Space news and Exploration II

Congress Wants To Explore Europa To Seek Out New Life —And New Jobs

Congress Wants To Explore Europa To Seek Out New Life ?And New Jobs

Earlier this week, the Planetary Society held a pep rally for Europa, where Bill Nye and climate change-denier House Rep. Lamar Smith (R-TX) set aside their differences to promote planetary science. And, of course, it doesn't hurt that a Europa expedition could pump millions of dollars into Congressional districts.

With its subsurface ocean and active plumes, Europa is one of the best candidates for life in our solar system. NASA has said that it wants to send a robotic probe to explore Jupiter's moon, and on Tuesday, the space agency announced that it had set aside $25 million for proposals to develop scientific equipment for the mission.

But, judging from the speeches at the standing-room only event, "The Lure of Europa," there are some influential people who wouldn't mind seeing a more aggressive timetable for the mission.

We will see how you're not anti-science, tea party.
 
Last edited:


New Horizons to take new photos of Pluto and Charon, beginning optical navigation campaign


New Horizons to take new photos of Pluto and Charon, beginning optical navigation campaign | The Planetary Society
Posted by Emily Lakdawalla

2014/07/18 22:06 UTC

Topics: New Horizons, Pluto, Charon, mission status

New Horizons' scientific mission at Pluto doesn't technically begin until the end of this year, but starting in two days, the spacecraft will begin to take a lot of photos of Pluto and Charon. Why would they be doing this, if not for science? What's the point of taking pictures in which Pluto and Charon will be teeny weeny dots, barely distinguishable from stars? The answer: they're taking the photos in order to figure out how to steer the spacecraft.

Nearly every deep-space mission uses optical navigation methods to help navigators back on Earth fine-tune their path to the target. We know very well from two-way radio communication the position of spacecraft with respect to Earth. What's less precise is our knowledge of the position of the places we're aiming for. This is particularly true of small or distant targets like asteroids and Kuiper belt objects. You need big telescopes to see them, so we have relatively few measurements of their positions with respect to the stars, and few measurements lead to relatively big error bars on our predictions of their future positions.

The cameras on spacecraft never have the resolving power of our better Earth-based telescopes, so at first we steer spacecraft according to what we've been able to determine from Earth. But at some point on every space mission, a spacecraft approaches close enough to its target that its relatively small camera can do better than the bigger 'scopes back at home.
 
ESA prepares IXV concept spaceplane for maiden flight
ESA prepares IXV concept spaceplane for maiden flight
The European Space Agency is preparing to test the atmospheric re-entry capabilities of its new early concept spaceplane, the Intermediate eXperimental Vehicle (IXV). The test flight is slated for launch in November atop a European made Vega rocket, with the hope that results will inform the design of future ESA spacecraft.

The overriding goal in pursuing the project is to lessen the ESA's dependence on the current generation of Russian made Soyuz return vehicles. Whilst the IXV test vehicle is designated as a spaceplane, you could be forgiven for thinking that, at least on the outside, it looks anything but. Instead, in its current stage of development the IXV resembles a simple fuselage.

The apparent simplicity in the design of the IXV is due to the fact that the spacecraft represents a preliminary stage of testing, with an emphasis on proving basic but vital technology for more advanced concepts in the future. The agency intends to take the lessons taken from the November launch and begin the process of creating a viable autonomous re-entry spacecraft with a focus on modularity and flexibility in orbital operations.
 
Transiting exoplanet with longest known year

Astronomers have discovered a transiting exoplanet with the longest known year. Kepler-421b circles its star once every 704 days. In comparison, Mars orbits our Sun once every 780 days. Most of the 1,800-plus exoplanets discovered to date are much closer to their stars and have much shorter orbital periods.

"Finding Kepler-421b was a stroke of luck," says lead author David Kipping of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (CfA). "The farther a planet is from its star, the less likely it is to transit the star from Earth's point of view. It has to line up just right."

