Space exploration thread

[ScienceRocks]

Europe and US agree details for Orion astronaut spacecraft

The US and Europe have cemented their plan to work together on the Americans' next-generation capsule system to take humans beyond Earth.

The Orion vehicle is being built to carry astronauts to the Moon, asteroids and Mars, but it will need a means to propel itself through space.

Europe has now formally agreed to provide this technology.

Space agency executives have just signed an "implementing agreement" to cover the legal aspects of the work.

The first flight of Orion with its European-built "service module" will take place in 2017.

From http://www.bbc.co.uk...onment-21044408

 

[ScienceRocks]

For Space Station, a Pod That Folds Like a Shirt and Inflates Like a Balloon





http://www.nytimes.c...argain-too.html



Quote

The balloonlike structure is carefully designed not to pop. The fabric walls will consist of several layers including Vectran, a bullet-resistant material. Even if punctured by a high-speed meteorite, the fabric does not tear. A hole in a metal structure in space, by comparison, can cause explosive decompression as air rushes out.


When the Beam module reaches the space station, astronauts

 

[ScienceRocks]

Deep Space Industries – asteroid mining company

The second asteroid mining company in less than a year will soon be announced.

Last year, Planetary Resources was announced as the world's first commercial asteroid mining company. Co-founded by Peter Diamandis and Eric Anderson, its stated goal was "to expand Earth's natural resource base" by developing a series of telescopes, probes and robotic vehicles. With a single asteroid containing more precious metals than ever mined in history, this endeavour could potentially "add trillions of dollars to the global GDP" and "enable humanity's prosperity to continue for centuries to come."

Planetary Resources – with a team of high-profile backers – generated overwhelming interest from the public. Since that press conference, the firm has signed an agreement with Virgin Galactic enabling multiple launches for its spacecraft.

It now appears that a second company has entered the race. Although its website is rather sparse, we understand that Deep Space Industries will be announcing their plans on 22nd January. From the little information gleaned elsewhere, former Astrobotic Technology President David Gump is said to be involved. The firm is developing "a breakthrough process for manufacturing in space" and intends to pursue "an aggressive schedule."

Deep Space Industries will showcase their plans at the Santa Monica Museum of Flying, California. The Science Channel's Geoff Notkin will host the event, which will include a video showing the new spacecraft and the company's other plans. When more information becomes available, we will of course post it here.

Deep Space Industries – asteroid mining company

 

[ScienceRocks]

Scientists uncover massive river on Mars
Brittany Hillen, Jan 19th 2013 Discuss [0]

In 2012, the European Space Agency discovered a huge 1,500 kilometer river in the upper Reull Vallis region of Mars. The agency's Mars Express took a picture of the area using a high-stereo camera, which gave an impressive look at the landscape. Now it has released the 3D image taken of the river, which shows a large area of the Reull Vallis complete with one tributary and mountains off to the right

Scientists uncover massive river on Mars - SlashGear

 

[ScienceRocks]

Kepler Mission Manager Update: Kepler Returns to Science Mode

After a "wheel rest" safe mode that began on January 17, 2013, NASA's Kepler spacecraft returned to science data collection at 5 p.m. PST on January 28, 2013. During the 10-day resting safe mode, daily health and status checks with the spacecraft using NASA's Deep Space Network were normal.


The recovery from wheel rest began at 11:30 a.m. PST on January 27, 2013, and proceeded without issue. The spacecraft responded well to commands and transitioned from thruster control to reaction wheel control as planned.

Early this month during a semi-weekly contact with the spacecraft, elevated friction was detected in reaction wheel #4. As a precaution for wheel safety, and as a measure to mitigate the friction, the reaction wheels were spun down to zero-speed and the spacecraft was placed in a thruster-controlled safe mode.

Science data collection was halted during this rest period and the spacecraft solar panels were pointed at the sun to maintain positive power. This is similar to a normal safe mode configuration, but with thrusters maintaining attitude instead of reaction wheels.

Since the failure of reaction wheel #2 in July 2012, the performance of the spacecraft on three wheels has been excellent. Reaction wheel #2, we now know, worked relatively well until January 2012, when it began to exhibit elevated and somewhat chaotic friction that led to failure.

Reaction wheel #4 has been something of a free spirit since launch, with a variety of friction signatures, none of which look like reaction wheel #2, and all of which disappeared on their own after a time.

