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Hello , and welcome back to TechCrunch Space . I hope everyone had a fantastical weekend . On to the news .
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Story of the week
I had a fortune to catch up withDawn Aerospaceco - beginner and CEO Stefan Powell last week to find out all about the latest test campaign of the Mk - II Aurora aircraft . For those unfamiliar , Mk - II is fundamentally a roquette - power aircraft , or , as the company put it,“an aircraft with the performance of a garden rocket , not a rocket with wings . ” Powell had some interesting thing to say about nonconventional vehicles :
“ I think common noesis is that spaceplanes have been stress with the Shuttle , and that did n’t work , and it ’s a dim idea . And if not that then , things with wings are stupid because , look at Virgin Orbit , that did n’t work . Air launching is slow . You have to get to quite a nuanced conversation before you actually understand the difference between what we ’re trying to do and the rockets with wing that have flown before us , and how the route we ’re on is very much an aircraft path , but there is still a path to name it have the performance of a skyrocket . ”
What we’re reading
I really enjoyedthis longer read from The Wall Street Journal , which looked at Florida locals ’ reactions to SpaceX ’s purpose plans to launch spaceship from there . As I reported last month , the society ’s plan to launch Starship 44 meter per twelvemonth from Kennedy Space Center ruffled feather — but it’salsoconsidering a plan to fly the arugula 76 times from neighbor Cape Canaveral . That ’s 120 times per twelvemonth , a declare oneself metre that has some Florida residents and business owner concerned .
This week in space history
On August 14 , 1959 , Earth reflection was bear . The Explorer 6 satellite took the first - ever image of Earth by a space vehicle . It ’s , uh , not the most crisp image , but it depicts the north part of the Pacific Ocean near Mexico , and was transmitted to a priming coat station over a 40 - minute ( ! ) span .
