Space exploration thread

[ScienceRocks]

I'll keep supporting expiration, science, tech, infrastructure and a evidence based justice system. You extremist ignore 200 years of common sense and evidence that says your way is wrong.

 

[whitehall]

The word "supporting" is the key. I support space exploration and anybody who has any sense supports infrastructure maintenance but these things are already funded and ongoing. If the radical left was really concerned about science and technology it would take a look at the federal department of education which seems more concerned about putting a condom on a cucumber than real science and as a result the US ranks about the bottom of the list in science and technology education.

 

[ScienceRocks]

I believe adding 10 billion(27-30 billion) to nasa here at home would be far better then giving it to Egypt, Pakistan and Turkey. It isn't like we're blowing 200 billion a year on Iraq for over a decade.

Nasa=American jobs that pay good. Our kids want to work harder in school=more people getting good jobs.


My vote is as good as yours.

 

[whitehall]

I believe adding 10 billion(27-30 billion) to nasa here at home would be far better then giving it to Egypt, Pakistan and Turkey. It isn't like we're blowing 200 billion a year on Iraq for over a decade.

Nasa=American jobs that pay good. Our kids want to work harder in school=more people getting good jobs.


My vote is as good as yours.

It's true. Using NASA as an employment agency is as bad as blowing foreign aid on countries that hate us.

 

[ScienceRocks]

NASA to Launch Cargo Craft

NASA To Launch Cargo Craft To International Space Station - ABC News

An unpiloted cargo craft is scheduled to deliver nearly three tons of food, fuel, supplies and experimental hardware today to the International Space Station.

NASA is launching the cargo craft, the ISS Progress 52, from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. The spacecraft is expected to reach the space station in approximately six hours, after orbiting the earth four times.

Pretty much Russia is...We should be doing all this.

 

[ScienceRocks]

First Planet Discovered Orbiting a Brown Dwarf

Astronomers have long supposed that planets can form around brown dwarfs just as they do around ordinary stars. Now they’ve found the first example

Astrophysical calculations show that any star that is smaller than about 1/10th of the mass of the sun cannot sustain hydrogen fusion reactions at its core. These failed stars never light up. Instead they wander the galaxy as warm, dark balls of hydrogen known as brown dwarfs.

Brown dwarfs probably form through the same process that lead to ordinary stars but merely on a smaller scale. If that’s correct, planets should also form in the protoplanetary disks of gas and dust around brown dwarfs. Indeed, astronomers have seen a number of protoplanetary disks of this type.

Until now, however, they’ve never seen a planet orbiting a brown dwarf. That’s not really surprising.

The standard methods for detecting planets look for the way a star wobbles as a planet orbits or at how its magnitude changes as a planet passes in front. But given that brown dwarfs are dim and difficult to see, these methods have yet to produce fruit.

First Planet Discovered Orbiting a Brown Dwarf | MIT Technology Review

 

[BlueGin]

Big Asteroid Flies By Earth Tonight: How to Watch Live

An asteroid as large as five football fields will zoom by Earth tonight, and you can watch the close approach live from the comfort of your home.

The near-Earth asteroid 2003 DZ15 will come within 2.2 million miles (3.5 million kilometers) of our planet — about nine times farther than the distance between Earth and the moon — tonight (July 29) at 8:37 p.m. EDT (0037 GMT on July 30). There is no chance that 2003 DZ15 will strike Earth on this pass, scientists say.

The online Virtual Telescope Project will stream live footage of 2003 DZ15 beginning at 6 p.m. EDT (2200 GMT) tonight. The webcast will use views from a powerful telescope in Ceccano, Italy, along with live commentary by astrophysicist Gianluca Masi, who runs the Virtual Telescope Project. You can watch the feed of 2003 DZ15's flyby here on SPACE.com, or follow it at the Virtual Telescope Project's site here: The Virtual Telescope Project 2.0: Virtual Telescope?s WebTV

Big Asteroid Flies By Earth Tonight: How to Watch Live

 

[ScienceRocks]

