Hackaday Links: March 30, 2025

March 30, 2025 by Dan Maloney 11 Comments

The hits just keep coming for the International Space Station (ISS), literally in the case of a resupply mission scheduled for June that is now scrubbed thanks to a heavy equipment incident that damaged the cargo spacecraft. The shipping container for the Cygnus automated cargo ship NG-22 apparently picked up some damage in transit from Northrop Grumman’s Redondo Beach plant in Los Angeles to Florida. Engineers inspected the Cygnus and found that whatever had damaged the container had also damaged the spacecraft, leading to the June mission’s scrub.

Mission controllers are hopeful that NG-22 can be patched up enough for a future resupply mission, but that doesn’t help the ISS right now, which is said to be running low on consumables. To fix that, the next scheduled resupply mission, a SpaceX Cargo Dragon slated for an April launch, will be modified to include more food and consumables for the ISS crew. That’s great, but it might raise another problem: garbage. Unlike the reusable Cargo Dragons, the Cygnus cargo modules are expendable, which makes them a great way to dispose of the trash produced by the ISS crew since everything just burns up on reentry. The earliest a Cygnus is scheduled to dock at the ISS again is sometime in this autumn, meaning it might be a long, stinky summer for the crew.

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Hackaday Links: March 23, 2025

March 23, 2025 by Dan Maloney 9 Comments

What a long, strange trip it’s been for NASA astronauts Suni Williams and Bruce Wilmore, who finally completed their eight-day jaunt to space after 289 days. The duo returned to Earth from the ISS on Tuesday along with two other returning astronauts in a picture-perfect splashdown, complete with a dolphin-welcoming committee. For the benefit of those living under rocks these past nine months, Williams and Wilmore slipped the surly bonds way back in June on the first crewed test flight of the Boeing Starliner, bound for a short stay on the ISS before a planned return in the same spacecraft. Alas, all did not go to plan as their ride developed some mechanical difficulties on the way upstairs, and so rather than risk their lives on a return in a questionable capsule, NASA had them cool their heels for a couple of months while Starliner headed home without them.

There’s been a lot of talk about how Butch and Suni were “stranded,” but that doesn’t seem fair to us. Sure, their stay on the ISS was unplanned, or at least it wasn’t Plan A; we’re sure this is always a contingency NASA allows for when planning missions. Also unfortunate is the fact that they didn’t get paid overtime for the stay, not that you’d expect they would. But on the other hand, if you’re going to get stuck on a work trip, it might as well be at the world’s most exclusive and expensive resort.

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Hackaday Links: March 9, 2025

March 9, 2025 by Dan Maloney 9 Comments

It’s been a busy week in space news, and very little of it was good. We’ll start with the one winner of the week, Firefly’s Blue Ghost Mission 1, which landed successfully on the Moon’s surface on March 2. The lander is part of NASA’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services program and carries ten scientific payloads, including a GPS/GNSS receiver that successfully tracked signals from Earth-orbiting satellites. All of the scientific payloads have completed their missions, which is good because the lander isn’t designed to withstand the long, cold lunar night only a few days away. The landing makes Firefly the first commercial outfit to successfully soft-land something on the Moon, and being the first at anything is always a big deal.

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NASA Taps Webb To Help Study 2032 Asteroid Threat

February 13, 2025 by Tom Nardi 43 Comments

In all likelihood, asteroid 2024 YR4 will slip silently past the Earth. Based on the data we have so far, there’s an estimated chance of only 2.1% to 2.3% that it will collide with the planet on December 22nd, 2032. Under normal circumstances, if somebody told you there was a roughly 98% chance of something not happening, you probably wouldn’t give it a second thought. There’s certainly a case to be made that you should feel that way in regards to this particular event — frankly, it’s a lot more likely that some other terrible thing is going to happen to you in the next eight years than it is an asteroid is going to ruin your Christmas party.

That being said, when you consider the scale of the cosmos, a 2+% chance of getting hit is enough to raise some eyebrows. After all, it’s the highest likelihood of an asteroid impact that we’re currently aware of. It’s also troubling that the number has only gone up as further observations of 2024 YR4’s orbit have been made; a few weeks ago, the impact probability was just 1%. Accordingly, NASA has recently announced they’ll be making time in the James Webb Space Telescope’s busy scientific schedule to observe the asteroid next month.

So keeping in mind that we’re still talking about an event that’s statistically unlikely to actually occur, let’s take a look at what we know about 2024 YR4, and how further study and analysis can give us a better idea of what kind of threat we’re dealing with.

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What Happens If You Die In Space?

February 5, 2025 by Lewin Day 51 Comments

There are no two ways about it—space will kill you if you give it half a chance. More than land, sea, or air, the space environment is entirely hostile to human existence. Precision-engineered craft are the bare minimum just to ensure human survival. Even still, between the vacuum, radiation, micrometeorites, and equipment failures, there are plenty of ways for things to go catastrophically wrong beyond Earth’s atmosphere.

Despite the hazards, most spacefaring humans have completed their missions without injury. However, as we look to return to the Moon, tread on Mars, and beyond, it’s increasingly likely that future astronauts could pass away during longer missions. When that inevitably happens, the question is simple—how do you deal with death in space?

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Why NASA Only Needs Pi To So Many Decimal Places

December 17, 2024 by Lewin Day 53 Comments

If you’re new to the world of circular math, you might be content with referring to pi as 3.14. If you’re getting a little more busy with geometry, science, or engineering, you might have tacked on a few extra decimal places in your usual calculations. But what about the big dogs? How many decimal places do NASA use?

*NASA doesn’t need this many digits. It’s likely you don’t either. Image credits: NASA/JPL-Caltech*

Thankfully, the US space agency has been kind enough to answer that question. For the highest precision calculations, which are used for interplanetary navigation, NASA uses 3.141592653589793 — that’s fifteen decimal places.

The reason why is quite simple, going into any greater precision is unnecessary. The article demonstrates this by calculating the circumference of a circle with a radius equal to the distance between Earth and our most distant spacecraft, Voyager 1. Using the formula C=2pir with fifteen decimal places of pi, you’d only be off on the true circumference of the circle by a centimeter or so. On solar scales, there’s no need to go further.

Ultimately, though, you can calculate pi to a much greater precision. We’ve seen it done to 10 trillion digits, an effort which flirts with the latest Marvel movies for the title of pure irrelevance. If you’ve done it better or faster, don’t hesitate to let us know!

Hackaday Links: December 15, 2024

December 15, 2024 by Dan Maloney 7 Comments

It looks like we won’t have Cruise to kick around in this space anymore with the news that General Motors is pulling the plug on its woe-beset robotaxi project. Cruise, which GM acquired in 2016, fielded autonomous vehicles in various test markets, but the fleet racked up enough high-profile mishaps (first item) for California regulators to shut down test programs in the state last year. The inevitable layoffs ensued, and GM is now killing off its efforts to build robotaxis to concentrate on incorporating the Cruise technology into its “Super Cruise” suite of driver-assistance features for its full line of cars and trucks. We feel like this might be a tacit admission that surmounting the problems of fully autonomous driving is just too hard a nut to crack profitably with current technology, since Super Cruise uses eye-tracking cameras to make sure the driver is paying attention to the road ahead when automation features are engaged. Basically, GM is admitting there still needs to be meat in the seat, at least for now.

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