Space news and Exploration II

[ScienceRocks]

NASA releases new Ceres images prior to Friday encounter
By David Szondy
March 3, 2015
5 Pictures

As NASA’s Dawn spacecraft makes its final approach to Ceres, the ion-propelled spacecraft is sending the best images yet with more details about the surface of the dwarf planet. The images from Dawn have shown the presence of numerous craters and unusual bright spots that scientist hope will provide clues as to not only how Ceres formed and if it is still active, but the early history of the Solar System as well.

 

[ScienceRocks]

Science Shorts: How Big Is Pluto's Atmosphere?

2 March 2015

How big is Pluto's atmosphere? This is not a typical question one finds in planetary science. Earth's atmosphere has an equivalent thickness - the thickness if you compress the atmosphere to uniform pressure and density - of about 10 kilometers, or six miles. Compare this with the radius of Earth, 6,370 kilometers, and you see that the razor-thin thickness of Earth's atmosphere is about 0.17% of its radius.

Even if you consider the "outer limit" of Earth's neutral atmosphere, what we call the exobase, that reaches about 600 kilometers altitude, the atmosphere's equivalent thickness is only 10% of Earth's radius-still very thin. So the volume of Earth's atmosphere is tiny compared to Earth's volume.
But now consider Pluto. Its atmosphere has a near-surface equivalent thickness of about 40 kilometers, which is almost 4% of its 1,200- kilometer (or so) radius. But the "outer limit" of Pluto's atmosphere is very difficult to define, although we know that it is very far from the surface.

http://www.spacedail...sphere_999.html

 

[ScienceRocks]

New technique allows analysis of clouds around exoplanets

Analysis of data from the Kepler space telescope has shown that roughly half of the dayside of the exoplanet Kepler-7b is covered by a large cloud mass. Statistical comparison of more than 1,000 atmospheric models show that these clouds are most likely made of Enstatite, a common Earth mineral that is in vapor form at the extreme temperature on Kepler-7b. These models varied the altitude, condensation, particle size, and chemical composition of the clouds to find the right reflectivity and color properties to match the observed signal from the exoplanet.

Next Big Future Kepler Space Telescope data can be analysed to determine the composition of clouds on planets in other solar systems

Researchers in the Department of Earth, Atmospheric, and Planetary Sciences (EAPS) at MIT describe a technique that analyzes data from NASA’s Kepler space observatory to determine the types of clouds on planets that orbit other stars, known as exoplanets.

The team, led by Kerri Cahoy, an assistant professor of aeronautics and astronautics at MIT, has already used the method to determine the properties of clouds on the exoplanet Kepler-7b. The planet is known as a “hot Jupiter,” as temperatures in its atmosphere hover at around 1,700 kelvins.

NASA’s Kepler spacecraft was designed to search for Earth-like planets orbiting other stars. It was pointed at a fixed patch of space, constantly monitoring the brightness of 145,000 stars. An orbiting exoplanet crossing in front of one of these stars causes a temporary dimming of this brightness, allowing researchers to detect its presence.

Researchers have previously shown that by studying the variations in the amount of light coming from these star systems as a planet transits, or crosses in front or behind them, they can detect the presence of clouds in that planet’s atmosphere. That is because particles within the clouds will scatter different wavelengths of light.

 

[ScienceRocks]

China aims to have a rover on Mars by 2020

China has ambitious plans to touch down on Mars by 2020, likely with a rover, and to collect its own samples from the red planet 10 years after that, a top aerospace scientist has revealed.

http://m.scmp.com/news/china/article...thin-six-years

 

[ScienceRocks]

SpaceX Profitable as Musk Pulls In NASA Contracts, Google Cash

Investors are wondering how many years it will take before Tesla makes a profit. For Elon Musk’s other big enterprise, SpaceX, the time is now.
Space Exploration Technologies, as the closely held company is formally known, has contracts worth $4.2 billion for hauling U.S. astronauts and supplies to the International Space Station, and Pentagon officials say they expect to certify it soon for military payloads. And SpaceX’s business of launching satellites looks so promising that, in January, Google and Fidelity Investments together invested $1 billion in the Hawthorne, California–based company. That gives them a 10 percent stake that values SpaceX at $10 billion. Other investors include the Founders Fund, Draper Fisher Jurvetson, Valor Equity Partners, and Capricorn. With 50 launches worth $5 billion on its manifest, SpaceX is making money, according to its website, although a spokesman wouldn’t say how much.

