# US Space Program - a thread



## SvenSvensonov

*"The reports of my death are greatly exaggerated" - The US Space program*

The US has a long and storied history in space, I'm starting a thread to document its past and chronicle its future.

This thread will be a mixture of pictures, historical events, ongoing and future projects and experimental designs.

Please keep the discussion related to the US only, or I'll go on you.

*Dammit, NASA's Experimental Mars Parachute Just Failed. Again.*






_A balloon carried the LDSD to 120,000 feet over 3 hours in preparation for its second test flight._

A flying saucer plummeted through the skies over Hawaii today in the second test of NASA’s new Mars landing system. If this had been a real flight to Mars, we’d have just killed a rover by slamming it into the planet below.





_The balloon responsible for carrying the LDSD to 120,000 feet holds nearly 1 million cubic meters (34.4 million cubic feet) of helium contained in 89,000 square meters (22 acres) of plastic. Image credit: NASA_

The atmosphere of Mars is very, very thin, and we send spacecraft hurtling at it very, very fast. We’ve maxed out the capacity of the current landing system to slow landers to subsonic speeds, so NASA is testing an inflatable saucer and massive parachute in the skies over Hawaii.






During the original test flight last summer, everything worked great except the parachute started shredding before it even fully deployed. After a redesign and rocket-sled testing, engineers were optimistic this year the parachute would perform to expectations. It didn’t.

The testing process is simple: attach the Low-Density Supersonic Decelerator (LDSD) test craft to a massive balloon, send it slowly drifting up to 36,500 meters (120,000 feet) over 3 hours, fire rockets for 66 seconds to boost the craft to even thinner atmosphere at 54,800 meters (180,000 feet) while spinning it for stability, then let it plummet back to Earth.





_The LDSD is tested high above the planet for Earth’s atmosphere to mimic Mars. Image credit: NASA_

The first stage of slowing down incoming robots is to pop-inflate a 6-meter donut 42 seconds after the rocket burst.

The Supersonic Inflatable Aerodynamic Decelerator (SAID) increases drag, slowing the craft while coincidentally turn every rover and lander arriving at Mars into a extraterrestrial flying saucer. Just 16 seconds after that, the next stage is to fling open a truly massive parachute, one so large at 33.5 meters that it dwarfs all rational imagination and takes the record as the world’s largest parachute.

Hopefully slowed below supersonic speeds, the craft takes a full 42 minutes to fall back to Earth. The cameras and on-board instruments are all shut down before splashing into the Pacific Ocean in a controlled water impact, protecting and preserving the data for detailed post-flight analysis. On a real flight, once the craft dropped below the speed of sound other technologies like the infamous sky crane would swing into action for the final slow-and-land-gently part of arriving on Mars.





_The world’s largest parachute shredded during its first test flight in 2014. Image credit: NASA_

Last year, SAID performed perfectly, leaving this year’s focus solely on the parachute. The original discsail design has been modified to a more sharply-arched ringsail with greater structural strength in the crown, and successfully withstood strength-testing when dropped from a helicopter and dragged by a rocket sled across the skies of China Lake.

While it’s going to take weeks to retrieve instrument data and high definition footage, analyze it, and figure out exactly what happened, it appears the target vehicle reached altitude in stable flight with everything flipping on and off exactly to schedule. The SAID inflated, yet seconds later as the parachute snapped free and failed to inflate, the heartbroken disappointment of everyone involved in the test flight was audible. Even just watching the livestream was enough investment to be disappointed — I’m downright sad that this is a Learning Experience instead of an unmitigated success. Failure is the path to learning and innovation, but two failures of two designs in a row is frustrating when we rather be cheering that the ominously-named Supreme Council of Parachute Experts overcame defeat with a perfect revised prototype.

“Close enough” just doesn’t cut it when trying to slow multi-ton fragile rovers to subsonic speeds on a far-away planet. Had this been the real-deal instead of splashing into the Pacific Ocean for recovery and analysis, the new landing technology would have just slammed a beloved rover into the surface of Mars, scattering wheels and cameras across the dusty landscape. Instead, the parachute is heading back to the drawing board where experts will swarm over all available data to see exactly what happened, to revise the design, and try again.






The launch system has one more test scheduled for next summer. What exactly gets tested is very much To Be Determined after analysis of this most recent test data. While the 6-meter SAID-R inflatable donut has been performing gorgeously, an alternate 8-meter SAID-E design has been undergoing rocket tests and might make it into the field next year. As for the parachute: it looks like it’s time for another meeting of the Supreme Council of Parachute Experts that worked on the last redesign to try, try, and try again in the hopes of finding something strong enough to handle the brutal forces of landing on Mars.

If we can fix the parachute design and unlock this new landing system technology, we’ll be upgrading on the current parachutes that have been used since 1976. LDSD will not only double the current payload of Mars-bound robots to 1,500 kilograms (3,300 pounds), increasing how much science we can do, but also increase landing accuracy from a 10 kilometer (6.5 mile) region to a bullseye of just 1.6 kilometers (1 mile) and open up higher-elevation landing zones. This isn’t easy, but it’s worth the test flights, redesigns, and time to push our technology to new limits for exploration.





_Next time the LDSD is dangling from this tower in 2016, will it be carrying a parachute that can handle decelerating multi-ton payloads on Mars to subsonic speeds? Image credit: NASA_

Figuring out how to slow down on Mars is not a simple problem, and designing the world’s largest parachute to handle the enormous stresses of supersonic deceleration is a painfully challenging undertaking.

The initial results of this test flight were heartbreaking, disappointing, and not what anyone was hoping for when munching on their good-luck peanuts, but it is exactly why we test this equipment here on Earth before entrusting it with our charming robots on interplanetary journeys. We’ll learn from this and keep trying, but it would’ve been so much more fun to celebrate an unmitigated success.

It took years to design the new prototype technology, a year to refine it since the last tests, days to wait for weather suitable for a test flight, hours to gently float the craft to testing altitude, and just seconds to realize that the parachute didn’t inflate. Rocket science is damn hard, and damn heartbreaking.






@Indus Falcon @AMDR @Peter C @F-22Raptor @Nihonjin1051 - any news you guys have can be put here

@waz - would you be so kind as to sticky this thread? I'll be updating it frequently.

Thanks

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## SvenSvensonov

*Ride Along With Dawn Spacecraft As It Swoops Around Dwarf Planet Ceres*






A breathtaking new composite video tracks the journey of NASA’s Dawn spacecraft as it settles into an orbit some 2,730 miles (4,400 km) above the surface of Ceres.

Dawn entered into its new orbit on June 3. The spacecraft will stay there for about a month as it continues to conduct detailed observations of the surface.






The new fly over video was compiled from 80 different shots as Dawn made its approach, as well as recent images taken from a distance of 3,170 miles (5,100 km). The video offers a unique 3D perspective of the dwarf planet, showcasing its heavily cratered surface and highly irregular shape.




*Peer Out The Window Of A Rocket Returning To Earth*

What does it look like when one of SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rockets falls back to Earth? Here’s the view of our gorgeous planet captured during the uncontrolled tumble to reentry.






The coolest thing about the Falcon 9R rockets is hidden in the name — that R stands for “reusable,” an ambitious if not-quite-yet-proven attempt to soft-land on a barge and recycle the massive boosters in future flights. But before the rocket can try landing on a barge in the Atlantic Ocean, it first needs to find its way back to Earth. This video was captured by a Go Pro camera tucked inside the ejected fairing of a Falcon 9R rocket during a recent flight, recovered when the fairing washed up on a beach in the Bahamas. The video is replayed in real-time to give us just the smallest glimpse of how surreal and lovely our planet is from afar.









*Bill Nye's Solar-Powered Space-Sailer Has Woken Up*






For the last few weeks since its launch, the experimental LightSail satellite has been orbiting Earth, unable to make ground contact thanks to a software glitch. But earlier today, the spacecraft’s handlers successfully deployed the little craft’s gigantic sail.

Following the initial launch on May 20, LightSail went offline due to a software glitch. It spent eight days in silence, before dropping in and out of contact last week, with firm contact only re-established on Saturday. But with the batteries still charged, mission control was able to go forward with one of the main achievements for the experimental flight: deploying the tiny satellite’s huge solar sail.

LightSail is an experimental project, funded by The Planetary Society, a non-government organization founded by Carl Sagan in 1980, currently boasting our planet’s very own Science Guy as CEO. LightSail is a project aimed at testing the technical and economic benefits of solar sails, which use sunlight to propel themselves through the vacuum of space.

The LightSail craft that’s currently in orbit is too low to allow for actual sailing, since the satellite will be caught in atmospheric drag. Instead, it’s meant to test things like deployment and communications, in preparation for a full mission next year.






Solar sail technology isn’t particularly new, having already been tested by the Americans and Japanese. What LightSail is promising, though, is low-budget space exploration. The LightSail craft is made up of CubeSats, tiny satellites weighing about three pounds each. LightSail has three of those, and a huge Mylar sail covering 344 square feet. That makes it cheap — $4.5 million for the whole mission.

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## SvenSvensonov

*An Inside Look at the Construction of NASA's Next Mission to Mars*






Preparations for NASA’s next mission to Mars are kicking into high gear. And the technology the space agency is building for the Martian lander slated to launch in 2016 is enough to make science fiction fans foam at the mouth.

The mission, Interior Exploration using Seismic Investigations, Geodesy and Heat Transport(InSight for short) is going to be the very first devoted to studying the interior structure of the Red Planet. Exploring Mars’ deep subsurface will shed light on how the planet has evolved geologically over time, but InSight could also offer clues about Earth’s future and the evolution of rocky planets at large. Mars, roughly half the size of Earth, lost all of its core heat eons ago, which in turn caused tectonic activity to grind to a halt. In the distant future, something similar will happen on the blue marble, and our rapidly-aging little brother might show us what to expect.

According to NASA, the technical capabilities of InSight represent a critical step toward amanned mission to the Red Planet, which the space agency hopes to ship off in the 2030s. Let’s have a look at some of the components of the geologically-minded craft now under construction by Lockheed Martin.






Solar arrays on InSight are deployed in this test inside a clean room at Lockheed Martin Space Systems.






A top view of InSight’s cruise stage, which has its own solar arrays, thrusters, and radio antennas.






In this photo, the back shell of InSight is being lowered onto the mission’s lander. InSight’s back shell, along with a heat shield, together comprise an aeroshell which will protect the lander from burning up as it plunges into Mars’ upper atmosphere.






The heat shield, under construction.






The most important part of InSight—the science deck, containing all the tools necessary to carry out plenty of awesome sciencing. Or so we think. All we know so far about this oversized motherboard is that the large circular component is a covering that’ll protect InSight’s seismometer—a device used to record earthquakes, volcanic activity, and other types of below ground motion—after the instrument is placed on the Martian ground.






WTF is this?! Oh, it’s the guts of the lander, being assembled by Lockheed Martin engineers in a clean room. Rad, I was worried somebody let Doc Brown loose on the premises.






And of course, no space mission would be complete without a big-*** parachute to make the landing extra soft, amirite?

