Space news and Exploration II

[ScienceRocks]

LightSail Sends First Data Back to Earth

The Planetary Society’s LightSail spacecraft is sending home telemetry data following a Wednesday commute to orbit aboard a United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket. Deployment from the Centaur upper stage occurred at 1:05 p.m. EDT (17:05 p.m. UTC), and LightSail crossed into range of its Cal Poly San Luis Obispo ground station at 2:20 p.m....

 

[Mac1958]

This is a freakin' great thread, Matthew.

I've said to myself, "holy crap, how cool" to most of the posts.

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[ScienceRocks]

In the Late-2020s a microlensing survey could tell if Rogue planets are more common than planets around Stars

The Wide Field Infrared Survey Telescope (WFIRST) is a proposed infrared space observatory which was selected by National Research Council committee as the top priority for the next decade of astronomy. The WFIRST space telescope could be in space by 2024 if it is started in 2017. Estimates suggested that every planetary system in the galaxy...

 

[ScienceRocks]

Large Survey Telescope will image the entire sky every few nights for a thousand fold increase in survey power

The Large Synoptic Survey Telescope (LSST) is a planned wide-field "survey" reflecting telescope that will photograph the entire available sky every few nights. The LSST is currently in its design and mirror-development phases. Site construction is scheduled to begin in October 2014, with engineering first light in 2019, science first light...

 

[ScienceRocks]

Mind Boggling: NASA Discovers "The Most Luminous Galaxy in the Universe"

(Washington, DC)—A remote galaxy shining with the light of more than 300 trillion suns has been discovered using data from NASA's Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE). The galaxy is the most luminous galaxy found to date and belongs to a new class of objects recently discovered by WISE—extremely luminous infrared galaxies, or ELIRGs.

"We are looking at a very intense phase of galaxy evolution," said Chao-Wei Tsai of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, California, lead author of a new report appearing in the May 22 issue of The Astrophysical Journal. "This dazzling light may be from the main growth spurt of the galaxy's black hole."

The brilliant galaxy, known as WISE J224607.57-052635.0, may have a behemoth black hole at its belly, gorging itself on gas. Supermassive black holes draw gas and matter into a disk around them, heating the disk to roaring temperatures of millions of degrees and blasting out high-energy, visible, ultraviolet, and X-ray light. The light is blocked by surrounding cocoons of dust. As the dust heats up, it radiates infrared light.

Immense black holes are common at the cores of galaxies, but finding one this big so "far back" in the cosmos is rare. Because light from the galaxy hosting the black hole has traveled 12.5 billion years to reach us, astronomers are seeing the object as it was in the distant past. The black hole was already billions of times the mass of our sun when our universe was only a tenth of its present age of 13.8 billion years

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[longknife]

Certainly not a typical galaxy. Explained @ http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/05/150525100810.htm

 

[ScienceRocks]

KELT-8b: A highly inflated transiting hot Jupiter and a new technique for extracting high-precision radial velocities from noisy spectra

We announce the discovery of a highly inflated transiting hot Jupiter discovered by the KELT-North survey. A global analysis including constraints from isochrones indicates that the V = 10.8 host star (HD 343246) is a mildly evolved, G dwarf with Teff=5754+54-55 K, logg=4.078+0.049-0.054, [Fe/H]=0.272±0.038, an inferred mass M∗=1.211+0.078-0.066 M⊙, and radius R∗=1.67+0.14-0.12 R⊙. The planetary companion has mass MP=0.867+0.065-0.061 MJ, radius RP=1.86+0.18-0.16 RJ, surface gravity loggP=2.793+0.072-0.075, and density ρP=0.167+0.047-0.038[/sub] g cm[sup]-3. The planet is on a roughly circular orbit with semimajor axis a=0.04571+0.00096-0.00084 AU and eccentricity e=0.035+0.050-0.025. The best-fit linear ephemeris is T0=2456883.4803±0.0007 BJDTDB and P=3.24406±0.00016 days. This planet is one of the most inflated of all known transiting exoplanets, making it one of the few members of a class of extremely low density, highly-irradiated gas giants. The low stellar logg and large implied radius are supported by stellar density constraints from follow-up light curves, plus an evolutionary and space motion analysis. We also develop a new technique to extract high precision radial velocities from noisy spectra that reduces the observing time needed to confirm transiting planet candidates. This planet boasts deep transits of a bright star, a large inferred atmospheric scale height, and a high equilibrium temperature of Teq=1675+61-55 K, assuming zero albedo and perfect heat redistribution, making it one of the best targets for future atmospheric characterization studies.

