Space news and Exploration II

[sealybobo]

I

Why is it got to be uninhabited.

Probably because we don't have the tech to detect them yet. We really don't have the tech to detect earth size planets in long orbits either...Kepler came close but didn't last long enough.

m Watching Interstellar with matthew Mcconaghy. Have you seen it? I'm curious how science fiction its going to be. How they gonna travel far enough to find anything?

Yes!

1. A planet close enough to do that to the water = not going to have a breathable atmosphere and likely will mean that you're doomed.
2. It hasn't been proven if there's wormholes. Secondly, how would we control them???? Doesn't seem likely.
3. I think we could build a ship to go to Saturn with humans. With enough funding and decades of research I think we can do great things.
4. Yes, I believe there's habitual planets capable of some kind of life. Maybe within 16 to 20 light years.

What's at Saturn? Bfd.

The worm hole

Catch me up. Do we ride worm holes to far distances?

 

[ScienceRocks]

I

Probably because we don't have the tech to detect them yet. We really don't have the tech to detect earth size planets in long orbits either...Kepler came close but didn't last long enough.

m Watching Interstellar with matthew Mcconaghy. Have you seen it? I'm curious how science fiction its going to be. How they gonna travel far enough to find anything?

Yes!

1. A planet close enough to do that to the water = not going to have a breathable atmosphere and likely will mean that you're doomed.
2. It hasn't been proven if there's wormholes. Secondly, how would we control them???? Doesn't seem likely.
3. I think we could build a ship to go to Saturn with humans. With enough funding and decades of research I think we can do great things.
4. Yes, I believe there's habitual planets capable of some kind of life. Maybe within 16 to 20 light years.

What's at Saturn? Bfd.

The worm hole

Catch me up. Do we ride worm holes to far distances?

In the movie the ship goes to one system with 3 or 4 habitual planets. One of them has a massive black hole and the dumb physicist woman wants to land on that one, but they find out that the pull of the gravity is pulling the water into thousand foot tall mountains of water that slowly creeps across the planet. The bad news is the gravity of the black hole is causing time to slow and so they use up 7 years in one hour. They head to another one with the woman's old friend from earlier journey through the worm hole only to find out that this one is a icy hell. Her friend tries to kill them but they manage to beat him in the end...Sadly, the main actor then gets sucked into the black hole and the woman manages to reach the real habitual planet just in time as the ship had been fucked up pretty good.

I am sure there's such solar systems but there's a hole lot of fiction otherwise.

 

[ScienceRocks]

I'd like to see China and India do more with building telescopes like their own version of kepler. Now that would be nice. Now that's something a fucking corporation can't or won't do!

 

[ScienceRocks]

China pushing ahead plans to build space-based Silk Road - Headlines features photo and videos from ecns.cn china news chinanews ecns cns

Earlier media reports said China plans to launch another 120 satellites -- about 20 communications satellites, 70 remote sensing satellites and 30 navigation satellites. The number of Chinese satellites in orbit will overtake Russia in 2015 to rank second in the world.

Why not another Kepler China??

 

[ScienceRocks]

NASA funds NextSTEP deep space propulsion including 100 hour
Next Big Future NASA funds NextSTEP deep space propulsion including 100 hour VASIMR and advanced electric space drives

NASA has selected 12 Next Space Technologies for Exploration Partnerships (NextSTEP) to advance concept studies and technology development projects in the areas of advanced propulsion, habitation and small satellites.

Selected advanced electric propulsion projects will develop propulsion technology systems in the 50- to 300-kilowatt range to meet the needs of a variety of deep space mission concepts. State-of-the-art electric propulsion technology currently employed by NASA generates less than five kilowatts, and systems being developed for the Asteroid Redirect Mission (ARM) Broad Area Announcement (BAA) are in the 40-kilowatt range.

The three NextSTEP advanced propulsion projects, $400,000 to $3.5 million per year per award, will have no more than a three-year performance period focused on ground testing efforts. NASA required a minimum of 50% cost sharing and/or matching for the proposed efforts, which may include prior industry investment.

Ad Astra’s winning proposal for advancing the technology readiness of the VASIMR® engine was one of three selected in the field of advanced electric propulsion. Under this work, valued at approximately $10 million over three years, the partnership will advance the VASIMR® engine to a technology readiness level(TRL)greater than 5–a step closerto spaceflight –with a demonstration of the VX-200-SS™laboratory prototype, a fully integrated system capable of operating at high power continuously for a minimum of 100 hours

In 2013 , after more than $30 million in private capital , the company completed more than 10,000 successful high power firings of its most advanced VASIMR ® prototype , the VX - 200 ™ , in Ad Astra’s Houston vacuum chamber facility. These tests demonstrated the engine’s excellent firing repeatability and performance (6 N thrust, 5000 sec sp and a thruster efficiency greater than 70%) with no measurable signs of engine wear.

