All posts tagged: rocket

India achieves milestone with launch of first private-sector orbital rocket | Science and Technology News

India achieves milestone with launch of first private-sector orbital rocket | Science and Technology News

Published by Sam Flores

PM Narendra Modi says successful launch will ‘encourage countless youngsters to dream bigger and innovate fearlessly’. Published On 18 Jul 202618 Jul 2026 India has successfully tested its first private-sector orbital rocket, marking a milestone in New Delhi’s ambition to become a major player in the global space economy. The three-stage 22-metre Vikram-1 was launched from the Satish Dhawan Space Centre in Sriharikota and deployed customer payloads into a 450km (280-mile) low-Earth orbit, making India the third country to achieve orbital launch capability through private enterprise. Recommended Stories list of 3 itemsend of list Vikram-1 can carry a payload of up to 350kg (772lb) and is equipped with robotic arms that can clear space debris. It also carried experimental equipment, a lab-grown diamond and a miniature 18-carat gold sculpture commemorating India’s national space programme. Vikram-1 blasts off from the Satish Dhawan Space Centre [R Satish Babu/AFP] India Prime Minister Narendra Modi hailed the achievement, saying that it will “encourage countless youngsters to dream bigger and innovate fearlessly”. The test validated the rocket’s propulsion, avionics, telemetry, …

World’s First Commercial Nuclear-Powered Satellite Set For Launch Aboard SpaceX Rocket

World’s First Commercial Nuclear-Powered Satellite Set For Launch Aboard SpaceX Rocket

Published by Jenni Sidey

Authored by Mrigakshi Dixit via Interesting Engineering, Miami-based City Labs is all set to launch the world’s first commercial nuclear-powered satellite into orbit. NanoTritium battery Citi Labs Solar panels have some challenges. When a satellite slips into the shadow of the Earth, hits a permanently dark lunar crater, or drifts into deep space, its solar arrays become useless. Batteries can step in, but they eventually die. City Labs thinks nuclear energy could solve this persistent problem. On July 7, the company announced that its BOHR (Betavoltaic Orbital High-Reliability) satellite had secured a launch slot on a SpaceX Transporter-17 rideshare mission. According to reports, SpaceX has scheduled the launch of its Transporter-17 rideshare mission for Tuesday, July 7, at 3:10 a.m. ET. The launch will mark a massive historic milestone. BOHR will be the first-ever nuclear CubeSat to enter orbit. “This is a historic step for commercial nuclear power in space,” said Peter Cabauy, CEO of City Labs. “BOHR demonstrates that safe, compact, and regulatory-approved nuclear power systems are ready for routine commercial deployment. This capability enables …

Venus Aerospace raises M Series B to build a new kind of rocket engine

Venus Aerospace raises $90M Series B to build a new kind of rocket engine

Published by skeptic

Build a new kind of rocket engine, and the world will beat a path to your door. Or at least that’s how it’s worked out for Venus Aerospace and its Rotating Detonation Rocket Engine (RDRE), an ultra-efficient way to hurl stuff into the sky. The company was founded in 2020 by husband-and-wife duo, CEO Sassie Duggleby and CTO Andrew Duggleby, with the idea of developing clean-flying hypersonic jets for passenger travel. But after successfully demonstrating the engine last year, their plans changed. “What happened when we flew last May is the world looked at us and said, ‘oh my gosh, you have a working RDRE, would you sell us one?’ And that wasn’t what we were expecting,” Sassie Duggleby told TechCrunch. Now, the company is focused on hypersonic weapons development, replacing the solid rocket motors that power many missiles with its own thruster, and high-speed space vehicles that appeal to the military. “Our propulsion architecture combines efficiency, throttling, reusability and manufacturability in a way thatcustomers need for real defense and space missions,” Andrew Duggleby said …

An Explosion Knocked Out Anduril’s Rocket Motor Test Site in Mississippi

An Explosion Knocked Out Anduril’s Rocket Motor Test Site in Mississippi

Published by skeptic

A rocket motor exploded during a test at an Anduril facility in Mississippi last Friday, marking another setback in the startup’s hopes of becoming a major supplier of missile propulsion systems for the defense industry. Anduril publicly confirmed the incident after an inquiry from WIRED. No one was injured in the blast, which damaged Anduril’s testing stand, the company’s chief operating officer Matt Grimm said in a social media post on Tuesday hours after WIRED contacted the company about the incident. Three people familiar with Anduril’s operations, who were granted anonymity to discuss a sensitive situation, tell WIRED that they can’t recall another time when a similar test resulted in an explosion in the past few years, and they were unaware of what may have caused last week’s mishap. The incident halted a key step in the prototype testing work that generates revenue for Anduril’s rocket motor unit, and rebuilding the setup could take up to a couple of months, one of the people says. Grimm wrote in his post, which included photos of smoldered …

Blue Origin still doesn’t know why its New Glenn rocket blew up last month

Blue Origin still doesn’t know why its New Glenn rocket blew up last month

Published by skeptic

Jeff Bezos’ space company Blue Origin is doubling down on using its New Glenn mega-rocket again this year after last month’s explosion. But the company still doesn’t know why that explosion happened in the first place. In his most detailed public statement about the explosion yet, CEO Dave Limp wrote on Blue Origin’s website on Tuesday that his company is still trying to “identify and correct the root cause” of the explosion. “Early analysis points to the aft section of the first stage” of the rocket, Limp wrote, saying the company is pulling on “extensive data from multiple camera angles and sensors.” After spending more than a decade to slowly and deliberately develop New Glenn, Blue Origin had been moving quickly with the new rocket. Its first launch was in January 2025, and New Glenn was preparing to fly for the fourth time when it exploded during testing on May 28 this year. (Nobody was hurt in the explosion.) Blue Origin wants to return the rocket to flight as quickly as it can because the …

