tagged w/ Space Exploration
-
The Dawn spacecraft – which is on a course to study the asteroid Vesta and dwarf planet Ceres – has taken up permanent residence in the asteroid belt as of November 13th. Dawn is officially the first human-made object to become a part of the asteroid belt, which is sandwiched between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter.Dawn didn't move in without checking the place out first, though; this is the second visit for the craft, which remained there for 40 days in June of 2008. The lower boundary of the asteroid belt is defined as the furthest Mars gets away from the Sun during its orbit – 249,230,000 kilometers, or 154,864,000 miles.
Dawn, which was launched in September 2007, is on an eight-year, 4.9-billion kilometer (3-billion mile) journey to study the asteroid Vesta and the dwarf planet Ceres. By studying these members of the asteroid belt, NASA scientists hope to learn more about the formation of our Solar System. Because Vesta and Ceres are some of the largest members of the ring of asteroids between Mars and Jupiter, they are the most intact from when they were formed, and should act as a 'time capsule' to preserve information about what the early Solar System was like.
Dawn got a gravity assist from Mars in February of 2009, which propelled it past the planet and into the asteroid belt.
The spacecraft is expected to visit Vesta in August of 2011. Vesta is believed to be the source of most of the asteroid-origin meteorites that fall to ground here on Earth, and further study of the asteroid should confirm this.
In May of 2012, Dawn will make its way to Ceres, which lies further out in the asteroid belt. It will arrive there in July of 2015, where it will spend the remainder of its mission studying the icy dwarf planet, which may even have a tenuous atmosphere.
If you want to keep tabs on Dawn in its new home, the mission web site has a tool updated hourly, found here, which allows you to see where Dawn is right now. The tool includes simulated views of the Earth, Mars, Sun and Vesta from the vantage point of the spacecraft.
http://www.universetoday.com/2009/11/16/dawn-takes-up-residence-in-asteroid-belt/The Dawn spacecraft – which is on a course to study the asteroid Vesta and dwarf... more
-
-
~y2009m11d13-NASA--discovers-water-on-the-moon
-
-
~y2009m11d13-Mississippi-Storm-History-What-happened-on-this-date-November-12
-
-
Article => http://tinyurl.com/MoonWaterDiscovery2009
It's official: There's water on the moon.
NASA's LCROSS probe discovered beds of water ice at the lunar south pole when it impacted the moon last month, mission scientists announced today.
"Indeed, yes, we found water. And we didn't find just a little bit, we found a significant amount," Anthony Colaprete, LCROSS project scientist and principal investigator from NASA's Ames Research Center at Moffett Field, Calif.
The LCROSS probe impacted the lunar south pole at a crater called Cabeus on Oct. 9. The $79 million spacecraft, preceded by its Centaur rocket stage, hit the lunar surface in an effort to create a debris plume that could be analyzed by scientists for signs of water ice.
They found it, but did they also destroy it? Well, the European Space Agency ESA
has just brokered an agreement with the U.S. NASA to do the same thing to MARS
"DAMN THE TORPEDOES" [[ AND MOON || AND MARS ]] => http://www.networkworld.com/community/node/47712
SlashDot Discussion board => http://science.slashdot.org/story/09/11/12/1415240/NASA-European-Space-Agency-Want-To-Go-To-MarsArticle => http://tinyurl.com/MoonWaterDiscovery2009
It's official: There's water... more
-
-
By Clara Moskowitz
updated 1:31 a.m. CT, Sat., Nov . 7, 2009
A Seattle-based team has won $900,000 in this year's Space Elevator Games, a NASA-sponsored contest to build machines powered by laser beams that can climb a cable in the sky.
The homemade cable-climber built by the LaserMotive team climbed a 3,000-foot (900-meter) tether suspended by a helicopter at a speed of 8 mph (3.7 meters per second or 13 kilometers per hour) during a Wednesday attempt.
LaserMotive's robot climber managed to get all the way up the cable four times in two days, with a best time of about 3 minutes and 48 seconds (translating to a speed of 3.9 meters per second).
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/33737313/ns/technology_and_science-space/
http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5g16r_7B0VfVH_rWZF0kcnkPQbvGwD9BQNNGG0
http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/media/ALeqM5gkBLrncVOnvUD2g-I4KbhdeCC6bg?size=lBy Clara Moskowitz
updated 1:31 a.m. CT, Sat., Nov . 7, 2009
A Seattle-based team... more
-
-
-
This silly video was sent to me by Jared from LandlineTV. It is a comedic look at what happened when the earth sent out missiles that crashed into the surface of the moon in search of water.This silly video was sent to me by Jared from LandlineTV. It is a comedic look at what... more
-
-
In a paper published Oct. 15 in Science, researchers from the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) present a new view of the region of the sun’s influence, or heliosphere, and the forces that shape it. Images from one of the Magnetospheric Imaging Instrument’s sensors, the Ion and Neutral Camera (MIMI/INCA), on NASA’s Cassini spacecraft suggest that the heliosphere may not have the comet-like shape predicted by existing models.
