Space news and Exploration II

[ScienceRocks]

Made it to the drone ship, but landed a little too hard. Damn close.

Shows for a fact that it can be done with a little less speed next time.

 

[bripat9643]

You are aware of course that Obama with support of the Democrats stripped NASA of anyway to reach orbit or space? We must hire private enterprise to deliver materials to the space station and must use Russia to send people into space.

We have no space vehicle and no plans to make another. Ohh did I mention that Obama and the democrats cut NASA's budget to the bone?

Where's the money to come from? Oh yeah it's all Obama's fault. How about taking a few billion from the military's 700b.? After all with a Nasa budget of around 17b, 2 or 3b would be a real shot in the arm.Congress got the will to do that? Do you Sarge?

"A NASA authorization bill drafted by the Republican majority of the House Committee on Science, Space and Technology proposes to slash NASA's funding to $16.6 billion for 2014 — $300 million less than it received in 2013, and $1.1 billion less than President Obama requested for NASA in 2014. The bill — which authorizes spending levels but provides no actual funding — would roll back NASA’s funding to a level $1.2 billion less than its 2012 budget."

LINK: Space.com

Why don't we take the money from the Dept of Education?

 

[ScienceRocks]

Why not take the money from about 20 bases throughout the world? Like the ones in the eu that we're shutting down.

Tired of benefiting other people over ours.

 

[ScienceRocks]

And also, our space program already receives a tiny % of our budget(that isn't the cause of our debt!), but what I mean the 20 billion more we need for mars/year can come out of the closing of some bases.


Colliding black holes could warp space-time itself

If the two black holes meet, they could release as much energy as 100 million supernova explosions as they shatter their galaxy, a new study finds.

 

[ScienceRocks]

China plan for unmanned moon landing, Earth return advances
53 minutes ago

This is a composite image of the lunar nearside taken by the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter in June 2009, note the presence of dark areas of maria on this side of the moon. Credit: NASA

China's bold plan to land an unmanned spaceship on the moon before returning to Earth has moved another step forward with a test craft shifting into lunar orbit to conduct further tests, state media reported Sunday.

The service module of a lunar orbiter that flew back to Earth in November had been sitting in a position that brought in into sync with Earth's orbit, known as the second Lagrange point. It had separated from the orbiter in November.

The craft, loaded with support systems for operating a spaceship, will collect further data to aid planning of the 2017 Chang'e 5 mission, state broadcaster China Central Television said.

Chang'e 5 is being designed to make a soft landing on the moon and collect at least 2 kilograms (4 pounds) of rock and soil samples before returning to Earth.

If successful, that would make China only the third country after the United States and Russia to meet such a challenge.

Read more at: China plan for unmanned moon landing Earth return advances

 

[ScienceRocks]

Astronomers seek widest view ever of the universe with new telescope
2 hours ago by Sandi Doughton, The Seattle Times

Credit: LSST

At the annual meeting of the American Astronomical Society last week, the booth devoted to a revolutionary new telescope called the LSST got a lot of traffic.

Staffed by scientists from the University of Washington and other institutions, the display didn't feature sexy pictures of galaxies or nebulae, but it did include a sign that said LSST is hiring.

That was welcome news in a field where jobs can be hard to come by. It's also proof that after decades of planning and fundraising, a dream nurtured in part by UW and backed by Seattle billionaires is well on its way to reality.

On Saturday in Tuscon, Ariz., former Microsoft executive Charles Simonyi joined other luminaries to celebrate completion of the telescope's 20-ton mirror assembly, which includes the largest convex mirror ever made. Simonyi, who has twice visited the International Space Station as a tourist, put up $20 million for the mirror. His former boss Bill Gates chipped in $10 million.

Construction of the $700 million telescope will begin in earnest this spring on a mountaintop in Chile's Atacama Desert.

Read more at: Astronomers seek widest view ever of the universe with new telescope

 

[ScienceRocks]

NASA test fires SLS engine
By David Szondy
January 12, 2015
2 Pictures

The Orion spacecraft may have had its maiden flight, but it's still waiting for the Space Launch System (SLS) booster that will send it beyond the Moon. That wait got a bit shorter on Friday as NASA test fired the RS-25 engine that will power the SLS. The first of eight hot tests, it took place at NASA's Stennis Space Center near Bay St. Louis, Mississippi.

