SciByte

SpaceX is one of several aerospace firms who are competing for NASA funding under the third and final phase of NASA's commercial crew development program

Proposals for this stage of the competition, called Commercial Crew integrated Capability(CCiCap), require companies to present a complete launch system — rocket and vehicle — for consideration

company is facing some stiff competition from other aerospace firms, including Boeing and Sierra Nevada Corp

SpaceX's unmanned Dragon capsule is due to deliver food, supplies and science experiments

SpaceX is one of two companies with NASA contracts for robotic cargo delivery flights (Virginia's Orbital Technologies Corp. is the other), but is the first to actually try a launch

Here's how the robotic mission is expected to play out:

one researcher from Stanford University is suggesting we unleash a swarm of rover/spacecraft hybrids that can explore en masse.

been developing a concept under NASA’s Innovative Advanced Concepts (NIAC) Program that would see small spherical robots deployed to small worlds, such as Mars’ moons Phobos and Deimos, where they would take advantage of low gravity to explore — literally —  in leaps and bounds.

similar to what NASA has done in the past with the Mars rovers, except multiplied in the number of spacecraft (and reduced in cost.)

new partnership between the European Space Agency and the Faulkes Telescope Project, which will encourage amateur astronomers to look for asteroids

providing educational opportunities that will allow students to discover potentially dangerous space rocks, too.

ESA’s Space Situational Awareness (SSA) program is part of an international effort to be on the lookout for space hazards – not only asteroids but disruptive space weather and space debris objects in Earth orbit

scientists at the University of Bristol has found signs of a degenerative condition similar to human arthritis in the jaw of a pliosaur, an ancient sea reptile that lived 150 million years ago

Such a disease has never been described before in fossilized Jurassic reptiles.

has been kept since its discovery in the collections of the Bristol City Museum and Art Gallery.

team of Rice University freshmen took a mousetrap and built a better way to treat dehydration among children in the developing world.

goal was to regulate the amount of fluid delivered to children so we could prevent over-hydration and under-hydration

designed to be used in severely underdeveloped parts of the world, where conditions can be pretty primitive and they may not even have electricity."

Explorers have long known there was more to the 887 statues on Easter Island—some 2,000 miles west of Chile—than just the statue heads made famous in photographs.

most people think of the renowned monolithic statues, they think of the heads only

October 2011, the Easter Island Statue Project began its Season V expedition, revealing remarkable photos showing that the bodies of the statues go far deeper underground than just about anyone had imagined.

Excavations of the bodies have been going on for many years

generally accepted that the statues were made sometime between 1250 and 1500 AD

controversy surrounding why the bodies are buried. Was it time and erosion, or were they buried on purpose

about 1,200 pounds of cargo

including commemorative patches and pins, 162 meals and a collection of student experiments

Most of the cargo's weight, 674 pounds, is in food and crew provisions, including the meals, crew clothing and batteries and other pantry items. A laptop and its accompanying accessories will also make the journey.

then the 15 experiments comprising "Aquarius"

will be among the first payloads delivered to the station on a commercial cargo craft.

competition among students to fly experiments

during this transit, our sun will be displaying sun spots

allows for comparing changing light patterns of suspected exoplanets with those that occur much closer to home

Information gathered during the transit, he points out, could very well reveal pertinent information later on

engine glitch on its Falcon 9 rocket in the last second before liftoff forced an abort

Engineers traced the issue to a failed check valve in the engine,

engineers have replaced a faulty engine valve

aborted its launch attempt a half-second before liftoff

Software did what it was supposed to do, aborted engine five, and we went through the remaining engine shutdown

countdown reached zero and the engines of the Falcon 9 rocket carrying Dragon ignited, only to be cut off seconds later because of an excessive pressure reading in one of the engines

SpaceX engineers were able to trace the high-pressure problem to a valve that controls the flow of nitrogen used to purge the engine before ignition

check valve that allows the nitrogen purge prior to ignition in the Merlin engine was stuck open just before launch

stuck valve allowed “liquid oxygen to flow from the main injector [for the rocket engine itself] into the gas generator injector

Your local circumstances are computed below. You can change the location by either dragging the marker on the map or searching for an address. From the menu on the top right you can specify the year of the transit (1639 to 2125). Clicking the icon at the top right corner of the map, you can switch the area of visibility on and off. Click on the icon on the lower right for more detailed information, including times of sunrise and sunset.

Practising the timing of the contacts

Features of the phone app

Predicted

If Dragon performs well during the 10-day mission, the first of SpaceX's contracted cargo flights to the station could lift off later this year

released the picture above of the Earth as seen by a thermal imager that Dragon will use in its upcoming approach to the International Space Station