Why SpaceX Wants to Land a Rocket on a Platform in the Ocean

As reported by Vox: At 4:47 am ET on Saturday morning, SpaceX will launch its fifth cargo resupply mission to the International Space Station, part of a collaboration with NASA.

However, unlike the previous four missions, SpaceX will be doing something unusual with the main component of its Falcon 9 rocket: after its job is finished, the company will try to land the rocket vertically on a barge floating in the Atlantic Ocean a few minutes later.

This would be an unprecedented feat, and the company says it only has a 50 percent chance of success. If it works, though, SpaceX could reuse the rocket on a future flight — part of a broader push towards reusability that could dramatically drive down the cost of space travel.

What SpaceX is trying to do

The company will launch a Falcon 9 rocket from Cape Canaveral, Florida, in order to carry an uncrewed space capsule up to the International Space Station. (It originally planned to launch on January 6, but delayed it due to technical irregularities.) The capsule will bring all sorts of cargo to the ISS: food, life support equipment, and several scientific experiments.

The rocket itself is made up of two parts: a 138-foot-tall first stage, which burns for the first few minutes of flight, lifting the craft up to an altitude of about 50 miles before separating and falling back to Earth, and a smaller, 49-foot-tall second stage, which burns for another five minutes or so, carrying the spacecraft into orbit before disconnecting and falling back down to earth as well.

Normally, both of these stages — as well as the stages that make up other rockets in general — break up into pieces as they plummet downward, eventually sinking in the ocean and becoming unusable. But on Tuesday, as the first stage falls back to earth, SpaceX will fire its engines in order to stabilize and guide it for a controlled landing.

SpaceX made similar attempts to land its rockets as part of three previous launches, and two times, it managed to get the rocket to slowly hover and land upright in the ocean, but then it fell over.

This time, it's using an autonomous uncrewed barge, which is being stationed about 200 miles east of Jacksonville, Florida, as a landing platform.

As the rocket descends, steerable fins affixed to its outside will help guide it and slow it down. As it nears the barge, a set of legs will unfold from the bottom of the rocket, and if all goes to plan, it'll slow down to a speed of about 4.5 miles per hour before gently landing on them, fully upright.

This is a very difficult maneuver for a few different reasons. For one, the rocket is primarily designed to launch a spacecraft into orbit — which means that it'll be tricky to decelerate and steer on the way down.

Additionally, with its legs extended, the rocket will be 70 feet wide, so landing it on the 300-foot wide floating platform will require a high degree of accuracy. Finally, the platform itself will be a moving target as it sways slightly in the water.

SpaceX has compared this to "trying to balance a rubber broomstick on your hand in the middle of a wind storm," and has made it clear that the attempt might not work. But if it does, the feat could be a transformative one for the future of space travel.

Why SpaceX wants to reuse a rocket

One of the factors that make space travel so expensive is the fact that most of the equipment used to put cargo or people in orbit is destroyed after each use. SpaceX CEO Elon Musk has famously likened this to throwing away a brand-new 747 after a single flight to London.

From the beginning, his company has sought to make spaceflight possible with reusable components. And though that's an extremely ambitious goal, if SpaceX can pull off this landing, it'll be a first step towards achieving it.

The rocket's outer surfaces are designed to resist corrosion from seawater, and initially, SpaceX tried to use parachutes to slow down the stages as they descended. However, they broke apart due to the stress and heat produced during the descent, so the company switched to the current, powered landing approach in 2011.

If this first stage is successfully landed, it could be refurbished and used for a future flight. The Dragon capsule it launches into orbit, meanwhile, is already reusable, and the company has plans to eventually try landing and reusing the second stage of future rocket designs in a similar way as well. If successful, this would mean that the majority of the rocket components could be used several times.

This would reduce the cost of spaceflight in a huge way. Currently, building a new Falcon 9 rocket costs $54 million, but using it to put a payload into orbit costs only about $200,000 worth of fuel. Figuring out a way to reuse the rocket could make all sorts of missions — commercial satellite launches, collaborations with NASA, and space tourism — cheaper by orders of magnitude, opening up all sorts of new possibilities in spaceflight.