 

[ScienceRocks]

SpaceX supply ship arrives at space station with grocerie

s

A shipment of much-needed groceries and belated Christmas presents finally arrived Monday morning at the International Space Station.

The SpaceX company's supply ship, Dragon, pulled up at the orbiting lab two days after its liftoff from Florida. Station commander Butch Wilmore used a robot arm to grab the capsule and its 5,000 pounds of cargo, as the craft soared more than 260 miles above the Mediterranean.

 

[ScienceRocks]

 

[ScienceRocks]

1501.01623 The Occurrence of Potentially Habitable Planets Orbiting M Dwarfs Estimated from the Full Kepler Dataset and an Empirical Measurement of the Detection Sensitivity

The Occurrence of Potentially Habitable Planets Orbiting M Dwarfs Estimated from the Full Kepler Dataset and an Empirical Measurement of the Detection Sensitivity

We present an improved estimate of the occurrence rate of small planets around small stars by searching the full four-year Kepler data set for transiting planets using our own planet detection pipeline and conducting transit injection and recovery simulations to empirically measure the search completeness of our pipeline. We identified 157 planet candidates, including 2 objects that were not previously identified as Kepler Objects of Interest (KOIs). We inspected all publicly available follow-up images, observing notes, and centroid analyses, and corrected for the likelihood of false positives. We evaluate the sensitivity of our detection pipeline on a star-by-star basis by injecting 2000 transit signals in the light curve of each target star. For periods shorter than 50 days, we found an occurrence rate of 0.57 (+0.06/-0.05) Earth-size planets (1-1.5 Earth radii) and 0.51 (+0.07/-0.06) super-Earths (1.5-2 Earth radii) per M dwarf. Within a conservatively defined habitable zone based on the moist greenhouse inner limit and maximum greenhouse outer limit, we estimate an occurrence rate of 0.18 (+0.18/-0.07) Earth-size planets and 0.11 (+0.10/-0.05) super-Earths per M dwarf habitable zone. Accounting for the cooling effect of clouds by doubling the insolation limit at the inner edge of the habitable zone results in a higher occurrence rate of 0.27 (+0.16/-0.09) Earth-size planets and 0.25 (+0.11/- 0.07) super-Earths per M dwarf habitable zone.

 

[ScienceRocks]

Team in breakthrough research to discover new planets
15 minutes ago

Scientists from Queen's University Belfast have partnered with leading astrophysicists across Europe for a ground-breaking space research project that will form a crucial step in the quest to study small, rocky planets orbiting other stars and discover new planets.

The Next-Generation Transit Survey (NGTS) has achieved first light at the European Southern Observatory's (ESO) Paranal Observatory in Chile, and will reach a level of accuracy never before attained under observatory conditions. A suite of highly sensitive telescopes - parts of which have been manufactured in Belfast - will search for 'transiting exoplanets' which are planets that pass in front of their parent star and hence produce a small, periodic dimming of that star's light. Only a few such very delicate observations have ever been made, but NGTS should provide many more opportunities.

Read more at: Team in breakthrough research to discover new planets

 

[ScienceRocks]

Trans-Neptunian objects suggest that there are more planets in the solar system

There could be at least two unknown planets hidden well beyond Pluto, whose gravitational influence determines the orbits and strange distribution of objects observed beyond Neptune. This has been revealed by numerical calculations made by researchers at the Complutense University of Madrid and the University of Cambridge. If confirmed, this hypothesis would revolutionise solar system models.

Astronomers have spent decades debating whether some dark trans-Plutonian planet remains to be discovered within the solar system. According to the calculations of scientists at the Complutense University of Madrid (UCM, Spain) and the University of Cambridge (United Kingdom) not only one, but at least two planets must exist to explain the orbital behaviour of extreme trans-Neptunian objects (ETNO).

 

[ScienceRocks]

A NASA spacecraft's epic Pluto encounter is officially underway.

http://www.space.com...servations.html

NASA's New Horizons probe today (Jan. 15) began its six-month approach to Pluto, which will culminate with the first-ever close flyby of the dwarf planet on July 14.