Spacex rules! I hope they work with the asteroid mining companies to make it a thousand times more profitable!

 

[ScienceRocks]

Four-star planetary sytem 30 Ari

Planet Reared by Four Parent Stars NASA

The newfound four-star planetary system, called 30 Ari, is located 136 light-years away in the constellation Aries. The system's gaseous planet is enormous, with 10 times the mass of Jupiter, and it orbits its primary star every 335 days. The primary star has a relatively close partner star, which the planet does not orbit. This pair, in turn, is locked in a long-distance orbit with another pair of stars about 1,670 astronomical units away (an astronomical unit is the distance between Earth and the sun). Astronomers think it's highly unlikely that this planet, or any moons that might circle it, could sustain life.

 

[ScienceRocks]

NASA eying ion engines for Mars orbiter
A Mars orbiter launching in 2022 is a prime candidate to test out new technologies — like ion drive engines, better solar arrays, and lightning-fast broadband communications between Earth and Mars — to help scientists return samples from the Martian surface, and eventually send humans there, according to Charles Whetsel, who oversees formulation of future Mars missions at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California.

http://spaceflightnow.com/2015/03/03...ching-in-2022/

NASA officials want the agency’s next Mars orbiter to pull double duty as a communications relay station for a fleet of surface landers and as a trailblazer for a future round-trip sample return mission and human expeditions to the red planet.

Worried its fleet of Mars orbiter is aging, NASA intends to dispatch the spacecraft to the red planet in September 2022 to link ground controllers with rovers and extend mapping capabilities expected to be lost when the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter stops functioning.

Engineers also want to add ion engines to the orbiter and fly the efficient electrically-powered thruster system to Mars for the first time, testing out a solar-electric propulsion package that officials say will be needed when astronauts visit the red planet.

Ion engines produce just a whisper of thrust, using electric power to ionize atoms of a neutral gas and spit out the particles at high speed. While the drive given by the thrusters is barely noticeable in one instant, they can operate for months or years, burning scant fuel compared to traditional chemical rockets.

Good news!

 

[longknife]

SpaceX Profitable as Musk Pulls In NASA Contracts, Google Cash

Investors are wondering how many years it will take before Tesla makes a profit. For Elon Musk’s other big enterprise, SpaceX, the time is now.
Space Exploration Technologies, as the closely held company is formally known, has contracts worth $4.2 billion for hauling U.S. astronauts and supplies to the International Space Station, and Pentagon officials say they expect to certify it soon for military payloads. And SpaceX’s business of launching satellites looks so promising that, in January, Google and Fidelity Investments together invested $1 billion in the Hawthorne, California–based company. That gives them a 10 percent stake that values SpaceX at $10 billion. Other investors include the Founders Fund, Draper Fisher Jurvetson, Valor Equity Partners, and Capricorn. With 50 launches worth $5 billion on its manifest, SpaceX is making money, according to its website, although a spokesman wouldn’t say how much.

Spacex rules! I hope they work with the asteroid mining companies to make it a thousand times more profitable!

Well, the thought of the riches there should make a lot of investors salivate. There's only one problem - distance.

1. Because the asteroid belt is between the Mars and Jupiter orbits, it is around 2.2 to 3.2 Astronomical Units (AU) from the Sun – which is approximately 329,115,316 to 478,713,186 km. The average distance between objects is a massive 600,000 miles.

 

[ScienceRocks]

'Habitable' planet GJ 581d previously dismissed as noise probably does exist
8 hours ago

An artist’s impression of Gliese 581d, an exoplanet about 20.3 light-years away from Earth, in the constellation Libra.

A report published in Science has dismissed claims made last year that the first super-Earth planet discovered in the habitable zone of a distant star was 'stellar activity masquerading as planets.' The researchers are confident the planet named GJ 581d, identified in 2009 orbiting the star Gliese 581, does exist, and that last year's claim was triggered by inadequate analysis of the data.

Read more at: Habitable planet GJ 581d previously dismissed as noise probably does exist

 

[ScienceRocks]

Orion's Launch Abort System Motor Exceeds Expectations

Three seconds.


That’s all it took for the attitude control motor of NASA’s Orion Launch Abort System (LAS) to prove that its material can survive not only the intense temperatures, pressures, noise and vibrations experienced during a launch emergency but also 40 percent beyond. The LAS is being designed to bring a crew to safety should there be a problem in the launch pad or during ascent.

