logo
Doughnut-Shaped Spacecraft That Will Float Precious Cargo Back To Earth Successfully Completes First Test Flight

Doughnut-Shaped Spacecraft That Will Float Precious Cargo Back To Earth Successfully Completes First Test Flight

Yahoo30-04-2025

A doughnut-shaped spacecraft built to bring cargo back to Earth has completed its first test flight. Atmos Space Cargo, a German start-up, called the Phoenix mission a full success after splashdown 2,000 km off Brazil. Launched on 21 April aboard SpaceX's Bandwagon-3 mission, the craft met key objectives and gathered vital data. Sebastian Klaus, Atmos CEO, said the goals were flight data collection, payload operation, and testing an inflatable heat shield. Klaus confirmed all four payloads activated and sent back crucial information. Atmos plans to apply these findings to its next Phoenix test, scheduled for next year.

Orange background

Try Our AI Features

Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:

Comments

No comments yet...

Related Articles

Japanese Aerospace Firm Poised to Land Spacecraft on the Moon
Japanese Aerospace Firm Poised to Land Spacecraft on the Moon

Yahoo

time16 minutes ago

  • Yahoo

Japanese Aerospace Firm Poised to Land Spacecraft on the Moon

Update: Sadly, the spacecraft crashed into the Moon on Friday, June 6. Our original story follows below. A Japanese aerospace firm called Ispace is set to put a spacecraft on the Moon this week. Resilience, the star of Ispace's HAKUTO-R Mission 2, has spent nearly six months circumnavigating Earth and the Moon in preparation for its final descent. If all goes well, the spacecraft will touch down on the lunar surface Thursday afternoon. Resilience was a travel companion to Firefly Aerospace's Blue Ghost lander, which successfully touched down on a volcanic feature called Mons Latreille on March 2. Together, the landers launched via a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket on Jan. 15. But while Blue Ghost took just a month and a half to reach its target, Ispace wanted Resilience to stop and smell the roses along the way. The lander completed a lunar flyby before leveraging the Moon's gravity to initiate a slow, fuel-efficient path toward lunar orbit, which it entered on May 6. Now Ispace mission control is triple-checking that its lander is prepared for its final descent. On May 28, Resilience completed a lunar orbital control maneuver that perfected its trajectory, according to the company on Wednesday morning. The adjustment shortened Resilience's projected landing time by seven minutes, placing touchdown at 3:17 p.m. EST on Thursday, June 5. Ispace will live stream the landing globally; you can watch the English version here. Mare Frigoris is outlined in blue. Credit: NASA Resilience will land near the center of Mare Frigoris, which translates to "Sea of Cold." While the surface of the Moon can top 120 degrees Celsius (250 degrees Fahrenheit) during the day, this 1,500-kilometer lunar sea lies in the Moon's far north, which receives less solar radiation and stays relatively cool. Mare Frigoris's flat terrain and proximity to the north pole make it an ideal landing spot, especially because Ispace will need to maintain line-of-sight radio communication as Resilience deploys its many payloads. Among the payloads are a food production experiment from the Japanese biofuel firm Euglena Co., a deep space radiation probe from Taiwan's National Central University, and Ispace's own Tenacious micro rover, which will independently explore the landing site. Resilience will also place Moonhouse, a sculpture by Swedish artist Mikael Genberg, on the lunar surface.

Elon Musk's "Hubris and Arrogance" Are Ruining Our Chances of Actually Getting to Mars, Says Leading Expert
Elon Musk's "Hubris and Arrogance" Are Ruining Our Chances of Actually Getting to Mars, Says Leading Expert

Yahoo

time20 minutes ago

  • Yahoo

Elon Musk's "Hubris and Arrogance" Are Ruining Our Chances of Actually Getting to Mars, Says Leading Expert