SpaceX Wins Contract to Launch Canadian Radar Satellites

WASHINGTON — Space Exploration Technologies Corp. (SpaceX) will launch all three satellites for Canada’s planned Radarsat Constellation Mission (RCM) in 2018 aboard a single Falcon 9 rocket, the Hawthorne, Calif., rocket maker announced Tuesday (July 30). The contract award to SpaceX had been expected since January, when the Canadian Space Agency awarded MDA Corp. of Richmond, British Columbia, the 706 million Canadian dollar ($692 million) prime contract to build the RCM satellites. - See more at:

SpaceX Wins Contract to Launch Canadian Radar Satellites | Space.com

 

[ScienceRocks]

Nasa completes first internal review of concepts for asteroid redirect mission

3 hours ago

NASA has completed the first step toward a mission to find and capture a near-Earth asteroid, redirect it to a stable lunar orbit and send humans to study it.

In preparation for fiscal year 2014, a mission formulation review on Tuesday brought together NASA leaders from across the country to examine internal studies proposing multiple concepts and alternatives for each phase of the asteroid mission. The review assessed technical and programmatic aspects of the mission.

Read more at: Nasa completes first internal review of concepts for asteroid redirect mission

 

[ScienceRocks]

New Explorer mission chooses the 'just-right' orbit

Principal Investigator George Ricker likes to call it the "Goldilocks orbit"—it's not too close to Earth and her Moon, and it's not too far. In fact, it's just right

And as a result of this never-before-used orbit—advanced and fine-tuned by NASA engineers and other members of the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) team—the Explorer mission led by Ricker will be perfectly positioned to map the locations of more than 500 transiting exoplanets, extrasolar planets that periodically eclipse each one's host star. When the two-year mission begins in the 2017-2018 timeframe, it will represent the first time NASA has examined a large number of small planets around the brightest and closest stars in the sky.

Read more at: New Explorer mission chooses the 'just-right' orbit

 

[ScienceRocks]

NASA technologist makes traveling to hard-to-reach destinations easier

Traveling to remote locations sometimes involves navigating through stop-and-go traffic, traversing long stretches of highway and maneuvering sharp turns and steep hills. The same can be said for guiding spacecraft to far-flung destinations in space. It isn't always a straight shot.

A NASA technologist has developed a fully automated tool that gives mission planners a preliminary set of detailed directions for efficiently steering a spacecraft to hard-to-reach interplanetary destinations, such as Mercury, Jupiter, Saturn, and most comets and asteroids.

Read more at: NASA technologist makes traveling to hard-to-reach destinations easier

 

[ScienceRocks]

Mission to build world's most advanced telescope reaches major milestone

(Phys.org) —With the signing last week of a "master agreement" for the Thirty Meter Telescope—destined to be the most advanced and powerful optical telescope in the world—the University of California and UCLA moved a step closer to peering deeper into the cosmos than ever before.

The agreement, signed by UC President Mark Yudof and several international partners, formally outlines the telescope project's goals, defines the terms of its construction and establishes its governance structure, design and financing.

Work on the Thirty Meter Telescope (TMT), named for its 30-meter primary mirror—three times the diameter of the largest existing telescopes—is scheduled to begin in April 2014 atop Hawaii's dormant Mauna Kea volcano. The TMT's scientific operations are slated to start in 2022.

Read more at: Mission to build world's most advanced telescope reaches major milestone

 

[ScienceRocks]

NASA's Next Mega-Rocket Passes Key Design Review

The huge rocket that NASA is building to blast astronauts toward Mars, asteroids and other destinations in deep space has passed a critical design milestone, agency officials announced today (Aug. 1).

Engineers wrapped up the preliminary design review for NASA's Space Launch System rocket on Wednesday (July 31), giving the heavy lifter's design, production and ground support plans a stamp of approval.

NASA's Next Mega-Rocket Passes Key Design Review

Space x is also working on 130 ton rocket(Saturn v 110 ton). So we will be very capable of going back to the moon.

 

[ScienceRocks]

Japanese vehicle delivers new hardware for NASA's Robotic Refueling Mission

It may be called the Robotic Refueling Mission (RRM), but NASA's RRM was built to demonstrate much more than the clever ways space robots can fill up satellites.

With the launch of new hardware to the International Space Station on Aug. 3, RRM – recently named a "Top Exploration Technology Application From the International Space Station in 2012" – will be outfitted to practice a new set of satellite-servicing activities.