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## SvenSvensonov

*SpaceX - Falcon 9*

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## SvenSvensonov

*SpaceX - Falcon 9 and Dragon*

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## SvenSvensonov

*New Earth-Orbiting Microwave Gun is Making Killer Maps of Wind Dynamics*






On May 10th, tropical storm Ana—the first named storm of this year’s North Atlantic hurricane season—made landfall along the Carolina coast. NASA scientists took the opportunity to observe the storm’s wind dynamics with one of their newest toys and produced this spectacular wind map while they were at it.

The Rapid Scatterometer joined the rest of NASA’s Earth Observing fleet on the International Space Station last September. RapidScat is basically a giant microwave gun that sends pulses of radiation to the ocean’s surface, which then bounce back toward the instrument’s sensor. Choppy waters relay a more powerful signal that quiet waters, information which RapidScat uses to determine wind speed and direction.

According to NASA:

_The image above was produced with data acquired by RapidScat as Ana approached the coast on the afternoon of May 8, 2015. Arrows represent the direction of near-surface winds. Shades of blue indicate the range of wind speeds (lighter blue and green represent faster-moving winds). The image below, acquired with the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA’s Terra satellite, shows a natural-color view of the same storm as it appeared on the morning of May 9._






Hurricane season is just getting started, and we can expect plenty more cool NASA images as things kick into high gear.

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## SvenSvensonov

*NASA's Space Launch System Booster Passes Major Ground Test*

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The largest, most powerful rocket booster ever built successfully fired up for a major-milestone ground test in preparation for future missions to help propel NASA’s Space Launch System (SLS) rocket and Orion spacecraft to deep space destinations, including an asteroid and Mars.






The booster fired for two minutes, the same amount of time it will fire when it lifts the SLS off the launch pad, and produced about 3.6 million pounds of thrust. The test was conducted at the Promontory, Utah test facility of commercial partner Orbital ATK, and is one of two tests planned to qualify the booster for flight. Once qualified, the flight booster hardware will be ready for shipment to NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida for the first SLS flight.






"The work being done around the country today to build SLS is laying a solid foundation for future exploration missions, and these missions will enable us to pioneer far into the solar system," said William Gerstenmaier, NASA’s associate administrator for human exploration and operations. "The teams are doing tremendous work to develop what will be a national asset for human exploration and potential science missions."






It took months to heat the 1.6 million pound booster to 90 degrees Fahrenheit to verify its performance at the highest end of the booster’s accepted propellant temperature range. A cold-temperature test, at a target of 40 degrees Fahrenheit, the low end of the propellant temperature range, is planned for early 2016. These two tests will provide a full range of data for analytical models that inform how the booster performs. During the test, temperatures inside the booster reached more than 5,600 degrees.

"This test is a significant milestone for SLS and follows years of development," said Todd May, SLS program manager. "Our partnership with Orbital ATK and more than 500 suppliers across the country is keeping us on the path to building the most powerful rocket in the world."






During the test, more than 531 instrumentation channels on the booster were measured to help assess some 102 design objectives. The test also demonstrated the booster meets applicable ballistic performance requirements, such as thrust and pressure. Other objectives included data gathering on vital motor upgrades, such as the new internal motor insulation and liner and an improved nozzle design.






When completed, two five-segment boosters and four RS-25 main engines will power the SLS on deep space missions. The 177-feet-long solid rocket boosters operate in parallel with the main engines for the first two minutes of flight. They provide more than 75 percent of the thrust needed for the rocket to escape the gravitational pull of the Earth.






The first flight test of SLS will be configured for a 70-metric-ton (77-ton) lift capacity and carry an uncrewed Orion spacecraft beyond low-Earth orbit to test the performance of the integrated system. The SLS will later be configured to provide an unprecedented lift capability of 130 metric tons (143 tons) to enable missions farther into our solar system.

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## F-22Raptor

Excellent thread!

It's a shame the parachute didn't work. I was watching live and the disappointment of the team was palpable. No one ever said it would be easy though. This technology is critical to be able to land larger rovers and equipment/habitat modules for future manned missions to the surface of Mars. Back to the drawing board!

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## SvenSvensonov

_Astronaut Story Musgrave is positioned to replace components at the end of Endeavour’s Remote Manipulator System (RMS) mechanical arm on STS-61 in December 1993._





_Dave Scott works with the Lunar Roving Vehicle (LRV) on the slopes of Hadley Rille during Apollo 15._





_This iconic image, captured by astronaut Robert “Hoot” Gibson, shows Bruce McCandless participating in humanity’s first untethered EVA, aboard the Manned Maneuvering Unit (MMU)._





_Jim Newman waves to Jerry Ross’ camera whilst working outside the Unity node on STS-88._





_MUOS-4, the next satellite scheduled to join the U.S. Navy’s new MUOS secure communications network later this year, is in final assembly and test at Lockheed Martin’s satellite manufacturing facility in Sunnyvale, Calif._





_Dale Gardner holds up the famous “For Sale” sign to commemorate the successful salvage operation on Palapa-B2 and Westar-VI in November 1984._





_Backdropped by the glorious Earth, Challenger drifts serenely with Solar Max secured in her payload bay._





_Clasping the cold-gas maneuvering gun in his right hand, and trailed by a snake-like tether, Ed White tumbles over a cloud-speckled Earth during the United States’ first EVA._



F-22Raptor said:


> I was watching live and the disappointment of the team was palpable.



Same here, I was watching the live stream at work waiting for good news to share with people here. 

Nothing good though, but this is literally rocket science and failure is not only an option, it's often anticipated. I have a lot of faith in NASA though and they rarely ever let me down.

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## SvenSvensonov

*SpaceX Just Dropped These Amazing Retro Mars Travel Posters*






Everybody wants to go to Mars these days, not least of all Elon Musk, who might very well be hoping to retire there after he turns into a cyborg. But for those of you who haven’t jumped on the bandwagon yet, SpaceX just dropped some travel posters of the Red Planet to entice you.

For a company known for pushing the technological envelope forward, the Mars travel posters are endearingly retro. Like the exoplanet tourism posters NASA dropped earlier this year, this calls back to a simpler time, when science fiction was about valiant heroes with jetpacks and ray guns fighting bug-eyed space aliens. Let’s take a peek at ‘em.






Valles Marineris is a system of canyons that run along the Martian equator. More than 2,500 miles long, 120 miles wide and 23,000 feet deep, this rift system, probably the result of ancient tectonic activity, is one of the largest in our solar system, surpassed only by a handful of rift valleys here on Earth. It’d probably be a rather fun place to explore, even bring the kids—assuming you have jetpacks and a bubble helmet like this guy does.






Only the most adventurous hikers should try to scale Olympus Mons, a shield volcano three times taller than Mount Everest. Despite being utterly massive—the entire mountain covers a surface area roughly the size of Arizona—it’s actually a rather shallow ascent, with an average slope of only 5 degrees. This poster, then, might be making a teensy exaggeration, probably to sell us on the gondola, which does look pretty great.






Mars has two funny little lopsided moons, Phobos (fear) and Deimos (panic), named after the horses that pulled the chariot of the Greek war god Ares. Thought to be captured asteroids, both moons are tidally locked, always presenting the same face toward Mars, meaning you can certainly look forward to constant vistas of the red planet if choose your real estate wisely.

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## F-22Raptor

SvenSvensonov said:


> _Astronaut Story Musgrave is positioned to replace components at the end of Endeavour’s Remote Manipulator System (RMS) mechanical arm on STS-61 in December 1993._
> 
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> _Dave Scott works with the Lunar Roving Vehicle (LRV) on the slopes of Hadley Rille during Apollo 15._
> 
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> _This iconic image, captured by astronaut Robert “Hoot” Gibson, shows Bruce McCandless participating in humanity’s first untethered EVA, aboard the Manned Maneuvering Unit (MMU)._
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> _Jim Newman waves to Jerry Ross’ camera whilst working outside the Unity node on STS-88._
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> _MUOS-4, the next satellite scheduled to join the U.S. Navy’s new MUOS secure communications network later this year, is in final assembly and test at Lockheed Martin’s satellite manufacturing facility in Sunnyvale, Calif._
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> _Dale Gardner holds up the famous “For Sale” sign to commemorate the successful salvage operation on Palapa-B2 and Westar-VI in November 1984._
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> _Backdropped by the glorious Earth, Challenger drifts serenely with Solar Max secured in her payload bay._
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> _Clasping the cold-gas maneuvering gun in his right hand, and trailed by a snake-like tether, Ed White tumbles over a cloud-speckled Earth during the United States’ first EVA._
> 
> 
> 
> Same here, I was watching the live stream at work waiting for good news to share with people here.
> 
> Nothing good though, but this is literally rocket science and failure is not only an option, it's often anticipated. I have a lot of faith in NASA though and they rarely ever let me down.



We have to remember that this is cutting edge technology. A parachute that size travelling at those speeds has never been tested before the LDSD. Parachutes seem so pedestrian, but developing fabric that won't tear at supersonic speeds has to be hard as hell.

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## SvenSvensonov

*Say Hi To Pluto's Smallest Moons*






After nine years and a 3 _billion _mile journey, NASA’s New Horizons probe is finally getting close to everyone’s favorite ex-planet, Pluto. And in doing so, she’s also captured the first ever family portrait of Pluto and all its little moons.

So far, we’ve seen five moons orbiting Pluto: Charon, Nix, Hydra, Kerberos, and Styx. (Yes, this does sound like the beginning of a Greek odyssey to capture a golden fleece.) Kerberos and Styx were only found by the Hubble Space Telescope back in 2011 and 2012, thanks to the distances involved, and their diminutive size: at most, they’re 20 and 13 miles wide, respectively.

To obtain the image you see above, New Horizons used its most sensitive camera, the Long Range Reconnaissance Imager, shooting 10-second exposures. From there, the NASA team managing the mission did some serious ENHANCE work to end up with a photo in which you can kinda-sorta-maybe make out the moons.

As New Horizons gets closer to Pluto, there’s a distinct chance that we’ll spot new moons, ones that are simply too small and too far away to have been detected before. The Solar System isn’t done with secrets yet.




*NASA's Kepler Mission Discovered 1,000 Planets In Its Quest to Find Life*






It was six years ago this month that NASA shot the Kepler telescope to the heavens on a galactic, planet-finding mission. Today, the space agency released this graphic that could also be Kepler’s mic-dropping resume.

Launched on March 6, 2009, Kepler’s duty is pinpointing stars in our galaxy that sport orbiting exoplanets (like sun does with Earth). NASA is especially interested in those exoplanets that fall in the “habitable zone”—that sweet spot where an exoplanet is just close enough to a life-giving star that the planet could have an atmosphere that produces water, and, in turn, foster living organisms.






The telescope’s mondo powerful light sensor is what’s used to find the locations of Earth-sized planets that might dwell in the habitable zone. The sensor spots minuscule changes in brightness around certain stars—these brightness changes suggest an exoplanet that’s orbiting its star.

That’s not an easy task, though. According to NASA’s press release:

_For a remote observer, Earth transiting the sun would dim its light by less than 1/100th of one percent, or the equivalent of the amount of light blocked by a gnat crawling across a car’s headlight viewed from several miles away._

Now according to the data released today, _Kepler: Exoplanet Hunter_ has discovered over 1,000 of these in only six years. Can we give this spacecraft a raise?




