Space news and Exploration II

[ScienceRocks]

Falcon 9 ORBCOMM first stage propulsive landing!

 

[ScienceRocks]

SpaceX Sets Dates for Launch Escape Tests on Dragon Spaceship

SpaceX Sets Dates for Launch Escape Tests on Dragon Spaceship

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SpaceX plans to conduct two critical tests of its manned Dragon capsule's emergency abort system, designed to carry astronauts to safety during a launch failure, in the next five months, according to media reports.

The first test will take place in November on the launch pad at Florida's Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, while the second will be an in-flight trial originating from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California, Space News reportedtoday (Aug. 7), citing a presentation yesterday by SpaceX's Garrett Reisman at the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics' Space 2014 conference in San Diego.

 

[ScienceRocks]

June 17th 2014 Closing Bell Session is a talk about SpaceX being the number one on CNBC's Disruptor 50 List. They also talk about SolarCity's major plan in NY and Tesla's direct sales update.

Elon feels it not just getting to Mars but there needs to be a sustainable human City on Mars.

Elon says Spacex should recover and relaunch a first stage booster next year (2015).

For solar power, Elon thinks there is an over supply of low efficiency panels. What is needed is more high efficiency solar panels. He is thinking ahead to the need for high volume of high efficiency panels. Needing less area for high efficiency solar panels lowers the cost for installation and other overhead costs.

Elon Musk says that a sustainable human city is needed on Mars to achieve his multi-planetary goal

 

[ScienceRocks]

New Horizons Mission Catches Pluto And Charon Waltzing

By Caleb A. Scharf | August 8, 2014

After a ten year journey, NASA’s New Horizons mission is still 420 million kilometers from the Pluto system – but that’s close enough to begin to see the orbital dance of an icy world and its major moon.

New Horizons Mission Catches Pluto And Charon Waltzing | Life, Unbounded, Scientific American Blog Network

 

[ScienceRocks]

Twin Alien Planets Could Boost Chances for Extraterrestrial Life

Twin Alien Planets Could Boost Chances for Extraterrestrial Life

Alien planets could host life well into their old age if they have companion worlds tugging at them, researchers say.

Such exoplanets could potentially be the longest-lived life-friendly areas in the universe, enduring for up to 10 trillion years, scientists added.

As planets age, they cool, with their hot molten cores solidifying over time. This probably makes them geologically active and therefore less habitable for life as we know it, scientists say. On Earth, life depends on the geological activity of plate tectonics to circulate rocks that can absorb or release carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas that absorbs heat. Without plate tectonics, the planet might experience runaway heating or cooling, and thus potentially become uninhabitable.

 

[ScienceRocks]

Neptune's Moon Triton Spotlighted In 'Best-Ever' Map Created From Old Voyager Data


A scientist has created the best-ever global color map of Neptune's big moon Triton, using images taken by a NASA spacecraft 25 years ago.

Paul Schenk of the Lunar and Planetary Institute in Houston produced the map after restoring photos snapped by the Voyager 2 probe during its flyby of Neptune and Triton on Aug. 25, 1989. The new map has also been turned into a minute-long movie of Voyager 2's historic Triton encounter — the first and only time a spacecraft has ever visited the Neptune system.

The new map, which has a resolution of 1,970 feet (600 meters) per pixel, may help bring enigmatic Triton back into the spotlight. [Photos of Neptune, The Mysterious Blue Planet]

 

[ScienceRocks]

New Horizons passes Neptune orbit on way to Pluto encounter
By David Szondy
August 26, 2014
11 Pictures

Like a traveler on a very long road trip, a deep space probe has passed the last sign post before its destination. NASA has announced that its New Horizons probe has passed the orbit of Neptune – its last milestone before it flies by Pluto on July 14 next year. Launched in 2006, the piano-sized unmanned spacecraft is almost 2.75 billion mi (4.42 billion km) from Earth and is the fastest man-made object ever sent into space. Read More

 

[ScienceRocks]

NASA Team working on World’s most Powerful Rocket

To help to send the astronauts into deep space and get them safely home again, scientists are working on a heavy-life rocket, known as the Space Launch System.