Kepler-421b orbits an orange, type K star that is cooler and dimmer than our Sun. It circles the star at a distance of about 110 million miles. As a result, this Uranus-sized planet is chilled to a temperature of -135° Fahrenheit.

Read more at: Transiting exoplanet with longest known year
 
Congress Wants To Explore Europa To Seek Out New Life —And New Jobs

Congress Wants To Explore Europa To Seek Out New Life ?And New Jobs

Earlier this week, the Planetary Society held a pep rally for Europa, where Bill Nye and climate change-denier House Rep. Lamar Smith (R-TX) set aside their differences to promote planetary science. And, of course, it doesn't hurt that a Europa expedition could pump millions of dollars into Congressional districts.

With its subsurface ocean and active plumes, Europa is one of the best candidates for life in our solar system. NASA has said that it wants to send a robotic probe to explore Jupiter's moon, and on Tuesday, the space agency announced that it had set aside $25 million for proposals to develop scientific equipment for the mission.

But, judging from the speeches at the standing-room only event, "The Lure of Europa," there are some influential people who wouldn't mind seeing a more aggressive timetable for the mission.

We will see how you're not anti-science, tea party.
Defund all AGW projects to pay for Europa mission
 
Congress Wants To Explore Europa To Seek Out New Life —And New Jobs

Congress Wants To Explore Europa To Seek Out New Life ?And New Jobs

Earlier this week, the Planetary Society held a pep rally for Europa, where Bill Nye and climate change-denier House Rep. Lamar Smith (R-TX) set aside their differences to promote planetary science. And, of course, it doesn't hurt that a Europa expedition could pump millions of dollars into Congressional districts.

With its subsurface ocean and active plumes, Europa is one of the best candidates for life in our solar system. NASA has said that it wants to send a robotic probe to explore Jupiter's moon, and on Tuesday, the space agency announced that it had set aside $25 million for proposals to develop scientific equipment for the mission.

But, judging from the speeches at the standing-room only event, "The Lure of Europa," there are some influential people who wouldn't mind seeing a more aggressive timetable for the mission.

We will see how you're not anti-science, tea party.
Defund all AGW projects to pay for Europa mission

Seeing that solar is now the second fastest growing energy source in this country. It would be extremely stupid to stop investing in that infrastructure. ;) As long as we stay out of more wars...We'll easily afford a few billion to explore europa!
 
Discovery of a Transiting Planet Near the Snow-Line
[1407.4807] Discovery of a Transiting Planet Near the Snow-Line
In most theories of planet formation, the snow-line represents a boundary between the emergence of the interior rocky planets and the exterior ice giants. The wide separation of the snow-line makes the discovery of transiting worlds challenging, yet transits would allow for detailed subsequent characterization. We present the discovery of Kepler-421b, a Uranus-sized exoplanet transiting a G9/K0 dwarf once every 704.2 days in a near-circular orbit. Using public Kepler photometry, we demonstrate that the two observed transits can be uniquely attributed to the 704.2 day period. Detailed light curve analysis with BLENDER validates the planetary nature of Kepler-421b to >4 sigmas confidence. Kepler-421b receives the same insolation as a body at ~2AU in the Solar System and for a Uranian albedo would have an effective temperature of ~180K. Using a time-dependent model for the protoplanetary disk, we estimate that Kepler-421b's present semi-major axis was beyond the snow-line after ~3Myr, indicating that Kepler-421b may have formed at its observed location.
 

Fermi finds a 'transformer' pulsar


(Phys.org) —In late June 2013, an exceptional binary containing a rapidly spinning neutron star underwent a dramatic change in behavior never before observed. The pulsar's radio beacon vanished, while at the same time the system brightened fivefold in gamma rays, the most powerful form of light, according to measurements by NASA's Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope.