Resting the wheels can provide an opportunity for the lubricant in the bearings to redistribute and potentially return the friction to nominal levels. Over the next month, the engineering team will review the performance of reaction wheel #4 before, during, and after the safe mode to determine the efficacy of the rest operation.

http://www.nasa.gov/...m-20132901.html

 

[Mr. H.]

That's the most I've read about wheels since I don't know when.

 

[ScienceRocks]

Largest solar sail ever to take flight in 2014
Evan Ackerman
Friday, February 1, 2013 - 5:26pm

Most spacecraft are limited in their range and capabilities by consumables. What usually happens is that spacecraft need fuel to go places and turn into very useless (and very expensive) asteroids as soon as they've exhaused their propellant. This is why we've been looking for new and better ways to keep spacecraft running longer, but the best that we've come up with (ion engines) still run out of reaction mass eventually. The appeal of the solar sail, then, is that by using the sun itself as an engine, it never has to worry about running out of fuel.

Largest solar sail ever to take flight in 2014 | DVICE

 

[ScienceRocks]

Scientists: 4.5 Billion Earth-Like Planets in the Galaxy

According to a new study quoted in Space.com, the Milky Way Galaxy may have as many as 4.5 billion Earthlike planets, some within a close distance of Earth, as interstellar gulfs go, within 13 light-years.

Earth-like planets circle red dwarf stars

Space.com reports that the study, to be published in The Astrophysical Journal, is based on analysis of data derived from the Kepler Space Telescope. Kepler, which is dedicated to discovering exoplanets, has found 2,740 candidates for planets circling other stars since March 2009. The study suggests that red dwarf stars that Kepler has examined are smaller and cooler than previously thought. Worlds that had previously been thought to be too large and too hot to maintain life have been "downsized" to a degree that many of them are now considered rocky worlds of the approximate size of Earth. Also since their parent stars are considered cooler, many exoplanets thought to be circling too close to such stars may now be in the habitable zone where liquid water can exist and thus life may be present.

4.5 billion Earths in our galaxy

Space.com goes further to state that according to the data from Kepler, roughly 60 percent of red dwarves have planets smaller than Neptune, the smallest gas giant in our solar system. It was determined that roughly 6 percent of the red dwarves in the Milky Way Galaxy have Earth-like planets, hence the figure of 4.5 billion.

Red dwarves

According to Universe Today, a red dwarf star ranges from less than half to 7.5 percent of the mass of the sun. A red dwarf puts out between 10 percent and 1/10000 the energy of the sun. Red dwarves consume themselves at far less the rate of a yellow star such as the sun and therefore a considerably older. Thus the habitable zone for such a star is much closer to it than that of the sun, where Earth is located. The closest star to Earth besides the sun is a red dwarf, Proxima Centauri.

Visiting Earth-like worlds

The idea that another Earth might be within 13 light-years is beguiling to scientists. Thus far, no technology exists that could propel a probe to any star system outside our own for any amount of time less than centuries. However Space.com reports that NASA has embarked on a research and development program that might, some decades hence, create something resembling warp drive as depicted in science fiction such as "Star Trek." It could be that people alive today will see one or more of these new Earths with their own eyes.



Mark R. Whittington is the author of Children of Apollo and The Last Moonwalker. He has written on space subjects for a variety of periodicals, including The Houston Chronicle, The Washington Post, USA Today, the L.A. Times, and The Weekly Standard.

Scientists: 4.5 Billion Earth-Like Planets in the Galaxy - Yahoo! News

Yet you fuckers want to defund nasa? LOL! what a joke my species have become.

 

[ScienceRocks]

China claims successful test of microwave relativity engine



China claims successful test of microwave relativity engine | DVICE

Researchers in China say that they've successfully managed to test an engine that runs on electricity, requires no propellant and produces no exhaust. It's called the EmDrive, and it's able to convert microwave energy directly into thrust inside a sealed chamber. Oh, it's totally silent and highly efficient, too. If it seems too good to be true, well, you're not the only one who feels that way. But the researchers have a prototype that apparently works, and they've just published a paper detailing it.

Before we get into the mechanics of the EmDrive, let's give it some context. An engine is something that converts energy into motion. There are lots and lots of different ways of doing this, but let's take a look at a very simple one: a rocket engine. With a rocket engine, you've got a big tube with some explosive stuff (propellant) in it. When you launch the rocket and the propellant combusts, it tries to expand in all directions at once, but because it's stuck in a tube, it can only make it out the back. This means that the force that explosion exerts on the tube is symmetrical in every direction except for the back and the front, and as the propellant escapes out the back, the rocket gets pushed forward.