*NASA's Vomit Comet Trains Astronauts in the Ways of Weightlessness*






With limited lab space aboard the ISS and skyrocketing launch costs, only the very best extra-terrestrial experiments make it into orbit. To put prospective experiments and astronauts alike through their weightless paces over the last six decades, NASA has relied on a gracefully arcing series of cargo planes called The Vomit Comet.






These planes, traditionally modified US military cargo aircraft, generate brief periods of weightlessness by flying in parabolic arcs. By first climbing at a steep 45 degree angle, then reducing thrust and leveling out the nose of the craft as it travels over the "hump" of its flight path, the planes can simulate a zero gravity environment (really both the plane and the passengers are in a slow free fall) for about 25 seconds (out of each 65 second parabola) before the nose of the plane is tilted down at 30 degrees, thrust is added, and everybody aboard endures 2 G forces through the descent and lower "trough." The process is then repeated 40 to 60 times each training session.

These weightlessness training flights began in 1959 when Project Mercury astronauts including Alan Shepard, the first American in space, practiced aboard a C-131 Samaritan and were the ones to bestow the "vomit comet" nickname on account of the horrible motion sickness the experience can invoke in some passengers.

As the Space Race exploded after Shepard's famous flight, the original Samaritan was replaced in 1973 by a pair of modified KC-135 Stratotankers which served for nearly 30 years—training the space-farers of the era in the ways of zero gravity as well as appearing in a number of films like _Apollo 13_. It's estimated that the primary KC-135A, the one used in _Apollo 13_, completed nearly 60,000 parabolic maneuvers between 1973 and its retirement in 2000. It's counterpart flew an additional four years before being put on permanent display at the Pima Air & Space Museum in Tucson, Arizona.

But the retirements of these venerable planes did not spell the end of the vomit comet line. In 2005, NASA acquired a pre-owned McDonnell Douglas C-9B Skytrain II from KLM Royal Dutch Airlines and uses it for parabolic flights.






Additionally, NASA maintains a service contract with the Zero Gravity Corporation (ZERO-G) for use of the company's weightless training aircraft G-FORCE ONE, a modified Boeing 727-200. While the company charges normal folks like Penn and Teller, Martha Stewart, and Stephen Hawking around $5,000 for the experience, ZERO-G has provided the test-bed for NASA's FASTRACK Space Experiment Platform in 2008 and has been been cleared by the FAA to "...offer reduced gravity parabolic flights to prospective suborbital launch operators to meet the applicable components of the crew qualification and training requirements outlined in the Code of Federal Regulations (14 C.F.R., Section 460.5)."




*"Snow Cleaning" Keeps This Giant Telescope Mirror Perfectly Pristine*






The James Webb Space Telescope is the most powerful space telescope ever built, and its mirrors must be kept squeaky clean. Any debris, even tiny flecks of dust, could impact its science. Ergo, “snow cleaning:” the use of carbon dioxide snow to clean the mirrors thoroughly yet gently.

According to NASA, the photo above shows a test mirror getting the snow-clean treatment:

_Just like drivers sometimes use snow to clean their car mirrors in winter, two Exelis Inc. engineers are practicing “snow cleaning’” on a test telescope mirror for the James Webb Space Telescope at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. By shooting carbon dioxide snow at the surface, engineers are able to clean large telescope mirrors without scratching them.

“The snow-like crystals (carbon dioxide snow) knock contaminate particulates and molecules off the mirror,” said Lee Feinberg, NASA optical telescope element manager. This technique will only be used if the James Webb Space Telescope’s mirror is contaminated during integration and testing.

The Webb telescope is the scientific successor to NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope. It will be the most powerful space telescope ever built. With a mirror seven times as large as Hubble’s and infrared capability, Webb will be capturing light from 13.5 billion light years away. To do this, its mirror must be kept super clean._

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## SvenSvensonov

_Apollo 11 Launch @ Kennedy Space Center – July 16, 1969

At 9:32 a.m. EDT, the swing arms move away and a plume of flame signals the liftoff of the Apollo 11 Saturn V space vehicle and astronauts Neil A. Armstrong, Michael Collins and Edwin E. Aldrin, Jr. from Kennedy Space Center Launch Complex 39A._





_Close-up STS-107 Launch @ Kennedy Space Center – January 16, 2003

A close-up camera view shows Space Shuttle Columbia as it lifts off from Launch Pad 39A on mission STS-107. Launch occurred on schedule at 10:39 EST_





_Bumper V-2 Launch @ Kennedy Space Center – July 24, 1950

The Bumper V-2 was the first missile launched at Cape Canaveral on July 24, 1950._





_OSO Launch @ Goddard Space Flight Center – June 21, 1975

NASA successfully launched more than 200 Earth-orbiting satellites, including Goddard’s eighth Orbiting Solar Observatory aboard this Delta rocket on June 21, 1975, at Cape Canaveral, Florida. The satellite-the final in a series of spacecraft specifically designed to look at the Sun in high-energy wavelength bands that scientists cannot see on Earth-gathered data on energy transfer in the Sun’s hot, gaseous atmosphere and its 11-year sunspot cycle.

Sunspots are cooler regions that appear as dark patches in the visible surface of the Sun and are more plentiful every 11 years. Flares and other powerful solar events that sometimes wreak havoc with Earth’s communications systems also are associated with heightened sunspot activity. In addition to looking at the Sun, the satellite investigated celestial sources of X-rays in the Milky Way and beyond. It carried eight experiments._





_STS-43 Launch @ Kennedy Space Center – August 2, 1991

The Space Shuttle Atlantis streaks skyward as sunlight pierces through the gap between the orbiter and ET assembly. Atlantis lifted off on the 42nd space shuttle flight at 11:02 a.m. EDT on August 2, 1991 carrying a crew of five and TDRS-E. A remote camera at the 275-foot level of the Fixed Surface Structure took this picture._





_Viking 1 Launch @ Kennedy Space Center – August 20, 1975

Viking 1 was launched by a Titan/Centaur rocket from Complex 41 at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station at 5:22 p.m. EDT to begin a half-billion mile, 11-month journey through space to explore Mars. The 4-ton spacecraft went into orbit around the red planet in mid-1976._

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## SvenSvensonov

*Orion launch
*
Congratulations NASA!!! Orion successfully tested!!!

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## SvenSvensonov



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## SvenSvensonov

*






LLRV*

The Lunar Landing Research Vehicle’s (LLRV), humorously referred to as “flying bedsteads,” were created by a predecessor of NASA’s Dryden Flight Research Center to study and analyze piloting techniques needed to fly and land the tiny Apollo Lunar Module in the moon’s airless environment. (Dryden was known as NASA’s Flight Research Center from 1959 to 1976.)

Success of the LLRVs led to the building of three Lunar Landing Training Vehicles (LLTVs) used by Apollo astronauts at the Manned Spacecraft Center, Houston, TX, predecessor of NASA’s Johnson Space Center.

Apollo 11 astronaut Neil Armstrong,  first human to step onto the moon’s surface, said the mission would not have been successful without the type of simulation that resulted from the LLRVs and LLTVs.
￼
When Apollo planning was underway in 1960, NASA was looking for a simulator to profile the descent to the moon’s surface. Three concepts were developed: an electronic simulator, a tethered device, and the ambitious Flight Research Center (FRC) contribution, a free-flying vehicle. All three became serious projects, but eventually the FRC’s LLRV became the most significant one. Hubert Drake is credited with originating the idea, while Donald Bellman and Gene Matranga were senior engineers on the project, with Bellman the project manager.

After conceptual planning and meetings with engineers from Bell Aerosystems, Buffalo, NY, a company with experience in vertical takeoff and landing (VTOL) aircraft, NASA issued Bell a $50,000 study contract in December 1961. Bell had independently conceived a similar, free-flying simulator, and out of this study came the NASA Headquarters’ endorsement of the LLRV concept, resulting in a $3.6 million production contract awarded to Bell on Feb. 1, 1963, for delivery of the first of two vehicles for flight studies at the FRC within 14 months.

Built of aluminum alloy trusses and shaped like a giant four-legged bedstead, the vehicle was to simulate a lunar landing profile. To do this, the LLRV had a General Electric CF-700-2V turbofan engine mounted vertically in a gimbal, with 4,200 lb of thrust. The engine got the vehicle up to the test altitude and was then throttled back to support five-sixths of the vehicle’s weight, simulating the reduced gravity of the moon. Two hydrogen peroxide lift rockets with thrust that could be varied from 100 to 500 lb handled the LLRV’s rate of descent and horizontal movement. Sixteen smaller hydrogen peroxide rockets, mounted in pairs, gave the pilot control in pitch, yaw, and roll. As safety backups on the LLRV, six 500-lb rockets could take over the lift function and stabilize the craft for a moment if the main jet engine failed. The pilot had a zero-zero ejection seat that would then lift him away to safety.

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## SvenSvensonov

*Neutral Buoyancy Lab training facility*

NASA - Neutral Buoyancy Lab

_Neutral Buoyancy Laboratory at NASA is 202 feet (62m) long, 101 feet (31m) wide and 40 feet (12m) deep and is used to train personnel for spacewalks._

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## SvenSvensonov

*Atlas V*






The Atlas V 401 Launch Vehicle is a part of the flight proven Atlas V 400/500 family that is being operated by United Launch Alliance. Atlas V rockets are flown since 2002 and have a near-perfect success rate (one flight was a partial failure, however the mission was catalogued as a success). The Vehicle is operated from Launch Complex 41 at the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, Florida and Launch Complex 3-E at Vandenberg Air Force Base, California. The vehicle is assembled in Decatur, Alabama; Harlingen, Texas; San Diego, California; and at United Launch Alliance's headquarters near Denver, Colorado.

Atlas V 401 is the smallest of the Atlas V Launcher Family featuring no Solid Rocket Boosters and a 4.2-meter Payload Fairing. The 401 configuration has two stages, a Common Core Booster and a Centaur Upper Stage. Centaur can make multiple burns to deliver payloads to a variety of orbits including Low Earth Orbit, Geostationary Transfer Orbit and Geostationary Orbit,

Every Atlas V version has a three digit ID-Number:
First Digit: Payload Fairing diameter: 4XX - 4m Diameter; 5XX - 5.4m Diameter
Second Digit: Number of Solid Rocket Boosters (0-5)
Third Digit: Number of RL-10A Engines on Centaur (1 or 2)

*Launch Vehicle Description*

Atlas V 401 stands 58.3 meters tall and has a main diameter of 3.81 meters. With a liftoff mass of 334,500 Kilograms, it is the light-weight of the Atlas V Fleet as the 401 version does not feature any Solid Rocket Boosters. The Launcher uses the conventional Atlas V design with a Common Core Booster and a Centaur Upper Stage on top of it. Atlas V 401 features a 4.2-meter payload Fairing under which it can carry payloads of up to 10,470 Kilograms to Low Earth Orbit. Geostationary Transfer Orbit Capability is 4,750 Kilograms.