BlackBerry's IoT Plans Start Close to Home: Cars, Asset Tracking

As reported by IT World: BlackBerry is taking the same approach with its Internet of Things platform, launched Wednesday at International CES, as it is with its handset business: Aim at its core markets.

In IoT, the struggling mobile vendor has found an emerging area of technology where it may have the right combination of strengths. The company signaled as much last May when it announced Project Ion, a future cloud-based service it said would make it easier for enterprises to develop IoT software.

The results of that project, which involved beta testing by several customers, have been folded into a product called simply the BlackBerry IoT Platform, set for availability in April. The cloud-based system was announced at the biggest consumer technology show in the world along with some device and messaging news closer to the spirit of CES. But apart from some plans for messaging on wearables, the company’s IoT story steered clear of Las Vegas gadget fever.

Its target market in IoT, at least for now, is squarely within familiar territory: connected cars and asset tracking.

BlackBerry’s QNX business is a powerhouse in automotive as well as industrial embedded software, and the company as a whole has been rediscovering its unsexy enterprise roots. That trend continued on Wednesday with the introduction at AT&T of its BlackBerry Classic and an updated version of its chunky Passport smartphone. Both sport the company’s trademark physical keyboard, and the AT&T Passport, though it gets rounded corners, is still pretty square. The company did give a nod to consumer tech, saying its BBM messaging will be available on Android Wear smart watches.

Industrial IoT might prove a winner for BlackBerry, simply because no company yet dominates the field and BlackBerry has enterprise credibility. But even though businesses will probably buy into IoT sooner than most consumers, the industry may take a long time to emerge.

The BlackBerry IoT Platform combines QNX embedded software with BlackBerry’s secure network infrastructure and device lifecycle management. At its heart is what the company calls an efficient, scalable messaging system that can deliver highly responsive performance, BlackBerry says. That system serves as a message bus for other components including instantaneous data indexing and storage for real-time intelligence, analytics for data visualization and detailed permissions for validating every action, message and piece of data.

The platform includes several features for device management, including application enablement, over-the-air software updating and log collection. Those can speed up device deployment and extend the useful life of devices in the field, BlackBerry says.

If IoT forecasts are accurate, anything that manages IoT devices will have to scale up dramatically to serve the expected volume of connected things out in the world. BlackBerry emphasized the size of its infrastructure in pushing the IoT Platform, saying its global network of data centers handles about 35 petabytes of data per month and has peering connections with more than 300 mobile operators.

The first place BlackBerry will try to sell the IoT platform will be businesses that need to keep track of valuable things that move around a lot, such as the shipping and automotive industries. Later it plans to take the system beyond asset tracking and connected cars to other fields including energy and health care.

AT&T will offer the Passport for US$649.99 or $199.99 with a two-year agreement, as well as under AT&T Next payment plans for as little as $21.67 per month. It will sell the BlackBerry Classic for $419.99 or $49.99 with a two-year agreement, as well as on AT&T Next plans for as little as $14 per month. Exact shipping dates weren’t provided.

UberCargo: A New Logistics Service In Hong Kong

As reported by TechCrunch: Uber is often talked about for its potential to develop into a global logistics service, and customers in Hong Kong are getting a glimpse at what that might look like after a new service called Uber Cargo launched in the city-state.

The U.S. company often trials new project in single cities. It launched bike couriers in New York last year, for example, and Uber Cargo looks to be another experiment that is telling of what the company is planning to offer beyond just taxis.

The Cargo service has actually been in quiet beta in Hong Kong, according to an Uber blog post. Uber said that the service is ideal for ferrying any kind of item around:

"With UberCARGO, a van arrives wherever you want it to be in minutes. You can load your items in the back of the van yourself or request the driver’s assistance if you need an extra hand. Deliveries can easily be tracked in real-time through the app, the item’s location can be shared with the recipient and you can even ride along with your goods so you’ll have ease of mind that your items are safe.


Prices are based on the distance of the trip and also time taken", Uber explained.

Why Hong Kong?
The busy city-state is already a thriving market for van rental services. Two ‘Uber for logistics’ startups already exist there, and both have raised significant amounts of funding from investors.

Lalamove — also known as EasyVan — raised $10 million just this week, while rival GoGoVan closed a $6.5 million seed round and scored a $10 million investment from Chinese social network Renren in 2014.

