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NASA artist rendering, from 1999, of the Project Orion pulsed nuclear fission spacecraft. Project Orion was a study conducted in the 1950s and 1960s by the United States Air Force, DARPA, [1] and NASA into the viability of a nuclear pulse spaceship that would be directly propelled by a series of atomic explosions behind the craft.
After the ban of nuclear weapons in space by the Outer Space Treaty in 1967, nuclear power has been discussed at least since 1972 as a sensitive issue by states. [8] Space nuclear power sources may experience accidents during launch, operation, and end-of-service phases, resulting in the exposure of nuclear power sources to extreme physical conditions and the release of radioactive materials ...
Deep Impact at Comet 9P/Tempel 1 Dart Impact at Dimorphos Mars 2020 Skycrane descend stage crash smoke plume in the distance. This is a list of uncrewed spacecraft which have been intentionally destroyed at their objects of study, typically by hard landings or crash landings at the end of their respective missions and/or functionality.
Three of the flights had flown above the Kármán line (edge of space), and one was intended to do so. In each of these accidents the entire crew was killed. As of December 2023, a total of 676 people have flown into space and 19 of them have died. This sets the current statistical fatality rate at 2.8 percent.
Radiatively cooled TPS can be found on modern entry vehicles, but reinforced carbon–carbon (RCC) (also called carbon–carbon) is normally used instead of metal. RCC was the TPS material on the Space Shuttle's nose cone and wing leading edges, and was also proposed as the leading-edge material for the X-33.
A kinetic bombardment or a kinetic orbital strike is the hypothetical act of attacking a planetary surface with an inert kinetic projectile from orbit (orbital bombardment), where the destructive power comes from the kinetic energy of the projectile impacting at very high speeds.
When stacked and fully fueled, Starship has a mass of approximately 5,000 t (11,000,000 lb), [c] a diameter of 9 m (30 ft) [15] and a height of 121.3 m (398 ft). [16] The rocket has been designed with the goal of being fully reusable to reduce launch costs; [17] it consists of the Super Heavy booster and the Starship upper stage [18] which are powered by Raptor and Raptor Vacuum engines.
On April 20, 2023, Starship 24 performed the first full flight test on top of a Super Heavy booster, followed by a second test on November 18, 2023, when Starship 25 successfully completed hot-staging and passed the Kármán Line, becoming the first Starship to reach space as well as the heaviest object to ever reach space, before exploding at ...