*
Common Core Booster*

The first Stage of the Atlas V 401 is an Atlas Common Core Booster that is 32.46 meters long and has a diameter of 3.81 meters. With an inert mass of 21,054 Kilograms, the Common Core booster can hold up to 284,089 Kilograms of Rocket Propellant-1 and Liquid Oxygen that are consumed by the single RD-180 Main Engine of the vehicle. RD-180 is being manufactured by NPO Energomash. It is a two-chamber staged combustion engine that provides 3,827 Kilonewtons of liftoff thrust and 4,152 Kilonewtons of vacuum thrust. RD-180 maintains a high-pressure staged combustion cycle employing an Oxygen-rich preburner. It runs with an oxidizer to fuel ratio of 2.72. The drawback of an oxygen-rich combustion is that high pressure, high temperature gaseous oxygen must be transported throughout the engine. The nominal chamber pressure is 267 bar. RD-180 is capable of being throttled from 50% to 100% of rated performance. The engine is based on the RD-170 engine that features four combustion chambers. First Stage control is accomplished by gimbaling the RD-180 nozzles by up to 8 degrees. Engine gimbaling is achieved via the vehicles hydraulics system. The first stage propellants are held inside aluminum isogrid tanks; tank pressurization is accomplished with high-pressure Helium that is stored in Helium Bottles on the Common Core Booster. Tank pressurization is computer-controlled. The Common Core Booster is equipped with a Flight Termination System that can be used to destroy the vehicle in the event of any major malfunction. Also, the CCB is outfitted with redundant Rate Gyros to acquire navigation data. Internal Batteries provide power during powered ascent and an independent telemetry system is utilized for data downlink. First stage separation is initiated by pyrotechnics and the core stage ignites eight retro rockets to drop away from the launcher.










*
Interstage Adapter
*
The first and second stage of the Atlas V launch vehicle are connected by a Interstage Adapter (400-ISA) that is used to join the two stages of the vehicle that feature different diameters. It consists of a cylindrical section that is 3.05 meters in diameter and 2.52 meters in length as well as a conical section with a maximum diameter of 3.81 meters and a length of 1.61 meters. The composite structure is equipped with Aluminum Ring Frames (forward and aft) and weighs 947 Kilograms.





*

Centaur Upper Stage
*
The Upper Stage of the Atlas V 401 is a single-engine Centaur Stage. Centaur is 3.05 meters in diameter and 12.68 meters in length with an inert mass of 2,243 Kilograms. Centaur is a cryogenic rocket stage using Liquid Hydrogen and Liquid Oxygen as propellants. A total of 20,830 Kilograms of propellants can be filled into the vehicle's pressure stabilized stainless steel tanks. The LOX and LH2 Tanks are separated by a common ellipsoidal bulkhead. Centaur is powered by a RL-10A-4-2 engine that is manufactured by Pratt & Whitney Rocketdyne and provides 99.2 Kilonewtons of thrust. The engine uses an expander cycle and operates at a chamber pressure of 39 bar. It is 3.53 meters in length, 1.53 meters in diameter and features a Nozzle Extension. RL-10 has a certified burn time of up to 740 seconds and can make multiple engine starts. It has a dry weight of 166 Kilograms and an expansion ratio of 84:1 achieving a thrust to weight ratio of 61:1. RL-10 can be gimbaled with a electromechanical system to provide vehicle control during powered flight. During Coast Phases, the vehicle's orientation is controlled by Centaur's Reaction Control System. Eight lateral 40-Newton Thrusters and four 27-Newton Thrusters are used for attitude control. The System uses Hydrazine propellant. The Centaur Upper Stage houses the Atlas V Flight and Guidance Computers that are capable of autonomously performing the mission controlling all aspects of the flight. The fault-tolerant inertial navigation unit is located on the Centaur forward equipment module.

In the aft section of the Centaur Upper stage is an ASA - Aft Stub Adapter that is 3.05 meters in diameter and 0.65 meter in length. ASA has a mass of 181.7 Kilograms and consists of a Aluminum Monocoque. It is separated by a Frangible Joint Assembly Separation System.
*




*
*Payload Adapter*

Payload Adapters interface with the vehicle and the payload and are the only attachment point of the payload on the Launcher. They provide equipment needed for spacecraft separation and connections for communications between the Upper Stage and the Payload. The separation system can be based on either the traditional pyrotechnical-initiated bolt cutters/separation nuts or Low-Shock Marmon Type Clamp Band Separation System. For Atlas V, a Launch Vehicle Adapter interfaces with the SIP (Standard Interface Plane) of the Launcher and connects to the Standard Payload Adapter or custom-made adapters. Four off-the-shelf adapters are available to accommodate various payloads. Also, custom made fairings can be fitted atop the Launch Vehicle Adapters to accommodate a variety off different payload requirements.





*
Payload Fairing
*
The Payload Fairing is positioned on top of the stacked vehicle and its integrated Payload. It protects the spacecraft against aerodynamic, thermal and acoustic environments that the vehicle experiences during atmospheric flight. When the launcher has left the atmosphere, the fairing is jettisoned by pyrotechnical initiated systems. Separating the fairing as early as possible increases launcher performance. The Atlas V 401 Rocket features fairings with a diameter of 4.2 meters. Three different fairing lengths are available: 12.0, 12.9 and 13.8 meters. Major sections of these payload fairings are the boattail, the cylindrical section, and the nose cone that is topped by a spherical cap. Both fairing and boattail sections consists of Aluminum Skin Stringers and Frame Clampshells. The fairing is separated by pyro bolts and spring jettison actuators that push the two halves away from each other. Payload Fairings are outfitted with acoustic panels, access doors and RF windows. Optional fairing hardware includes thermal shields and ECS doors. Also, the Payload Fairing is connected to a purge air system to ensure a controlled environment

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## SvenSvensonov

*STS-134 Endeavour*

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## F-22Raptor

Images from the Apollo missions

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## SvenSvensonov

*OV-105 Endeavour... again*

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## SvenSvensonov

*OV-104 Atlantis*

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## SvenSvensonov

*GRAIL
*




*



*

*Mission Overview*

The GRAIL mission will place two spacecraft into the same orbit around the Moon. As they fly over areas of greater and lesser gravity, caused both by visible features such as mountains and craters and by masses hidden beneath the lunar surface, they will move slightly toward and away from each other. An instrument aboard each spacecraft will measure the changes in their relative velocity very precisely, and scientists will translate this information into a high-resolution map of the Moon's gravitational field.
This gravity-measuring technique is essentially the same as that of the Gravity Recovery And Climate Experiment (GRACE), which has been mapping Earth's gravity since 2002.

*Objectives*

GRAIL's engineering objectives are to enable the science objectives of mapping lunar gravity and using that information to increase understanding of the Moon's interior and thermal history. Getting the two spacecraft where they need to be, when they need to be there, requires an extremely challenging set of maneuvers never before carried out in solar system exploration missions.
*
Mission design*

The two GRAIL spacecraft will be launched together and then will fly similar but separate trajectories to the Moon after separation from the launch vehicle, taking about 3 to 4 months to get there. They will spend about 2 months reshaping and merging their orbits until one spacecraft is following the other in the same low-altitude, near-circular, near-polar orbit, and they begin formation-flying. The next 82 days will constitute the science phase, during which the spacecraft will map the Moon's gravitational field.

*Spacecraft and payload*

The two GRAIL spacecraft are near-twins, each about the size of a washing machine, with minor differences resulting from the need for one specific spacecraft (GRAIL-A) to follow the other (GRAIL-B) as they circle the Moon.

The science payload on each spacecraft is the Lunar Gravity Ranging System, which will measure changes in the distance between the two spacecraft down to a few microns - about the diameter of a red blood cell. Each spacecraft will also carry a set of cameras for MoonKAM, marking the first time a NASA planetary mission has carried instruments expressly for an education and public outreach project.

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## SenLin

Nice thread bro.



SvenSvensonov said:


>



From which Apollo mission is this pic?

2 similar ones from Apollo 17:


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## F-22Raptor

Curiosity rover pics on Mars

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## SvenSvensonov

SenLin said:


> From which Apollo mission is this pic?



Honestly, I'm not sure, it's probably from Apollo 17 though. I pluck the pic from NASA.gov, I'll track down its info for you.

*Vandenburg AFB - these are military launches*

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## SvenSvensonov

*Hubble Reveals Fascinating and Chaotic Properties of Pluto's Moons*

Hubble Reveals Fascinating and Chaotic Properties of Pluto’s Moons « AmericaSpace





_Using a set of archival data that were taken with the Hubble Space Telescope. astronomers were able to conduct the most comprehensive and detailed study to date of Pluto’s four smaller moons, Nix, Hydra, Kerberos and Styx. This artist’s illustration shows the scale and comparative brightness of these small satellites, as discovered by Hubble over the past several years. Pluto’s binary companion, Charon, is placed at the bottom for scale. Two of the moons (Nix and Hydra), are highly oblate. The reflectivity among the moons varies from dark charcoal to the brightness of white sand. Hubble cannot resolve surface features on the moons and so the cratered textures seen here are purely for illustration purposes._

Some of the best things come in small packages, as the saying goes, and that certainly holds true for Pluto and its system of moons. A new comprehensive analysis of archival observations of the Pluto system, undertaken with NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope during the last decade, have revealed the dwarf planet and its moons comprise a fascinating mini planetary system of their own which is entirely unique in the Sun’s planetary family, while also providing many important insights not only about the physical processes that take place in our own Solar System, but about those that govern extrasolar ones as well.

Discovered in 1930 by American astronomer Clyde Tombaugh, Pluto was originally thought to be the long-sought-for hypothetical massive Planet X in the outskirts of the Solar System, which astronomers had extensively searched for many decades during the mid-19th and early 20th century. As telescopes were becoming steadily more powerful in the years following the discovery of Pluto, it was eventually determined that the latter was in reality just a diminutive world no more than 2,300 km across, which was also found in the late 1970s to be accompanied by a comparatively large moon named Charon that had a diameter of approximately 1,200 km, almost half that of Pluto. The Hubble Space Telescope completed the picture of Pluto’s moon system by detecting an additional four much smaller satellites around the planet, Nix and Hydra in 2005, as well as Kerberos and Styx in 2011 and 2012 respectively.





_A composite image from the Hubble Space Telescope, showing Pluto’s entire system of known moons. The four smaller moons, Nix, Hydra, Kerberos and Styx, were imaged with 1000x longer exposure times because they are far dimmer than Pluto and Charon._

One of the more interesting aspects of Pluto and Charon is the fact that, due to their comparative sizes and close distance between them, both objects orbit their common center of mass thus comprising a double-planet system with the rest of the smaller moons revolving around the latter, essentially making Pluto and Charon the only binary planet in the entire Solar System, with the exception of the Earth and the Moon, whose own center of mass lies within our home planet. Ever since Pluto’s smaller moons were discovered, astronomers have been actively studying their fascinating orbital dynamics with the help of Hubble, which is currently the only space telescope capable of observing their motions from a distance of more than 5 billion km away. Now, in a new paper which is being published today (June 4) in the journal _Nature_, planetary astronomer Mark Showalter, a senior research scientist at the SETI Institute in California and co-discoverer of Kerberos and Styx, and Dr. Douglas Hamilton, a professor of astronomy at the University of Maryland, present the results of a comprehensive four-year study of the entire Pluto system, based on archival Hubble data collected by the orbiting observatory between 2005 and 2012. The analysis of the data revealed quite unexpected and fascinating findings that were contrary to previous theoretical predictions, including the extremely small surface brightness of Kerberos compared to that of other satellites in the Pluto system, as well as the chaotic nature of the orbital revolutions of Nix and Hydra.