“These images have revolutionized what we thought we knew for the past fifty years; the sun travels through the galaxy not like a comet but more like a big, round bubble” said Stamatios Krimigis, principal investigator for MIMI, which is orbiting Saturn. “It’s amazing how a single new observation can change an entire concept that most scientists had taken as true for nearly fifty years.”
As the solar wind flows from the sun, it carves out a bubble in the interstellar medium. Models of the boundary region between the heliosphere and interstellar medium have been based on the assumption that the relative flow of the interstellar medium and its collision with the solar wind dominate the interaction. This would create a foreshortened “nose” in the direction of the solar system’s motion, and an elongated “tail” in the opposite direction.
The INCA images suggest that the solar wind’s interaction with the interstellar medium is instead more significantly controlled by particle pressure and magnetic field energy density.
“The map we’ve created from INCA’s images suggests that pressure from a hot population of charged particles and interaction with the interstellar medium’s magnetic field strongly influence the shape of the heliosphere,” says Don Mitchell, MIMI/INCA co-investigator at APL.
Since entering into orbit around Saturn in July of 2004, INCA has been mapping energetic neutral atoms near the planet, as well as their dispersal across the entire sky. The energetic neutral atoms are produced by energetic protons, which are responsible for the outward pressure of the heliosphere beyond the interface where the solar wind collides with the interstellar medium, and which interact with the magnetic field of the interstellar medium.
“Energetic neutral atom imaging has demonstrated its power to reveal the distribution of energetic ions, first in Earth’s own magnetosphere, next in the giant magnetosphere of Saturn and now throughout vast structures in space—out to the very edge of our sun’s interaction with the interstellar medium,” says Edmond C. Roelof, MIMI/INCA co-investigator at APL.
Researchers from University of Arizona, Tucson, Southwest Research Institute, and University of Texas at San Antonio contributed to the article. The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. JPL, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the Cassini-Huygens mission for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate, Washington. The Cassini orbiter was designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The Magnetospheric Imaging Instrument was developed by APL.
More information on the Cassini mission is available at: http://www.nasa.gov/cassini, http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov and on the Magnetospheric Imaging Instrument Web site at http://sd-http://www.jhuapl.edu/CASSINI.In a paper published Oct. 15 in Science, researchers from the Johns Hopkins Applied... more
-
-
n October of 1957, the Soviet Union started the Space Age with the launch of Sputnik. Since then, a lot of spacecraft have wended their way through the solar system and beyond. Trying to visualize all those trips can be mind-bending, so what better way to do so then to make a mind-bending graphic?
From the blog: Bad Astronomyn October of 1957, the Soviet Union started the Space Age with the launch of Sputnik.... more
-
-
Today in the innermost region of our solar system, NASA’s Messenger space probe will swoop past Mercury for the third and final time. The maneuver will give scientists a close look at the dense, iron-rich, oddball planet, and will also alter the probe’s trajectory and prepare it to begin orbiting Mercury in March 2011.
As Messenger travels within 142 miles of Mercury at 12,000 miles per hour, the spacecraft’s camera will swivel to stare at a succession of craters and other geological features…. One target will be an old 90-mile-wide crater. Another will be young 13-mile crater and a splash of light-colored soil surrounding it. A third crater of interest has materials of unusual color perhaps produced by violent volcanic eruptions. When this third flyby is complete, 95 percent of the planet will have been mapped in high resolution.
Scientists will also take a moment to examine the stream of charged atoms that start at the planet’s surface and extend millions of miles into space in a comet-like, gaseous tail. The ions bleed from Mercury’s surface as it is blasted by the full force of the solar wind, a stream of particles from our star which buffets the entire Solar System.
While researchers are waiting eagerly to see what the flyby’s measurements and pictures will reveal, they’re keeping in mind that the best rewards will come later, when Messenger becomes the first spacecraft to orbit Mercury and begins a year-long study of the planet. Therefore, the most crucial element of the flyby is that Mercury’s gravity will act as a brake for the probe, setting it on a trajectory to enter orbit in one and a half years. Explains mission scientist Eric Finnegan: “Slowing the spacecraft by [5,900 miles per hour], Messenger’s orbital period around the Sun will be decreased by 13 days, closely matching the 88-day orbital period of the innermost planet”Today in the innermost region of our solar system, NASA’s Messenger space probe will... more
-
-
It is a historic mission to another world. It marks a dramatic end to the human race’s initial reconnaissance of the eight planets of our Solar System, and the beginning of detailed study of Mercury.It is a historic mission to another world. It marks a dramatic end to the human... more
-
-
What are the greatest events in the history of Astronomy and Space Exploration? These moments lay frozen in time, their significance magnifying as they pass through the generations. More than a dozen nominations for the greatest event in astronomy and space exploration compiled in the spring of 2009 by AstronomyTop100.com ranged from the Star of Bethlehem (7-4BC) through the Battle of Hastings (1044AD) to the dramatic rescue of Apollo 13 (1970AD).What are the greatest events in the history of Astronomy and Space Exploration? These... more
-
-
A view from space to Earth and the love he felt for it and how special it is, something he hoped to share with us. And does.A view from space to Earth and the love he felt for it and how special it is,... more
-
-
quanta
-
added this
-
2 months ago
- |
-
That's right, the non-profit Aeronautics and Cosmonautics Romanian Association (ARCA) are planning to get to the moon ... in a balloon.