 

[Mr. H.]

The Belgian EmDrive...

 

[ScienceRocks]

Asteroid-Targeting System Could Vaporize Dangerous Space Rocks

http://www.space.com...pace-rocks.html

Quote

...Lubin and his colleagues have conceived of a system they call DE-STAR, or Directed Energy Solar Targeting of Asteroids and exploration. The concept: harness power from the sun and convert it into a massive phased array of laser beams that can deflect or evaporate asteroids hazardous to Earth.

"This system is not some far-out idea from Star Trek," Gary B. Hughes, a researcher at California Polytechnic State University, said in a statement. "All the components of this system pretty much exist today. Maybe not quite at the scale that we'd need — scaling up would be the challenge — but the basic elements are all there and ready to go."

 

[Mr. H.]

Asteroid-Targeting System Could Vaporize Dangerous Space Rocks

http://www.space.com...pace-rocks.html

Quote

...Lubin and his colleagues have conceived of a system they call DE-STAR, or Directed Energy Solar Targeting of Asteroids and exploration. The concept: harness power from the sun and convert it into a massive phased array of laser beams that can deflect or evaporate asteroids hazardous to Earth.

"This system is not some far-out idea from Star Trek," Gary B. Hughes, a researcher at California Polytechnic State University, said in a statement. "All the components of this system pretty much exist today. Maybe not quite at the scale that we'd need — scaling up would be the challenge — but the basic elements are all there and ready to go."

That could come in handy. Once every 10 million years or so.

 

[ScienceRocks]

Newly discovered planet is tiniest one yet

Kepler 37-b is roughly size of Earth's moon, report released today says

By Emily Chung, CBC News

Posted: Feb 20, 2013 1:00 PM ET

Last Updated: Feb 20, 2013 1:14 PM ET
Newly discovered planet is tiniest one yet - Technology & Science - CBC News

A hot, rocky planet discovered using the Kepler space telescope is the smallest ever found outside our solar system.

The new planet, called Kepler-37b, has a radius less than a third the size of Earth’s, making it roughly the size of the moon, a paper published online in the journal Nature reported Wednesday.

"The thing that really I find astounding about this is we’ve managed to find a planet that is smaller than any that we know of in our own inner solar system,” Thomas Barclay, a researcher at NASA-Ames Research Center, who led the study, said in an interview with CBC News.

Barclay noted that many of the first planets found outside our solar system were larger than the planets found in our own solar system, showing that stellar systems could be quite different from our own.

"Now we know that things are not only larger than what we have in our own solar system, but also smaller,” he said.

That makes Kepler-37b “significantly smaller” than Mercury, which has officially been the smallest planet in our solar system since Pluto was demoted to a “dwarf planet” by the International Astronomical Union in 2006.

Kepler-37b is the inner-most of three planets detected orbiting a star called Kepler-37, located about 210 light years away from Earth in the constellation Lyra.

The star is sun-like, but cooler and a little bit smaller than the sun, according to the paper by Kepler-37b is thought to be a rocky, with no atmosphere, like Mercury. Because it is very close to its star, its surface temperature is estimated to be a scorching 400 C. The little planet is also a speedy traveller, completing its journey around its star once every 13 days.

The two other planets in the system are Kepler-37c, which has a radius about 70 per cent the size of Earth’s, and Kepler-37d, which has a radius about double that of the Earth’s.

 

[ScienceRocks]

Nearby Ancient Star is Almost as Old as the Universe

A metal-poor star located merely 190 light-years from the Sun is 14.46+-0.80 billion years old, which implies that the star is nearly as old as the Universe! Those results emerged from a new study led by Howard Bond. Such metal-poor stars are (super) important to astronomers because they set an independent lower limit for the age of the Universe, which can be used to corroborate age estimates inferred by other means.

Nearby Ancient Star is Almost as Old as the Universe

 

[ScienceRocks]

Private Space Company Plans To Send Space Tourists To Mars By 2018

Dennis Tito, the first private space tourist and chairman of Inspiration Mars Foundation, is planning to open up opportunities for people to take a trip to Mars in a 501-day trip.

...

Tito first made history in 2001, after paying $20 million for a ride to the International Space Station (ISS) aboard a Russian Soyuz spacecraft. Since his expedition to space, six other individuals have taken similar flights.

According to a report by NBC, the mission to Mars being discussed next week would involve a flyby of Mars with a free return back to Earth. The type of mission would essentially be a straight trajectory, due to orbital conditions that will only be taking place in 2018 and 2031. The space tourist(s) would be heading towards the Red Planet in a modified SpaceX Dragon capsule, which NASA is considering for use for its astronauts.