 

[ScienceRocks]

http://www.nasa.gov/press-release/co...ssions-in-2017

The Commercial Crew Program ordered its first crew rotation mission from The Boeing Company. SpaceX, which successfully performed a pad abort test of its flight vehicle earlier this month, is expected to receive its first order later this year. Determination of which company will fly its mission to the station first will be made at a later time. The contract calls for the orders to take place prior to certification to support the lead time necessary for the first mission in late 2017, provided the contractors meet certain readiness conditions.

 

[ScienceRocks]

More details of Chandrayaan 2 and its payload.

http://indianexpress.com/article/tec...2-by-2015-end/

ISRO has set 2017-18 as a target for launching Chandrayaan-2, which is being developed as an “indigenous” mission. “The preliminary design review is over and the flight models are under fabrication. We will be delivering the payload by the end of this year or at the beginning of next year,” Misra added. SAC is developing three major payloads namely the Terrain Mapping Camera-2 (TMC-2), Imaging Infra-Red Spectrometer (IIRS) and L&S Band Synthetic Aperture Radar (L&S-band SAR). All these three payloads will be part of the orbiter that will encircle the moon.

Most of the equipment being developed at SAC are advanced versions of those on Chandrayaan-1 which was lost mid-way during the mission in 2009. For instance, the TMC-1 that had accompanied Chandrayaan-1 mission had mapped only 45 percent of the moon’s surface. TMC-2, which will be only two-third the weight of it’s predecessor, will be mapping the remaining surface and will be creating a three-dimensional map of the lunar surface.

Meanwhile, the L&S-Band SAR will be the first indigenously developed microwave sensor to be flown in a planetary mission. This equipment will not only help detect water-ice, but it will also have the capability to estimate the quantum of water present in a particular area. It will also map polar regions and lunar craters.

The IIRS is also an advanced version to the spectrometers – Hyper Spectral Imager (of SAC), Moon Mineralogy Mapper (NASA) and Near Infrared Spectrometer (Germany) – flown onboard the Chandrayaan-1. Such an instrument which can also look at the permanently shadowed areas of polar regions of the moon is being development for the first time in ISRO.

 

[ScienceRocks]

NASA’s New Horizons Sees More Detail as It Draws Closer to Pluto

NASA s New Horizons Sees More Detail as It Draws Closer to Pluto NASA
What a difference 20 million miles makes! Images of Pluto from NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft are growing in scale as the spacecraft approaches its mysterious target. The new images, taken May 8-12 using a powerful telescopic camera and downlinked last week, reveal more detail about Pluto’s complex and high contrast surface.

These images show Pluto in the latest series of New Horizons Long Range Reconnaissance Imager (LORRI) photos, taken May 8-12, 2015, compared to LORRI images taken one month earlier. In the month between these image sets, New Horizons’ distance to Pluto decreased from 68 million miles (110 million kilometers) to 47 million miles (75 million kilometers), as the spacecraft speeds toward a close encounter with the Pluto system in mid-July. The April images are shown on the left, with the May images on the right. All have been rotated to align Pluto’s rotational axis with the vertical direction (up-down), as depicted schematically in the center panel. Between April and May, Pluto appears to get larger as the spacecraft gets closer, with Pluto’s apparent size increasing by approximately 50 percent. Pluto rotates around its axis every 6.4 Earth days, and these images show the variations in Pluto’s surface features during its rotation. These images are displayed at four times the native LORRI image size, and have been processed using a method called deconvolution, which sharpens the original images to enhance features on Pluto. Deconvolution can occasionally add “false” details, so the finest details in these pictures will need to be confirmed by images taken from closer range in the next few weeks. All of the images are displayed using the same linear brightness scale.

The images were taken from just under 50 million miles (77 million kilometers) away, using the Long-Range Reconnaissance Imager (LORRI) on New Horizons. Because New Horizons was approximately 20 million miles closer to Pluto in mid-May than in mid-April, the new images contain about twice as many pixels on the object as images made in mid-April.

