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Showing posts with label space exploration. Show all posts
Showing posts with label space exploration. Show all posts

Wednesday 22 July 2015

NEW PLUTO PICTURES SHOW JELLY-BEAN MOON AND MOUNTAINS

nh-pluto-mountain-range.0.0
Newly-discovered frozen peaks on Pluto are taller than Ben Nevis while images of Nix reveal an unusual red spot
Newly-discovered frozen peaks on Pluto are taller than Ben Nevis while images of Nix reveal an unusual red spot
The latest pictures to be beamed back from the far reaches of the Solar System show a new mountain range on Pluto and the first close up images of two of the dwarf-planet’s smaller moons.
NASA’s New Horizons probe has discovered a new, mountain range on bright, heart-shaped region named Tombaugh Region.
These newly-discovered frozen peaks are estimated to be around 5,000ft high – about 600ft taller than Ben Nevis.
The Norgay Mountains discovered by New Horizons on July 15 are much taller, around 11,000ft, roughly the height of The Pyrenees.
The new range is just west of the region within Pluto’s heart called Sputnik Plain and some 68 miles northwest of Norgay Mountains..
Pluto2_3383483b
New Horizons has also picked up the first images large images of two of Pluto’s smaller moons.
Nix and Hydra – the second and third moons to be discovered – are approximately the same size, but their similarity ends there.
New Horizons’ first colour image of Nix shows a jelly bean shaped satellite which is 26 miles long and 22 miles wide.
Although the overall surface colour of Nix is neutral grey in the image, the newfound region has a distinct red tint. Hints of a bull’s-eye pattern lead scientists to speculate that the reddish region is a crater.
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Meanwhile, the sharpest image yet received from New Horizons of Pluto’s satellite Hydra shows that its irregular shape resembles the state of Michigan.
There appear to be at least two large craters, one of which is mostly in shadow. The upper portion looks darker than the rest of Hydra, suggesting a possible difference in surface composition.
Source: Telegraph

Thursday 16 July 2015

After the Moon and Mars, ISRO eyes Venus for next exploration mission

earth-2
After the successful launch of its Mars orbiter, the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) is now viewing Venus as possibly the next planet it can study and explore.
“Besides the Mars-2 mission, we are looking at Venus and even an asteroid for exploration. A project has to be formulated for this before we chart out a proper roadmap for the explorations.  Venus is our neighbour and has many scientific challenges and aspects that need to be studied. Exploring an asteroid is also challenging task,” Dr Kiran Kumar, Isro chairman, told HT.
In 2014, India created history in space when its Mars orbiter slipped into the Red Planet’s orbit in its maiden attempt.
India became the first Asian country to reach Mars and the first in the world to enter the orbit of the planet in its first attempt.
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Photo of Mars as taken by ISRO’s Mars Oriber Mission
Regarding the Saarc satellite, Dr Kumar said that it would be launched before December 2016. “The activities related to this project are in progress and we should begin building the satellite soon.”
Moving beyond satellite launches and planetary explorations, Isro is also aggressively working with many government departments on optimising the usage of space tools and data.
A national meet on space is likely to be held in Delhi next month, where ministries and departments of the government will give presentations on how they are using space tools in their workings. From civil aviation to railways, tribal affairs to health, postal to agriculture the number of government departments working with Isro has increased to more than 60 in the past few months.
Source : HindustanTimes

STUNNING FIRST HI-DEFINITION IMAGE OF PLUTO REVEALS HUGE MOUNTAINS


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The first ever high-resolution image of Pluto has been beamed back to Earth showing water ice and 11,000ft (3,350 metre) mountains. The mountains likely formed no more than 100 million years ago – mere youngsters relative to the 4.56-billion-year age of the solar system. Nasa says they may still be in the process of building
Like the rest of Pluto, this region would presumably have been pummeled by space debris for billions of years and would have once been heavily cratered – unless recent activity had given the region a facelift, erasing those pockmarks.
‘We now have an isolated small planet that is showing activity after 4.5 billion years,’ said Alan Stern, New Horizons’ principal investigator. ‘It’s going to send a lot of geophysicists back to the drawing board.’
‘This is one of the youngest surfaces we’ve ever seen in the solar system,’ added Jeff Moore of New Horizons’ Geology, Geophysics and Imaging Team (GGI).
This is the first time astronomers have seen a world that is mostly composed of ice that is not orbiting a planet.
Unlike the icy moons of giant planets, Pluto cannot be heated by the gravitational pull of a larger planetary body. Nasa says some other process must be generating the mountainous landscape.
‘This may cause us to rethink what powers geological activity on many other icy worlds,’ says GGI deputy team leader John Spencer of the Southwest Research Institute.
In a Wednesday press conference, scientists also revealed a high-resolution photo of Pluto’s moon Charon, which is covered in cliffs and ridges:
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They also released the first-ever photo of Pluto’s tiny moon Hydra, which appears to be covered in water ice:
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A new sneak-peak image of Hydra  is the first to reveal its apparent irregular shape and its size, estimated to be about 27 by 20 miles (43 by 33km). The surface shows differences in brightness, which suggests that Hydra’s outer layer is composed manly of water ice .
Read more: Daily Mail