New technological advances (for higher 100 hour endurance) will be fully integrated into a test article called the VX-200SS™ (for steady state)

 

[ScienceRocks]

Star's birth glimpsed 'in real time'

3 March 2015

Astronomers have witnessed a key stage in the birth of a very heavy star, using two radio telescope views of the process taken 18 years apart.

The young star is 4,200 light-years from Earth and appears to be surrounded by a doughnut-shaped cloud of dust.
That cloud slows down the hot, ionised wind that the star blasts into space, causing it to form an elongated column perpendicular to the dusty ring.
The new results represent "before and after" glimpses of that column forming.
They were captured by the Very Large Array, a battery of 27 antennae in the New Mexico desert, and are published in the journal Science.
"The comparison is remarkable," said first author Carlos Carrasco-Gonzalez, from the National Autonomous University of Mexico. The compact, rounded wind indicated by data from 1996 transforms - just 18 years later in 2014 - into a "distinctly elongated outflow".

http://www.bbc.co.uk...onment-32168507

 

[ScienceRocks]

Mission Manager Update: K2 in Campaign 4
Mission Manager Update K2 in Campaign 4 NASA

Now in its fourth observing campaign, the Kepler spacecraft continues to operate wonderfully since beginning its new K2 mission in May 2014. Data collected for Campaigns 0, 1 and 2 have been made available to the public through the Mikulski Archive for Space Telescopes (MAST). Campaign 3 data will be processed with a scheduled delivery to MAST in June 2015.

K2 began its fourth campaign on Feb. 8. The Campaign 4 target set includes nearly 16,000 target stars, which can be searched for exoplanets and examined for an array of astrophysical phenomena. This field includes two notable open star clusters—Pleiades and Hyades, the nearest open cluster to our solar system. Both are located in the constellation of Taurus.

nasa should put up dozens of these

 

[ScienceRocks]

Planned maneuver further extends MESSENGER orbital operations

MESSENGER mission controllers at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) in Laurel, Md., conducted a maneuver yesterday to raise the spacecraft's minimum altitude sufficiently to extend orbital operations and further delay the probe's inevitable impact onto Mercury's surface.

Read more at: http://phys.org/news/2015-04-maneuver-messenger-orbital.html#jCp

 

[ScienceRocks]

UMass Lowell gets grant to find Earth 2.0
NASA helps fund device to seek out planets like ours
E-Mail
http://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/20...ct/dYGzTjoxJI8w8Hd5SSi8bN/story.html#comments
By Rebecca FioreGlobe Correspondent March 04, 2015
NASA gives 5.6m to UMass Lowell for planet project - Metro - The Boston Globe

NASA has given $5.6 million to the University of Massachusetts Lowell to build and test an imaging device to detect planets beyond our solar system that are capable of supporting life, officials said.

The grant, the first of its size, will be going to the university’s Lowell Center for Space Science and Technology. The center focuses on studying atmospheres and ionospheres of Earth and the solar system, the Milky Way galaxy, and the cosmos, officials said.

The apparatus, which is called a planetary imaging concept testbed using a recoverable experiment — coronagraph, or PICTURE-C, has a special optical-imaging system in its telescope that blocks light from stars to see other objects in space.

“PICTURE-C will enable us to image and characterize the disk of dust, asteroids, planets, and other debris orbiting the stars and gain a better understanding of the processes and dynamics that formed our solar system,” Supriya Chakrabarti, a UMass Lowell physics professor and the director of the center, said in a statement.

 

[ScienceRocks]

More and more the rest of the world is standing up for leadership of space. America is finished because of the gop! I wish they'd land a rover on Mercury!

As MESSENGER is saying it's farewell, two probes are taking shape here on planet earth. One from Europe and the other from Japan. They will travel together to Mercury in 2017 and take a touristy route to it and arrive in 2024.

http://spaceflightnow.com/2015/04/05...slips-to-2017/

BepiColombo will be the first mission to Mercury by Europe and Japan, and the second to orbit the fleet-footed planet after NASA’s Messenger spacecraft.

First proposed to ESA in the 1990s, BepiColombo is one of the most difficult space missions ever attempted by Europe and the most ambitious probe ever sent to Mercury. Powered by ion engines and shielded to withstand scorching temperatures of nearly 700 degrees Fahrenheit at Mercury, BepiColombo has endured redesigns, upgrades and delays that have sent the mission’s cost more than 50 percent higher than original estimates.

ESA officials intended BepiColombo to launch on a medium-class Soyuz rocket, but the spacecraft outgrew the capacity of the Soyuz, forcing it to lift off on the more expensive Ariane 5.

Technicians in February mated BepiColombo’s European orbiter and transfer module for the first time at ESA’s test center in the Netherlands. Japan’s magnetospheric probe is due to arrive at ESA in April for final tests.