Read more at: Fermi finds a 'transformer' pulsar
 
SpaceX releases video of powered booster landing
SpaceX releases video of powered booster landing
During the recent Orbcomm OG2 launch, SpaceX attempted its second powered landing during a commercial mission, but this time you don’t have to take the company’s word for it. As the first stage made a controlled touchdown on the surface of the Atlantic Ocean, a video camera recorded the event. SpaceX has released the video for the public to see – give or take a few ice crystals.

The two-stage Falcon 9 booster launched on July 14 from Space Launch Complex 40 at Cape Canaveral, Florida carrying six Orbcomm OG2 communication satellites in the second mission flight of a Falcon booster equipped with landing legs. After second stage separation, the usual fate of a first stage rocket would have been to crash into the ocean or burn up in the Earth’s atmosphere. However, this latest version of the Falcon 9 booster was equipped with a trio of landing legs.

After separation, the booster fired its engines to slow it down from its hypersonic velocity and return it to its designated landing spot. As it approached the ground, the engines fired again, the legs sprang open, and the booster touched down vertically at near zero velocity on the surface of the ocean. Since the booster wasn't designed to land on water, the test ended with the craft falling over on its side when SpaceX says it lost its hull integrity and broke up.

 
Last edited by a moderator:
The most precise measurement of an alien world's size


Thanks to NASA's Kepler and Spitzer Space Telescopes, scientists have made the most precise measurement ever of the radius of a planet outside our solar system. The size of the exoplanet, dubbed Kepler-93b, is now known to an uncertainty of just 74 miles (119 kilometers) on either side of the planetary body.

The findings confirm Kepler-93b as a "super-Earth" that is about one-and-a-half times the size of our planet. Although super-Earths are common in the galaxy, none exist in our solar system. Exoplanets like Kepler-93b are therefore our only laboratories to study this major class of planet.

With good limits on the sizes and masses of super-Earths, scientists can finally start to theorize about what makes up these weird worlds. Previous measurements, by the Keck Observatory in Hawaii, had put Kepler-93b's mass at about 3.8 times that of Earth. The density of Kepler-93b, derived from its mass and newly obtained radius, indicates the planet is in fact very likely made of iron and rock, like Earth.

Read more at: The most precise measurement of an alien world's size
 
Hubble locates three nearly dry exoplanets

According to a report from NASA, astronomers using NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope (HST) to search for water vapor in the atmospheres of three planets orbiting stars similar to the sun has come up virtually dry. The findings appear today in The Astrophysical Journal Letters.

The three planets, known as HD 189733b, HD 209458b, and WASP-12b, range between 60 and 900 light-years away from Earth. They were considered to be model candidates for detecting water vapor in their atmospheres due to their high temperatures turning water into a measurable vapor.

These “hot Jupiters” are in such close proximity to their parent star that they have temperatures between 1,500 and 4,000 degrees Fahrenheit. Conversely, the astronomers found that the planets were found to have only one-tenth to one one-thousandth the amount of water predicted by extant planet-formation theories.
Read more: Hubble locates three nearly dry exoplanets | Science Recorder
 
Cloudy planets have better chance at supporting alien life, researchers say


Planets with significant cloud coverage that were previously thought to be too close to a star’s intense heat to support organic life may have increased chances of being habitable, said researchers in the Apr. 25 edition of Astrophysical Journal Letters.

Over 1,700 exoplanets have been identified beyond our solar system, but only a handful are in the zone close enough to their sun to form liquid water, such as that found on Earth. They must receive enough heat to cause liquid water to evaporate on the surface, rise into the atmosphere and then cool and collect into condensation. A planet’s proximity to its sun determines the amount of light it must absorb, and the corresponding amount of heat that prevents either evaporation or condensation. Planets close to their sun but with cloudier atmospheres reflect light and, with it, heat.

Read more: Cloudy planets have better chance at supporting alien life, researchers say | Science Recorder
The cloudier an alien planet is, the closer it can get to its star and still remain potentially life-friendly, researchers say.

In fact, clouds might help Earth-like planets remain hospitable to life even when orbiting a sun-like star as closely as the hellish Venus circles the sun in our solar system, the scientists added.

