.isaacarthur.net. ❤️ Support us on Patreon: / isaacarthur. ⭐ Support us on Subscribestar: https://www.subscribestar.com/isaac-a… 👥 Facebook Group: / 1583992725237264 📣 Reddit Community: / isaacarthur. 🐦 Follow on Twitter / X: / isaac_a_arthur. 💬 SFIA Discord Server: / discord. Credits: The Physics of FTL Travel. Written, Produced \& Narrated by: Isaac Arthur. Editor: Lukas Konecny. Music Courtesy of Stellardrone \& Chris Zabriskie. Select imagery/video supplied by Getty Images.
Chapters. 0:00 Intro. 0:12 Faster Than Light Is the Wrong Question. 4:18 Spacetime Engineering: Moving the Map Instead of the Ship. 5:24 Warp Drives: Surfing Spacetime. 11:46 Wormholes: Shortcuts with a Side of Time Travel. 13:20 Hyperspace: Shortcuts Through the Bulk. 15:11 Solitons: The Positive Energy Challenge. 17:35 The Krasnikov Tube: Building a Star-Road. 20:30 Natural Relativistic Loopholes: Cosmic Strings and Tipler Cylinders. 25:05 Tachyons: The Simplest Way to Break Time. 28:04 Vacuum \& Time-Advance Effects: When Causality Bends, Just a Little. 32:19 Quantum Red Herrings. 35:42 Nebula. 36:54 Why the Universe Pushes Back: Chronology Protection and Self-Defeating Physics.
When a star dies, it generates an explosion of elemental nuclei and hurls them into space. Those elements, called cosmic rays, travel at nearly the speed of light, and eventually some of them encounter manmade detectors. Recording how many of each of these elements show up helps scientists better understand cosmic processes—but despite incredible research advances over the last century, uncertainty around how these elements transform as they travel across the light-years has left fundamental questions about our galaxy’s composition unanswered.
Priyarshini Ghosh, a UMBC nuclear physicist with the Center for Space Sciences and Technology, is at the forefront of research that could significantly improve our understanding of these cosmic phenomena.
Ghosh and her collaborators have just completed a pioneering experiment at the Facility for Rare Isotope Beams (FRIB) at Michigan State University, where they generated and then fragmented a beam of chromium-52 nuclei. Chromium-52 is of particular interest because it can shed light on different processes happening in our galaxy, and yet it has never been measured.
