Latest news with #SpaceShuttles
WIRED
25-03-2025
- Science
- WIRED
It's Looking More Likely NASA Will Fly the Artemis II Mission
Late Saturday night, technicians at Kennedy Space Center in Florida moved the core stage for NASA's second Space Launch System rocket into position between the vehicle's two solid-fueled boosters. Working inside the iconic 52-story-tall Vehicle Assembly Building, ground teams used heavy-duty cranes to first lift the butterscotch-orange core stage from its cradle in the VAB's cavernous transfer aisle, the central passageway between the building's four rocket assembly bays. The cranes then rotated the structure vertically, allowing workers to disconnect one of the cranes from the bottom of the rocket. That left the rocket hanging on a 325-ton overhead crane, which would lift it over the transom into the building's northeast high bay. The Boeing-built core stage weighs about 94 tons (85 metric tons), measures about 212 feet (65 meters) tall, and will contain 730,000 gallons of cryogenic propellant at liftoff. It is the single largest element for NASA's Artemis II mission, slated to ferry a crew of astronauts around the far side of the moon as soon as next year. Finally, ground crews lowered the rocket between the Space Launch System's twin solid rocket boosters already stacked on a mobile launch platform inside High Bay 3, where NASA assembled Space Shuttles and Saturn V rockets for Apollo lunar missions. Ars Technica This story originally appeared on Ars Technica, a trusted source for technology news, tech policy analysis, reviews, and more. Ars is owned by WIRED's parent company, Condé Nast. On Sunday, teams inside the VAB connected the core stage to each booster at forward and aft load-bearing attach points. After completing electrical and data connections, engineers will stack a cone-shaped adapter on top of the core stage, followed by the rocket's upper stage, another adapter ring, and finally the Orion spacecraft that will be home to the four-person Artemis II crew for their 10-day journey through deep space.
Yahoo
03-03-2025
- Automotive
- Yahoo
This Maserati MC20 Just Became the Fastest Autonomous Car
Records are meant to be broken, especially fastest-speed records in cars. Maserati announced Monday that it set a new record for fastest autonomous car, or 197.7 mph in modified MC20, beating the old record by 4.9 mph. The record was set at the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida, on one of the world's longest runways, the 2.8-mile stretch of pavement where Space Shuttles landed. More from Robb Report Aston Martin Now Has Over $1 Billion in Debt, Will Cut 5% of It Workforce An Ultra-Rare De Tomaso Pantera Is Now Heading to Auction These New Ultra-Exclusive McLaren Supercars Celebrate Its Latest F1 Championship The modified MC20 that drove autonomously—also with help from artificial intelligence—had previously set the mark for fastest autonomous production car at 177 mph, a record which it set in November. Maserati said that setting the mark was part of its journey to making autonomous driving safe for higher speeds on the highway. People and engineers involved with the project, part of the Indy Autonomous Challenge, probably also thought it was extremely cool to go fast. 'These world speed records are much more than just a showcase of future technology; we are pushing AI-driver software and robotics hardware to the absolute edge,' Paul Mitchell, CEO of Indy Autonomous Challenge, said in a statement. 'Doing so with a streetcar is helping transition the learnings of autonomous racing to enable safe, secure, sustainable, high-speed autonomous mobility on highways.' The fastest car in the world is the Bugatti Chiron Super Sport which got up to a verified 304.7 mph, while the Koenigsegg Jesko Absolut will do a claimed 330 mph. Anything beyond that begins to enter the realm of jet engines or merely the impractical, which is why automakers focus these days more on acceleration. Acceleration is also getting much quicker thanks to electric motors and their instant torque, making numbers like a zero-to-60 time in 2 seconds or less seem almost normal. With top speeds, though, very fast supercars usually top out around 200 mph, like the new Ferrari 12Cilindri Spider, which goes up to a claimed 211 mph. That's in part because while getting up to 200 mph is impressive, getting up to 300 mph is exponentially more difficult, and going faster than that exponentially more difficult still. There are also not that many suitable tracks or proving grounds on which to test super-fast speeds owing to the length required, which is why airport runways are often used. The autonomous record will surely fall again, in other words, but it wouldn't be much of a surprise if it ends up being mostly in line with the human-drive of Robb Report The 2024 Chevy C8 Corvette: Everything We Know About the Powerful Mid-Engine Beast The World's Best Superyacht Shipyards The ABCs of Chartering a Yacht Click here to read the full article.