Built by Orbital ATK, the attitude control motor consists of a solid propellant gas generator, with eight proportional valves equally spaced around the outside of the three-foot diameter motor. Together, the valves can exert up to 7,000 pounds of steering force to the vehicle in any direction upon command from the Orion – the spacecraft that will one-day take humans to an asteroid and eventually Mars.

"For the first time, the motor demonstrated capability far enough above what it would see in flight," said Kevin Rivers, deputy director for the Flight Projects Directorate at NASA's Langley Research Center in Virginia. "We can now have absolute confidence that the motor would perform flawlessly during a crewed mission."

http://www.nasa.gov/...s/#.VPngVeF2niE

 

[ScienceRocks]

NASA Spacecraft Becomes First to Orbit a Dwarf Planet | NASA

NASA's Dawn spacecraft has become the first mission to achieve orbit around a dwarf planet. The spacecraft was approximately 38,000 miles (61,000) kilometers from Ceres when it was captured by the dwarf planet’s gravity at about 4:39 a.m. PST (7:39 a.m. EST) Friday.

Mission controllers at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, California received a signal from the spacecraft at 5:36 a.m. PST (8:36 a.m. EST) that Dawn was healthy and thrusting with its ion engine, the indicator Dawn had entered orbit as planned.

"Since its discovery in 1801, Ceres was known as a planet, then an asteroid and later a dwarf planet," said Marc Rayman, Dawn chief engineer and mission director at JPL. "Now, after a journey of 3.1 billion miles (4.9 billion kilometers) and 7.5 years, Dawn calls Ceres, home."

http://www.wantchinatimes.com/news-s...1&MainCatID=11

Liang Xiaohong explains China's space projects for 2015 during the annual meetings of the National People's Congress and Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference held in Beijing.
In addition to the launch of the CZ-11, Liang said that the CZ-5, China's next-generation heavy lift launch system will be revealed to the public for the first time at Hainan island's Wenchang Satellite Launch Center. Designed to match the capabilities of American EELV-sized vehicles such as the Delta IV, Atlas V, and Falcon 9, the CZ-5 is currently China's largest rocket system. Its first flight is scheduled to take place this year as well.

 

[Vigilante]

Mystery 'noise' could be an Earth-like world...signals suggest habitable planet...22 light years...

dailymail.co.uk ^
Astronomers believe mysterious signals - previously dismissed as stellar bursts - are coming from an Earth-like planet. The Gliese 581d planet has conditions that could support life, and is likely to be a rocky world, twice the size of Earth. Signals from the planet were initially discovered in 2010, but last year dismissed as noise from distant stars.

 

[ScienceRocks]

The service module now orbiting the moon is still doing experiments to help the Chang'e 5 mission

http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/20..._134048142.htm

China has ran tests close to the moon simulating an unmanned docking procedure needed in the country's next lunar mission.

The service module of the unmanned lunar orbiter currently in space to trial such techniques entered a target lunar orbit after breaking maneuvers, and flew to a suitable position for orbital docking between Tuesday and Saturday, said the State Administration of Science, Technology and Industry for National Defense (SASTIND) on Sunday.

Liu Jizhong, deputy chief commander of the SASTIND's lunar probe project, said that the service module has proven the reliability of key technology needed for the docking of two spacecraft in the Chang'e-5 mission.

 

[ScienceRocks]

The world's largest radio telescope takes A major step towards construction
3 hours ago

At their meeting last week at the SKA Organisation Headquarters near Manchester, UK, the SKA Board of Directors unanimously agreed to move the world's largest radio telescope forward to its final pre-construction phase. The design of the €650M first phase of the SKA (SKA1) is now defined, consisting of two complementary world-class instruments – one in Australia and one in South Africa – both expecting to deliver exciting and transformational science.

Read more at: The world s largest radio telescope takes A major step towards construction

 

[ScienceRocks]

Venus, if you will, as seen in radar with the GBT
3 hours ago

From earthbound optical telescopes, the surface of Venus is shrouded beneath thick clouds made mostly of carbon dioxide. To penetrate this veil, probes like NASA's Magellan spacecraft use radar to reveal remarkable features of this planet, like mountains, craters, and volcanoes.
Recently, by combining the highly sensitive receiving capabilities of the National Science Foundation's (NSF) Green Bank Telescope (GBT) and the powerful radar transmitter at the NSF's Arecibo Observatory, astronomers were able to make remarkably detailed images of the surface of this planet without ever leaving Earth.

