Space news and Exploration II

[ScienceRocks]

NASA to fly material testing experiment on X-37B spaceplane
By David Szondy
May 9, 2015
4 Pictures

More details have been revealed about the X-37B spaceplane's upcoming OTV-4 mission. When it launches on May 20 from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida, the (not entirely) secret X-37B will carry a NASA experiment called Materials Exposure and Technology Innovation in Space (METIS) designed to test new materials for use in future spacecraft.

 

[ScienceRocks]

More details of the third stage of the proposed four-stage Angara-5V.

http://www.russianspaceweb.com/angara_urm2v.html

For the first time since the mighty Energia rocket flew its final mission in 1988, a new Russian booster propelled by hydrogen will take to the sky onboard the Angara-5V rocket in the first half of 2020s. Provisionally known as URM-2V, it will serve as the third stage of the four-stage Angara-5V.

 

[ScienceRocks]

The Five Planets in the Kepler-296 Binary System All Orbit the Primary: A Statistical and Analytical Analysis

Kepler-296 is a binary star system with two M-dwarf components separated by 0.2 arcsec. Five transiting planets have been confirmed to be associated with the Kepler-296 system; given the evidence to date, however, the planets could in principle orbit either star. This ambiguity has made it difficult to constrain both the orbital and physical properties of the planets. Using both statistical and analytical arguments, this paper shows that all five planets are highly likely to orbit the primary star in this system. We performed a Markov-Chain Monte Carlo simulation using a five transiting planet model, leaving the stellar density and dilution with uniform priors. Using importance sampling, we compared the model probabilities under the priors of the planets orbiting either the brighter or the fainter component of the binary. A model where the planets orbit the brighter component, Kepler-296A, is strongly preferred by the data. Combined with our assertion that all five planets orbit the same star, the two outer planets in the system, Kepler-296 Ae and Kepler-296 Af, have radii of 1.53 +/- 0.26 and 1.80 +/- 0.31 R_earth, respectively, and receive incident stellar fluxes of 1.40 +/- 0.23 and 0.62 +/- 0.10 times the incident flux the Earth receives from the Sun. This level of irradiation places both planets within or close to the circumstellar habitable zone of their parent star.

 

[ScienceRocks]

Image: Chaos on watery Europa
5 hours ago

Enlarge
Credit: NASA/JPL/University of Arizona

Jupiter's moon Europa is brimming with water. Although it is thought to be mostly made up of rocky material, the moon is wrapped in a thick layer of water – some frozen to form an icy crust, some potentially pooled in shallow underground lakes or layers of slush, and vast quantities more lurking even deeper still in the form of a giant subsurface ocean.

Read more at: http://phys.org/news/2015-05-image-chaos-watery-europa.html#jCp

 

[ScienceRocks]

A Closer Look At Ceres' Mysterious Bright Spots Reveals We Were Wrong

With our ever closer looks at Ceres’ surface, we’ve been hoping to get close enough to finally see a bit more about where those two mystery light splotches were coming from. Well, now we have. And, it turns out that we were wrong about one very basic fact: There were not two of them.

There were actually lots and lots.

After taking a look at the surface from 8,400 miles away (the closest look yet), NASA scientists reported back two things: One, that the two bright spots were actually composed of many smaller bright spots, and, two, that their brightness was due to sunlight.

 

[ScienceRocks]

NASA challenges public for ideas to make a Mars colony more sustainable
By Anthony Wood
May 11, 2015

NASA has launched a public challenge with the aim of innovating technologies vital for the establishment of a colony on Mars. The agency is focused on a mission to the Red Planet, and has already taken the first vital steps. However, whilst simply reaching Mars with a cargo of healthy astronauts would be a monumental triumph, maintaining a permanent presence on so inhospitable a planet could prove to be a much greater technological challenge.

I find a sizable mars cave and seal it off. This would 1. block some of the U.V and Radiation from the sun and 2. Protect the crew from the elements.

 

[orogenicman]

Battle of the Heavyweight Rockets – SLS could face Exploration Class rival

Battle of the Heavyweight Rockets SLS could face Exploration Class rival NASASpaceFlight.com

I don't know if anyone has posted this before, but this is a very interesting article that was published last year in which some here might have an interest. It's a good read with lots of external links to related topics.

Enjoy,

 

[danielpalos]

Non-rocket space launch (NRS) refers to concepts for launch into space where some or all of the needed speed and altitude are provided by something other than expendable rockets.[1] A number of alternatives to expendable rockets have been proposed. In some systems such as skyhook, rocket sled launch, and air launch, a rocket is used to reach orbit, but it is only "part" of the system.


Present-day launch costs are very high – $10,000 to $25,000 per kilogram from Earth to low Earth orbit (LEO).[2] As a result, launch costs are a large percentage of the cost of all space endeavors. If launch costs can be made cheaper the total cost of space missions will be reduced. Fortunately, due to the exponential nature of the rocket equation, providing even a small amount of the velocity to LEO by other means has the potential of greatly reducing the cost of getting to orbit.