New Hardware for a New Era of Satellite-Servicing Demonstrations

Read more at: Japanese vehicle delivers new hardware for NASA's Robotic Refueling Mission

 

[ScienceRocks]

SpaceX will send nine-engine rocket for reusability tests in New Mexico


By: Zach Rosenberg Washington DC

06:39 1 Aug 2013

SpaceX has confirmed it will bring a nine-engine vehicle to Spaceport America in New Mexico to test reusable technology, rather than the Grasshopper reusability test bed currently flying in Texas.

In contrast to Grasshopper, which flies with one Merlin 1D engine and associated tankage, the new vehicle will closely resemble the Falcon 9-R core stage that had its first firing at SpaceX's test stand in McGregor, Texas, with nine engines and eventually a potential second stage.

In contrast to the Texas site, Spaceport America is an FAA-certified spaceport with relatively open airspace. Grasshopper is certified to fly up to 11,500ft at the McGregor site, and would require additional certifications or waivers to fly higher and faster; flights from Spaceport America will not require such certifications.

"New Mexico will have testing ongoing, but we haven't announced when," says the company.

SpaceX will send nine-engine rocket for reusability tests in New Mexico

This will go to 100,000 feet!

 

[ScienceRocks]

Hey, Whitehall

If Musk is successful in the grasshopper that can be reused up to 10 times at .3 percent to refuel. Let's say for 80k! Believe me there's a market. So expect to see a lot more satellites, probes, etc. hehe

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. Given that the rocket's constituent materials are such a small part of the total vehicle cost, he said: "Clearly people were doing something silly in how they put those materials together. By eliminating those foolish things, we were able to make a rocket for much less." 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. SpaceX is developing a reusable first stage for the Falcon 9 under a program dubbed Grasshopper.

- See more at: SpaceX Chief Says Reusable First Stage Will Slash Launch Costs | Reusable Rockets | Space.com

 

[ScienceRocks]

http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/multimedia/videos/movies/msl20130801/msl20130801-480.mov

 

[ScienceRocks]

NASA's Next Mars Probe Arrives at Launch Site

As NASA's Curiosity rover celebrates one year on Mars, the space agency has begun final preparations for the launch of its next Red Planet mission later this year. The Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution spacecraft, or MAVEN, arrived at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida on Friday (Aug. 2), just three days before the one-year anniversary of Curiosity's dramatic Mars landing. MAVEN is now sitting in a cleanroom, where engineers are testing and fueling the orbiter ahead of its planned Nov. 18 launch from Kennedy toward the Red Planet. -

See more at: NASA's Next Mars Probe Arrives at Launch Site | Space.com

 

[ScienceRocks]

Astronomers image lowest-mass exoplanet around a sun-like star

Using infrared data from the Subaru Telescope in Hawaii, an international team of astronomers has imaged a giant planet around the bright star GJ 504. Several times the mass of Jupiter and similar in size, the new world, dubbed GJ 504b, is the lowest-mass planet ever detected around a star like the sun using direct imaging techniques.

Read more at: Astronomers image lowest-mass exoplanet around a sun-like star

 

[ScienceRocks]

Top 10 milestones of Curiosity's first year on Mars

Today, NASA paid tribute to its Curiosity rover, which has completed its first year exploring the planet Mars. On August 6, 2012 (August 5, PDT), the unmanned explorer landed on the Red Planet as the start of a two-year mission to seek out areas where life might have once, or could still exist. To commemorate this event, the space agency broadcast reminiscences by Curiosity team members from NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, California. What follows is our own look at the top 10 milestones of Curiosity’s first year.

To be technical, it’s actually the end of Curiosity’s first Earth Year on Mars. In Martian years, it’s only halfway to the anniversary mark, at about 356 out of 668 Martian days. In that time, the nuclear-powered explorer has sent back to Earth 190 gigabits of data, fired its laser 75,000 times, collected and analyzed samples from two rocks and clocked over one mile (1.6 km) on the odometer – if it had an odometer. It’s been an eventful year that began with what NASA calls “seven minutes of terror.”

Top 10 milestones of Curiosity's first year on Mars