Tuesday 14 July 2015

THE NEW HORIZONS PLUTO MISSION IS A BIG DEAL. HERE ARE SOME REASONS WHY


SOURCE : vox.com 
NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft is about to show us an alien world for the first time. At precisely 7:49 am ET on Tuesday, the probe will become the first spacecraft to fly by Pluto.
New Horizons has been en route for nine years, traveling more than 3 billion miles. The flyby will be over in a matter of minutes, as the probe frantically takes hundreds of photos and collects data on Pluto’s atmosphere, geology, and moons. All this data will be enormously valuable to scientists as they seek to understand our solar system and how it formed billions of years ago.
More than anything, this mission is about broadening our horizons — taking in just a little bit more of the impossibly vast universe we live in.

1) We’ve never seen Pluto before

Pluto feels familiar. It’s easy to imagine the small, frigid rock, millions of miles from the sun and covered in ice.
But what you’re picturing in your head when you think about Pluto is probably an artist’s illustration. Until very recently, we didn’t even know exactly what color it was — and the best photos we had of Pluto looked like this:
pluto-hubble
New Horizons is going to change that in a very big way. Already, as it’s closed in on Pluto, it’s given us way better photos than ever before:
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Pluto (right) and its moon Charon, as seen by New Horizons on July 11. (NASA-JHUAPL-SWRI)
The high-resolution photos to come will give us detailed topographical maps, just like those provided by the satellites that orbit Earth. They could reveal mountains, ice caps, volcanoes, or even an ocean of liquid water under the ice. “Who knows what kind of bizarre things we’ll find up close?” Stern said.

2) This mission will remind you how vast space really is

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Earth, as seen by the Voyager spacecraft, from more than 4 billion miles away.
We spend our entire lives on the surface of Earth — so it’s hard to really grasp how far away Pluto truly is from us.
But as an analogy, think of Earth as a basketball. By comparison, Pluto would be a little larger than a golf ball. But if you wanted to keep the scale constant, you’d have to put that golf ball incredibly far away: 50 to 80 miles (depending on its location in orbit). This mission, like many activities in space, is a good reminder of how vast our corner of the universe is — and how absurdly tiny our entire earthly realm of experience is by comparison.
And it’s not just the size of space that boggles the mind. It’s also the timescale on which everything occurs. Pluto takes 248 Earth years to orbit the sun. To put it another way, the entirety of US history has occurred during a single Plutonian orbit.

3) We won’t get many more missions like this for a while

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There’s a mission to Europa planned, but it won’t reach the moon for a decade or more.
The past few decades have been filled with all sorts of fascinating missions to the planets, moons, asteroids, and comets of our solar system — uncrewed probes sent every few years, run by trained scientists, and supported by government funding.
But the sad truth is that this era is largely drawing to a close. As David W. Brown writes in an article on the dark future of American space exploration, “There is nothing budgeted in the pipeline to take its place. Yesterday invested in today. But we are not investing in tomorrow.”
This is the result of cutbacks to NASA’s planetary exploration budget. The OSIRIS-REx probe will launch next year, to travel to an asteroid and bring back a sample, but it won’t return until 2023. Meanwhile, a mission to Jupiter’s moon Europa is in the works, but it likely won’t be launched until 2025 at the earliest, and wouldn’t reach Europa until the 2030s.
In other words: Enjoy this brief flyby. It’s going to be a while before any NASA probe visits a new world.

4)This is a staggering technological achievement

t’s hard to appreciate just how difficult it is to send a spacecraft to Pluto. But think of it this way: because it’s so incredibly far away, it took New Horizons nine years to cover the 3-billion-mile trip there — which means the craft is using decade-old technology, traveling a route that was calculated years ago.
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New Horizons’ trajectory through the solar system.
Despite this, NASA engineers managed to get the tiny probe — about the size and shape of a grand piano — to an incredibly precise spot in space, using Jupiter’s gravity as a slingshot to accelerate it outward and a few thruster burns over the years to keep the probe on track.
Along the way, they had to worry about potentially damaging debris nearby Pluto — as well as a scary software glitch this past weekend, which was, thankfully, resolved. Now New Horizons is going to fly within 7,750 miles of Pluto, coming closer than its moons.
Because New Horizons is traveling at such a high speed (about 31,000 miles per hour) and can’t slow down, the flyby will be over in a matter of minutes — fording it to collect all its data in a tiny window of time.
And receiving all that data is another huge challenge. Because New Horizons is so far away, it takes about 4.5 hours for any data it sends back to reach Earth. And the signal is so faint that NASA has to use 200-foot-wide radio dishes (one each in Australia, California, and Spain) to pick it up. This means an extremely low rate of data transmission: about 1 kilobit per second, more than 50 times slower than a 56k modem from the ’90s. It takes more than 42 minutes for New Horizons to fully transmit an image that’s 1024 pixels wide.
If you haven’t been paying attention so far, now’s the time to start. This is a really big deal.