More specifically, the researchers studied the brightness variations of Pluto’s moons throughout their entire orbital periods, under the assumption that the latter were locked in synchronous orbits around Pluto, as is the case with Charon and most of the other moons in the Solar System, which causes them to constantly point one hemisphere toward their respective planets. Since Pluto’s smaller moons are irregularly shaped due to their very small sizes, the researchers expected that their brightness would change in a predictable manner during their orbital revolutions around Pluto, if they were indeed locked in such a synchronous rotation. Yet what Showalter and Hamilton found to their great surprise was there appeared to be no correlation whatsoever between the moons’ brightness and their position along their orbits, indicating that Nix and Hydra definitely weren’t locked in a synchronous rotation around Pluto. After running a series of numerical simulations based on these observations, the researchers soon realised that these orbital wobbles of Nix and Hydra were the result of the irregular gravity field they were embedded in, which was caused by the Pluto-Charon binary planet system itself, leading the smaller moons to exhibit a fundamentally chaotic and unpredictable orbital spins over longer periods.

“[Pluto and Charon] whirl around each other rapidly, causing the gravitational forces that they exert on the small nearby moons to change constantly,” says Hamilton. “Being subject to such varying gravitational forces makes the rotation of Pluto’s moons very unpredictable. The chaos in their rotation is further accentuated by the fact that these moons are not neat and round, but are actually shaped like rugby balls! Like good children, our Moon and most others keep one face focused attentively on their parent planet. What we’ve learned is that Pluto’s moons are more like ornery teenagers who refuse to follow the rules.”

These chaotic orbital dynamics elevate Pluto and its moons from the status of just a set of inconspicuous lesser bodies in the outskirts of the Solar System, to that of a very unique and fascinating mini planetary system in its own right. “Prior to the Hubble observations, nobody appreciated the intricate dynamics of the Pluto system,” adds Showalter. “Our research provides important new constraints on the sequence of events that led to the formation of the system.”

As for the results of these strange orbital dynamics, the view from Nix and Hydra would be unlike anything seen anywhere else in the Solar System. “You would literally not know if the Sun is coming up tomorrow,” explained Showalter during the presentation of the study’s results at a NASA teleconference that was held yesterday at the agency’s headquarters, in Washington, D.C. “For that matter, the Sun might rise in the west and set in the east. In fact, if you had a real estate on the north pole of Nix you might suddenly discover one day that you’re on the south pole instead. This is the environment we’re talking about for Nix and Hydra and we believe for the other moons as well, although we don’t [currently] have the data to show that.”






Years-worth of studies with the Hubble Space Telescope have revealed that the Jupiter and Pluto systems have much in common regarding their structure and that the moons of Pluto are not small in the relative sense. Seen at left is a montage of Jupiter and its four large Galilean moons as photographed by NASA’s Voyager 1 spacecraft in 1979. Scaling Pluto and its moons up to the size of Jupiter creates a system very similar to the Jupiter system we already know (seen at right), with the exception of Charon, which is the primary driver of the chaos that has been observed with Hubble in the Pluto system.






One key question that naturally arose out of these findings is how the Pluto system is kept stable over long periods of time without having its moons fly apart or collide with one another due to these orbital instabilities. The answer came when Showalter and Hamilton determined through their numerical simulations that all four moons are being kept in a surprising near-3:4:5:6 orbital resonance relative to Charon, while Nix, Styx, and Hydra are tied together in a near-1:2:3 three-body orbital resonance, where for each orbital revolution that Nix makes around Pluto, Styx makes two and Hydra makes three, similar to the near-resonances that are shared between Io, Europa, and Ganymede around Jupiter. “What this relationship does, is to prevent these moons from ever getting very close together all at the same time and that helps to stabilise the system,” explains Hamilton. “The resonant relationship between Nix, Styx and Hydra makes their orbits more regular and predictable, which prevents them from crashing into one another. This is one reason why tiny Pluto is able to have so many moons.”

The brightness variation measurements which led the researchers to study orbital dynamics of Pluto’s smaller moons allowed them to make another important discovery about the latter as well. More specifically, by studying the light curves of the smaller moons, Showalter and Hamilton were able to determine that Nix and Hydra both shared an albedo (surface reflectivity) of approximately 40 percent, similar to that of Charon, which indicated they are all fairly bright objects. Yet the albedo of Kerberos, whose orbit lies between that of Nix and Hydra, was found to be no greater than 4 percent, indicating it was a surprisingly dark object. Such surface darkening has been observed on various Solar System moons as well and is thought to result from meteorite dust debris that covers the moon’s surfaces over time. But the fact that the surfaces of the neighboring moons Nix and Hydra are so bright presents an unexpected enigma for astronomers, who had theorised that due to the close locations, the surfaces of all three moons should have been coated with dark debris material in similar proportion. “Think of a charcoal briquette orbiting between two dirty snowballs,” says Showalter. “Now, that’s a very, very strange result.”





_A numerical simulation of the orientation of Nix as seen from the center of the Pluto system. It has been sped up so that one orbit of Nix around Pluto takes 2 seconds instead of the actual 25 days. Large wobbles are visible, and occasionally the pole flips over. This tumbling behavior meets the formal definition of chaos; the orientation of Nix is fundamentally unpredictable. Video Credit: STScI and Mark Showalter, SETI Institute_

The overall findings to come from this new study by Showalter and Hamilton not only help to shed more light to the intricate dynamics of the Pluto system, but they can help astronomers gain important insights to the inner workings of extrasolar planetary systems as well. “What if Pluto were the size of our Sun? Then Charon would be a small [neighboring] star, forming a double star system,” commented during yesterday’s teleconference Heidi Hammel, a planetary astronomer and executive vice president of the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy in Washington, D.C. “And we actually know from many telescopic searches that double stars are ubiquitous throughout our galaxy. And thanks to NASA’s Kepler spacecraft and many other telescopic searches , we know that many of these double stars do host planets, so Pluto and its complex and chaotic moon system can provide a direct analog to these planetary systems we see around other stars … Everything we have learned about the Pluto system, we actually learned without resolving these moons – they are just points of light. And we’re developing now the capabilities in astronomy, of seeing exoplanets around other stars as points of light separated from their host stars … So, thanks to this very interesting moon system of Pluto, we will one day be able to apply the same kinds of tools and techniques for probing those moons, to study exoplanetary systems around other stars and learn about the characteristics of those planets in that kind of detail that you are hearing [about Pluto] today. And all of this is grounded in our knowledge of these four tiny moons travelling in their chaotic orbits and chaotic rotations around the distant around the binary Pluto and Charon system, as seen with the Hubble Space Telescope.”

“We are learning chaos may be a common trait of binary [exoplanetary] systems,” adds Hamilton. “It might even have consequences for life on planets if it is found in such systems.”

Despite its superior capabilities, Hubble can only reveal so much about Pluto and its menagerie of fascinating and chaotic moons. More detailed observations are bound to come just 40 days from now, when NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft will speed through the Pluto system on 14 July, for its eagerly anticipated and historic flyby of this distant realm of the Solar System. “Hubble has provided a new view of Pluto and its moons revealing a cosmic dance with a chaotic rhythm,” says John Grunsfeld, associate administrator of NASA’s Science Mission Directorate in Washington, D.C. “When the New Horizons spacecraft flies through the Pluto system in July we’ll get a chance to see what these moons look like up close and personal.”

And if there ever was a need to come up with a reason to make the upcoming New Horizons flyby more interesting than it already is, then the promise of a more detailed view of exoplanetary systems in the vast reaches of our Milky Way galaxy would be a fine reason indeed.

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## SvenSvensonov

*SLS Main Engine Test Fire Round Two Ignites With 450-Second Burn at Stennis Space Center*

SLS Main Engine Test Fire Round Two Ignites With 450-Second Burn at Stennis Space Center « AmericaSpace






NASA’s Space Launch System (SLS) rocket is quickly manifesting into reality. Its solid rocket booster was test fired just a couple months ago, NASA’s Pegasus transport barge is being made larger to support moving the colossal rocket, acoustic sound-suppression testing is occurring, F-18 Hornet fighter jets are carrying out flight tests for SLS flight software development, test stands are being built or modified, KSC’s iconic Vehicle Assembly Building (VAB) is being upgraded to support SLS, launch pad 39B is being prepared, the rocket’s Mobile Launch Platform (MLP) and Crawler Transporter are being prepared, and both qualification and flight hardware for the first SLS vehicle itself are being constructed for an inaugural 2018 launch on the Exploration Mission-1 (EM-1) flight with NASA’s Orion deep-space multi-purpose crew capsule (which itself conducted its first flight test last December).

The latest happening on America’s “Journey to Mars” occurred yesterday (May 28, 2015), as the space agency conducted a second test fire of the RS-25 main engine that will help power the 320-foot-tall SLS off its launch pad 39B at Kennedy Space Center, where astronauts will ascend from to escape Earth’s orbit for destinations farther from home than any human in history has ever been.

The 450-second test fire, carried out by development engine [HASHTAG]#0525[/HASHTAG] on the historic A-1 test stand, went off without issue—something that has come to be expected of the RS-25 engine, which formerly powered NASA’s now-retired space shuttle fleet uphill on 135 missions. The RS-25 was the first reusable rocket engine in history, as well as being one of the most tested large rocket engines ever made, having conducted more than 3,000 starts and over one million seconds (nearly 280 hours) of total ground test and flight firing time over the course of NASA’s 30-year space shuttle program.

The engines proved their worth time and time again, but the RS-25 now requires several modifications to meet the giant rocket’s enormous thrust requirements.






Yesterday’s test fire will provide engineers with critical data on the engine’s new state-of-the-art controller unit—the “brain” of the engine, which allows communication between the vehicle and the engine itself, relaying commands to the engine and transmitting data back to the vehicle. The new controller also provides closed-loop management of the engine by regulating the thrust and fuel mixture ratio while monitoring the engine’s health and status, thanks to updated hardware and software configured to operate with the new SLS avionics architecture.

“We’ve made modifications to the RS-25 to meet SLS specifications and will analyze and test a variety of conditions during the hot fire series,” said Steve Wofford after the first test fire earlier this year, manager of the SLS Liquid Engines Office at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala., where the SLS Program is managed. “The engines for SLS will encounter colder liquid oxygen temperatures than shuttle; greater inlet pressure due to the taller core stage liquid oxygen tank and higher vehicle acceleration; and more nozzle heating due to the four-engine configuration and their position in-plane with the SLS booster exhaust nozzles.”

For shuttle flights the engines pushed 491,000 pounds vacuum thrust during launch—each—and shuttle required three to fly, but for SLS the power level was increased to 512,000 pounds vacuum thrust per engine, and the SLS will require four to help launch the massive rocket and its payloads with a 70-metric-ton (77-ton) lift capacity that the initial SLS configuration promises.

The pace for SLS engine testing at Stennis is expected to pick up this summer. After the first test fire on Jan. 9, upgrades were needed on the A-1 test stand’s high pressure industrial water system, which provides cool water for the test stand during a hot-fire engine run. Engine 0525 will carry out a total of seven test fires in this first series of tests and will fire for a grand total of 3,500 seconds, followed by another 10 test fires with another development engine, which will be put through its paces for a grand total of 4,500 seconds.






