The Webb of Knowledge

Be sure to Click LIKE at the bottom of this article, and share it everywhere!! By Craig Andresen – The National Patriot and Right Side Patriots – Commentary

Back in 1990, the Hubble Space Telescope was launched, and after being fitted with glasses due to a rather unfortunate mix-up between standard and metric measurements, we started seeing things that simply astounded us. We saw the cosmos with a clarity never before imagined.

Hubble has done more to enhance our knowledge and understanding of the universe since 1990 than  Galileo has since 1609. The images we have gazed upon with rightful wonder thanks to Hubble have been magnificent, awe-inspiring and breath-taking. Among other things, Hubble has helped pin down the age for the universe now known to be 13.8 billion years, roughly three times the age of Earth.

Because of Hubble, we’ve discovered two moons of Pluto, Nix and Hydra. Hubble has helped determine the rate at which the universe is expanding, discovered that nearly every major galaxy is anchored by a black hole at the center and created a 3-D map of dark matter. Hubble has found exoplanets and helped determine their composition. Hubble let us watch a comet slam into Jupiter, found water vapor erupting off the surface of Jupiter’s moon Europa and for the very first time, the effect of gravitational lensing on a distant exploding star.

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Hello SpaceX and Dasvidaniya Russia

Be sure to Click LIKE at the bottom of this article, and share it everywhere!! By Craig Andresen – The National Patriot and Right Side Patriots – Commentary

Since the end of the Space Shuttle, NASA has relied primarily on the Russians for transport into space. Our astronauts had to hitch rides on Russian spacecraft just to get to and from the International Space Station (ISS) but that wasn’t the only part of our space program that was connected to Russia.

The Atlas 5 program had also become reliant on Russia for engines used to launch NASA and other satellites into space.

While the Atlas 5 has been reliable as a launch vehicle; it is somewhat of an antique in the space industry. The Atlas 5 was the launch platform for Mercury missions in the early 1960’s that first took U.S. astronauts into space making the launch vehicle now a working museum piece of sorts.

For now, there are some 26 Atlas 5 rockets still in the NASA inventory, all of which have been dedicated to specific satellite launch missions and all of which are powered by RD-180 engines manufactured by and purchased from the Russians. While the RD-180 engines are proven and reliable, having been used by NASA for the better part of a decade, thanks to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and our nation’s sanctions against Russia, issues have arisen.

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