Space news and Exploration II

[ScienceRocks]

Morpheus makes first night landing
Morpheus makes first night landing

Spacecraft lifting off at night are a beautiful sight, but equally impressive is when one lands in the dark under its own power. NASA’s robotic Morpheus prototype planetary lander did both of those in its first night-time free flight at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, which included an autonomous landing in an artificial lunar landscape.

 

[KissMy]

Space-X has a more impressive launch vehicle. It launches the capsule, returns to the launch pad by automatically landing itself in launch position & is ready to be refueled & relaunched.

[youtube]NoxiK7K28PU[/youtube]

 

[Indofred]

Virgin Galactic signs spaceflight deal with US authority

BBC News - Virgin Galactic signs spaceflight deal with US authority

Virgin Galactic has signed a deal with the US Federal Aviation Authority (FAA), which will allow it to charter space flights from its base in the US state of New Mexico.

The agreement lays out rules for how the flights will be integrated into US air space.

In a statement, Virgin Galactic said the deal brings it "another step closer" to commercial space flights.

The firm hopes to launch its first flight by the end of 2014.

Just as interesting is where the cash came from.
A British/American/ Arabic deal, including Bin Laden.

 

[Indofred]

Space-X has a more impressive launch vehicle. It launches the capsule, returns to the launch pad by automatically landing itself in launch position & is ready to be refueled & relaunched.

[youtube]NoxiK7K28PU[/youtube]

That is pretty cool.

 

[KissMy]

Space-X has a more impressive launch vehicle. It launches the capsule, returns to the launch pad by automatically landing itself in launch position & is ready to be refueled & relaunched.

[youtube]NoxiK7K28PU[/youtube]

That is pretty cool.

Here is a better video of the SpaceX Rocket.

 

[Indofred]

A thing of beauty.

 

[mamooth]

FAA approves SpaceX launch site in South Texas | The Space Reporter

At the southern tip of Texas, the site is farther south than Cape Canaveral, making it more efficient for launches.

 

[ScienceRocks]

The United Kingdom could have a spaceport by 2018.

Pending a regulatory report to be published this July and a technical feasibility study that is underway with the country's National Space Technology Programme (NSTP), it is possible that the country could host a spaceport within the next five years. A new National Space Flight Coordination Group, chaired by the U.K. Space Agency, will oversee these reports and the future work for this U.K. spaceport. Government officials hope this will be the start of commercial spaceflight for the country.

UK Takes Aim at Commercial Spaceflight, Spaceport Possible by 2018

 

[ScienceRocks]

Astronomers find a new type of planet: The 'mega-Earth'
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/06/140602115837.htm

Astronomers announced today that they have discovered a new type of planet -- a rocky world weighing 17 times as much as Earth. Theorists believed such a world couldn't form because anything so hefty would grab hydrogen gas as it grew and become a Jupiter-like gas giant. This planet, though, is all solids and much bigger than previously discovered "super-Earths," making it a "mega-Earth."

"We were very surprised when we realized what we had found," says astronomer Xavier Dumusque of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (CfA), who led the data analysis and made the discovery.

"This is the Godzilla of Earths!" adds CfA researcher Dimitar Sasselov, director of the Harvard Origins of Life Initiative. "But unlike the movie monster, Kepler-10c has positive implications for life."

The team's finding was presented today in a press conference at a meeting of the American Astronomical Society (AAS).

Seems to be some quite shocking news. You'd think a planet over 10 earth masses would become a gas giant...Maybe the star nova'ed?

 

[ScienceRocks]

The Kepler-10 planetary system revisited by HARPS-N: A hot rocky world and a solid Neptune-mass planet
[1405.7881] The Kepler-10 planetary system revisited by HARPS-N: A hot rocky world and a solid Neptune-mass planet

