William Harwood
@rocketksc.bsky.social
1.3K followers 72 following 1.5K posts
Full-time space reporter, based at the Kennedy Space Center, since 1984; first with UPI, now with CBS News, covering human space flight, planetary exploration, commercial space operations and general astronomy
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rocketksc.bsky.social
Leaving the Kennedy Space Center today, got a nice view of a New Glenn first stage heading to the pad…
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New Shepard-36: The crew is now exiting the capsule
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New Shepard-36: Blue Origin says the previously unidentified passenger is Will Lewis, an entrepreneur and adventurer
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New Shepard-36: Touchdown confirmed
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New Shepard-36: New Shepard main parachute deploy confirmed
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New Shepard-36: Booster touchdown confirmed
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New Shepard-36: Booster and capsule descending normally; passengers are back in their seats
rocketksc.bsky.social
New Shepard-36: Main engine shutdown, capsule separation confirmed; the passengers are now weightless
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New Shepard-36: Management poll complete; all systems 'go' for launch
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New Shepard-36: 15 minutes to launch of the RSS First Step capsule
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New Shepard-36: As with all New Shepard flights, the capsule will be boosted to an altitude just above 62 miles, the internationally recognized "boundary" of space; as the capsule coasts through the top of its ballistic trajectory, the crew will experience about 3 minutes of weightlessness
rocketksc.bsky.social
New Shepard-36: The 6 passengers include businessman Jeff Elgin; Danna Karagussova of Kazakhstan; entrepreneur Aaron Newman; Vitalii Ostrovsky, a Ukrainian businessman and adventurer; Clint Kelly III, an electrical engineer making his 2nd New Shepard flight; and an unidentified passenger
rocketksc.bsky.social
New Shepard-36: Blue Origin is preparing to launch 6 passengers aboard a New Shepard spacecraft on a sub-orbital flight to the edge of space and back; liftoff from the company's West Texas launch site is targeted for 9:40am EDT (1340 UTC); this will be Blue's 15th passenger flight to space
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F9/IMAP: 1st stage landing on the droneship Just Read The Instructions; this was the 414th booster landing at seat and the 510th successful recovery overall
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F9/IMAP: 2nd stage engine shutdown; the vehicle will now coast for a little more than 1 hour before a second firing to put the vehicle onto the payload deploy trajectory
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F9/IMAP: 1st stage engine shutdown, stage separation, 2nd stage ignition confirmed
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F9/IMAP: LIFTOFF! At 7:30am EDT (1130 UTC)
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F9/IMAP: Here's a pre-launch view of the three payloads launching today, shortly before their encapsulation in a Falcon 9 nose fairing
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F9/IMAP: NASA's Carruthers Geocorona Observatory will study ultraviolet light generated in Earth's extreme outer atmosphere while NOAA's SWFO-L1 will look for indicators of developing solar storms that could impact Earth's space environment
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F9/IMAP: NASA's Interstellar Mapping and Acceleration Probe, or IMAP, will monitor the boundary of the heliosphere, where charged particles in the solar wind run into the surrounding interstellar medium; it will operate from Lagrange point 1, a gravitationally stable region between Earth and sun
rocketksc.bsky.social
F9/IMAP: SpaceX is fueling a Falcon 9 rocket for a dawn launch to carry three science probes into space to monitor the solar wind, solar storm development and Earth's extreme outer atmosphere; liftoff from KSC pad 39A is targeted for 7:30am EDT (1130 UTC)
Spaceflight Now
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New Shepard/NS-35: Capsule touchdown confirmed
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New Shepard/NS-35: The New Shepard capsule, meanwhile, has deployed its main parachutes
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New Shepard/NS-35: Booster landing confirmed