On Wednesday, NASA officials announced a major milestone in developing a heavy-lift system, which has a development budget of more than $7 billion. The NASA rocket, Space Launch System, is scheduled to make its initial launch no later than November 2018.

 

[ScienceRocks]

Rosetta: Landing Site Search Narrows
Rosetta Landing Site Search Narrows - NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory
August 25, 2014

The European Space Agency's Rosetta mission has chosen five candidate landing sites on comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko for its Philae lander. Philae's descent to the comet's nucleus, scheduled for this November, will be the first such landing ever attempted. Rosetta is an international mission spearheaded by the European Space Agency with support and instruments provided by NASA.

Choosing the right landing site is a complex process. It must balance the technical needs of the orbiter and lander during all phases of the separation, descent and landing, and during operations on the surface, with the scientific requirements of the 10 instruments on board Philae. A key issue is that uncertainties in navigating the orbiter close to the comet mean that it is possible to specify any given landing zone only in terms of an ellipse - covering about-four-tenths of a square mile (one square kilometer) - within which Philae might land.

"This is the first time landing sites on a comet have been considered," said Stephan Ulamec, Philae Lander Manager at the German Aerospace Center, Cologne, Germany. "The candidate sites that we want to follow up for further analysis are thought to be technically feasible on the basis of a preliminary analysis of flight dynamics and other key issues - for example, they all provide at least six hours of daylight per comet rotation and offer some flat terrain. Of course, every site has the potential for unique scientific discoveries."

For each possible zone, important questions must be asked: Will the lander be able to maintain regular communications with Rosetta? How common are surface hazards such as large boulders, deep crevasses or steep slopes? Is there sufficient illumination for scientific operations and enough sunlight to recharge the lander's batteries beyond its initial 64-hour lifetime without causing overheating?

 

[ScienceRocks]

Radio telescopes settle controversy over distance to Pleiades
Published: Friday, August 29, 2014 - 04:18 in Astronomy & Space

Astronomers have used a worldwide network of radio telescopes to resolve a controversy over the distance to a famous star cluster -- a controversy that posed a potential challenge to scientists' basic understanding of how stars form and evolve. The new work shows that the measurement made by a cosmic-mapping research satellite was wrong. The astronomers studied the Pleiades, the famous "Seven Sisters" star cluster in the constellation Taurus, easily seen in the winter sky. The cluster includes hundreds of young, hot stars formed about 100 million years ago. As a nearby example of such young clusters, the Pleiades have served as a key "cosmic laboratory" for refining scientists' understanding of how similar clusters form. In addition, astronomers have used the measured physical characteristics of Pleiades stars as a tool for estimating the distance to other, more distant, clusters.

Until the 1990s, the consensus was that the Pleiades are about 430 light-years from Earth. However, the European satellite Hipparcos, launched in 1989 to precisely measure the positions and distances of thousands of stars, produced a distance measurement of only about 390 light-years.

Radio telescopes settle controversy over distance to Pleiades e Science News

 

[ScienceRocks]

How can we find tiny particles in exoplanet atmospheres?
Aug 29, 2014 by Seth Shostak

It may seem like magic, but astronomers have worked out a scheme that will allow them to detect and measure particles ten times smaller than the width of a human hair, even at many light-years distance. They can do this by observing a blue tint in the light from far-off objects caused by the way in which small particles, no more than a micron in size (one-thousandth of a millimeter) scatter light.

Read more at: How can we find tiny particles in exoplanet atmospheres

 

[ScienceRocks]

NASA deep-space rocket, SLS, to launch in 2018
Aug 27, 2014

Artist concept of NASA’s Space Launch System (SLS) 70-metric-ton configuration launching to space. Credit: NASA

The US space agency's powerful deep-space rocket, known as the Space Launch System (SLS), aims to blast off for the first time in 2018, NASA said Wednesday.

The SLS has been in development for three years already, and when finished it should propel spacecraft beyond Earth's orbit and eventually launch crew vehicles to Mars by the 2030s.

NASA has now completed a thorough review of the project, signifying formal space agency commitment to the 70 metric ton version of the SLS at a cost of $7.021 billion from 2014 to 2018.

"The program is making real, significant progress," said William Gerstenmaier, associate administrator for the Human Explorations and Operations Mission Directorate at NASA.