Kepler-10b was the first rocky planet detected by the Kepler satellite and con- firmed with radial velocity follow-up observations from Keck-HIRES. The mass of the planet was measured with a precision of around 30%, which was insufficient to constrain models of its internal structure and composition in detail. In addition to Kepler-10b, a second planet transiting the same star with a period of 45 days was sta- tistically validated, but the radial velocities were only good enough to set an upper limit of 20 Mearth for the mass of Kepler-10c. To improve the precision on the mass for planet b, the HARPS-N Collaboration decided to observe Kepler-10 intensively with the HARPS-N spectrograph on the Telescopio Nazionale Galileo on La Palma. In to- tal, 148 high-quality radial-velocity measurements were obtained over two observing seasons. These new data allow us to improve the precision of the mass determina- tion for Kepler-10b to 15%. With a mass of 3.33 +/- 0.49 Mearth and an updated radius of 1.47 +0.03 -0.02 Rearth, Kepler-10b has a density of 5.8 +/- 0.8 g cm-3, very close to the value -0.02 predicted by models with the same internal structure and composition as the Earth. We were also able to determine a mass for the 45-day period planet Kepler-10c, with an even better precision of 11%. With a mass of 17.2 +/- 1.9 Mearth and radius of 2.35 +0.09 -0.04 Rearth, -0.04 Kepler-10c has a density of 7.1 +/- 1.0 g cm-3. Kepler-10c appears to be the first strong evidence of a class of more massive solid planets with longer orbital periods.

 

[ScienceRocks]

Two planets orbit nearby ancient star

An international team of scientists, led by astronomers at Queen Mary University of London, report of two new planets orbiting Kapteyn's star, one of the oldest stars found near the Sun. One of the newly-discovered planets could be ripe for life as it orbits at the right distance to the star to allow liquid water on its surface.

Discovered at the end of the 19th century and named after the Dutch astronomer who discovered it (Jacobus Kapteyn), Kapteyn's star is the second fastest moving star in the sky and belongs to the galactic halo, an extended cloud of stars orbiting our galaxy. With a third of the mass of the sun, this red-dwarf can be seen in the southern constellation of Pictor with an amateur telescope.

The astronomers used new data from HARPS spectrometer at the ESO's La Silla observatory in Chile to measure tiny periodic changes in the motion of the star. Using the Doppler Effect, which shifts the star's light spectrum depending on its velocity, the scientists can work out some properties of these planets, such as their masses and periods of orbit.
The study also combined data from two more high-precision spectrometers to secure the detection: HIRES at Keck Observatory and PFS at Magellan/Las Campanas Observatory.

"We were surprised to find planets orbiting Kapteyn's star. Previous data showed some moderate excess of variability, so we were looking for very short period planets when the new signals showed up loud and clear," explains lead author Dr Guillem Anglada-Escude, from QMUL's School of Physics and Astronomy.
Based on the data collected, the planet Kapetyn b is at least five times as massive as the Earth and it orbits the star every 48 days. This means the planet is warm enough for liquid water to be present on its surface. The second planet, Kapteyn c is a more massive super-Earth and quite different: its year lasts for 121 days and astronomers think it's too cold to support liquid water.

At the moment, only a few properties of the planets are known: approximate masses, orbital periods, and distances to the star. By measuring the atmosphere of these planets with next-generation instruments, scientists will try to find out whether they can bear water.

Typical planetary systems detected by NASA's Kepler mission are hundreds of light-years away. In contrast, Kapteyn's star is the 25th nearest star to the sun and it is only 13 light years away from Earth.

Read more at: Two planets orbit nearby ancient star

 

[ScienceRocks]

Planet-hunting Kepler telescope back in action
BY STEPHEN CLARK
SPACEFLIGHT NOW
Posted: June 3, 2014

NASA's planet-hunting Kepler space telescope, given a new lease on life after an endorsement by a science review panel last month, has resumed scanning the cosmos for the tell-tale signatures of alien worlds lurking around distant stars.

Kepler started taking science data May 30 in the first of nine observing campaigns through June 2016 under a two-year, $20 million mission extension dubbed K2 approved by NASA last month.

Kepler is running on just two of its four reaction wheels, spinning gyroscopes which keep the telescope steadily aimed at stars to detect subtle fluctuations in light that might indicate the presence of a planet.

But engineers with NASA and Ball Aerospace and Technologies Corp., Kepler's manufacturer, devised a way for the observatory to continue its planet-hunting quest despite its diminished capabilities.

http://www.spaceflightnow.com/news/n1406/03kepler/#.U45_ySg9WPQ


Into the methane depths of Kraken, Titan's strange sea

A sea of liquid methane laps a shore of solid ice as the biggest rainstorm ever falls from an orange sky. Welcome to Saturn's largest moon

THE sky is a baleful orange, but then it's always like that. The roar of the approaching maelstrom is new though, and disturbing. As are the gathering clouds, which threaten to loose a deluge more violent than anything ever seen on Earth. A sailor on an alien sea may hesitate: is it wise to venture into the Throat of Kraken?