Sunday 5 July 2015

Biggest commercial mission! ISRO to launch 5 British satellites on July 10


Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) on Sunday announced that it will be launching five British satellites on July 10, which will be the thirtieth flight of the PSLV (Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle) and the biggest ever commercial mission by the Indian space reasearch centre.

In the heaviest ever commercial mission undertaken by ISRO and its commercial arm Antrix, the country’s workhorse the Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV) will put in orbit five foreign satellites from the spaceport of Sriharikota in Andhra Pradesh on July 10.

With the overall lift-off mass of the five satellites amounting to about 1,440 kg, this mission becomes the heaviest commercial mission ever undertaken by Antrix/ISRO, the Indian space agency said.
In its 13th flight, PSLV-C28 will launch three identical DMC3 optical earth observation satellites built by Surrey Satellite Technology Limited (SSTL), United Kingdom (UK).

The three DMC3 satellites, each weighing 447 kg, will be launched into a 647 km Sun-Synchronous Orbit (SSO) using the high-end version of PSLV (PSLV-XL), ISRO said on its website.  PSLV-C28 will be the ninth flight of PSLV in ‘XL’ configuration.

In addition, the rocket will also carry two auxiliary satellites from UK - CBNT-1, a technology demonstrator earth observation micro satellite built by SSTL, and De-OrbitSail, a technology demonstrator nano satellite built by Surrey Space Centre, it said.

Accommodating the three DMC3 satellites each with a height of about 3 metre within the existing payload fairing of PSLV, was a challenge, ISRO said.

To mount these satellites onto the launcher, a circular Launcher adaptor called L-adaptor and a triangular deck called Multiple Satellite Adapter-Version 2 (MSA-V2), were newly designed and realised by ISRO for this specific purpose.

Source: Newsnation

Monday 29 June 2015

SpaceX’s rocket just exploded. Here’s why that’s such a big deal.


SpaceX’s unmanned Falcon 9 rocket launched from Cape Canaveral, Fla., on Sunday but exploded a few minutes after liftoff. It was on a mission to resupply the International Space Station. (NASA)

An unmanned SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket bound for the International Space Station exploded a couple of minutes after liftoff Sunday morning. It was the third cargo mission to the space station to be lost in recent months.

Elon Musk, SpaceX's founder tweeted that "there was an overpressure event in the upper stage liquid oxygen tank." He added: "That's all we can say with confidence right now. Will have more to say following a thorough" analysis.





NASA officials said it was not clear what caused the explosion. During an afternoon press conference William Gerstenmaier, NASA's associate administrator for human exploration and operations, said there was "no negligence here."

The three failures from three different launch providers show "the challenges facing engineering and the challenges facing space flight in general."

The rocket took off from Cape Canaveral, Fla., at 10:21 a.m., and everything seemed fine until 2 minutes at 19 seconds. Then video of the launch showed harrowing, if now familiar, images of a rocket exploding into a plume of smoke. The Falcon 9 was carrying more than 4,000 pounds of food and supplies to the space station, where American Scott Kelly is spending a year. There were no astronauts onboard.


The explosion also lost many student experiments and a water filtration system. Also onboard was a piece of hardware that would be used to help two new crew vehicles dock to the station.


Source : Wahshington Post

Friday 26 June 2015

NASA to Send Microsoft's Virtual Reality Headset to International Space Station



NASA is sending Microsoft's virtual reality headset to the International Space Station (ISS) to beam back to Earth what astronauts see in space.

NASA and Microsoft are teaming up to develop Sidekick, a new project using commercial technology to empower astronauts aboard the ISS.

Sidekick uses Microsoft HoloLens to provide virtual aid to astronauts working off the Earth.



A pair of the devices is scheduled to launch on SpaceX's seventh commercial resupply mission to the station on June 28.

"HoloLens and other virtual and mixed reality devices are cutting edge technologies that could help drive future exploration and provide new capabilities to the men and women conducting critical science on the International Space Station," said Sam Scimemi, director of the ISS programme at NASA Headquarters in Washington.

"This new technology could also empower future explorers requiring greater autonomy on the journey to Mars," said Mr Scimemi.