The radar signals from Arecibo passed through both our planet's atmosphere and the atmosphere of Venus, where they hit the surface and bounced back to be received by the GBT in a process known as bistatic radar.

Read more at: Venus if you will as seen in radar with the GBT

 

[ScienceRocks]

To get a idea of the sizes of the largest moons to the inner-planets...Well, here is a good idea.

There's a couple of moons that are bigger then Mercury and nearly as big as Mars!

----\

http://spacenews.com/commercial-crew...ter-contracts/

While Mulholland and Reisman debated their relative strengths and weaknesses, the two left room for potential future collaboration. Mulholland noted that Boeing has had discussions in the past with SpaceX about the technical compatibility of the CST-100 with the Falcon 9 as a backup to the Atlas 5. “We were not given a bid for the Falcon 9 in this previous phase of the proposal, but we’ve had discussions with SpaceX,” he said.

Mars may have had more water than the Arctic Ocean
By David Szondy
March 9, 2015
2 Pictures

In Edgar Rice Burroughs's Barsoom novels, Earthman John Carter's adventures took place on the dry beds of Mar's ancient oceans. Now NASA scientist's say that may not be so far fetched. Though they haven't found signs of any thoats, they have estimated that Mars may once have had enough water to form a vast ocean surrounding its north pole of which only plains remain.

I am willing to bet that if Venus was where mars was it would be habitual. Certainly, it would be colder but it would be habitual. Kepler 186f and a few other cold side planets could still be so.

 

[ScienceRocks]

Engine running on frozen carbon dioxide may power mission to Mars
By Colin Jeffrey
March 10, 2015

Future missions to Mars may well be powered by carbon dioxide fueled engines, thanks to a recent prototype developed by Northumbria and Edinburgh Universities. Exploiting a phenomenon known as the Leidenfrost effect, researchers hope that their engine could be powered by the vast amount of dry-ice deposits found on the red planet, thereby reducing the need to transport fuel on interplanetary missions.

 

[ScienceRocks]

http://www.spacedaily.com/m/reports/...e_lab_999.html

Research on the Long March-5 carrier rocket - to be used to lift the Tiangong-2 lab into space - Tiangong-2's payload, and selection of astronauts for the mission are currently "progressing in an orderly manner," Zhou said.

 

[ScienceRocks]

In 'milestone' toward Mars, NASA test-fires rocket

The most powerful solid rocket booster ever built was fired up for the first time Wednesday in a test that NASA described as a "significant milestone" toward Mars.

Tied horizontally to the ground at the base of a Utah mountain, the 177-foot-long (54-meter) Space Launch System (SLS) booster was hot-fired for two minutes to see how the system would perform when eventually launched.

"Great test, just a fantastic result," said Alex Priskos, who manages the Boosters Office for the SLS program at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama.

"This thing was about as perfect... as it could be."

Read more at: In milestone toward Mars NASA test-fires rocket

 

[ScienceRocks]

Jupiter's Moon Ganymede Has a Salty Ocean with More Water than Earth
by Miriam Kramer, Space.com Staff Writer | March 12, 2015 01:50pm ET
Jupiter s Moon Ganymede Has a Salty Ocean with More Water than Earth

A salty ocean is lurking beneath the surface of Jupiter's largest moon, Ganymede, scientists using the Hubble Space Telescope have found.

The ocean on Ganymede — which is buried under a thick crust of ice — could actually harbor more water than all of Earth's surface water combined, according to NASA officials. Scientists think the ocean is about 60 miles (100 kilometers) thick, 10 times the depth of Earth's oceans, NASA added. The new Hubble Space Telescope finding could also help scientists learn more about the plethora of potentially watery worlds that exist in the solar system and beyond.

"The solar system is now looking like a pretty soggy place," Jim Green, NASA's director of planetary science, said during a news teleconference today (March 12). Scientists are particularly interested in learning more about watery worlds because life as we know it depends on water to thrive.

Scientists have also found that Ganymede's surface shows signs of flooding. Young parts of Ganymede seen in a video map may have been formed by water bubbling up from the interior of the moon through faults or cryo-volcanos at some point in the moon's history, Green said.