Getting launch costs down into the hundreds of dollars per kilogram range would make many of the proposed large scale space projects such as space colonization, space-based solar power[3] and terraforming Mars[4] possible.

...

A rail gun is a pair of conductive rails with a projectile between them. A coil gun similarly could be used for a non-rocket space launch.--Source: Non-rocket spacelaunch - Wikipedia the free encyclopedia

 

[orogenicman]

A rail gun will spaghettify any human being trying to use it to get into space.

 

[danielpalos]

A rail gun will spaghettify any human being trying to use it to get into space.

it depends on acceleration; "runways" could be longer than an aircraft carrier; and, in space it would be easier than rocket based missions.

 

[orogenicman]

A rail gun will spaghettify any human being trying to use it to get into space.

it depends on acceleration; "runways" could be longer than an aircraft carrier; and, in space it would be easier than rocket based missions.

Any rail gun large enough to launch a man-rated module would have to exert nearly 20,000 Gs to get it into LEO orbit, thus spaghettifying anyone in the module, to say nothing of the extreme heat exerted on the projectile.

 

[ScienceRocks]

New spacesuit tech simulates gravity on a personal scale
By David Szondy
May 11, 2015
2 Pictures

One thing that space definitely lacks is "down." Zero gravity isn't just disorienting, it also affects astronauts' health. Draper Laboratory's NASA-funded Variable Vector Countermeasure Suit (V2Suit) uses a new spacesuit technology to create a sort of artificial gravity that provides astronauts with a sense of up and down while helping relieve some of the detrimental effects of weightlessness.

 

[danielpalos]

A rail gun will spaghettify any human being trying to use it to get into space.

it depends on acceleration; "runways" could be longer than an aircraft carrier; and, in space it would be easier than rocket based missions.

Any rail gun large enough to launch a man-rated module would have to exert nearly 20,000 Gs to get it into LEO orbit, thus spaghettifying anyone in the module, to say nothing of the extreme heat exerted on the projectile.

how do rockets achieve similar results?

 

[orogenicman]

A rail gun will spaghettify any human being trying to use it to get into space.

it depends on acceleration; "runways" could be longer than an aircraft carrier; and, in space it would be easier than rocket based missions.

Any rail gun large enough to launch a man-rated module would have to exert nearly 20,000 Gs to get it into LEO orbit, thus spaghettifying anyone in the module, to say nothing of the extreme heat exerted on the projectile.

how do rockets achieve similar results?

A rail gun projectile moves at hypersonic speeds almost instantaneously. Rockets don't. And modern man-rated rockets rarely accelerate over 3-4 Gs during the course of the launch.

 

[orogenicman]

 

[ScienceRocks]

NASA-funded research seeks to produce breathable oxygen on Mars
By Anthony Wood
May 12, 2015
2 Pictures

Establishing and maintaining a permanent human presence on Mars promises to be one of the most technologically challenging ventures ever undertaken by our species. A key aspect of the endeavor is to create an environment in which human beings can survive and flourish – this requires a ready supply of oxygen. NASA is working with Indiana-based company Techshot Inc. in order to develop a solution with the potential to produce an abundant source of oxygen with minimal assistance from Earth.

 

[danielpalos]

i believe cannon ball sized space probes would do quite nicely.

 

[ScienceRocks]

I agree with you that a probe(without humans) maybe workable. But you're talking about a serious rail-gun!

 

[ScienceRocks]

Great to see some focus on Venus!!! Maybe focus on the habitual zone above the clouds to see if a floating colony maybe possible.



Venus Plane Pushed for Next NASA Next Frontiers Mission
by Dan Leone, Space News Writer | May 12, 2015 11:06am ET
Venus Plane Pushed for Next NASA Next Frontiers Mission

WASHINGTON — Northrop Grumman is developing an inflatable, propeller-powered aircraft for a years-long cruise in the sulfurous skies of Venus and is gearing up to enter the concept in NASA's next New Frontiers planetary science competition.

That Northrop believes its Venus Atmospheric Maneuverable Platform, or VAMP, could be ready to compete for about $1 billion in NASA funding as soon as Oct. 1 is a testament to the company's confidence in the concept, which despite arousing the intrigue of some Venus scientists is technically immature and likely to face competition from finalists of NASA's last New Frontiers contest.

"I think we can be ready," Ron Polidan, Northrop's Redondo, California-based chief architect of civil systems, told SpaceNews.

 

[orogenicman]

i believe cannon ball sized space probes would do quite nicely.

A hardened probe could, in theory be launched into orbit with a rail gun. This has been theorized for decades. But the issue you raised earlier, I believe, was using rail guns to launch people into space. And I'm afraid that is simply not possible.