Category: Science

• Chris Kraft, left, and Robert Gilruth monitor the launch of Apollo 5 in 1968. [credit:
  NASA ]

Christopher Columbus Kraft Jr.—one of NASA’s founding engineers, its first flight director, and a key architect of the Apollo and space shuttle programs—has died at the age of 95.

Back during the earliest days of NASA, the head of the agency’s Space Task Group, Robert Gilruth, assigned Kraft the job of drawing up rules and procedures for safely managing the flight of a human into space, through the great blackness, and back to the ground. Kraft was to do all of this without the aid of a calculator or sophisticated computer and without any reference material. And he had to hurry, because the Soviet Union had already taken a big lead in the Space Race.

Over time, the work Kraft did in writing those rules, as well as hiring a talented team of

• SpaceX has been assembling a Starship prototype in South Texas. This gallery highlights a recent static fire test. [credit:
  Trevor Mahlmann for Ars ]

This is a big week for SpaceX, which has an important Falcon 9 launch for NASA taking place from Florida and probably a key test flight in Texas as well.

On Wednesday, SpaceX is scheduled to attempt its ninth launch of 2019: a cargo supply mission to the International Space Station. The Dragon spacecraft will ferry about 2.5 metric tons of supplies, science experiments, and equipment to the orbiting laboratory. This will be the 18th supply mission SpaceX has flown for NASA.

With a static fire of the Falcon 9 rocket already complete, liftoff is presently scheduled for 6:24pm ET (22:24 UTC) Wednesday from Space Launch Complex 40 at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida. The weather forecast is not great, however, with a 70

On Monday, an Indian rocket launched a spacecraft bound for the Moon from Sriharikota, a barrier island off the Bay of Bengal coast. This Chandrayaan-2 mission is the second spacecraft India has sent to the Moon, and it represents a significant effort to explore the lunar surface and its potential as a source for water ice.

The GSLV Mark III rocket lifted off Monday after an eight-day delay due to a technical issue, and the launch proceeded normally. “Today is a historical day for space and science and technology in India,” K. Sivan, chair of the Indian Space Research Organization, said after the launch. “I’m extremely happy to announce that GSLV Mark III successfully injected Chandrayaan-2 into the defined orbit.”

Although this is India’s most powerful rocket, the GSLV vehicle only

Video shot by Joshua Ballinger, edited and produced by Jing Niu and David Minick. Click here for transcript. (video link)

And then it was all over.

After the drama of Apollo 13, the final four human missions to the Moon in 1971 and 1972 flew smoothly. With each successive, increasingly routine landing, astronauts made longer forays out onto the dusty lunar terrain and delved deeper into the scientific secrets hidden there.