To put the power of the Aerojet Rocketdyne-built RS-25 engines into perspective, consider this:


The fuel turbine on the RS-25’s high-pressure fuel turbopump is so powerful that if it were spinning an electrical generator instead of a pump, it could power 11 locomotives; 1,315 Toyota Prius cars; 1,231,519 iPads; lighting for 430 Major League baseball stadiums; or 9,844 miles of residential street lights—all the street lights in Chicago, Los Angeles, or New York City.
Pressure within the RS-25 is equivalent to the pressure a submarine experiences three miles beneath the ocean.
The four RS-25 engines on the SLS launch vehicle gobble propellant at the rate of 1,500 gallons per second. That’s enough to drain an average family-sized swimming pool in 60 seconds.
The next RS-25 test fire is currently scheduled to take place sometime between June 10-12.






Four previously-flown RS-25 engines will be attached to the first SLS core stage, which will be manufactured at Michoud Assembly Facility in New Orleans, and test fired together atop the B-2 test stand at Stennis as a stage before being approved for the first SLS launch, planned for late 2018.

NASA currently has 16 RS-25 engines in their SLS inventory, 14 of which are veterans of numerous space shuttle missions. Aerojet Rocketdyne just recently finished assembly of the sixteenth engine, engine 2063, one of the space agency’s two “rookie” RS-25’s. It will be one of four RS-25 engines that will be employed to power the SLS Exploration Mission-2 (EM-2), the second SLS launch currently targeted for the year 2021.

“There is nothing in the world that compares to this engine,” said Jim Paulsen, vice president of Program Execution Advanced Space & Launch Programs Aerojet Rocketdyne. “It is great that we are able to adapt this advanced engine for what will be the world’s most powerful rocket to usher in a new space age.”

The SLS program also kicked off its Critical Design Review (CDR) earlier this month at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala., which demonstrates that the SLS design meets all system requirements with acceptable risk and accomplishes that within cost and schedule constraints. The CDR proves that the rocket should continue with full-scale production, assembly, integration, and testing, and that the program is ready to begin the next major review covering design certification. The SLS CDR is expected to be completed by late-July.






Acoustic Testing

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## SvenSvensonov

*New Oxygen Preburner Firings a Major Step Toward Rekindling US Hydrocarbon Rocket Engine Leadership*

New Oxygen Preburner Firings a Major Step Toward Rekindling US Hydrocarbon Rocket Engine Leadership « AmericaSpace






The U.S. Air Force (USAF) and its rocket engine contractor Aerojet Rocketdyne (AJRD) have achieved a major milestone toward a new U.S. state-of-the-art capability to develop powerful next generation hydrocarbon rocket engines. The achievement involves completion of the first in a series of hot-fire tests on a sub-scale oxygen-rich pre-burner, built by ARJD for the USAF’s Hydrocarbon Boost Technology Demonstrator (HBTD) program.

While America once led the world in kerosene and RP-fueled rocket engine technology, the U.S. has lost such hydrocarbon rocket infrastructure and lags behind Russia, specifically with the Energomash RP-1/liquid oxygen RD-180 that powers the proven and reliable United Launch Alliance (ULA) Atlas-V.

There are two major rocket engine cycles. One is called a “gas generator cycle,” where gases used to drive an engine’s turbopump are exhausted by the pump, giving a somewhat ragged looking rocket plume due to this flaming exhaust vented beside more distinct rocket nozzle plumes.





_As this diagram shows, the oxygen-hydrogen powered Space Shuttle RS-25 Main Engine has pre burners, but no powerful U.S. hydrocarbon engine does, a deficiency the USAF program seeks to correct._

The other cycle is the “staged combustion cycle,” where a share of the propellant—be it kerosene or oxygen or both—is first burned in a pre-burner. The resulting hot gas is first used to power the engine’s turbines and pumps, then, instead of being dumped as with the gas generator cycle, that exhausted gas is injected into the main combustion chamber, along with the rest of the propellant to generate powerful thrust. The two stages that make up the staged cycle propulsion are from the pre-burner stage, then combustion chamber stage.

A key advantage of staged combustion is that it gives an abundance of power, which permits very high chamber pressures and the use of high expansion ratio nozzles. These nozzles give better efficiencies at low altitude critical to the flight in the moments after liftoff.

The disadvantages of staged cycle engines include harsh turbine conditions, exotic plumbing to carry the hot gases, and complicated feedback and control. The U.S. mastered all of these for the Space Shuttle RS-25 Main Engine design that used cryogenic oxygen and hydrogen propellants and a preburner for each.

According to Aerojet Rocketdyne an oxidizer preburner combusts hydrogen and oxygen at an extremely fuel-rich mixture ratio, and thus supplies hot gas at variable rates to drive the engines high-pressure oxidizer turbo pump. The operating level of the oxidizer preburner is controlled by regulating the oxidizer flowrate by means of the oxidizer preburner oxidizer valve. Welding the injector into the top of the engine’s Hot Gas Manifold forms the combustion area and places it immediately above the pump turbine.






“Throughout the sub-scale fabrication and facility checkouts, we’ve documented a number of lessons learned that have directly influenced a full-scale pre-burner design. We are looking forward to what more we will learn during the hot-fire test series,” said Joe Burnett, program manager of the Hydrocarbon Boost Technology Demonstrator program at Aerojet Rocketdyne.

AJRD states, “In coming months, multiple injector configurations will be tested to evaluate the performance and stability parameters that are critical for a high-performance, high-reliability liquid oxygen/kerosene rocket engine.”

According to the USAF, typical parameters for an oxygen preburner are:


*Mixture*: A full 100 percent of the engine’s oxygen flow will be be mixed with 4 percent of the RP flow.
*Losses*: There are no secondary gas flow losses en route to the thrust chamber.
_*Performance*_: The resulting high pump and turbine speeds will equate to higher combustion chamber pressures producing higher thrust.
The sub-scale test series will be used to aid the design and development of the full-scale pre-burner and engine development. An oxygen-rich pre-burner is one of the enabling technologies of the Oxygen-Rich Staged Combustion (ORSC) cycle needed to provide high thrust-to-weight and performance regardless of hydrocarbon fuel type, both USAF and AJRD documentation says.

Under program direction of the Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL), Aerojet Rocketdyne is designing, developing, and testing the HBTD engine. Its technologies are directed at achieving the goals of the Rocket Propulsion for the 21st Century (RP21) program, formally known as Integrated High Payoff Rocket Propulsion Technology, or IHPRPT.





_Russian RD-180 being checked out near Moscow, Russia. It and the four-chamber RD-170 are only large hydrocarbon engines given more thrust with preburners._

Designed to generate 250,000 pounds of thrust, the engine technology uses liquid oxygen and liquid kerosene (RP-2) in the first U.S.-developed demonstration of the ORSC cycle. It has been designed as a re-usable engine system, capable of powering up to 100 flights, and features high-performance long-life technologies and modern materials, said the Air Force and its contractor.

Burn-resistant, high-strength alloys, manufactured using novel technologies, will be used throughout the engine. Manufacturing parameters of some of the alloys have been developed under a joint effort with the Air Force, known as the Metals Affordability Initiative or MAI, said AJRD.

These advanced technologies will be matured sufficiently throughout the program to support the next generation of expendable launch system development efforts. It also will help in the rapid turn-around usability for future re-usable launch systems.

The data from this test effort will be used by other Air Force development programs such as the Advanced Liquid Rocket Engine Stability Tools program (ALREST) to further advance the state-of-the-art capabilities in combustion stability modeling.

Previously, Aerojet Rocketdyne designed and supplied the oxygen-rich and fuel-rich pre-burners for the Air Force’s Integrated Powerhead Device (IPD) demonstration engine, the world’s first full-flow staged combustion rocket engine.

“The design lessons learned and test approach from the IPD pre-burners have been leveraged for the HBTD pre-burner architecture,” Aerojet Rocketdyne believes.

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## SvenSvensonov

*Flying (Mostly) Friendly Skies: Northrop Grumman Developing Airplane to Cruise Atmosphere of Venus*

Flying (Mostly) Friendly Skies: Northrop Grumman Developing Airplane to Cruise Atmosphere of Venus « AmericaSpace






With so much attention now on the rovers and spacecraft at Mars, Saturn, Ceres, comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko, and, soon, Pluto, it may seem like Earth’s closest planetary neighbor Venus has been forgotten again. But no, Venus is still very much on the minds of researchers who are busy developing a *concept airplane* which could cruise for years in the hellish planet’s atmosphere.





_Prototype wing built for the Rapid Eye drone concept. A much larger version will be used for VAM_P.

The aircraft design, called the Venus Atmospheric Maneuverable Platform (VAMP), is being developed by Northrop Grumman as an entry in NASA’s next New Frontiers planetary science competition. It will compete for $1 billion in NASA funding, possibly as early as Oct. 1, 2015. The winning mission will need to be ready for launch by 2021, according to Jim Green, NASA’s director of planetary science. VAMP will have to compete against other high-priority New Frontiers destinations such as the lunar poles, Jupiter’s moon Io, Saturn, and trojan asteroids. It is also part of Northrop Grumman’s *2015 Challenge: Lighter Than Air Competition* (for the High School Innovation Challenge):

“Northrop Grumman is currently performing research on an unmanned concept vehicle called the Venus Atmospheric Maneuverable Platform (VAMP). VAMP is a very large, but incredibly light inflatable aircraft that integrates Northrop Grumman’s diverse capabilities in deployables, unmanned aircraft, semi-buoyant vehicles, and space exploration into a unique planetary exploration vehicle. Using a combination of powered flight and passive floating, VAMP will be capable of staying aloft for long periods of time collecting vital data about Venus and its atmosphere. After reaching Venus’ orbit aboard a carrier spacecraft, VAMP will deploy and inflate with a buoyant gas. With a wingspan of approximately 150 feet and 100 pounds of payload carrying capability, VAMP will be able to cruise through the Venus skies at altitudes between 31 and 43 miles (55 and 70 kilometers) for several months to a year.”

This year’s challenge uses the VAMP program as inspiration to design and build an airship with agile maneuverability, speed, endurance, and payload-carrying capability.

VAMP will also need to clear some engineering hurdles before that can happen. Nothing like it has ever flown before, on Earth or elsewhere. The closest thing is a pair of ultra-light wings built in 2008 and 2010 by Northrop’s partner L.Garde Inc. of Tustin, Calif., for a defunct Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency initiative called Rapid Eye, which were meant to be collapsible, rocket-deployed drones which could arrive for reconnaissance duties anywhere on Earth an hour after launch. The project was cancelled in 2010. While the wings for Rapid Eye were only 2 meters long, the wings for VAMP would need to be much larger, at 55 meters across.

Right now, the technology is rated a three on NASA’s Technology Readiness Level (TRL) scale, a “proof of concept” level. Once “flight proven,” those technologies are rated at TRL 9. According to Ron Polidan, Northrop’s Redondo, California-based chief architect of civil systems, “The one nice thing for New Frontiers is they would like you to be at TRL 6 by the preliminary design review, so that gives you a few more years.”

“We have a list of a about a dozen instruments that people have proposed we fly… and we convened a science advisory board to help us define both the instruments and where the aircraft needs to be to take the needed measurements,” Polidan said.