"We really are on Pluto's doorstep," New Horizons principal investigator Alan Stern said last month during a news conference at the annual fall meeting of the American Geophysical Union (AGU) in San Francisco.

 

[Old Rocks]

This year looks to be as epic as the first Voyager discoveries. That changed our whole concept concerning the planets and their moons.

 

[ScienceRocks]

Planets outside our solar system more hospitable to life than thought

A study by astrophysicists at the University of Toronto suggests that exoplanets - planets outside our solar system - are more likely to have liquid water and be more habitable than we thought.

"Planets with potential oceans could have a climate that is much more similar to Earth's than previously expected," said Jérémy Leconte, a postdoctoral fellow at the Canadian Institute for Theoretical Astrophysics (CITA) at the University of Toronto, and lead author of a study published today in Science Express.

Scientists have thought that exoplanets behave in a manner contrary to that of Earth - that is they always show their same side to their star. If so, exoplanets would rotate in sync with their star so that there is always one hemisphere facing it while the other hemisphere is in perpetual cold darkness.

Leconte's study suggests, however, that as exoplanets rotate around their stars, they spin at such a speed as to exhibit a day-night cycle similar to Earth.

Read more at: Planets outside our solar system more hospitable to life than thought

 

[ScienceRocks]

Three transiting Super-Earths around a nearby M dwarf star

by Edasich Today at 4:44 am
1501.03798 A nearby M star with three transiting super-Earths discovered by K2
A nearby M star with three transiting super-Earths discovered by K2

Small, cool planets represent the typical end-products of planetary formation. Studying the archi- tectures of these systems, measuring planet masses and radii, and observing these planets' atmospheres during transit directly informs theories of planet assembly, migration, and evolution. Here we report the discovery of three small planets orbiting a bright (Ks = 8.6 mag) M0 dwarf using data collected as part of K2, the new transit survey using the re-purposed Kepler spacecraft. Stellar spectroscopy and K2 photometry indicate that the system hosts three transiting planets with radii 1.5-2.1 R_Earth, straddling the transition region between rocky and increasingly volatile-dominated compositions. With orbital periods of 10-45 days the planets receive just 1.5-10x the flux incident on Earth, making these some of the coolest small planets known orbiting a nearby star; planet d is located near the inner edge of the system's habitable zone. The bright, low-mass star makes this system an excellent laboratory to determine the planets' masses via Doppler spectroscopy and to constrain their atmospheric compositions via transit spectroscopy. This discovery demonstrates the power of K2 and future space-based transit searches to find many fascinating objects of interest.

Really good news that k2 can find planets this small. Kepler is king! Wish we could put a dozen of these up.

 

[ScienceRocks]

Lost Beagle2 probe found 'intact' on Mars
BBC News - ‎2 minutes ago‎

The missing Mars robot Beagle2 has been found on the surface of the Red Planet, apparently intact. High-resolution images taken from orbit have identified its landing location, and it looks to be in one piece.

 

[ScienceRocks]

Here is the paper for the 3 new k2 planets
http://arxiv.org/pdf/1501.03798v1.pdf

 

[ScienceRocks]

This is SpaceX's rocket crash-landing on the platform

You can see in the GIF above that the rocket touched down on the barge's landing surface at about 45 degrees to the horizontal. That was because the fins on the side of the rocket lost power, causing it to drift over to one side. As it fell towards the barge, the angle of approach meant the legs and then the engine sections smashed.

From there, residual fuel and oxygen left in the craft were able to combine and—BOOM—a rather dramatic explosion followed. Or, as Elon Musk puts it, there was a "Full RUD"—a "rapid unscheduled disassembly" event.

http://gizmodo.com/t...arge-1679890015

 

[ScienceRocks]

Creating the world's largest ever satellite constellation

OneWeb Ltd will build, launch and operate the world’s largest ever satellite network. Virgin Galactic’s LauncherOne programme will help make it possible with frequent satellite launches at a much lower cost and with greater reliability.

Virgin Galactic has always planned to build a commercial spaceline that can create positive change back on earth. Well, both human spaceflight and the satellite constellation have the potential to transform lives in ways that almost no other companies have done before.
~Richard Branson