A rocket reentry spiked metal levels in the atmosphere

A rocket reentry spiked metal levels in the atmosphere

Published by skeptic

aluminum: A metallic element, the third most abundant in Earth’s crust. It is light and soft, and used in many items from bicycles to spacecraft. atmosphere: The envelope of gases surrounding Earth, another planet or a moon. atmospheric physics: This field of meteorology is related to climate science. People who work in this field, called atmospheric physicists, use computers and math to model the properties of Earth’s atmosphere that drive weather and climate. chemical: A substance formed from two or more atoms that unite (bond) in a fixed proportion and structure. For example, water is a chemical made when two hydrogen atoms bond to one oxygen atom. Its chemical formula is H2O. Chemical also can be an adjective to describe properties of materials that are the result of various reactions between different compounds. chemical reaction: A process that involves the rearrangement of the molecules or structure of a substance, as opposed to a change in physical form (as from a solid to a gas). climate: The weather conditions that typically exist in one area, in …

I Saw the Ultimate Rocket Bike in Action and It Blew Me Away

I Saw the Ultimate Rocket Bike in Action and It Blew Me Away

Published by skeptic

As I watched Graham Sykes climb onto his rocket bike, I was worried for a moment that I was about to film a man as he died. But as he hurtled past me at hundreds of miles per hour and engulfed me in a cloud of steam, I realised I needn’t have worried — this is just a normal day for Sykes.  I was at the Santa Pod raceway in Bedfordshire, England, meeting Sykes and his team as they prepped his entirely steam-powered bike — dubbed Force of Nature — for a potentially record-breaking speed attempt during a drag-racing festival. After battling through the crowds flooding into the venue, I eventually found Sykes and his team among cars and bikes of all shapes and sizes, diligently preparing Force of Nature for its one scheduled run that day.  Watch this: World’s Fastest Steam-Powered Rocketbike 05:32 Sykes, who seemed far calmer than I expected, offered me a marshmallow as I got my first glimpse of the bike, “I tend to not eat a great deal before a …

NASA picks Eric Schmidt’s rocket company for Mars mission, setting up a race with SpaceX

NASA picks Eric Schmidt’s rocket company for Mars mission, setting up a race with SpaceX

Published by skeptic

Relativity Space—a rocket maker acquired by former Google executive chair Eric Schmidt last year after stumbling on the path to orbit—might just beat SpaceX to Mars. On Tuesday, NASA said it hired the company to build a spacecraft to house a suite of scientific instruments, launch it into space, and fly it to Mars. The structure of the contract is akin to the deals that NASA made with SpaceX to fly cargo to the International Space Station, or Firefly Aerospace to put a lander on the Moon. The government agency handles the science, while the private company provides low-cost infrastructure. Aeolus, as the mission is dubbed, will contain four instruments to measure and image Mars from orbit, providing what NASA expects to be the first daily, global view of dust, winds, and temperature in its atmosphere. The agency said that data will make it safer for landers and, someday, astronauts, to visit the surface of the Red Planet. “By pairing NASA’s world‑class instruments with commercial innovation and investment, we can deliver more science, more often, …

Elon Musk’s rocket launches are a nuisance for this California town

Elon Musk’s rocket launches are a nuisance for this California town

Published by Sam Flores

The sonic booms often arrive without warning. In the strawberry fields outside Lompoc, Calif., farmworkers flinch and look skyward. They feel the vibrations in their toes. Children jump in their seats in classrooms a few miles away. Inside the Lompoc federal prison complex, more than 3,000 inmates absorb the shock waves and rattling walls with no way to escape them. And across a coastline the Chumash people have considered sacred for thousands of years, the ground shudders. This is what a SpaceX launch feels like from below. For most Americans, Elon Musk’s rockets are something seen on a livestream — a puffy white plume against a blue sky, a triumphant feat of engineering. But for the agricultural communities, ranches, schools, retirees and people who are incarcerated surrounding Vandenberg Space Force Base, these launches are an increasingly frequent intrusion into daily life. Late last year, the Air Force authorized a cadence of up to 100 missions per year from Vandenberg — roughly one every three days. SpaceX alone intends to put 42,000 Starlink satellites in orbit …

Taiwan drills with U.S. rocket system, firing in China’s direction : NPR

Taiwan drills with U.S. rocket system, firing in China’s direction : NPR

Published by Sam Flores

A rocket is launched from a High Mobility Artillery Rocket System (HIMARS) during a military live-fire shooting training in Taichung City, Taiwan, Wednesday, June 10, 2026. Chiang Ying-ying/AP hide caption toggle caption Chiang Ying-ying/AP TAICHUNG, Taiwan — Taiwan’s military fired rockets in China’s direction from “shoot-and-scoot” mobile launchers on Wednesday in a demonstration of how it might try to repel a Chinese attack. While the U.S.-supplied system known as HIMARS has been tested before, the latest live-fire exercise was the first time its rockets were fired into the waters of the narrow Taiwan Strait that separates the self-governing island from China. “Due to the current enemy threat, we will continue HIMARS training with unwavering determination to protect Taiwan as the nation’s strongest force,” army Sgt. Wang Ming-hui said. The military said it used reduced-range practice rockets that don’t fly very far from the coast before falling into the water. China views Taiwan as a renegade province and says it must come under its control at some point in the future. It sends warships and planes …