VAMP would fly autonomously, carrying a variety of scientific instruments to study the Venusian environment; there is still a lot about Venus which scientists don’t understand. While the surface of Venus is extremely hot and inhospitable, higher altitudes are more benign, making the aircraft concept feasible. An airplane could fly the (mostly) friendly skies of Venus with little problem.

“Surviving on the surface for any longer than four hours and getting high-resolution data is a challenge,” said Constantine Tsang, a research scientist at the Southwest Research Institute in Boulder, Colo. She is also a member of Northrop’s all-volunteer VAMP science advisory board.

“Not a whole lot different than flying on Earth,” Polidan said. “If you wanna just sprinkle sulfuric acid all over yourself, that would be more like what you have on Venus.”

The acidity at altitude, unlike the unforgiving surface conditions, “we can handle now with a lot of the materials we have,” Tsang added.

A big question is: How much science VAMP could do, being an airborne craft instead of a surface lander or rover? The answer is not everything scientists might want, but still a lot.






“VAMP could not answer all key questions,” said Robert Herrick, a University of Alaska-based surface specialist. “Primarily, the platform would be for atmospheric science.” Herrick chaired the committee in charge of the NASA-chartered Venus Exploration Analysis Group’s (VEXAG) 2014 science roadmap. Or as VEXAG member Kevin McGouldrick, a research scientist with the Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics at the University of Colorado, Boulder, noted, VAMP could answer all of the big atmospheric questions, half the questions about surface-atmosphere interactions, and perhaps some of the Venusian surface questions by “remotely sensing the surface.”

According to Tsang, VAMP could remotely study the surface using nadir-facing infrared sensors.

“That would tell you whether the surface is basaltic, has igneous rocks, things like that,” Tsang said. “But you couldn’t do isotopic ratio measurements of minerals, for example, that rovers could be doing.”






Having a functioning lander in Venus’ brutal surface conditions is difficult enough, never mind a rover. That may be a while in the future yet. The airplane concept would seem to be a good way to study both Venus’ atmosphere and surface, at least for the near future. Venus is thought to have been more Earth-like earlier in its history. VAMP could help answer the question of how it became such an inhospitable place since then.

The design concept might also be well-suited to explore other places in the Solar System such as Saturn’s moon Titan, and similar ideas are also now being proposed. A Titan airplane would provide unprecedented views of Titan’s methane seas, lakes, and rivers, as well as study what clues the moon might offer in terms of astrobiology. Scientists consider Titan to be similar in many ways to the early Earth, when life was just starting to gain a foothold.

If it wins the competition, VAMP could provide a unique opportunity to study our nearest planetary neighbor up close in a way not possible before, and help scientists understand why “Earth’s twin gone bad” changed the way that it did over time.

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## SvenSvensonov

*See How SpaceX Astronauts Could Survive a Failed Launch*







A few weeks ago, SpaceX successfully tested the launch abort system for its new commercial crew capsule, which is designed to carry astronauts to the International Space Station by 2017. The company has just released a first-person view video recorded by cameras mounted on the Dragon capsule, so you can take a virtual ride on the capsule as it accelerates from 0-100 mph in 1.2 sec during the first critical pad abort test.

Enjoy the test footage here:






Watch again the test from the outside:

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## SvenSvensonov

*NASA tests DARPA Challenge robot for space manufacturing*

NASA tests DARPA Challenge robot for space manufacturing | Computerworld





_Team JPL's Robosimian robot._

NASA has big plans for the robot its JPL team used to compete in the DARPA Robotics Challenge finals last weekend.

The space agency hopes its four-legged robot, which came in fifth place in the DARPA finals, can one day build parts for the International Space Station and satellites in space. The weekend challenge involved two dozen teams competing to see who had built the best robot to aid in disaster response.

Now that the JPL, or Jet Propulsion Lab's robot, dubbed Robosimian, has finished competing, its second job will begin.






"We actually already have a program with DARPA. Rather than looking at disaster areas, we're looking at assembly work -- in this case, assembly in space," said Brett Kennedy, principle investigator for JPL's team in the robotics challenge. "The dexterity and mobility capabilities that come along with Robosimian could be adapted for zero-g (gravity) environments."

Robosimian is a four-legged robot that can stand upright on two legs and use its other two limbs as arms with hands capable of grasping a lever, holding a tool or turning a valve.

That design might serve well in orbit, on the moon or even on Mars to build satellites, fuel depots or shelters to house astronauts.






"Assembly in space … it would all be the same robotics problem," Kennedy told_Computerworld_. "The most immediate research we're going to be doing… would be more along the lines of building very large telescopes or fuel depots for satellites. Currently, the largest telescopes we can build are limited by the size of the rocket that launches them."

The bigger the satellite, the bigger the rocket needed to launch it. Larger rockets cost more, making it too expensive to launch large satellites.

The same robotics technology also could be used to build fuel depots in orbit. Then robots could be used to refuel satellites, keeping them going far longer.

It also would be more efficient and less expensive to refuel satellites than to build and launch new ones.

If scientists could figure out a way to launch robots, the parts and possibly 3-D printers into space, then have the robots do the assembly work in orbit or, one day, in deep space, it would be far less expensive to do.






By avoiding the structural stresses and high costs of major launches, future satellites would not only be cheaper, but would be bigger and higher functioning.

Late last year, Tethers Unlimited Inc., a Bothell, Wash.-based aerospace and defense research company, announced that it is working on six- or eight-legged robotic spiders to build satellites or even spacecraft in space.

Researchers hope the project, called SpiderFab, could change the way spacecraft are built and deployed.






NASA's Robosimian is probably a few years away from being tested in space, according to Kennedy.

"If we can point to something we do on Earth that we could do on another planet, that's a very powerful thing to show people," he added. "We can have a different idea of what missions might be."

Robosimian will need to be redesigned for the rigors of space but should still look similar to the way it looked during the DARPA challenge.






DARPA's goal is to advance autonomous technology and robotics to the point where robots could be sent into damaged buildings after a disaster to turn off systems, inspect damage and look for victims.

In the finals last weekend, the teams were tasked with sending their robots into a simulated disaster scene, taking on eight different tasks, including driving a car, climbing stairs, using a drill to cut a hole in a wall and turning a valve.

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## SvenSvensonov

*NASA Aiming for Multiple Missions to Jupiter Moon Europa*

NASA Aiming for Multiple Missions to Jupiter Moon Europa






NASA's highly anticipated mission to Europa in the next decade may be just the beginning of an ambitious campaign to study the ocean-harboring Jupiter moon.

In the early to mid-2020s, NASA plans to launch a mission that will conduct dozens of flybys of Europa, which many astrobiologists regard as the solar system's best bet to host life beyond Earth. Space agency officials hope this effort paves the way for future missions to Europa — including one that lands on the icy moon to search for signs of life.

"You gotta figure, if the first one works, then we're going to go to Europa again," NASA Administrator Charles Bolden said late last month during a media event at the Los Angeles facility of aerospace company Aerojet Rocketdyne.






*Studying Europa from afar*

At 1,900 miles (3,100 kilometers) wide, Europa is only slightly smaller than Earth's moon. But the Jovian satellite is very different from the one that lights up Earth's night sky; Europa is covered by a shell of ice, beneath which sloshes an ocean of liquid water.

Scientists think this ocean is in contact with Europa's rocky mantle, making possible a variety of complex chemical reactions. Indeed, the Europan sea may be capable of supporting life as we know it, which explains why astrobiologists have long dreamed of launching a probe to the icy world.

They will get their wish relatively soon. On May 26, NASA announced the nine science instrumentsthat will fly aboard the agency's Europa spacecraft, which is scheduled to blast off in a decade or so.

That gear includes high-resolution cameras, ice-penetrating radar, a heat detector and other equipment. The probe will reach Jupiter orbit and then use these instruments to study Europa's frigid surface and underground ocean during 45 flybys of the moon over the course of about two and a half years.

The goal of the as-yet-unnamed Europa flyby missionis to better understand the moon's ability to support life, not search for signs of alien organisms. As exciting as a Europa life hunt would be, NASA is just not ready to take that step yet, agency officials said.

"Building a life detector is incredibly difficult," Curt Niebur, Europa program scientist at NASA's Washington headquarters, said during a news conference announcing the Europa mission's science payload. "We're not even sure how to go about building it yet."

*Going back to Europa?*

*



*

Bolden said that people who are frustrated with the scope of the first Europa mission should exercise a little patience, for the agency does not envision a one-and-done effort at the Jupiter moon.

"My friends in the science community — they don't have a lot of faith, either in us at NASA or in Congress, to fund another Europa mission, so they'd like to get everything on this first mission," he said at the Aerojet Rocketdyne facility on May 26.

"That is a sure recipe for disaster, when you try to do all things with one vehicle. We need to do incremental approaches to studying Europa," Bolden added. "We're going to fly a Europa mission in the 2020s sometime, and hopefully, what we find will whet our appetite and there will be follow-on Europa missions."

Indeed, NASA is already thinking, in a preliminary sense, about possible next steps at Europa, said Jim Green, head of the space agency's Planetary Science division.

"At this stage, we are doing some studies — very elementary studies — about landed missions," Green said during the May 26 science-instrument news conference.

NASA tends to study alien worlds in a series of increasingly ambitious steps; a flyby generally comes first, followed by an orbital mission and then a lander or rover. But the initial Europa effort, with its 45 flybys, will basically serve as an orbital mission in terms of science return, Green said, so putting a probe down on the moon's surface is the logical next step.

Indeed, the flyby probe will, in some ways, serve as a scout, returning supersharp images and other data — such as information about the thickness of Europa's ice shell — that will help researchers plan out a potential surface mission in the future.

"We actually don't know what the surface of Europa looks like at the scale of this table, at the scale of a lander — if it's smooth, if it's incredibly rough, if it's full of spikes," Niebur said. "Without knowing what the surface even looks like, it's difficult to design a lander that could survive."

Ideally, Green said, a landed mission to Europa would not be restricted to its surface. Rather, the mission would get beneath the moon, coming into contact with the ocean, or at least with smaller pockets of liquid water trapped under the ice.

"It'd be great to think that the results from this particular mission would lead, in the next decade, to some new and exciting concepts about potentially getting underneath the ice shell," Green said.

"We need to really make those steps — methodical steps in scientific understanding — to determine indeed if this body can be penetrated in a way to be able to get under the ice shell," he added. "But that's, indeed, in the distant future."

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## SvenSvensonov

*Apollo 11*

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## SvenSvensonov

*SpaceX Dragon Pad Abort Test*






SpaceX successfully tested the launch abort system for its new commercial crew capsule, which is designed to carry astronauts to the International Space Station by 2017. Everything went as planned, and you can watch the replay of the event here:

Pad Abort Test on Livestream

The critical flight test at SpaceX’s Space Launch Complex 40 (SLC-40) was basically a trial run for the 8-ton prototype spacecraft’s launch escape system. It consists of eight 3D-printed SuperDraco rocket thrusters built into the bottom half of the capsule, that are used in the case of a launch emergency.






Such systems are crucial for the safety of the astronauts: The launch abort system drags the crew and spacecraft away from the rocket as far and as quickly as possible if something goes wrong during the launch. Think of it as an astronauts ejector seat.