Read more at: NASA deep-space rocket SLS to launch in 2018

I use it to send humans back to the moon. I'd then put a telescope on the other side of the moon with a base to man it.

 

[Moonglow]

I am looking forward to 2018 mars mission with great anticipation...

 

[Moonglow]

I could not find a link, but NASA is looking for contractors for it's new shuttle program. The Air Force has had a re-entry plane in orbit over 600 days now..Wonder what they are doing up there??

 

[ScienceRocks]

DeOrbiter microsatellite could put wayard satellites back on track
By David Szondy
September 1, 2014

Tel Aviv-based start up Effective Space Solutions claims that its DeOrbiter microsatellites could not only be used to dispose of defunct geosynchronous satellites, but could also rescue a pair of errant Galileo satellites currently trapped in the wrong orbit and put them back into service.

Read More

 

[ScienceRocks]

Russia May Continue ISS Work Beyond 2020
4 September 2014

Russia may continue working at the International Space Station (ISS) beyond 2020, Izvestia newspaper reported Monday.

"The issue of Russia's participation at the ISS after 2020 remains open, but there is a 90-percent chance that the state's leadership will agree to participate in the project further," the paper wrote citing a source at Russia's Federal Space Agency Roscosmos.
Russian space enterprises continue to make new modules for the space station according to the schedule, the paper said.

http://www.space-tra...d_2020_999.html

 

[ScienceRocks]

Evidence of forming planet discovered 335 light years from Earth

An international team of scientists led by a Clemson University astrophysicist has discovered new evidence that planets are forming around a star about 335 light years from Earth.

The team found carbon monoxide emission that strongly suggests a planet is orbiting a relatively young star known as HD100546. The candidate planet is the second that astronomers have discovered orbiting the star.

Theories of how planets form are well-developed. But if the new study's findings are confirmed, the activity around HD100546 would mark one of the first times astronomers have been able to directly observe planet formation happening.

Read more at: Evidence of forming planet discovered 335 light years from Earth

 

[ScienceRocks]

Half of all exoplanet host stars are binaries

(Phys.org) —Imagine living on an exoplanet with two suns. One, you orbit and the other is a very bright, nearby neighbor looming large in your sky. With this "second sun" in the sky, nightfall might be a rare event, perhaps only coming seasonally to your planet. A new study suggests that this could be far more common than we realized.

Read more at: Half of all exoplanet host stars are binaries

 

[ScienceRocks]

Project Dragonfly is competition to design interstellar laser sail probes that would be technological feasible by 2034 and launched by 2050

Project Dragonfly is a feasibility study for an interstellar mission, conducted by small, distributed spacecraft, propelled primarily by laser sails. The spacecraft shall be capable of reaching the target star system within a century and be able to decelerate. We believe that such a mission can be conducted with technology available by 2024-2034 as well as a space infrastructure, available by 2050.

The competition's main objective is to identify innovative mission architectures that are feasible in terms of required technologies as well as required resources. The final design reports of the teams shall cover all areas, which are relevant for returning scientific data from such a mission: instruments, communication, laser sail design, power supply, secondary structure, deceleration propulsion etc. Furthermore, the technological as well as economic feasibility of the architecture shall be assessed by the teams.

 

[ScienceRocks]

NASA probe identifies clouds on Mars

WASHINGTON: The belief that Mars could support life received a boost when NASA's Curiosity Mars Rover identified clouds that researchers believe are most likely to have formed through the accumulation of water ice crystals or supercooled water droplets.

"Clouds are part of the planet's climate system," Robert Haberle, a planetary scientist from the NASA Ames Research Center was quoted as saying by Astrobiology Magazine.

"Their behaviour tells us about winds and temperatures," he explained.

"Some studies suggest that clouds in the past may have significantly warmed the planet through a greenhouse effect. A warmer environment is more conducive to life," Haberle added.

So far, Curiosity's main focus was downwards, drilling into Mars rock and sampling dust within its on-board chemistry laboratory.

Now, turning towards the skies, the robot has identified clouds. In a recent series of image ..

Read more at:
NASA probe identifies clouds on Mars - The Economic Times