The goal of Sidekick is to enable station crews with assistance when and where they need it. This new capability could reduce crew training requirements and increase the efficiency at which astronauts can work in space.

"Sidekick is a prime example of an application for which we envisioned HoloLens being used - unlocking new potential for astronauts and giving us all a new perspective on what is possible with holographic computing," said Alex Kipman, technical fellow, Windows and Devices Group at Microsoft.

NASA and Microsoft engineers tested Project Sidekick and the Microsoft HoloLens aboard NASA's Weightless Wonder C9 jet to ensure they function as expected in free-fall in advance of their delivery to the microgravity environment of the space station.

Sidekick has two modes of operation. The first is "Remote Expert Mode," which uses Skype to allow a ground operator to see what a crew member sees, provide real-time guidance, and draw annotations into the crew member's environment to coach him or her through a task.

Until now, crew members have relied on written and voice instructions when performing complex repair tasks or experiments.

The second mode is "Procedure Mode," which augments standalone procedures with animated holographic illustrations displayed on top of the objects with which the crew is interacting.

This capability could lessen the amount of training that future crews will require and could be an invaluable resource for missions deep into our solar system, where communication delays complicate difficult operations.

Source : NDTV

Russia sets out Moon landing ambition, leaves Mars plans to Nasa

Russia, which put the first man into orbit in 1961, sees the Moon as a base for deeper space missions, Komarov said


Roscosmos plans to send 3 unmanned craft to the Moon before a Russian cosmonaut attempts a landing.
Russia’s state space agency chief is shooting for the Moon, three years after a predecessor warned that the country was on the verge of losing its competitiveness in the industry.
A manned lunar mission in 2029-2030 is Russia’s priority, while there are no “current stage” plans for a journey to Mars, Igor Komarov, head of the Federal Space Agency or Roscosmos, said in an interview in St. Petersburg last week.
“Nasa has Mars as the priority,” Komarov said. “We at this stage are making the Moon our priority. We can be good in rounding each other out and working jointly on this programme.”
Komarov’s ambition of landing a Russian on the Moon contrasts with former Roscosmos chief Vladimir Popovkin’s warning in 2012 that the country’s space industry risked being uncompetitive within three or four years without “urgent measures.”
Russia, which put the first man into orbit in 1961, sees the Moon as a base for deeper space missions, Komarov said. It plans to send three unmanned craft to the Moon before a Russian cosmonaut attempts a landing, though Earth’s nearest neighbour shouldn’t become the object of a technological race between Russia and the US, he said.
Space partners
“We see it as a joint project and are ready to invite our partners for it to be done,” said Komarov, 51, who was appointed Roscosmos chief in January after it merged with United Rocket and Space Corp. that he headed. Previously in charge of Russia’s OAO AvtoVAZ carmaker for four years until 2013, he was given the task of overhauling the country’s space industry following a series of recent accidents during launches.
Amid worsening ties between Russia and the US over the conflict in Ukraine, space research could provide an example of cooperation that doesn’t depend on politics, Komarov said.
Sanctions imposed by the US and the European Union didn’t affect cooperation in running the International Space Station, he said. Increased equipment prices and delays in international projects show that Russia’s space industry hasn’t completely avoided the tensions and it’s now forced to seek greater cooperation with fellow members of the BRICS group that includes India, China, Brazil and South Africa, according to Komarov.
“Global projects are easier to implement together,” he said. “Less investment is needed, it benefits everyone.”
Humanity will always be united by the “eternal dream” of searching for civilizations on other planets, Komarov said.
“I do believe in the existence of an intellect different from ours,” he said.
Bloomberg

Friday 13 February 2015

[Video] Nasa revealed Far side of moon

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A number of people asked what the other side of the Moon looks like, the side that can't be seen from the Earth. This video answers that question. The imagery was created using Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter data.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cDHLdXu5JvI&feature=youtu.be

Source : NASA

This woman wants to live and die on Mars—and 200,000 others would gladly take her place

Volker Maiwald, executive officer and habitat engineer of Crew 125 EuroMoonMars B mission, walks among the rock formations in the Utah desert

Ok, it's Utah - but we can dream. (Reuters/Jim Urquhart)

Dina was born in Iraq, lives in the US, and may end her life on Mars.

She’s one of 663 people who are still in the running for a place on the first four-person team that Mars One, a Dutch organization launched in 2011, wants to send to the red planet. Candidates have been whittled down from some 200,000 who applied.

In a video made for the Guardian by Stateless Media, Dina (whose last name isn’t given) and two other hopefuls—one from the UK, one from Mozambique—discuss love, sex, and death on Mars.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8na3oQzcwCk

Dina is 29 now, but she’ll be nearing 40 by the time of the Mars mission’s planned launch in 2024. She could be almost a year older than that when they arrive on Mars, which is up to 300 days’ travel away .
Her days may then be numbered. A group of strategic engineering graduates estimated that the first of the travelers would die in 68 days—though the plan is to live there much longer .