One day this could be a real scene on Saturn's giant moon, Titan. Apart from Earth, Titan is the only world known to have liquid on its surface (see diagram). We first glimpsed its alien lakes and seas through the eyes of the Cassini spacecraft in 2006. Now, after eight years of slow exploration, Cassini has suddenly unleashed a flood of ...

http://www.newscientist.com/article...hane-depths-of-kraken-titans-strange-sea.html

 

[ScienceRocks]

First light for SPHERE exoplanet imager

SPHERE—the Spectro-Polarimetric High-contrast Exoplanet REsearch instrument—has been installed on ESO's Very Large Telescope at the Paranal Observatory in Chile. This powerful facility for studying exoplanets uses multiple advanced techniques in combination. It offers dramatically better performance than existing instruments and has produced impressive views of dust discs around nearby stars and other targets during the very first days of observations. It is expected to revolutionize the study of exoplanets and circumstellar discs. Included is one of the best images so far of the ring of dust around the nearby star HR 4796A.

Read more at: First light for SPHERE exoplanet imager

 

[ScienceRocks]

Astronomers discover a bizarre new type of
"hybrid" star

Astronomers have detected the first Thorne-Żytkow objects (TŻOs). These hybrids of red supergiant and neutron stars, first proposed in 1975, had been theoretical until now.

In a discovery decades in the making, scientists have detected the first of a “theoretical” class of stars first proposed in 1975 by physicist Kip Thorne and astronomer Anna Żytkow. Thorne-Żytkow objects (TŻOs) are hybrids of red supergiant and neutron stars that superficially resemble normal supergiants like Betelgeuse in the constellation Orion. They differ, however, in their distinct chemical signatures resulting from unique activity in their stellar interiors.

TŻOs are thought to be formed by the interaction of two massive stars – a red supergiant and a neutron star formed during a supernova explosion – within a close binary system. While the exact mechanism is uncertain, the most commonly held theory suggests that, during the evolutionary interaction of the two stars, the much more massive red supergiant essentially swallows the neutron star, which spirals into the core of the red supergiant.

While normal supergiants derive their energy from nuclear fusion in their cores, TŻOs are powered by the unusual activity of the absorbed neutron stars in their cores. The discovery of this TŻO thus provides evidence of a model of stellar interiors previously undetected by astronomers.

Project leader Emily Levesque of the University of Colorado Boulder, who earlier this year was awarded the American Astronomical Society’s Annie Jump Cannon Award, said: “Studying these objects is exciting as it represents a completely new model of how stellar interiors can work. In these interiors we also have a new way of producing heavy elements in our universe. You’ve heard that everything is made of ‘star stuff’ – inside these stars we might now have a new way to make some of it.”

The study, published in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society Letters, is co-authored by Philip Massey, of the Lowell Observatory in Flagstaff, Arizona; Anna Żytkow of the University of Cambridge in the UK; and Nidia Morrell of the Carnegie Observatories in Chile. The astronomers achieved their discovery using the 6.5-metre Magellan Clay telescope on Las Campanas in Chile, pointed at the Small Magellanic Cloud, which lies about 200,000 light years away:



They examined the spectrum of light emitted from apparent red supergiants, which tells them what elements are present. When the spectrum of one particular star – HV 2112 – was first displayed, the observers were surprised by some of its unusual features. As Morrell commented: “I don’t know what this is, but I know that I like it!”

When Levesque and her colleagues looked closely at the subtle lines in the spectrum, they found it contained excess rubidium, lithium and molybdenum. Past research has shown that normal stellar processes can create each of these separate elements. But high abundances of all three at temperatures typical of red supergiants are a unique signature of TŻOs.

 

[ScienceRocks]

NASA announces technology experiments to fly on SpaceShipTwo

NASA announces technology experiments to fly on SpaceShipTwo

Science and space tourism shook hands this week with NASA announcing 12 technology experiments that will fly on the SpaceShipTwo spaceplane under a charter agreement with Virgin Galactic. The payload is a mixture of government, academic, and private microgravity experiments that will form the first commercial research flight for the spacecraft.

