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There is a lot coming in space exploration this year,
big things, small things, and space sailing.
You do not want to miss 2014.
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Hey, all.
Welcome to our first weekly DNews space update of 2014.
I'm Trace.
Space exploration takes a long while.
And during this trip around the sun
our tiny planet is heading out into the stars
in new and exciting ways.
My third favorite space mission of 2014
has to be space tourism in general.
The successes of private space companies in the last few years
has created quite the visible push for *** Galactic
to get their passengers' butts up into the blackness.
Last September, *** Galactic got off
the ground with its final test flights.
600 people are already on the list at $250 K a pop,
so they better get in gear, especially now
that SpaceX and Orbital Sciences are launching missions
to the ISS today and next week.
Come on, Branson, I want to get up there too.
Let's fly.
Second is the Sunjammer.
On the ground, it doesn't look like much.
But it's a satellite unlike any we've ever launched before.
Riding a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket, the Sunjammer
is a solar sail boat.
See, the sun is constantly throwing photon particles
into space.
And though each individual photon is tiny, all of them
together press with a constant nine newtons of force.
And that's called the solar wind.
The Sunjammer has a sail on board,
packed into about the size of a dishwasher.
But once deployed, its 3,000 square foot sail
will gather that solar wind.
And boom!
Space travel.
It's set to drop a satellite or two.
But it is also going to prove solar sails are
a viable method of constant propulsion,
without on board rocket fuel.
Imagine ancient humans sailing the seas, but in space.
That's genius.
The biggest thing I'm excited for this year
is the test launch of NASA's Orion spacecraft,
the next generation of human-carrying, reusable space
launch vehicles.
The plan is for Orion to take humans
to asteroids, the moon, Mars, and other deep space missions.
It's been described as Apollo on steroids.
That's not strictly speaking true.
They took the Saturn V from Apollo,
and then they made it 30% bigger,
and then rebuilt everything else.
The thing is going to pack a whole wallop.
And they're going to launch the full system, unmanned,
for a complete test later this year.
Orion is set to have the fastest reentry we have ever done.
And it's going to go further out into space
than any human spaceflight vehicle since 1972.
This is going to be big all over.
What are you excited about for this year in space?
I'm sure you can tell us.
Just go down in the comments.
Thanks, a lot for watching, everybody.
And we'll see you next Friday for a weekly space update.
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