Intimacy is not encouraged, because of the potential risks of childbirth—though in the long term the future of colony would rely on it .

No one will return from the mission. This led, last year, to a prohibition on Muslims joining the mission , issued by the General Authority of Islamic Affairs and Endowment in the United Arab Emirates. It judged the mission to be so inevitably fatal that it is essentially suicide.

In the future, the mission plans to meet its costs, to a large extent, via broadcast rights . The first mission will cost $6 billion, according to estimates, though a subsequent mission—a plan is already in the pipeline—would be somewhat cheaper.

Source : qz.com

Tuesday 27 January 2015

SpaceX, Boeing on Track to Take Astronauts to Space Station by 2017

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The agency will use the partnership to end dependency on Russia

SpaceX has completed the first certification milestone in its CCP commitment, and will spend much of 2015 testing abort solutions for its formerly cargo-only Dragon capsule. (Abort procedures are more critical in crewed missions.) A launchpad abort will be tested in the next two months at Cape Canaveral, and an in-flight abort test will follow "later this year," according to SpaceX President and COO Gwynne Shotwell. Uncrewed missions to the ISS with the new capsule will start in 2016, and the company is still working out the makeup of its first test flight crew.

spacex-boeing
"I DON'T EVER WANT TO HAVE TO WRITE ANOTHER CHECK TO ROSCOSMOS."

The company is also working on outfitting its Dragon capsule with propulsive landing, Shotwell said, which could improve reusability by dispensing with the need to splash down in water. Instead, the capsule would land right at Johnson Space Center, using rockets on the bottom to help control the descent. That's not the only new technology the company is working on. It hopes to outfit its Falcon 9 rockets with wings and retrorockets so they can land on autonomous barges in the ocean.

Boeing has completed the first two certification milestones for its CST-100 spacecraft. NASA has signed off on parts of its commercial crew operation, including designs for the control center, training systems, flight simulators, and software. Boeing has also started building its crew access tower on the Atlas V launchpad, and that construction will continue in between uncrewed Atlas V launches.

The CST-100 will undergo a critical design review in March, and if approved, will let the company launch "full-bore" into manufacturing, according to VP and General Manager of Boeing Space Exploration John Elbon. Boeing's spacecraft can fit up to seven crew members, and is also being designed with reusability in mind. According to Elbon, the plan is for the capsule to be recovered, refurbished, and reused up to 10 times.

When asked how this all fits in with the 2016 budget, Bolden said he's "very optimistic." "Congress has, I think, kind of started to understand the critical importance of commercial crew and cargo. They've seen, as a result of the performance of our providers, that this is not a hoax. It's not a myth. It's not a dream," he said. "It's something that really is happening."

Source : theverge

Monday 26 January 2015

Rosetta images reveal crack hundreds of meters long in comet 67P

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Image of Comet 67P taken by ESA's Rosetta (Click Image to Download)

The European Space Agency (ESA) succeeded in delivering the Philae lander to the surface of comet 67P several months ago, but its Rosetta probe hasn’t been twiddling its robotic thumbs since then. It’s still in orbit of 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko to study the comet as it gets closer to the sun. In the newest set of images published by the ESA, scientists reveal 67P is coming apart at the seams. A huge crack was discovered running hundreds of meters along the surface.

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To visualize what’s happening, it’s important to know a little about the shape of 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko. Many of us have an idea of comets as being more or less round, but many of them are actually quite oddly shaped. For example, 67P has two lobes, one smaller than the other, connected by a narrow neck. It looks a little like a rubber duck. The crack detected by Rosetta’s Osiris camera is in the neck region, which is also where most of the gas and dust is being expelled.

The crack is about one meter in width, which wouldn’t be so impressive if it wasn’t covering such a large area. The neck region where the crack was found is only 1km wide after all, so a few hundred meters is nothing to sneeze at. In the image above, the crack is visible in two locations on the surface, but the middle section is obscured by layers of dust, which the ESA team has found is plentiful on the surface of 67P, especially in the neck region where the object’s minimal gravity is even less substantial.

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67P won’t reach its closest approach to the sun for several months, but it’s already losing more than 11kg of gas and dust every second. Scientists are unsure if the crack will worsen or close up as the comet continues to lose weight. If the stresses on the neck increase, the comet could fracture and break in two .
Some researchers believe that 67P’s shape is the result of two smaller objects colliding in the distant past, so this crack could be following an existing “fault line” in the structure. It’s also possible this crack is nothing out of the ordinary for porous comets like 67P as they erode. It’s hard to say for sure — this is the first time we’ve gotten such a close-up look at a comet.

