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[Starver]

(...also, by definition a potentially Earth-impacting asteroid is going to be easier to Sample Return from, given its Earth-crossing nature means that the delta-Vs needed to intercept asteroid from Earth and re-intercept Earth from asteroid are both fairly minimal. As long as you've got time enough to catch up/let the asteroid catch up, not planning on confronting it head-on and then retro-thrust like a crazy-A stick of asparagus. And probably with Clint Eastwood on board, for the lulz...)

[Dutrius]

OSIRIS-REx is now on an escape trajectory. Solar arrays should deploy shortly.

[Dutrius]

Both solar arrays are deployed! I doubt we'll hear much more from OSIRIS-REx for a couple of years, while the probe makes it's rendezvous with Bennu.

[martinuzz]

As far as I understand, Bennu itself orbits the sun in about 6 years, so OSIRIS-REx should be back within a decade if all goes well, not next century.

In other news, billionaire ELon Musk is at a loss as for what caused the SpaceX rocket to explode during refueling.
He has called upon the public on Twitter, asking anyone who filmed or photographed the rocket prior to and during the explosion, to send in their images.

Musk stresses that the rocket engines were turned off, and there was no heat source anywhere.

What concerns the SpaceX research team most, is the small explosion that sounds before the big one, on online videos of the event.
They say "It could come from the rocket, but it could also have come from somewhere else".

Inb4 sabotage theories reach a higher orbit than SpaceX ever did.

[Starver]

As far as I understand, Bennu itself orbits the sun in about 6 years, so OSIRIS-REx should be back within a decade if all goes well, not next century.

If that's to me, yes I worked out my mis-read fairly quickly, but then I thought it amusing enough to share. (Second post in a row was regarding the "why choose Bennu?" question, as additional reasoning. But could have been given more context.)

Not previously said, but perhaps can still be, despite assurances otherwise ("In writing out a list of the big ideas that the science plan would be based on, Dr. Lauretta realized that they spelled out OSIRIS."), I'm of the opinion that it's definitely a mostly contrived backronym that they should be ashamed of.   

In other news, […]
What concerns the SpaceX research team most, is the small explosion that sounds before the big one, on online videos of the event.
They say "It could come from the rocket, but it could also have come from somewhere else".

Inb4 sabotage theories reach a higher orbit than SpaceX ever did.

Happy to be Stage 1 for that...

HEAT round sniped at the stack by someone hired by corporate rivals?  Distances/accuracy issues, admitedly make it quite literally a long-shot (helluva distance, if fired from across the Banana River), but the alternative is on-site sabotage (or something snuck onto a component, e.g. the lost payload).

Alternately an innocent failure of the legitmate payload. Uncommanded* non-cold thruster firing, perhaps. Not enough info at hand to check that possibility out. But, aside from the Falcon itself, the satellite (the first of its sub-series to be due to use electric prpoulsion for station-keeping) has much about it that could possibly have gone wrong and initiated the rocket's own destruction.

* Or malevolently commanded!!!11oneone!!!!

[Dutrius]

Thinking about it... It was a problem in (or around) the upper stage Oxygen tank. Could this be a similar problem to that experienced by Apollo 13?

[martinuzz]

lolno, rocket parts are tested for much broader temperature ranges ever since.

EDIT: ohwait I was confusing it with the Challenger accident. There temperature was the issue.

[Starver]

The GIF movie on https://www.inverse.com/article/20788-spacex-falcon-9-explosion-ufo-anomaly suggests explosive combustion starts (or at least most easily exits the skin of the rocket, but that's never armour-plate strength) just below the payload shroud, which is where I'd expect the orbit-raising final stage motor to be.

(The UFO is, IMO, a bird at mid-distance. Neither large and fast and far off, nor fly-sized and fly-speed and near, but a normal sized and normal speed bird at some point significantly between camera and pad, clearly flapping. It is mere coincidence that it is in frame, and doesn't even look like it hits the craft. Even if it was a drone, it can't be directly responsible by colliding, giving it clearly does not, and doesn't get caught in the explosion.)

Apollo 13: stirrer (necessary for destratification in zero-G?) with inadvertently arcing wires, IIRC.
Challenger: Booster seal made brittle by cold, causing catastrophic failure in use.

Neither seem to apply to this pre-test refuelling incident. But note that SpaceX is on record as having pinpointed the cause as being a LOX tank's internal helium bottle strut failing, in an early ISS delivery attempt that failed. This by the use of internal sensors capturing audio of the event (given very little first-hand examination of the resulting debris being even possible), so to have so early on started to say that this accident is a complete puzzle, needing video to perhaps answer at all, suggests that even if they have internal data, they're looking at something external to their own equipment and entirely unaffected. Or they're being very cautious about a pressure-skin failure, for business reasons (their own, or a supplier) not wanting to get caught up in a defamation or incompetence lawsuit situation before they have enough evidence to make it a legal certainty, whoever ends up being in the wrong.

[Akura]

I just wanted to say in the better-quality video below the gif in that link, just before the explosion there's another black dot similar to the one remarked about passing in front of the rocket, below where the explosion occurs.

[Il Palazzo]

And there's about dozen other flying animals ornitopters rebel fighters caught in the same video. I bet they had been shooting their torpedoes all this time, but only when the one used the Force, did they manage to finally hit the vent and blow up the rocket fully operational battle station. Now the evil Elonian empire shall collapse and all jar-jars will be able to wear their tin foil hats in peace.

[Starver]

After Shepherd, there's Glenn.

(Guesses as to who is next in the line-up?)

[andrea]

Nice to see more players entering the orbital commercial reusable rocket field, although it was already known they were working on one such thing. It seems a quite capable rocket too and the hydrogen upper stages should allow better payload to higher orbits than SpaceX(falcon heavy) offers.
Speaking about Space X, one has to wonder how long will the falcon heavy be delayed due to the recent explosion. Falcon heavy and New Glenn might enter the market at roughly the same time, which would bring a direct competition.which would be rather interesting, depending on cost and performance of the 2 launch vehicles.

Although, as nice those second generation rockets are, I can't wait to see the third generation of launch vehicles produced by those 2 feuding billionaires. New armstrong and BFR will be a great sight and bring many opportunities.

Bezos has the money to actually fund his space program out of pocket ( as seen by the fact that they haven't launched any commercial payload yet despite years of operations) and the moon is relatively simple, so I think there is a good chance to see a blue origin flag on the moon sometime in the next decade or 2.

That said, I really don't like that huge feather on the side of the rocket.

[Starver]

so I think there is a good chance to see a blue origin flag on the moon sometime in the next decade or 2.

That's going to be the New Armstrong rocket, I predict. But there are still some intermediate challenges to be overcome (and named).

[hops]

I still kind of wish we had an international space program instead of having to rely on americans and occasionally the chinese government.

[TempAcc]

Why bother with it now when corporations are starting to get their shit in space? :U

Seriously tho governments can only carry space exploration so far, private enterprise will have to take over sooner or later, better sooner than later.