Space Tourists May Fly To Mars By 2018 - Space News - redOrbit

 

[Mr. H.]

Nearby Ancient Star is Almost as Old as the Universe

A metal-poor star located merely 190 light-years from the Sun is 14.46+-0.80 billion years old, which implies that the star is nearly as old as the Universe! Those results emerged from a new study led by Howard Bond. Such metal-poor stars are (super) important to astronomers because they set an independent lower limit for the age of the Universe, which can be used to corroborate age estimates inferred by other means.

Nearby Ancient Star is Almost as Old as the Universe

I don't get it. How can that star be so close to us if it's that old?

 

[ScienceRocks]

Doesn't make any sense, Mental poor and 14.6 billion years old only 190 light years away. Makes one wonder.


The estimate for the occurrence rate of Earth-sized planets in the HZ of M dwarf stars has increased to 15%.

[1302.1647] The Occurrence Rate of Small Planets around Small Stars

We corrected an error in the code that calculates the number of stars for which a given planet could have been detected. The stellar parameters, planet parameters, and fraction of stars with planets did not change significantly. However, our estimate of the occurrence rate of habitable-zone, Earth-sized planets increased. Accepted for publication in ApJ. Machine readable tables in right sidebar

 

[ScienceRocks]

Second SpaceX Space Station Resupply Flight Ready to Go

Second SpaceX space station resupply flight ready to go
Feb. 25, 2013 —

The second International Space Station Commercial Resupply Services flight by Space Exploration Technologies (SpaceX) is set for liftoff at 10:10 a.m. EST on March 1 from Space Launch Complex 40 at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida.

Carried by a Falcon 9 rocket, the Dragon spacecraft will ferry 1,268 pounds of supplies for the space station crew and for experiments being conducted aboard the orbiting laboratory.

The Falcon 9 and Dragon were manufactured at SpaceX headquarters in Hawthorne, Calif., and arrived at the Florida launch site by truck. The rocket, topped with the spacecraft, stands 157-feet tall.

The two-stage rocket uses nine engines to power the first stage, generating 855,000 pounds of thrust at sea level, rising to nearly 1,000,000 pounds of thrust as Falcon 9 climbs out of Earth's atmosphere. One engine powers the second stage to complete the climb to space. The 14.4-foot-tall Dragon spacecraft is capable of carrying more than 7,000 pounds of cargo split between pressurized and unpressurized sections.

 

[ScienceRocks]

Lab Instruments Inside Curiosity Eat Mars Rock Powder

Lab instruments inside Curiosity eat Mars rock powder
Feb. 25, 2013 —

Two compact laboratories inside NASA's Mars rover Curiosity have ingested portions of the first sample of rock powder ever collected from the interior of a rock on Mars.

Curiosity science team members will use the laboratories to analyze the rock powder in the coming days and weeks.

The rover's Chemistry and Mineralogy (CheMin) and Sample Analysis at Mars (SAM) instruments received portions of the sample on Friday and Saturday, Feb. 22 and 23, respectively, and began inspecting the powder.

 

[ScienceRocks]

Is a Comet on a Collision Course with Mars?

by Nancy Atkinson on February 26, 2013

Is a Comet on a Collision Course with Mars?

Simulation of the close approach of C/2013 A1 to Mars in Celestia using the latest info from the Minor Planet Center. Credit: Ian Musgrave/Astroblog.

There is an outside chance that a newly discovered comet might be on a collision course with Mars. Astronomers are still determining the trajectory of the comet, named C/2013 A1 (Siding Spring), but at the very least, it is going to come fairly close to the Red Planet in October of 2014. “Even if it doesn’t impact it will look pretty good from Earth, and spectacular from Mars,” wrote Australian amateur astronomer Ian Musgrave, “probably a magnitude -4 comet as seen from Mars’s surface.”

The comet was discovered in the beginning of 2013 by comet-hunter Robert McNaught at the Siding Spring Observatory in New South Wales, Australia. According to a discussion on the IceInSpace amateur astronomy forum when the discovery was initially made, astronomers at the Catalina Sky Survey in Arizona looked back over their observations to find “prerecovery” images of the comet dating back to Dec. 8, 2012. These observations placed the orbital trajectory of comet C/2013 A1 right through Mars orbit on Oct. 19, 2014.

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Read more: Is a Comet on a Collision Course with Mars?