This finding suggests that many alien worlds previously thought to be too hot for life as we know it may actually be habitable, investigators said

Habitable alien planets

The distance at which a planet orbits its star is one factor behind how much light from the star heats up that world's surface. Another factor controlling how much energy a planet gets from its star are clouds in that world's atmosphere, which can reflect light away from a world and cool it down — for instance, clouds account for most of the sunlight reflected away from Earth. [Habitable Zones for Alien Planets Explained (Infographic)]

Now scientists find that on planets that rotate much slower than Earth, clouds form that can help those worlds maintain Earth-like climates, even when they receive levels of light from their stars that would make Earth uninhabitable for life as we know it.

The amount of clouds a planet has and where these clouds are located on that world are primarily controlled by how its atmosphere circulates. This in turn is determined in part by how slowly that planet spins. For instance, the more slowly a planet rotates, the longer both its days and nights are — this increases the difference in temperature between the day and night sides, and to even out this imbalance, the atmosphere will circulate more.

In addition, when a planet spins, masses of air on its surface will rotate as well, a phenomenon known as the Coriolis effect that influences how powerfully major wind patterns such as hurricanes whirl. The faster a world spins, the stronger the Coriolis effect, and the more the atmosphere will separate into multiple bands running parallel to the equator in which the winds circulate in distinct patterns. The slower a planet whirls, the weaker the Coriolis effect, and the less divided the atmosphere will be into distinct regions.

The scientists found that on what they considered rapidly rotating planets — ones that rotated about as fast as Earth — the atmosphere broke up into distinct bands, and clouds behaved much like they do on Earth. The habitable zones of these rapidly rotating worlds matched previous calculations for planets in general.

However, slowly rotating planets — ones that spin 100 times slower than Earth or more — had significantly wider habitable zones. They could maintain Earth-like climates even when receiving nearly twice as much light as rapidly rotating planets.

The scientists explained that on slowly rotating planets, the area on the planet that faces its star — the "substellar point" — gets heated for a long time. This causes air to rise from the substellar point.

"Clouds tend to form where air rises because moist warm air is cooled, leading to condensation," said study co-author Dorian Abbot, a geophysicist at the University of Chicago.

Without a strong Coriolis effect to break up atmospheric circulation into distinct bands, more clouds form. At the substellar point, the researchers found cloud cover would be present 90 percent or more of the time, reflecting a significant amount of light away from the planet, Abbot said.

http://www.space.com/26636-cloudy-alien-planets-life.html
 
Last edited:

Cassini spacecraft reveals 101 geysers and more on icy Saturn moon

14 hours ago by Preston Dyches


Scientists using mission data from NASA's Cassini spacecraft have identified 101 distinct geysers erupting on Saturn's icy moon Enceladus. Their analysis suggests it is possible for liquid water to reach from the moon's underground sea all the way to its surface.

These findings, and clues to what powers the geyser eruptions, are presented in two articles published in the current online edition of the Astronomical Journal.

Over a period of almost seven years, Cassini's cameras surveyed the south polar terrain of the small moon, a unique geological basin renowned for its four prominent "tiger stripe" fractures and the geysers of tiny icy particles and water vapor first sighted there nearly 10 years ago. The result of the survey is a map of 101 geysers, each erupting from one of the tiger stripe fractures, and the discovery that individual geysers are coincident with small hot spots. These relationships pointed the way to the geysers' origin.

After the first sighting of the geysers in 2005, scientists suspected that repeated flexing of Enceladus by Saturn's tides as the moon orbits the planet had something to do with their behavior. One suggestion included the back-and-forth rubbing of opposing walls of the fractures generating frictional heat that turned ice into geyser-forming vapor and liquid.
Read more at: Cassini spacecraft reveals 101 geysers and more on icy Saturn moon
 
Last edited:
Next-generation Thirty Meter Telescope begins construction in Hawaii
15 hours ago
Following the approval of a sublease on July 25 by the Hawaii Board of Land and Natural Resources, the Thirty Meter Telescope (TMT) announces the beginning of the construction phase on Hawaii Island and around the world throughout the TMT international partnership. Contingent on that decision, the TMT International Observatory (TIO) Board of Directors, the project's new governing body, recently approved the initial phase of construction, with activities near the summit of Mauna Kea scheduled to start later this year.