Rosetta dropped the Philae lander off on 67P back in November, but it didn’t quite go as planned. The lander’s harpoons failed to fire, which caused it to bounce along the surface, eventually coming to rest in a shadow that prevented the solar panels from creating enough power. After doing most of its science, Philae went to sleep. The ESA has continued to monitor conditions on the comet with Rosetta and hopes that when the comet nears the sun, it will shine more light on Philae, allowing it to come back online.

Philae isn’t close enough to the neck region to offer any insights about the newly discovered crack, but it can certainly tell us more about the composition of 67P. Even if Philae never comes back online, Rosetta will keep an eye on the surface from a few kilometers up. It will be there through 67P’s solar perigee in August, and will follow as it heads back out toward Jupiter.

Source : Geek.com

Thursday 22 January 2015

Europe Wants To Send Humans To The Dark Side Of The Moon

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(Click Image to Download)

Should we return to the Moon? While Elon Musk, Mars One, and even NASA have their sights set on the Red planet, many think that the Moon is a better option for space exploration .
The European Space Agency (ESA) is one - they just released a new video stating that the Moon is an important and crucial step in mankind's future.

"In the future, the Moon can become a place where the nations of the world can come together to understand our common origins, to build a common future, and to share a common journey beyond. A place where we can learn to move onwards into the solar system," ESA explains in the video "Destination: Moon" .

ESA envisions future manned missions to the far side of the Moon - also known as the dark side of the Moon because it never faces the Earth (though it isn't shrouded in darkness at all). This alien landscape is a rugged terrain, scarred with billions of years worth of impact craters, including one of the largest impact craters in the solar system, the South Pole-Aitken basin.

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Photograph of the far side of the moon taken by a crew member on Apollo 16.

Scientists think the crater formed around 4 billion years ago. Inside of this 8.1-mile-deep crater, certain parts are shrouded in perpetual, freezing darkness, but at the crater's rim, shown below, are high, mountainous peaks that bathe in almost-constant sunlight. It's here, on these lunar mountains that ESA plans to send robots and eventually humans.

By sending future missions to the Moon we will be able to answer questions like:

  • Is there water elsewhere on the Moon?

  • If so, how much?

  • Where did it come from?

  • And what can it teach us about the origins of water and life on Earth?


If the Moon proves to have an abundant store of water under it surface, then future human generations can use the hydrogen and oxygen atoms for rocket fuel.

To Check out the full video Goto to Business Insider

Sunday 18 January 2015

Researchers: Solar system may have Planet X , Planet Y

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The presence of two additional planets might explain the unexpected orbital features of some trans-Neptunian objects.

Scientists have postulated the existence of possibly two undiscovered planets beyond the orbit of Neptune to explain discrepancies in the orbits of extreme trans-Neptunian objects (ETNO). The objects have orbits that take them beyond the orbit of the planet Neptune.

Theory predicts that they be randomly distributed and that their orbits must have a semi-major axis with a value around 150 AU; an orbital inclination of nearly zero degrees; and an angle of perihelion, the point in the object’s orbit at which it is closest to the Sun, of zero to 180 degrees.

However, a dozen ETNO do not fit these orbital criteria. These objects have semi-major axis values of 150 to 525 AU, orbital inclinations of around 20 degrees, and angles of perihelion far from 180 degrees.

According to a statement, a new study by astrophysicists at the Complutense University of Madrid (UCM) and University of Cambridge have calculated that these orbital discrepancies could be explained by the existence of at least two additional planets beyond the orbits of Neptune and dwarf planet Pluto. Their study suggests that the gravitational pulls of those two planets must be disturbing the orbits of some smaller ETNO.

However, there are two difficulties with the hypothesis. One is that current models of the formation of our solar system do not allow for additional planets beyond Neptune. Secondly, the team’s sample size is very small, only 13 objects. However, additional results are in the pipeline, which will expand the sample.

“This excess of objects with unexpected orbital parameters makes us believe that some invisible forces are altering the distribution of the orbital elements of the ETNO and we consider that the most probable explanation is that other unknown planets exist beyond Neptune and Pluto,” said Carlos de la Fuente Marcos of UCM and lead author on the study.

The new findings have been published in two papers published in the journal Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society Letters.

Source : thespacereporter

Sunday 16 November 2014

Philae sleeps, but Rosetta's not done yet

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Its battery dead, the European lander is lost in a crater somewhere on a huge comet. But the orbiter that brought it there still has plenty of science left to do.

Rosetta

As of Saturday morning, the Philae lander is in a digital coma somewhere on the surface of comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko. But even if the history-making little robot never wakes again, the Rosetta mission and the orbiter of the same name still have a long journey ahead of them.