 

[ScienceRocks]

SpaceX, Sierra Nevada get more time to finish flight tests

http://spaceflightnow.com/2015/04/02...-flight-tests/

NASA has extended development agreements with SpaceX and Sierra Nevada Corp. past a March 31 deadline, giving the companies more time to complete delayed tests on commercial spacecraft intended to one day ferry astronauts into space.

The extensions do not come with any extra funding from the space agency, which pays out money to the contractors as they complete predetermined milestones.

SpaceX now has until Dec. 31 to wrap up work under its Commercial Crew Integrated Capability, or CCiCap agreement. Sierra Nevada’s amended agreement now extends until March 31, 2016, according to documents posted on NASA’s website.

@SpaceX
Continued progress on Pad 39A and its hangar that will house Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy at KSC:

Space-x is probably the greatest of Obama's achievements.

 

[ScienceRocks]

Dawn Is In Excellent Shape One Month After Arriving at Ceres
Dawn Is In Excellent Shape One Month After Arriving at Ceres - SpaceRef

Since its capture by the gravity of dwarf planet Ceres on March 6, NASA's Dawn spacecraft has performed flawlessly, continuing to thrust with its ion engine as planned.

The thrust, combined with Ceres' gravity, is gradually guiding the spacecraft into a circular orbit around the dwarf planet. All of the spacecraft's systems and instruments are in excellent health.

Dawn has been following its planned trajectory on the dark side of Ceres -- the side facing away from the sun -- since early March. After it entered orbit, the spacecraft's momentum carried it to a higher altitude, reaching a maximum of 46,800 miles (75,400 kilometers) on March 18. Today, Dawn is about 26,000 miles (42,000 kilometers) above Ceres, descending toward the first planned science orbit, which will be 8,400 miles (13,500 kilometers) above the surface.

The next optical navigation images of Ceres will be taken on April 10 and April 14, and are expected to be available online after initial analysis by the science team. In the first of these, the dwarf planet will appear as a thin crescent, much like the images taken on March 1, but with about 1.5 times higher resolution. The April 14 images will reveal a slightly larger crescent in even greater detail. Once Dawn settles into the first science orbit on April 23, the spacecraft will begin the intensive prime science campaign.

 

[ScienceRocks]

NASA's Space Launch System to deploy 11 additional satellites on maiden launch
By Anthony Wood
April 7, 2015

NASA is planning to maximize the scientific potential of the maiden launch of its next generation launch vehicle, the Space Launch System, by selecting 11 tiny satellites to ride shotgun. The little probes, known as CubeSats, will be transported in the SLS's upper stage adaptor, presenting a cost-effective delivery option for experiments designed to function beyond low-Earth orbit.

Why not send up another Kepler???

 

[ScienceRocks]

Here's the paper for CoRoT-28 b and CoRoT-29 b.
http://arxiv.org/abs/1504.01532

Apparentlly CoRoT-29 b has an asymmetric light curve due an oblate star.

Context. We present the discovery of two transiting extrasolar planets by the satellite CoRoT. Aims. We aim at a characterization of the planetary bulk parameters, which allow us to further investigate the formation and evolution of the planetary systems and the main properties of the host stars. Methods. We used the transit light curve to characterize the planetary parameters relative to the stellar parameters. The analysis of HARPS spectra established the planetary nature of the detections, providing their masses. Further photometric and spectroscopic ground-based observations provided stellar parameters (log g,Teff,v sin i) to characterize the host stars. Our model takes the geometry of the transit to constrain the stellar density into account, which when linked to stellar evolutionary models, determines the bulk parameters of the star. Because of the asymmetric shape of the light curve of one of the planets, we had to include the possibility in our model that the stellar surface was not strictly spherical. Results. We present the planetary parameters of CoRoT-28b, a Jupiter-sized planet (mass 0.484+/-0.087MJup; radius 0.955+/-0.066RJup) orbiting an evolved star with an orbital period of 5.208 51 +/- 0.000 38 days, and CoRoT-29b, another Jupiter-sized planet (mass 0.85 +/- 0.20MJup; radius 0.90 +/- 0.16RJup) orbiting an oblate star with an orbital period of 2.850 570 +/- 0.000 006 days. The reason behind the asymmetry of the transit shape is not understood at this point. Conclusions. These two new planetary systems have very interesting properties and deserve further study, particularly in the case of the star CoRoT-29.

 

[ScienceRocks]

Eagleworks NASA updated EMDrive models show possible scaling to 2000 Newtons of propellantless propulsion with multikilowatt magnetron

If one envisions the quantum vacuum (Q-V) as a semi-virtual electrical plasma as Dr. White does, that would imply that the Poynting power flow vector would entrain the Q-V plasma and send it on its way toward the pillbox end of the cavity and then out of the cavity, the back-reaction on the cavity should be in the opposite direction towards the RF feed end of the Cannae test article, but the observed thrust vector is opposite to that surmise, i.e. toward the shorter RF sense antenna end of the cavity per the attached slide.