Kahu Ku Mauna and the Mauna Kea Management Board reviewed, and the University of Hawaii Board of Regents recently approved, the proposed TMT sublease. The final approval from the Board of Land and Natural Resources—the last step in the sublease process—allows TMT to begin on-site construction on Mauna Kea, home to many of the world's premier observatories.

"It has been an amazing journey for TMT, from idea to shovel-ready project," said Henry Yang, TIO Board Chair and Chancellor of the University of California Santa Barbara. "We are grateful to the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, the Hawaiian government, its citizens, and our project partners in bringing this important astronomical science effort to fruition. It is also my rewarding experience to work with so many community friends, University of Hawaii colleagues, and officials on both the Big Island and Oahu in this journey."

The Rise of a New Observatory – Activities Around the World

The TMT project was initiated a decade ago by the Association of Canadian Universities for Research in Astronomy (ACURA), the California Institute of Technology (Caltech), and the University of California as the TMT Observatory Corporation. Now, as the TMT International Observatory (TIO)—founded as a nonprofit limited liability company on May 6, 2014 —the project has the official green light to begin constructing a powerful next-generation telescope.


Read more at: Next-generation Thirty Meter Telescope begins construction in Hawaii
 
Last edited:
Nasa validates 'impossible' space drive

31 July 14 by David Hambling
Nasa is a major player in space science, so when a team from the agency this week presents evidence that "impossible" microwave thrusters seem to work, something strange is definitely going on. Either the results are completely wrong, or Nasa has confirmed a major breakthrough in space propulsion.

British scientist Roger Shawyer has been trying to interest people in his EmDrive for some years through his company SPR Ltd. Shawyer claims the EmDrive converts electric power into thrust, without the need for any propellant by bouncing microwaves around in a closed container.

Nasa validates 'impossible' space drive (Wired UK)
 
Man-made 'breathing' leaf is an oxygen factory for space travel

An artificial leaf converts water and light to oxygen, and that's good news for road-tripping to places beyond Earth.

One of the persistent challenges of manned space exploration is that pesky lack of oxygen throughout much of the universe. Here on Earth, trees and other plant life do us a real solid by taking in our bad breath and changing it back to clean, sweet O2.

So what if we could take those biological oxygen factories into space with us, but without all the land, sun, water, soil, and gravity that forests tend to require? This is the point where NASA and Elon Musk should probably start paying attention.

Royal College of Art graduate Julian Melchiorri has created the first man-made, biologically functional leaf that takes in carbon dioxide, water, and light and releases oxygen. The leaf consists of chloroplasts -- the part of a plant cell where photosynthesis happens -- suspended in body made of silk protein.

"This material has an amazing property of stabilizing (the chloroplast) organelles," Melchiorri says in the video below. "As an outcome I have the first photosynthetic material that is living and breathing as a leaf does."

In addition to its potential value to space travel, Melchiorri also imagines the technology literally providing a breath of fresh air to indoor and outdoor spaces here on Earth. The facades of buildings and lampshades could be made to exhale fresh air with just a thin coating of the leaf material.

But perhaps best of all, a man-made breathing leaf could be the key to not just space travel but space colonization. No need to figure out how to till that dry, red Martian dirt to get some nice leafy trees to grow; we could just slap them on the inside of the colony's dome and puff away.

Man-made 'breathing' leaf is an oxygen factory for space travel - CNET
 
SpaceX to build rocket launch site in Texas

SpaceX will build the world's first commercial site for orbital rocket launches in the southernmost tip of Texas.