Lalamove and GoGoVan are both based in Hong Kong, but have wider plans for Asia. Lalamove is already present in six cities across China and Southeast Asia and, with new money in its coffers, it plans to expand in both of those regions. GoGoVan hasn’t gone beyond Hong Kong yet, but its founders have spoken of plans to enter China, Japan and Southeast Asia this year.

Uber covers more than 200 cities worldwide, including 35 in Asia Pacific, so don’t be surprised to see its van service rapidly expanding into Southeast Asia and China, and potentially other markets, soon.

The U.S. company’s brand and visibility is such that it can allow young startups to take the lead on new business ideas, but once they gain traction, it needs to follow suit rapidly. Uber’s move into logistics suggests that both Lalamove and GoGoVan may be on to something — and it will be interesting to see how this business/service develops in 2015.

Uber confirmed that its latest $1.2 billion financing round will go towards expanding its presence in Asia. We’ve already seen it put significant resources into India and add Baidu as a strategic investor in China — Uber Cargo is another reminder that new Uber initiatives can (and do) come from outside of the company’s U.S. headquarters. We might yet see more services originate in Asia first as part of Uber’s new-found focus on the region.  

Uber Cargo looks like it is primarily targeting business users, but Lalamove executive Blake Larson told TechCrunch earlier this week that he believes there is also a strong market for consumers. Larson, who heads up Lalamove outside of China, said this year is about validating the startup’s business model — Uber’s move to rival it with its logistics service is one checkbox ticked for the startup.

Dream Chaser Space Plane Marches Toward Flight Despite GAO Protest Denial

As reported by Space Flight Insider: The U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO ) denied a protest filed by Sierra Nevada Corporation on Jan. 5, after the Louisville, Colorado-based firm’s Dream Chaser spacecraft was not selected to move forward under the Commercial Crew transportation Capability phase of NASA’s Commercial Crew Program. The protest was filed after the Sept. 16, 2014 announcement that NASA had selected Boeing’s CST-100 and SpaceX’s Dragon spacecraft to provide transportation services for astronauts to the International Space Station.

In their protest, SNC stated that the evaluation NASA conducted went outside what the space agency had said would be conducted. Deviating from the criteria that SNC had expected Dream Chaser to encounter. The company also suggested that competitors were not provided with notification as to what the central objectives would be in terms of the determining factors in the evaluation and selection process.

Sierra Nevada tapped United Launch Alliance's Atlas V to provide
the boost required to get Dream Chaser to orbit.  This might still
take place as both ESA and JAXA have expressed interest in the
vehicle.

The GAO described the various spacecraft that had been offered up by the competitors under the Commercial Crew Program as follows:

Sierra Nevada offered its Dream Chaser crew transportation system (a lifting body spacecraft), launched using United Launch Alliance’s Atlas 5 launch vehicle, and landed horizontally on normal runways.  Sierra Nevada’s price was $2.55 billion.

Boeing offered its CST-100 crew transportation system (a capsule spacecraft), also launched using United Launch Alliance’s Atlas 5 launch vehicle, and landed using parachute and airbag systems for hard-surface landings, or contingency water landings.  Boeing’s price was $3.01 billion.

SpaceX offered its Crew Dragon crew transportation system (also a capsule spacecraft), launched using SpaceX’s Falcon 9 launch vehicle, and landed using parachutes and propulsive soft landing systems for hard-surface landings, or contingency water landings.  SpaceX’s price was $1.75 billion.

NASA had decided that CST-100 and Dragon V2 represented the best proposals in terms of a return on the government’s investment under commercial crew. The CST-100 was viewed as the strongest of the three candidates for technical, management reasons as well as past performance by its manufacturer, Boeing. In terms of SpaceX, the most dominate cause for the selection of the Dragon V2 - was its lower cost.

NASA issued the following response to the GAO’s decision.

“The GAO has notified NASA that it has denied Sierra Nevada Corporation’s protest of the Commercial Crew Transportation Capability contract awards. NASA is pleased the GAO’s decision allows the agency to move forward and continue working with Boeing and SpaceX on the Launch America initiative that will enable safe and reliable crew transportation to and from the International Space Station on American spacecraft launched from the United States, ending the nation’s sole reliance on Russia for such transportation. The case remains under the protective order and blackout until the GAO releases its decision.”