Virgin Galactic is known mainly for booking tourists, who will fly into space for the sobering price of US$250,00. But it’s flagship, SpaceShipTwo, is also designed to carry scientific experiments for the more research-minded customer. One of three charter flights under the $4.5 million contract with Virgin Galactic to carry up to 1,300 lbs (590 kg) of scientific experiments per flight, the NASA mission will be conducted as part of NASA's Flight Opportunities Program to provide a microgravity environment for experiments and encourage the development of commercial space industries.

The purpose of the flight is to test new experiments in the weightless environment that the spaceplane produces at the peak of its suborbital flight. Though the roughly six minutes – depending on trajectory – that SpaceShipTwo will experience weightlessness doesn’t seem like much, it is enough to collect important data and to determine if an experiment is worth taking the more expensive step of sending it to the International Space Station.

 

[ScienceRocks]

Musk fucking rules!!!

Spacex targets reusing the Dragon V2 ten times before refurbishment and targest hundreds of flights per day by 2030 and thousands per day by 2035

Elon Musk describing upgrades to the ship that could allow Dragons to fly up to 10 times without significant refurbishment

Musk doesn't want SpaceX to simply become an orbital taxi service, however. His dreams are far grander: to transform the way in which space exploration is conducted, opening up the final frontier to widespread and affordable use. Musk's vision doesn't end in Earth orbit but rather stretches all the way to the frozen deserts of Mars.

The key is reusability. Musk said the crewed Dragon is designed to land softly back on Earth and be rapidly turned around for another flight — possibly on the same day.

"The reason that this is really important is that, apart from the convenience of the landing location, is that it enables rapid reusability of the spacecraft," Musk told the audience.

Just reload the propellants and fly it again. This is extremely important for revolutionizing access to space, because as long as we continue to throw away rockets and spacecraft, we will never have true access to space; it will always be incredibly expensive," he added. "You can imagine a scenario where … if an aircraft was thrown away after each flight, nobody would be able to afford to fly. Or very few, only a small number of government customers. The same is true with rockets and spacecraft." If SpaceX's engineers can pull it off, the crewed Dragon will launch on a Falcon 9 rocket that's also fully reusable. This past April, the first stage of a Falcon 9 maneuvered to a soft "landing" on the ocean, refiring its engines and extending four landing legs before hitting the water intact. SpaceX's goal is to to recover a Falcon 9 first stage with a touchdown on land by the end of the year. The company would then re-launch the stage next year on a demonstration flight.

The company's engineers are also working on the more difficult problem of trying to recover the Falcon 9's second stage, which reaches a much higher altitude. Musk predicted that instead of flying into space a handful of times per year as we do now, humans would eventually be able to fly to space multiples times per day. "I think 20 years for thousands of flights," Musk said in response to a question about increasing annual launch rates. "And I think we could probably get to the hundreds-of-flights level in 12 to 15 years." Reusability Cost Analysis - Spacex could soon have a reusable first stage and Dragon stage Here are the estimated costs for one use and partially reusable and more reusable Spacex rockets. One use Falcon 9 rocket launch cost $1,862/lb One use Falcon Heavy launch cost $1000/lb The above costs are from Wikipedia and the Spacex website. First stage reusable Falcon 9 launch cost $1200/lb First stage reusable Falcon Heavy launch cost $600/lb The cost of fuel and the Spacex rockets has been repeated a few times. Musk reiterated the origin of the SpaceX production model, saying fuel is only 0.3 percent of the total cost of a rocket, with construction materials accounting for no more than 2 percent of the total cost, which for the Falcon 9 is about $60 million.

Musk said that a rocket's first stage accounts for three-quarters of its total price tag, so a vehicle with a reusable first stage can be produced at far less cost — assuming the hardware is fully and rapidly reusable. A reusable rocket stage would be able to launch about 80% of the cargo of a one use rocket. The weight of fuel is needed to fly the stage back and the extra weight of landing legs and other modifications for reuse have to be carried. Two launches with second reusing the first stage. Capital cost - 1.25 times the cost of one full rocket. 0.6% for fuel Launch cargo 1.6 times the cargo of one rocket. 78% of the cost of a single use rocket Three launches with reuse of the first stage twice. Capital cost - 1.5 times the cost of one rocket 0.9% for fuel Launch cargo 2.4 times the cargo of one rocket 62.5% of the cost of a single use rocket 50% of the cost with five launches and four reuses of the first stage [$930 per pound for the 9 v1.1 and $500 per pound for the heavy]