 

[ScienceRocks]

Mars has belts of glaciers consisting of frozen water
19 hours ago

Mars distinct polar ice caps, but Mars also has belts of glaciers at its central latitudes – between the blue lines, in both the southern and northern hemispheres. A thick layer of dust covers the glaciers, so they appear as the surface of …more


Mars has distinct polar ice caps, but Mars also has belts of glaciers at its central latitudes in both the southern and northern hemispheres. A thick layer of dust covers the glaciers, so they appear as surface of the ground, but radar measurements show that underneath the dust there are glaciers composed of frozen water. New studies have now calculated the size of the glaciers and thus the amount of water in the glaciers. It is the equivalent of all of Mars being covered by more than one meter of ice. The results are published in the scientific journal, Geophysical Research Letters.
Several satellites orbit Mars and on satellite images, researchers have been able to observe the shape of glaciers just below the surface. For a long time scientists did not know if the ice was made of frozen water (H2O) or of carbon dioxide (CO2) or whether it was mud.

Using radar measurements from the NASA satellite, Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, researchers have been able to determine that is water ice. But how thick was the ice and do they resemble glaciers on Earth?

A group of researchers at the Niels Bohr Institute have now calculated this using radar observations combined with ice flow modelling.

"We have calculated that the ice in the glaciers is equivalent to over 150 billion cubic meters of ice – that much ice could cover the entire surface of Mars with 1.1 meters of ice. The ice at the mid-latitudes is therefore an important part of Mars' water reservoir," explains Nanna Bjørnholt Karlsson.


Read more at: http://phys.org/news/2015-04-mars-belts-glaciers-frozen.html#jCp

Who said there's no water on mars? lol

 

[ScienceRocks]

The solar system and beyond is awash in water
12 hours ago by Preston Dyches

NASA is exploring our solar system and beyond to understand the workings of the universe, searching for water and life among the stars. Credit: NASA

As NASA missions explore our solar system and search for new worlds, they are finding water in surprising places. Water is but one piece of our search for habitable planets and life beyond Earth, yet it links many seemingly unrelated worlds in surprising ways.

"NASA science activities have provided a wave of amazing findings related to water in recent years that inspire us to continue investigating our origins and the fascinating possibilities for other worlds, and life, in the universe," said Ellen Stofan, chief scientist for the agency. "In our lifetime, we may very well finally answer whether we are alone in the solar system and beyond."

The chemical elements in water, hydrogen and oxygen, are some of the most abundant elements in the universe. Astronomers see the signature of water in giant molecular clouds between the stars, in disks of material that represent newborn planetary systems, and in the atmospheres of giant planets orbiting other stars.

Read more at: http://phys.org/news/2015-04-solar-awash.html#jCp

 

[ScienceRocks]

Electric Solar Sails for mission to Uranus and for de-orbiting satellites

1. Coulumb Drag Devices: Electric Solar Wind Sail Propulsion and Ionospeheric Deorbiting

* Plasma brake thrust is 16 times larger in pure oxygen plasma than in pure proton plasma
* There is an altitude dependence. Below 700 km the thrust would continue to increase until 400-500 km (provided there is the right hardware design)

Next Big Future Electric Solar Sails for mission to Uranus and for de-orbiting satellites

 

[ScienceRocks]

You know what I want to do? Use a gravity tractor or a dozen of them to move Ceres smack into Venus.

 

[ScienceRocks]

Blue Origin's BE-3 engine cleared for flight
By David Szondy
April 8, 2015
4 Pictures

Blue Origin has taken a step closer to lifting into space by announcing that its BE‑3 rocket engine has completed acceptance testing, opening the door to its first flight. The first new hydrogen engine to be developed in the US in over a decade, the BE-3 is part of Blue Origin's program to develop a completely reusable launch system.
Less than two years ago, the BE-3 rocket engine made its first test firing at the company’s West Texas facility in Van Horn. Since then, according to Blue Origin founder Jeff Bezos, the 110,000-ft-lb engine has completed 30,000 seconds of firing time over 450 tests, which included multiple mission duty cycles, deep throttling, and off-nominal testing points. Bezos says that this opens the way for an eventual suborbital test flight.

The BE-3 is notable as the first new liquid hydrogen engine since the RS-68 engine for the Delta IV booster went into service in 2002. The BE-3, which can be continuously throttled between 110,000 ft-lb and 20,000 ft-lb thrust, is part of a vertical takeoff and landing Reusable Booster System, which will allow the spacecraft to fly again rather than be disposed off after one mission, as is the case with the conventional boosters.