The GAO stated that despite contentions made by SNC, the Request For Proposals that NASA issued – stated clearly that each proposal would be reviewed with the objective of having the spacecraft be certified by the close of 2017.

SNC also had questioned the validity of SpaceX’s claims concerning the price and financial resources that were at the company’s disposal. According to Sierra Nevada, this served to skew the evaluation process, specifically the mission suitability evaluation factor. The GAO stated that these claims were not supported either by the evaluation record or by the terms of the solicitation.

In regard to the aspects of the various offerings under CCtCap, the GAO issued the following statement: The GAO decision takes no position on the relative merits of these proposal approaches to NASA’s Commercial Crew Transportation Capability Contract.  Instead, GAO reviewed the conclusions reached by NASA to determine if they were reasonable, and consistent with the evaluation approach NASA set out in its solicitation.

Specifics about the decision made by the GAO contained sensitive information concerning source selection and proprietary nature, as such, these elements were not released to the general public and were only made available to either select NASA personnel or to outside counsel (those admitted under the GAO protective order issued for this protest). A public version is expected to be released in the near future (within the next few weeks).

Sierra Nevada’s Dream Chaser space plane was unique among the CCP candidates as it was the only lifting-body design, essentially a mini shuttle which would have been launched atop a United Launch Alliance (ULA ) Atlas V 401 booster, rendezvoused and docked to the space station – and then landed back at Kennedy Space Center’s Shuttle Landing Facility. Even though NASA might have taken a pass on the Dream Chaser – other space agencies have expressed interest in the design. Both the European Space Agency and Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency are considering the spacecraft for use.

SpaceX Postpones Cargo Launch, Daring Rocket Test to Saturday January 10th

As reported by Space.com: SpaceX has delayed its next robotic cargo launch toward the International Space Station — which will also feature a bold rocket-reusability test — by another day, to early Saturday morning (Jan. 10, 2015).

SpaceX's Falcon 9 rocket and Dragon capsule are now scheduled to blast off from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida at 4:47 a.m. EST (0947 GMT) Saturday. You can watch the launch live here on Space.com, courtesy of NASA TV and SpaceX, beginning at 3:30 a.m. EST (0830 GMT).

The launch — which will kick off SpaceX's fifth contracted supply mission to the space station for NASA —  was targeted for Tuesday (Jan. 6), but that attempt was scrubbed just before liftoff because of an issue with an actuator on the Falcon 9's second stage. SpaceX initially pushed the launch to Friday morning (Jan. 9), which was the next available opportunity, and today (Jan. 7), decided to delay it another 24 hours. 

The primary objective of the launch is to send the unmanned Dragon — which is loaded with more than 5,000 lbs. (2,270 kilograms) of food, scientific experiments and spare parts — on its way to the orbiting lab. But SpaceX will also try to bring the Falcon 9's first stage back to Earth for a pinpoint landing on a floating platform in the Atlantic Ocean.

The unprecedented rocket-landing test is part of SpaceX's effort to develop fully and rapidly reusable rocket technology — a key priority of the company and its billionaire founder, Elon Musk.

If Dragon does get off the ground on Saturday, the capsule will arrive at the space station early Monday morning (Jan. 12), NASA officials said. Dragon will stay at the orbiting lab for a month, and then return to Earth for a splashdown in the Pacific Ocean.


SpaceX holds a $1.6 billion contract with NASA to complete 12 cargo runs to the space station. The space agency also signed a $1.9 billion deal with Virginia-based Orbital Sciences Corp. to fly eight such missions using the company's Cygnus spacecraft and Antares rocket. Orbital's first two flights went well, but the third was lost in late October when Antares exploded shortly after liftoff.

Leap Second to be Added in 2015 - Google to Use 'Leap Smear'

As reported by the Telegraph:The year 2015 will be slightly longer after the International Earth Rotation and Reference Systems Service (IERS) announced it was adding a leap second to clocks this summer.

On June 30, dials will read 11:59:60 as clocks hold their breath for a second to allow the Earth’s rotation to catch up with atomic time.

Atomic time is constant, but the Earth’s rotation is gradually slowing down by around two thousandths of a second per day.