The plan was for Philae to land at a targeted site on the comet, firing harpoons into the surface of the icy rock to keep itself locked in place for a long trip around the sun. The strong grip was particularly important since a comet this size has only a tiny fraction of the gravity of a place like Earth, leaving little Philae at risk of floating off into space.

But when showtime came, there were problems with Philae's downward thrusters and with firing the harpoons. The European Space Agency reports that the lander bounced off the surface of the comet twice and eventually landed somewhere else without much access to the sunlight its solar panels need to keep it functioning.

Friday evening, Philae used its remaining energy to upload all its data before going into hibernation mode. There was a time slot early this morning during which, the ESA had reported, communication with the lander was possible, but that time has now come and gone.

Still, Rosetta remains.

Even if Philae stays lost in a comet crater for the next year, the orbiter that traveled almost half a billion miles to get to this point will continue to orbit the comet and its lost lander.

Right now, Rosetta has been pulling out to a 30 kilometer orbit of the comet. It will come closer again early next month to get more details on the comet -- some of its flybys will be as close as 8 kilometers to the comet. There's a whole lot of potential science and data about comets, planets and our solar system packed in that process, building up to the trio's closest encounter with the sun, next August.

Before that point there may also be better opportunities to rouse Philae.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=crbnOY8WeB8#t=15

Friday 14 November 2014

3D-printed engine parts future of space launches: NASA

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A team of NASA researchers has found that 3D manufactured copper parts could withstand the heat and pressure required of combustion engines used in space launches.

The US space agency and California-based rocket and missile propulsion manufacturer Aerojet Rocketdyne (AR) conducted 19 hot-fire tests on four injector and thrust chamber assembly configurations at NASA's Glenn Research Centre.

"The successful hot fire test of engine components provides confidence in the additive manufacturing process and paves the way for full-scale development," said Tyler Hickman, lead engineer for the test at Glenn.

3D printing approach is changing the speed, cost and flexibility of designing and building future machines for space and earth applications.

The work is a major milestone in the development and certification of different materials used in the manufacturing process.

Copper alloys offer unique challenges to the additive manufacturing processes.

"Additively manufactured metal propulsion components are truly a paradigm shift for the aerospace industry," added Paul Senick, Glenn project manager.

This will improve efficiency and bring down the cost of space launches and other earth applications, he concluded.

Source : business standard

A Universe of Blue Dots? --"Water Common During the Formation of All Planetary Systems"

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The new SciFi blockbuster, Interstellar, shows astonauts from post apocalyptic earth, destroyed by what appears to be a modern dust-bowl, catapulted into the unknown of outer space in the hopes of finding a new home for the human race, only to discover an extraterrestrial tidal wave on a distant exo planet. How realistic is the premise of an alien water planet? New findings suggest it's based on solid science.
"This is an important step forward in our quest to find out if life exists on other planets," said Tim Harries, from the University of Exeter's Physics and Astronomy department, who was part of the research team. "We know that water is vital for the evolution of life on Earth, but it was possible that the Earth's water originated in the specific conditions of the early solar system, and that those circumstances might occur infrequently elsewhere. By identifying the ancient heritage of Earth's water, we can see that the way in which our solar system was formed will not be unique, and that exoplanets will form in environments with abundant water. Consequently, it raises the possibility that some exoplanets could house the right conditions, and water resources, for life to evolve."
The implication of these findings is that some of the solar system's water must have been inherited from the Sun's birth environment, and thus predate the Sun itself. If our solar system's formation was typical, this implies that water is a common ingredient during the formation of all planetary systems.

To date, the Kepler satellite has detected nearly 1,000 confirmed extrasolar planets. The widespread availability of water during the planet-formation process puts a promising outlook on the prevalence of life throughout the galaxy.

A pioneering new study has shown that water found on Earth predates the formation of the Sun – raising hopes that life could exist on exoplanets, the planets orbiting other stars in our galaxy. The ground-breaking research set out to discover the origin of the water that was deposited on the Earth as it formed.

It found that a significant fraction of water found on Earth, and across our solar system, predates the formation of the Sun. By showing that water is 'inherited' from the environment when a star is born, the international team of scientists believe other exoplanetary systems also had access to an abundance of water during their own formation.

As water is a key component for the development of life on Earth, the study has important implications for the potential for life elsewhere in the galaxy.

Scientists have previously been able to understand the conditions present when stars are formed by looking at the composition of comets and asteroids, which show which gases, dust and, most importantly, ices were circling the star at its birth.

The team of international scientists were able to use 'heavy water' ices – those with an excess of water made with the element deuterium rather than hydrogen – to determine whether the water ices formed before, or during, the solar system's formation.

Thursday 13 November 2014

The Rosetta comet landing has made history

http://i.telegraph.co.uk/multimedia/archive/02758/Rosetta_2758749b.jpg

After 10 years of hard work and one nerve-wracking night, the Rosetta mission has made history by landing on the surface of a comet.

