Blue Origin Return to Flight


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MoonDAO Updates

Town Hall Recap

You can join online every Thursday at 3pm Eastern time in MoonDAO's Discord!

Last week's town hall had the presentation of one proposal for Skyline Digital fiat on & off-ramp, which was successfully passed by the MoonDAO Senate and is now up for a vote by the community (more on that in a minute). We also had round table updates about the state of various ongoing projects, including the Citizen and Entity program, DeSci research, the second astronaut proposal, and others, along with open floor updates from community members.

Open Vote

Voting for MDP-143 closes in approximately 24 hours! This proposal would onboard MoonDAO to Skyline Digital, a non-custodial solution opening the doors of tradfi for web3 businesses based in Switzerland, via our MoonDAO DAO LLC legal entity based in the Marshall Islands. Skyline digital provides “rails” to on or off-ramp between crypto and fiat. > Read the Full Proposal

New Member Spotlight

Have you said hello in the introduction channel?

SuperSquril writes: “Hi everyone. I found MoonDAO through a post on LinkedIn from Dr. Eiman Jahangir. I am very excited to get involved in any way that I can. My undergraduate degree and professional experience is in Chemical Engineering, mostly in the development of gas processing and treatment systems. More recently I have completed a graduate certificate in Systems Engineering and will be pursuing my Master's in Space Science and Technology. My current professional role also surrounds conversion of waste to energy streams for both terrestrial and spaceborne installations. I look forward to meeting you all and hopefully contributing to some amazing projects."

Let’s give a friendly MoonDAO welcome to SuperSquril as he joins our community!

Bite-Sized Space News

Blue Origin Returns to Flight

Yesterday, Blue Origin’s New Shepard capsule successfully carried six passengers to the edge of space, marking the first human flight of the reusable suborbital vehicle since 2022. This milestone mission included 90-year-old retired Air Force Capt. Ed Dwight, who trained as an astronaut during the Apollo era but never had the opportunity to leave the planet.

NS-25 experienced a minor hiccup when one of the capsule’s three parachutes failed to fully deploy during the return to Earth. Despite this, Blue Origin assured that the vehicle is designed to land safely with just two parachutes, although a thorough internal investigation into the deployment issue is certain.

This recent flight happened after a lengthy pause in New Shepard’s operations due to a booster failure during an uncrewed mission in September 2022. The company's investigation identified an engine nozzle failure caused by excessive heat, leading to a redesign. A successful uncrewed test flight in December paved the way for this recent crewed mission.

A return to human flight by Blue Origin means that we are one step closer to the launch of MoonDAO’s second astronaut, Dr. Eiman Jahangir, who was the winner of the Ticket to Space sweepstakes earlier this year.

Wet Dress Rehearsal

SpaceX successfully completed a "wet dress rehearsal" at its Starbase site in South Texas today. This crucial prelaunch test involved filling both stages of the Starship with supercold liquid oxygen and liquid methane.

"Launch rehearsal for Flight 4 complete," SpaceX announced in a post on X, sharing photos of the procedure.

Starship's previous flights have shown incremental improvements. The debut flight ended shortly after launch when the stages failed to separate, leading to an intentional detonation. The second flight achieved stage separation and lasted twice as long, while the third flight lasted about 50 minutes before breaking apart upon reentry.

The main objective for the upcoming fourth flight is to successfully navigate through maximum reentry heating. SpaceX aims to launch this flight in about two weeks, although the timeline depends on obtaining a launch license modification from the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) and the conclusion of the FAA's investigation into the third flight's outcome.

Upcoming Launches

  • ExPace Kuaizhou 11 on Mon May 20, 2024 11:10 PM GMT-5 from Site 95A, Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center, China
  • Rocket Lab Electron/Curie | Ready, Aim, PREFIRE on Wed May 22, 2024 2:15 AM GMT-5 from Rocket Lab LC-1B, Māhia Peninsula, New Zealand
  • SpaceX Falcon 9 | NROL-146 on Wed May 22, 2024 3:00 AM GMT-5 from SLC-4E, Vandenberg SFB, California, USA

That’s it for your MoonDAO updates this week. Join us on Discord to stay up-to-date with all the latest developments.

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