It is the task of scientists and officials at the International Earth Rotation Service based in France to monitor the planet's rotation and tweak time where necessary. Some years the Earth runs bang on time and no adjustment is needed.

Software companies are already bracing themselves for problems. When the last leap second was added in 2012 Mozilla, Reddit, Foursquare, Yelp, LinkedIn, and StumbleUpon all reported crashes and there were problems with the Linux operating system and programs written in Java. 

Many computing systems use the Network Time Protocol, or NTP, to keep themselves in sync with the world’s atomic clocks. But most are not programmed to deal with an unexpected extra second.

Google has even developed a special technique to deal with what it refers to as a ‘leap smear’ where it gradually adds milliseconds to its system clocks prior to the official arrive of the leap second.

"The Earth is slowing down a little bit," said Nick Stamatakos, the chief of Earth Orientation Parameters at the US Naval Observatory.

"Atomic clocks keep very accurate time. The measurements are telling us 'Oh, they're slowing down'"

The first leap second was added in 1972, and it will be the 26th time it has been added to clocks in history.

It means the rotation of the Earth will have slowed 26 seconds compared to the time measured on atomic clocks.

"They add an extra second to something called UTC (Coordinated Universal Time) in order to make sure the rate of UTC is the same as atomic time," he said.

Adding the leap second will mean that at 11:59:59pm on June 30 for one second clocks will read 11:59:60pm.

"For that day [June 30] there'll be 86,401 seconds, instead of 86,400 seconds. The length of the day for you and I and everyone on the Earth will have an extra second," added Mr Stamatakos.

Leap seconds are rarer these days than they were when the practice of adding seconds first began.

From 1972 to 1979, at least one second was added every year. Leap seconds were added six times throughout the 1980s. But there will only have been four leap seconds added since 1999.

The US wants to get rid of leap seconds claiming they're too disruptive to precision systems used for navigation and communication. At a conference in Geneva in 2012 delegates argued that precisely timed money transactions could go astray or vehicles could be sent tens of metres out of position if they are a second out in their measurement of time

But Britain opposes the change, saying that it would forever break the link between our concept of time and the rising and setting of the Sun.

It would also spell the end for Greenwich Mean Time, which is measured by the time at which the Sun crosses the Greenwich Meridian and was adopted in Britain in 1847

Experts also fear that once this link is broken it could never be restored because although the Earth's timekeeping systems are built to accommodate the occasional leap second, adding a leap minute or hour to global time would be virtually impossible.

Rory McEvoy, Curator of Horology, Royal Observatory Greenwich, said: "Since antiquity the Earth’s rotation has provided us with our timescale – it is the Earth’s rotation that gives us our most basic unit of time, the solar day.

"In the early 20th century civil time, Greenwich Mean Time (GMT), was disseminated by radio signal. The clocks connected to the radio transmitters were constantly checked and adjusted, when necessary, according to astronomical determination of time.

"This setup did not require leap seconds. It was only after the redefinition of the si second in 1967, when it became an issue because it was based on atomic timekeeping (more accurate than the Earth). It was felt that civil time, Co-ordinated Universal Time (UTC), should correspond with Earth rotation. In 1972 the first leap second was added to UTC to correct the disparity.

"The Earth’s speed of rotation has a tendency to slow – caused principally because of the relationship between Earth and the moon – but it can speed up. There is a possibility that a negative leap second could be added to UTC.

"The abolition of the leap second is being considered and after around 12 years of discussion there may be a decision made later this year." 

NASA Approves SpaceX's Plans to Send Astronauts to Space Station

As reported by Space.com: SpaceX's Dragon capsule is one step closer to flying astronauts to and from the International Space Station.

SpaceX has passed NASA's "certification baseline review," which required the California-based company to outline exactly how it plans to ferry crews to and from the orbiting lab using the Dragon spacecraft and its Falcon 9 rocket under SpaceX's Commercial Crew Transportation Capability (CCtCap) contract with the space agency.

"This milestone sets the pace for the rigorous work ahead as SpaceX meets the certification requirements outlined in our contract," Kathryn Lueders, manager of NASA's Commercial Crew Program, said in a statement. "It is very exciting to see SpaceX's proposed path to certification, including a flight test phase and completion of the system development."