The state of Texas added $15.3 million in incentives to the geographic value of a location east of Brownsville that will allow SpaceX to have greater control over the timing of its launches. The company has said it plans to launch 12 rockets a year from the Boca Chica Beach, a short walk from the Gulf of Mexico and just a couple miles north of the U.S.-Mexico border.

"Texas has been on the forefront of our nation's space exploration efforts for decades, so it is fitting that SpaceX has chosen our state as they expand the frontiers of commercial space flight," Gov. Rick Perry's office said Monday in a prepared statement.


Read more at: SpaceX to build rocket launch site in Texas
 
Planet-like object may have spent its youth as hot as a star


Astronomers have discovered an extremely cool object that could have a particularly diverse history—although it is now as cool as a planet, it may have spent much of its youth as hot as a star.

The current temperature of the object is 200 to 300 degrees Fahrenheit (100 to 150 degrees Celsius), which is intermediate between that of the Earth and of Venus. However, the object shows evidence of a possible ancient origin, implying that a large change in temperature has taken place. In the past this object would have been as hot as a star for many millions of years.

Called WISE J0304-2705, the object is a member of the recently established "Y dwarf" class—the coolest stellar temperature class yet defined, following the other classes O, B, A, F, G, K, M, L, and T. Although the temperature is similar to that of the planets, the object is dissimilar to the rocky Earth-like planets, and instead is a giant ball of gas like Jupiter.


Read more at: Planet-like object may have spent its youth as hot as a star
 
Congress Wants To Explore Europa To Seek Out New Life —And New Jobs

Congress Wants To Explore Europa To Seek Out New Life ?And New Jobs



We will see how you're not anti-science, tea party.
Defund all AGW projects to pay for Europa mission

Seeing that solar is now the second fastest growing energy source in this country. It would be extremely stupid to stop investing in that infrastructure. ;) As long as we stay out of more wars...We'll easily afford a few billion to explore europa!







Only because the Feds give taxpayer money to their friends to keep their friends companies afloat.

It would be far better to expand the space program and let the unproductive solar companies fail. The amount of technological advancement that would come from a new space program on the order of Apollo is beyond my ability to predict.
 
I agree that a lot of great innovation would come out of it, westwall. ;)


Bigelow Aerospace has hired former NASA astronauts Kenneth Ham and George Zamka to form the cornerstone of the private astronaut corps the North Las Vegas, Nevada, company will need to maintain and operate the inflatable space habitats it plans to launch some time after 2017.

Bigelow said the smallest space station his company plans to fly will require two BA330 modules, each of which has 330 cubic meters of internal space. The company expects to finish building the first two BA330s by 2017, Bigelow said.

Ham and Zamka are former military aviators who have piloted and commanded space shuttle missions. Their NASA and military credentials are part of the appeal for Bigelow, who plans to put both former space fliers to work as recruiters.

“I would like to see us have half a dozen astronauts onboard by the end of the year,” Bigelow said.

Each Bigelow Aerospace space station would require about a dozen astronauts, including orbital, ground and backup personnel. The 660-cubic-foot stations would host four paying clients, who would be assisted by three company astronauts responsible for day-to-day maintenance, Bigelow said.

Initially, clients and crews would cycle in and out of the stations in 90-day shifts, Bigelow said. Eventually, the company hopes to shorten that cycle to 60 days.

“Our clients don’t need six months on orbit,” Bigelow said, referring to the time astronauts typically remain aboard the international space station. “It’s an imposition on them. They can get just as much out of three months.”

Zamka and Ham are part of a broader hiring push by Bigelow Aerospace. There are about 135 people in the North Las Vegas factory now, and “we’re hoping to be by Christmas time somewhere in the vicinity of 175,” Bigelow said


Bigelow Aerospace is hiring and targeting Inflatable Space Station Alpha to start launching in about 2017 or 2018

I think it would be a really good idea to help bigelow as the design allows for a lot more room and is far lighter.
 
Last edited:

Forum List

Back
Top