Reusable first stage falcon heavy [with about twenty reuses] can get down to about $350/lb [one third the one use price]. Reusable (about fifteen times) Falcon 9 rocket launch cost all stages reusable $100/lb [all three stages of a falcon heavy, should get to about ten times cheaper] Having three reusable stages that can be used ten times before refurbishment would get costs to about $150/lg for a Falcon Heavy. If you liked this article, please give it a quick review on ycombinator or StumbleUpon. Thanks

Spacex targets reusing the Dragon V2 ten times before refurbishment and targest hundreds of flights per day by 2030 and thousands per day by 2035

 

[ScienceRocks]

"Hello, World" – Video beamed from ISS using laser-based communications

"Hello, World" ? Video beamed from ISS using laser-based communications

While the International Space Station (ISS) may be mankind’s outpost for the conquest of space, it still leaves a lot to be desired when it comes to a decent YouTube connection. That’s because, for all its sophistication, the station’s communications system is still based on 1960s radio technology and has all the bandwidth of a soda straw. This changed on Thursday as NASA took a step into the video age with the test of its Optical Payload for Lasercomm Science (OPALS) demonstrator, which used a laser to beam a video to Earth in seconds instead of the usual minutes.

Developed by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, California, OPALS is designed to test the effectiveness of lasers as a higher-bandwidth substitute for radio waves. It was delivered to the ISS on April 20 by an unmanned Dragon space freighter and is currently undergoing a 90-day test. The system has 10 to 1,000 times greater capacity for data transmission than radio links.

For the test, OPALS transmitted the “Hello, World” video from the ISS to a ground station on Earth. In some ways, it was more difficult than the Lunar test undertaken by the LADEE lunar probe last year. The station orbits Earth at an altitude of about 260 mi (418 km) at 17,500 mph (28,000 km/h). The result is that the target is sliding across the laser’s field of view much faster than it did for the lunar test.

 

[ScienceRocks]

Massive Beast asteroid is set to pass by Earth this weekend, missing our planet by 777,000 miles.

WASHINGTON, June 7 (UPI) --The so-called Beast asteroid is expected to miss Earth by about 777,000 miles, which is a good thing because the 1,100-foot wide behemoth could do serious damage.

There's no chance the asteroid will hit Earth, scientists say, but at 777,000 miles away -- 3.25 times the distance from the Earth to the moon -- it's a relatively close call.

The asteroid is about 10 to 20 times bigger than the one that injured 1,000 people last year in Chelyabinsk, Russia, Bob Berman, of the Slooh community observatory said. That asteroid was 55 feet wide.

Read more: Massive Beast asteroid to have close call with Earth - UPI.com

The fact that we discoverd this in late April should be very concerning. This thing hits would be like Toba going off to life on earth...

 

[mamooth]

The Sun is letting out some X-class solar flares. Not pointed at earth, but news flares could be.

SpaceWeather.com -- News and information about meteor showers, solar flares, auroras, and near-Earth asteroids

 

[ScienceRocks]

NASA scientist creates expanded list of habitability possibilities for other worlds

NASA scientist creates expanded list of habitability possibilities for other worlds

(Phys.org) —A NASA scientist based at Ames Research Center has compiled a checklist of habitability possibilities for planets or other bodies in the solar system or beyond. In his paper published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Christopher McKay outlines ways that life could be possible on other planets, moons, or even other bodies.


Research here on Earth, McKay notes, has led to findings that show that life can exist under what would previously have been considered impossible environmental conditions. Thus, it seems logical that what we define as the conditions possible for life existing in other places should expand as well. Not all life forms need the same requirements as most of the life we see around us, some can survive or even thrive in very extreme conditions.

He notes that some types of microorganisms, for example, have been found to live in environments that are consistently well below freezing or well above the boiling point. Thus, it would not make sense to rule out a planet simply because it's too cold or too hot.

He also notes that not all life forms require as much water as was once thought. Some algae, for instance has been found living inside of rocks, where very, very little water is available. Not unlike the water that is trapped in rocks on the moon, as just one example.

Read more at: NASA scientist creates expanded list of habitability possibilities for other worlds

You'd think there would be far more public support for more money for nasa. Shows how far this country has fallen.