The founder of the Mars Society has accused SpaceX CEO Elon Musk of derailing existing plans to explore and visit the Red Planet. Robert Zubrin, who has coauthored hundreds of papers and laid out several blueprints as to how to settle on Mars, told Agence France-Presse in an interview that Musk is "absolutely instrumental in opening up this opportunity to get humans to Mars, both through the development of Starship and also the inspiration that has caused." But given the "hubris and arrogance" he has since bred — Zubrin went as far as to compare him to failed European dictator Napoleon Bonaparte — our future efforts to travel to the distant planet over 140 million miles away could be in peril. For our effort to send humans to Mars "to succeed, it has to go beyond these — this initiative cannot be seen as a Musk hobbyhorse or a Trump hobbyhorse — it must be seen, at a minimum, as America's program, or preferably the Free World's program," Zubrin told AFP. The publication of the interview comes in the wake of an incredibly messy divorce between Musk and president Donald Trump, though Zubrin made his comments before the relationship disintegrated. The two have been going at each other's throats and even threatening to cut off NASA's access to space. Musk's dreams of making humanity interplanetary by establishing a city on Mars appear to have slipped significantly on his list of priorities. The mercurial CEO was heavily criticized for abandoning his businesses in favor of overseeing a disastrous gutting of the US federal government, and is now racing to make Tesla investors happy as sales continue to plummet worldwide. SpaceX has also encountered major headwind in getting its Mars-bound Starship to not explode. The company's last three test flights ended in so-called "rapid unscheduled disassemblies," highlighting growing technical difficulties and the enormous degree of complexity involved in launching and landing the most powerful rocket in the world. While Musk has previously vowed to land Starships on Mars before the end of next year — he admitted it was a "50-50 chance" late last month — his characteristically ambitious timelines are once again looking unrealistic at best. "Progress is measured by the timeline to establishing a self-sustaining civilization on Mars," Musk said in a promotional video shared by SpaceX on May 29. "Each launch is about learning more and more about what's needed to make life multi-planetary and to improve Starship to the point where it can be taking, ultimately, hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of people to Mars." But all the turbulence Musk has generated, in addition to the Trump administration's brutal budget cut proposal to NASA, likely will only hamper our efforts to visit Mars, Zubrin argued. Complicating matters are fundamental disagreements about NASA's future direction. In a move largely seen as retribution, the Trump administration pulled its nomination for SpaceX space tourist and billionaire Jared Isaacman, who was hand-picked for the job by Musk. "This combination of Trump and Musk is not going to persist forever," Zubrin told AFP, foreshadowing Thursday's drama. "And if this program is identified as their deal, it will be crushed as soon as opposing forces have sufficient power." Most of all, Zubrin disagreed with Musk's stance that humanity will be saved by leaving the Earth behind and settling on Mars instead. "We're not going to Mars out of despair," he told AFP. "We're going to Mars out of hope... to establish new branches of human civilization which will add their creative capacity to that of humanity as a whole." "If we do the kind of program that I advocated... we will once again, as we did in Apollo, astonish the world with what free people can do," he added. "We'll make it clear that freedom, not authoritarianism, is the future of the human race." More on Mars: Trump Just Kicked Elon Musk's Hand-Picked NASA Head to the Curb

Trump says Musk ‘has lost his mind' as feud with Tesla tycoon continues
Trump says Musk ‘has lost his mind' as feud with Tesla tycoon continues

Yahoo

time21 minutes ago

  • Yahoo

Trump says Musk ‘has lost his mind' as feud with Tesla tycoon continues

President Donald Trump continued his war of words with Elon Musk on Friday, saying the Tesla tycoon 'has lost his mind' — even as Musk seemed to be softening his stance in their epic feud. Trump on Friday told reporters that while Musk may be ready to make amends, he's not ready to rekindle his friendship with the tech billionaire, whose public criticism of the president's "Big Beautiful Bill" — he called the proposed budget legislation a 'disgusting abomination' — sparked their ugly breakup. 'You mean the man who has lost his mind?' Trump said to ABC News' Jonathan Karl when asked about Musk. The president added he is 'not particularly' interested in speaking with Musk directly even though he claimed Musk has been trying to talk to him. 'I'm not even thinking about Elon. He's got a problem,' Trump told CNN. 'The poor guy's got a problem.' Musk didn't immediately respond to the new round of barbs from Trump, though the world's richest man signaled late Thursday that he was interested in lowering the temperature of their blow-up. He liked favorable posts online about his relationship with Trump, including one from hedge fund manager Bill Ackman. 'I support @realDonaldTrump and @elonmusk and they should make peace for the benefit of our great country,' he wrote. Musk replied: 'You're not wrong.' But it may be far too late for detente. MAGA adviser Steve Bannon suggested the government should use the Defense Production Act to seize SpaceX and Starlink from Musk in the interests of national security. The populist firebrand also urged Trump to investigate Musk's reported drug use and even his immigration status. Musk was born and raised in South Africa and is a naturalized U.S. citizen, but some reports claim he worked illegally in the U.S. years ago. Musk responded by deriding Bannon as a 'communist' and used the R-word to demean his intelligence. Musk tweeted late Thursday that he would no longer allow NASA to use SpaceX's Dragon craft to shuttle astronauts to the International Space Station, but backed off the threat hours later. The bromance between the two men fractured in recent weeks as Musk stepped down from his government post and denounced Trump's sprawling budget bill for blowing up the federal budget deficit. The criticism comes as Trump seeks to win the near-unanimous support of Republican lawmakers needed to jam the bill through Congress. It would extend his signature deep tax cuts for the wealthy and big corporations and make substantial but lesser cuts to popular social programs like Medicaid. Things really went off the rails Thursday when Trump said he was 'disappointed' in Musk and also accused him of having 'Trump Derangement Syndrome.' Musk, who shelled out nearly $300 million to land Trump in the White House, also accused his ex-pal of 'ingratitude,' adding that 'Trump would have lost the election' if not for his support. The mogul also agreed with a social media post calling for Trump's impeachment and suggested that Trump is implicated in Jeffrey Epstein's notorious sex trafficking crimes. Trump countered by threatening to cut off government contracts given to Musk's companies, paving the way for some MAGA acolytes to suggest other ways to exact pay back on Musk, who owns Tesla, SpaceX and X, the social media site formerly known as Twitter. _____

DOWNLOAD THE APP

Get Started Now: Download the App

Ready to dive into the world of global news and events? Download our app today from your preferred app store and start exploring.
app-storeplay-store