A technique called image deconvolution sharpens the raw, unprocessed pictures beamed back to Earth. In the April images, New Horizons scientists determined that Pluto has broad surface markings – some bright, some dark – including a bright area at one pole that may be a polar cap. The newer imagery released here shows finer details. Deconvolution can occasionally produce spurious details, so the finest details in these images will need confirmation from images to be made from closer range in coming weeks.

"As New Horizons closes in on Pluto, it's transforming from a point of light to a planetary object of intense interest," said NASA's Director of Planetary Science Jim Green. "We're in for an exciting ride for the next seven weeks."

“These new images show us that Pluto’s differing faces are each distinct; likely hinting at what may be very complex surface geology or variations in surface composition from place to place,” added New Horizons Principal Investigator Alan Stern of the Southwest Research Institute in Boulder, Colorado. “These images also continue to support the hypothesis that Pluto has a polar cap whose extent varies with longitude; we’ll be able to make a definitive determination of the polar bright region’s iciness when we get compositional spectroscopy of that region in July.”

The images New Horizons returns will dramatically improve in coming weeks as the spacecraft speeds closer to its July 14 encounter with the Pluto system, covering about 750,000 miles per day.

“By late June the image resolution will be four times better than the images made May 8-12, and by the time of closest approach, we expect to obtain images with more than 5,000 times the current resolution,” said Hal Weaver, the mission’s project scientist at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) in Laurel, Maryland.

Following a January 2006 launch, New Horizons is currently about 2.95 billion miles from home; the spacecraft is healthy and all systems are operating normally.

 

[ScienceRocks]

Boeing awarded first commercial manned space mission contract
By David Szondy
May 28, 2015
2 Pictures

Commercial passenger spaceflight has gone on the books with Boeing announcing that it's received the first contract ever issued to a private company to carry out a manned space mission. The NASA task order means that Boeing's CST-100 spacecraft will ferry crews to the International Space Station (ISS) on up to six missions.

 

[ScienceRocks]

http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/20..._134262236.htm

China's space capabilities are ranked the fourth in the world, and the gap between the leading powers is narrowing, according to a report issued recently by a Chinese research organization.

China is at a crucial period developing from a major power to a great power in space, says an evaluation by the Beijing Institute of Space Science and Technology Information, affiliated to the China Academy of Space Technology.

Last year saw a record 92 launches around the world, with 262 spacecraft put into orbit. The institute for the first time evaluated the space capabilities of 20 countries and regions across six aspects: strategy, product systems, infrastructure, industrial scale, innovation and international influence.

It rated the United States, Europe, Russia, China, Japan and India as the leading powers in space.

 

[ScienceRocks]

NASA begins testing InSight, next Mars lander, for 2016 mission

NASA begins testing InSight next Mars lander for 2016 mission ExtremeTech

NASA has had a remarkable record when it comes to successful missions on the Red Planet, dating back to 1976 with Viking 1 and 2, Pathfinder and Sojourner in 1997, the Spirit and Opportunity rovers in 2004, and Curiosity‘s crazy ‘7 minutes of terror’ landing in 2012. Each time, the spacecraft rovers are orders of magnitude more sophisticated, and two of the last three rovers are still doing science. Now NASA’s set to do it all over again come March 2016 with the InSight spacecraft, which will launch from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California and land on Mars roughly six months later.

Once on the surface, the mission is scheduled to last two years — 720 days, or 700 sols — and begin delivering science data in October 2016.

“Today, our robotic scientific explorers are paving the way, making great progress on the journey to Mars,” said Jim Green, director of NASA’s Planetary Science Division at the agency’s headquarters in Washington, in a statement. “Together, humans and robotics will pioneer Mars and the solar system.”

InSight will be as large as a car, and instead of looking for signs of life or studying surface rock composition, it’s directed at learning more about the interior of Mars. The name is an unwieldy acronym that reflects that: Interior Exploration using Seismic Investigations, Geodesy, and Heat Transport. Currently, NASA has begun testing the craft’s ability to operate in and survive deep space travel, as well as the famously harsh conditions on the surface of the Red Planet.

 

[ScienceRocks]

MIT study on exoplanet orbits may narrow parameters in search for life
By Anthony Wood
June 1, 2015

A team of researchers from MIT and Aarhus University, Denmark, have discovered that Earth-sized exoplanets orbit their parent stars in the same way that our planet orbits our own Sun – maintaining a roughly equidistant circular orbit. The discovery further narrows the characteristics of worlds that could potentially play host to extraterrestrial life.