The lander Philae was confirmed to touch down on the surface of the comet more than 300 million miles away at 11:03 a.m. Eastern. Now, scientists expect it to send a panoramic image home and begin analyzing the comet for scientists back on Earth.

Philae is already transmitting scientific data back home, but we're still waiting to see whether the probe is in a stable position. Until we know it's anchored tight, it could roll onto its back and never get back up.

Tensions were high in the European Space Agency's German mission control center, especially as the landing window approached. Because the comet that Philae landed on is so far from Earth, there's a communications delay of 28 minutes. So as the minutes ticked by, the Rosetta team knew that Philae had already either landed or failed — and there was nothing they could do but wait for the data to reach them. Those following the video online were nearly as desperate for news, and Twitter became a sounding chamber of anticipation and excitement.

But a few minutes after 11 a.m., the stern, cautious expressions of the mission control team melted into smiles. And just like that, the world swiveled from anxiety to elation: Philae was on the surface of the comet and ready to do some science.

The comet contains the materials that originally formed our solar system, frozen in time. By digging them out, we can learn more about the origins of our planet. The Rosetta spacecraft has made invaluable observations about the comet's attributes, and it will continue to do so as it follows it around the sun for the next year. But Philae will be able to look more closely at the comet's physical and molecular composition.

"It's a look at the basic building blocks of our solar system, the ancient materials from which life emerged," said Kathrin Altwegg of the University of Bern in Switzerland, one of the Rosetta project's lead researchers. "It's like doing archaeology, but instead of going back 1,000 years, we can go back 4.6 billion."

It's no easy thing to land on a comet's surface: These chunks of rock and ice are constantly spinning, and Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko, which was discovered in 1969, orbits the sun at a speed of about 85,000 mph. It's irregularly shaped — like a toddler's play-dough impression of a duck, or something — and its surface is uneven and pitted. And in a universe of unimaginable proportion, Rosetta's target is just 2.5 miles in diameter — smaller than Northwest Washington's Columbia Heights neighborhood.

So Rosetta has taken an onerous journey to get in sync with the comet's orbit, which would allow it to drop down a lander. In 2004, the spacecraft began what would be three looping orbits around the sun, altering its trajectory as it skimmed Mars, just 150 miles from the surface, and enduring 24 minutes in the planet’s shadow to align with Churyumov-Gerasimenko. The cumulative distance traveled by the craft – with all its looping and gravity assists – is a stunning 4 billion miles. “When the Rosetta signal reappeared after the passage behind Mars, shortly after the end of the ‘shadow’ period, there was a collective sigh of relief,” ESA said.

At one point in 2011, the spacecraft even had to hibernate for nearly three years. It flew so far from the sun — nearly 500 million miles — that its solar panels couldn't leech enough energy to keep the spacecraft operational. But in January of this year, Rosetta woke up, and quickly approached its target.

The last leg of this landing has not been without its bumps. Even as the mission approached its most critical moment, controllers at the European Space Agency on Tuesday night reported a problem with the thruster on the lander that could make for a rough landing. The gravity of the problem — and the extent to which it threatened the mission — remained unknown. “We’ll need some luck not to land on a boulder or a steep slope,” blogged Stephan Ulamec, lander manager for the project.

Source : washington post

Monday 10 November 2014

3D-printed moonbase? ESA suggested future moon colony

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The European Space Agency (ESA) has proven that its project to 3D-print a base on the Moon is possible. In a latest video the agency shows how 3D-printing robots may be used to build the base using lunar material.

The ESA started investigation of the lunar base possibility in 2013, working alongside its industrial and architectural partners. The creation of the reliable semi-spherical structures on the surface of the moon could be fulfilled within the next 40 years, and 90 percent of the materials needed would be derived from the moon itself.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pk9PWUGkz7o

latest details of the new concept, which is, however, still "firmly on the drawing board," were discussed at a conference this week at ESA's technical center in Noordwijk, the Netherlands.

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ISS crew lands, brings space-born flies to Earth

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Three crew members of the International Space Station have safely returned to Earth aboard a Soyuz-13M spacecraft, bringing back good memories and results of their 165-day shift in orbit – including a space-born generation of experimental fruit flies.

The spacecraft carrying the commander of the ISS Expedition 41 Russian cosmonaut Maksim Surayev, as well as two flight engineers, NASA astronaut Reid Wiseman and ESA astronaut Alexander Gerst, landed some 80 km from Arkalyk, Kazakhstan.

As part of their mission, the crew completed some 2,640 orbits covering more than 70 million miles and have participated in a number of experiments, including breeding of fruit flies that could potentially shed light on long-term space flight effects on human beings.