Their plan is simple. Once the balloon is high enough, rockets hanging beneath the balloon will fire, propelling a tethered probe towards the moon.
Balloon-launched rockets (or "rockoons") were abandoned by the Americans in the 1950s because they blew off course in windy conditions.
Will the brave Romanians succeed? A test launch is due next month.That's right, the non-profit Aeronautics and Cosmonautics Romanian Association (ARCA)... more
-
-
The Planetary Society's L.I.F.E experiment is set to send Earths first visitors to the Martian moon of Phobos later this year. Among the space travelers are several microorganisms from around the world. This 3 year trip to Phobos and back will test the theory of transpermia, or the theory that life can survive prolonged periods of space travel. This is one of several theory's that attempts to explain how life originated on Earth.The Planetary Society's L.I.F.E experiment is set to send Earths first visitors to the... more
-
-
The 'Wow! signal was a strong narrowband radio signal detected by Dr. Jerry R. Ehman on August 15, 1977, while working on a SETI project at The Big Ear radio telescope of Ohio State University. The signal bore expected hallmarks of potential non-terrestrial and non-solar system origin. It lasted for 72 seconds, the full duration Big Ear observed it, despite several attempts it has not been detected again.
Amazed at how closely the signal matched the expected signature of an interstellar signal in the antenna used, Ehman circled the signal on the computer printout and wrote the comment "Wow!" on its side. This comment became the name of the signal.
The signal's most likely origin in the sky was from the constellation Sagittarius, roughly 2.5 degrees south of the fifth-magnitude Chi Sagittarii star cluster which is 220 light years away.
The circled letter code "6EQUJ5" describes the intensity variation of the signal. The value 'U' remains to this day the highest ever detected by a SETI telescope.The 'Wow! signal was a strong narrowband radio signal detected by Dr. Jerry R. Ehman... more
-
-
Featuring extraordinary images from telescopes on the ground and in space and stunning, never-before-seen visualizations of physics-based simulations, the dazzling new Journey to the Stars launches visitors through space and time to experience the life and death of the stars in our night sky, including our own nurturing Sun.
Hear from Carter Emmart, Director of Astrovisualization at the American Museum of Natural History, as he describes the creative process behind this immersive theater experience. Journey to the Stars, narrated by Academy Award-winning actress Whoopi Goldberg, premiered on Saturday, July 4, 2009, in the Hayden Planetarium at the Frederick Phineas and Sandra Priest Rose Center for Earth and Space.
Produced/Edited by James Sims. For more information visit http://www.amnh.org/starsFeaturing extraordinary images from telescopes on the ground and in space and... more
-
-
This segment is from the nationally syndicated TV program "Tech Closeup." It features show host Marc Levenson who shows viewers how NASA's Kepler Mission will redefine how we look at galaxies and stars and planets within them.This segment is from the nationally syndicated TV program "Tech Closeup." It features... more
-
-
In preparation for the European Space Agency's ExoMars mission to the Red Planet in 2018, the agency's engineers are playing in a large sandpit in Noordwijk in the Netherlands. But they aren't using plastic buckets and spades.
The 90-square-metre playpen, known as the Planetary Utilisation Testbed is filled with sand, soil, gravel and rocks designed to recreate the look and feel of the Mars surface.
The ESA engineers are using the area to test the sense of direction of a prototype of the six-wheeled ExoMars rover. The final version will have to travel across the surface without the aid of a map, as well as to drill 2 metres beneath the Martian surface in search of life. Ensuring the rover can look after itself is vital to the mission's success.In preparation for the European Space Agency's ExoMars mission to the Red Planet in... more
-
-
40 years ago, three human beings - with the help of many thousands of others - left our planet on a successful journey to our Moon, setting foot on another world for the first time. Tomorrow marks the 40th anniversary of the July 16, 1969 launch of Apollo 11, with astronauts Neil A. Armstrong, Michael Collins and Edwin E. "Buzz" Aldrin Jr. aboard. The entire trip lasted only 8 days, the time spent on the surface was less than one day, the entire time spent walking on the moon, a mere 2 1/2 hours - but they were surely historic hours. Scientific experiments were deployed (at least one still in use today), samples were collected, and photographs were taken to document the entire journey. Collected here are 40 images from that journey four decades ago, when, in the words of astronaut Buzz Aldrin: "In this one moment, the world came together in peace for all mankind". (40 photos total [follow link])40 years ago, three human beings - with the help of many thousands of others - left... more
-
![The Truth Behind The Moon Bombing [video] - video](http://i2.crtcdn.net/images/asset/900/539/64/D26694_60x45.jpg)