 

[ScienceRocks]

Herschel images present a stunning insight into the distribution of matter in our galaxy
By Anthony Wood
June 1, 2015
3 Pictures

Three stunning new images from ESA's Herschel Space Observatory are providing new insights into how matter is distributed in our galaxy. Observations made by the orbital telescope have led astronomers to conclude that our galaxy is threaded with filamentary structures similar to those featured in the newly-released images, the smallest of which stretches across 170 light years of space.

 

[ScienceRocks]

Green light for Magellan super-scope


3 June 2015

Construction of the Giant Magellan Telescope has been given the go-ahead.
One of the largest optical observing systems ever conceived, the GMT will sit atop Cerro Las Campanas in Chile.
With its 24.5m-wide primary mirror system, astronomers should be able to see the first objects to emit light in the Universe, investigate dark energy and dark matter, and identify potentially habitable planets.
The GMT's international partners have all approved the $500m assembly phase.
Contracts against this money can now be awarded to suppliers.
Three are already at various stages of production (one is actually finished); the other four will begin their manufacture very soon.
"We expect in late 2021, possibly in early 2022, we will put three or four primary mirrors in the telescope, start doing some engineering, start doing some astronomy, and by that point we will have the largest (optical) telescope on the planet by a good margin," said GMT director, Pat McCarthy.
"We'll then slowly integrate the rest of the mirrors as they come along so that by 2024 or 2025, we should have all seven mirrors in the telescope," he told BBC News.

http://www.bbc.co.uk...onment-32984957

 

[longknife]

Space Station Remodelling

Why is the Lame Street Media giving out so little news about this huge advancement for science in general? Because NASA not has to pay Russia to get our astronauts there? Of because re-supply is being done by private companies.


They make a huge change to the station and not a peep!


Read the story @ Space Station remodelling

 

[ScienceRocks]

Hubble studies Pluto's wobbly moons

5 June 2015

Hubble has revealed fascinating new details about Pluto's four smaller moons.
At a distance of five billion km, the telescope only sees the satellites as faint pinpricks of light, and yet it has been able to discern information on their size, colour, and rotational and orbital characteristics.
Hubble finds the little objects to be somewhat chaotic in their behaviour.
They are very likely wobbling end over end as they move through their orbits.
"If you can imagine what it would be like to live on [these moons], you would literally not know where the Sun was coming up tomorrow," said Mark Showalter from the Seti Institute, US.
"The Sun might rise in the west and set in the east. The Sun might rise in the west and set in the north for that matter.
"In fact, if you had real estate on the north pole… you might discover one day you’re on the south pole."

http://www.bbc.co.uk...onment-33005898

 

[ScienceRocks]

ESA reveals candidates for new space science missions Spaceflight Now

In a separate announcement Thursday, ESA unveiled its top three picks for a new “medium-class” science mission due for launch in 2025.

The three candidate missions — ARIEL, THOR and XIPE — were culled from a list of 27 proposals. They will now undergo thorough evaluations before ESA officials decide on one project to proceed toward launch.

 

[ScienceRocks]

http://www.parabolicarc.com/2015/06/...oster-engines/

Details are contained in a patent application titled, Simplified Reusable Module for Launcher. Media reports say the company has been working on the project, which is code named Adeline, since 2010 and has conducted demonstration flights. The system could be used on any rocket, including the Ariane 6 that is now under development.

More information in spacenews.com

http://spacenews.com/meet-adeline-ai...spacex-rocket/

Airbus Defence and Space on June 5 unveiled the product of what it said was a five-year effort to design a reusable Ariane rocket first-stage engine and avionics package, a project company official said was stimulated by SpaceX’s work on reusable rockets.

Airbus officials said they believe they have resolved some of the issues inherent in Hawthorne, California-based SpaceX’s reusability effort, notably the exposure of the first stage engine to high-speed stresses as it descends through the atmosphere to its landing zone.

Airbus’s Adeline — short for Advanced Expendable Launcher with Innovative engine Economy — also imposes a much smaller performance penalty on its rocket than is the case for SpaceX’s reusable Falcon 9 first stage, all the while reusing 80 percent of the stage’s economic value — the engine, avionics and propulsion bay.