“We’re proud to have a launch escape system in case the Falcon 9 is having a bad day, the Dragon crew can get to safety. It’s a capability we had on Gemini and Apollo, and we have it on the Soyuz, but we did not enjoy that on the shuttle. We’re bringing that back to try and make sure our crews are super safe,” said Garrett Reisman, a former astronaut and current director of crew operations at SpaceX to Spaceflight Now. “It doesn’t last long. The boost phase is only a few seconds, and it’s pulling almost 5 G’s when it’s coming off the pad, so it’s going to get out of here in a hurry. My advice to you, if you go outside to watch it, is don’t blink.”

This graphic explains what happened during the event.






According to SpaceX there was a dummy on board the spacecraft, which experienced nearly 5 G’s at takeoff, when the Crew Dragon spacecraft traveled nearly 100 meters (328 ft) in 2 seconds, and more than half a kilometer (1/3 mi) in just over 5 seconds.

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## SvenSvensonov

*Space Nuclear Propulsion Office NERVA - a nuclear rocket engine*

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## SvenSvensonov

*Here's Proof That the LightSail Satellite Has Unfurled Properly*






Over the weekend, the LightSail satellite unfurled its gigantic solar sail to help propel it through space. Now, the first images to be beamed back from the satellite prove that it’s really up and running.

The satellite, funded by The Planetary Society to test the technical and economic benefits of solar sails, was originally championed by Caral Sagan and, more recently, Bill Nye. When it first found itself in space, a software glitch stymied communication between it and Earth. But as of Saturday, engineers were able to make contact and deploy the solar sail, demonstrating proof-0f-concept of low-budget space travel. Now, we know they were really successful. A full mission in planned for next year.



*SpaceX's New Hangar Is A Mammoth Gateway To The Stars*






To send really big rockets into space, you need equally enormous buildings to construct them in. Enter SpaceX’s new hangar, under construction right next to the pad that used to send Apollo missions to the Moon.

The new hangar — big enough to hold five Falcon 9 rockets, or house the upcoming Falcon Heavy vehicle — is being built next to launch pad 39A at the Kennedy Space Center. That real estate comes with some major pedigree — pad 39A was the starting point for all the Apollo missions, plus the first and last launch location of the Space Shuttle. In fact, the hangar sits on the gravel road that NASA’s giant crawler-transporters used taking Space Shuttles to the launchpad.

Work started on the new hangar just a few months ago in February, but it should be ready for the first scheduled test launch of the Falcon Heavy later this year.

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## SvenSvensonov

*New Solar Storm Forecast Gives Over 24 Hours Warning of Disruption*






Solar storms start their lives as violent explosions from the sun’s surface. They’re made up of energetic charged particles wrapped in a complex magnetic cloud. As they erupt from the sun’s surface, they can shoot out into interplanetary space at speeds of up to 3,000 kilometers per second (that’s 6.7 million miles per hour). Depending on their direction of travel, these energetic storms can journey past Earth and other planets.

If a solar storm makes it to Earth, it can disrupt a variety of modern technologies including GPS and high-frequency communications, and even power grids on the ground, causing radio blackouts and citywide loss of power. It can also wreak havoc within the aviation industry by disrupting communication methods.

To combat related potential economic losses, affected industries have been seeking a solution that can provide them with at least 24 hours of warning. With enough lead time, they can safely change their operational procedures. For example, passenger planes can be rerouted or power grid transformers can begin the slow process of “winding down,” all of which require at least a day’s notice – a huge jump beyond the 60-minute advance warning currently common. By building on earlier research, my colleagues and I have come up with a technique we think can meet that 24-hour warning goal.

*Magnetic fields dictate solar storm severity*

The strength with which a storm can affect our everyday technological infrastructure depends largely on the orientation of its magnetic field. Often the magnetic field within a solar storm has a helical structure, twisted like a corkscrew. But, much like tornadoes on Earth, these solar storms undergo significant changes during their evolution – in this case, as they leave the sun and travel toward the planets.

With a specific field orientation, the floodgates open, allowing the solar particles to enter the otherwise protective bubble of Earth’s atmosphere (the magnetosphere). This interaction between the solar material and Earth’s magnetosphere is predominately driven by a process of joining each other’s magnetic fields together. This interaction is called magnetic reconnection.

This realignment of the field works in a similar way as two bar magnets attracting. If similarpoles of each magnet (north and north) are brought together, the field lines repel each other. Unlike poles attract and combine together. If the poles are unlike, in our case between the solar storm and the Earth’s magnetosphere, they become magnetically connected. This new connectivity of the Earth’s magnetosphere now contains the trapped energetic particles that were previously isolated in the solar storm. If a large penetration of energetic particles makes it into the Earth’s upper atmosphere, the reaction provides the visual extravaganza that’s often called the Northern Lights.

*In search of: advance forecast*

To date, predicting the magnetic field structure within solar storms hitting Earth has remained elusive. Modern forecasting centers around the world, such as at NOAA and UK Met Office, are dependent on direct measurements from inside the solar storm by a spacecraft just in front of Earth (for example, the newly launched Discvr satellite by NOAA). Measurements tell us the direction of a solar storm’s magnetic field and thus whether it’s liable to reconnect with the Earth’s magnetosphere in a dangerous way for our technology. We’ve been stuck with less than 60 minutes of advance warning.

The difficulties in creating a reliable forecast have centered around our inability to reliably estimate the initial structure of the storm above the sun’s surface, and the difficulty in observing how storms evolve as they spend about two days traveling to Earth.

My colleagues and I recently published an article in Space Weather that proposes an improved method for predicting the initial magnetic structure of a solar storm. Getting a better handle on the origin of these solar storms is a substantial step toward predicting how the storm can affect us on Earth, and to what extent.

Our method relies on correctly modifying a previous discovery about how the motions of solar plasma (of mostly hydrogen ions) and magnetic field hidden below the sun’s surface can affect the initial structure of a solar storm. It’s called the solar dynamo process. This is a physical process that is believed to generate the sun’s magnetic field. It’s the engine and energy source driving all observed solar activity – that includes sunspots and long-term solar variability as well as solar storms.

We think combining this modified initial storm model with a new method that incorporates a storm’s early evolutionary stages will lead to significant improvements to our forecasting predictions. Triangulating the entire solar storm by using cameras at three locations from NASA’s STEREO and SOHO spacecraft in interplanetary space, using modern modeling techniques we’ve developed, enables a more robust prediction system. Since these cameras are located at very different vantage points in space, we can use them in conjunction to improve our estimations of the total shape and location of the solar storm – much like the depth of field we achieve by seeing the world through two eyes.

*Predictions matching reality*

So far, we’ve tested this new predictive technique on eight different solar storms, with the first forecasts showing significant agreement with the real data. Further advanced statistical testing with a larger number of storms is now under way within NASA Goddard’s Community Coordinated Modeling Center.

“We’ll test the model against a variety of historical events,” said Antti Pulkkinen, director of Space Weather Research Center at NASA Goddard and a coauthor of the publication. “We’ll also see how well it works on any event we witness over the next year. In the end, we’ll be able to provide concrete information about how reliable a prediction tool it is.”

We’re working toward improving the user interface and implementation into current systems. Once proven reliable and statistically significant for forecasting, our technique may soon become a regular operational tool used by the forecasters at Space Weather Prediction Center at NOAA.

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## SvenSvensonov

*50 Years Ago, Ed White Became The First American To Walk In Space*






On June 3rd, 1965, Edward White became the first American astronaut to walk in space. His mission commander, Jame McDivitt snapped this picture over the Pacific Ocean over the course of the Gemini 4 mission. He later described the order to return to the spacecraft as being “the saddest moment of his life.”

White was selected for the Apollo 1 mission in March 1966, along with astronauts Gus Grissom and Robert Chaffee. In 1967, the crew perished when a ‘plugs-out test’ resulted in a fire, trapping the astronauts.





This is a bit of a tangent, but it does use space assets, so I'm adding it here

*The CIA Is Shutting Down Its Secretive Climate Change Research Project*






The Central Intelligence Agency has announced that it’s closing down MADEA, a decades-old research program that shared classified information with scientists to study how climate change might exacerbate global security risks.

MEDEA, or Measurement of Earth Data for Environmental Analysis, was a CIA initiative that ran from 1992-2001, and then again during the Obama Administration. The program allowed civilian scientists to access classified data, including topography data captured by spy satellites, and ocean temperature and tidal readings collected by Navy submarines. This was a mutually beneficial arrangement; civilian scientists had access to data they wouldn’t normally have access to, while the CIA learned about security risks that might be spawned by climate change.

But as Tim McDonnell of _Mother Jones reports_, the program has come to a close.

In a statement, a CIA spokesperson explained: “Under the Medea program to examine the implications of climate change, CIA participated in various projects. These projects have been completed and CIA will employ these research results and engage external experts as it continues to evaluate the national security implications of climate change.”

Some experts are concerned about the program closure — especially now. As McDonnell writes:

_Marc Levy, a Columbia University political scientist, said he was surprised to learn that Medea had been shut down. “The climate problems are getting worse in a way that our data systems are not equipped to handle,” said Levy, who was not a participant in the CIA program but has worked closely with the US intelligence community on climate issues since the 1990s. “There’s a growing gap between what we can currently get our hands on, and what we need to respond better. So that’s inconsistent with the idea that Medea has run out of useful things to do.”

The program had some notable successes. During the Clinton administration, Levy said, it gave researchers access to classified data on sea ice measurements taken by submarines, an invaluable resource for scientists studying climate change at the poles. And last fall, NASA released a trove of high-resolution satellite elevation maps that can be used to project the impacts of flooding. But Levy said the Defense Department possesses even higher-quality satellite maps that have not been released._

Others argue that MEDEA has outlived its life, and that the over-taxed intelligence agency needs to direct its attention elsewhere.

At the same time, however, climate change has been referred to as a “threat multiplier.” It’s unlikely, therefore, that the CIA is totally giving up on climate change; the agency may find ways to facilitate civilian research. “Otherwise,” as Francesco Femia, co-director of the Center for Climate and Security, told McDonnell, “we will have a blind spot that prevents us from adequately protecting the United States.”

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## SvenSvensonov

*A Direct Image Of Another Solar System’s Kuiper Belt*






By using the Gemini Planet Imager, an international team of astronomers have captured an image of a protoplanetary disc that shares remarkable similarities with our own Kuiper Belt — though as it was at a much earlier time in our Solar System’s history.

The young system, called HD 115600, is located about 360 light-years away. A bright ring of dust can be seen surrounding the host star, which is just slightly bigger than our own. The disc of planetary debris extends out at a distance between 37 and 55 AU, a distance that’s similar to the one between the Kuiper Belt and our Sun. Also, the brightness of the disc implies that it’s comprised of silicates and ice, which are also found in the Kuiper Belt. It’s thus an excellent example of what our Solar System might have looked like billions of years ago.

“It’s almost like looking at the outer solar system when it was a toddler,” noted principal investigator Thayne Currie, an astronomer at the Subaru Observatory in Hawaii, in a statement.






More from the University of Cambridge release:

_The current theory on the formation of the solar system holds that it originated within a giant molecular cloud of hydrogen, in which clumps of denser material formed. One of these clumps, rotating and collapsing under its own gravitation, formed a flattened spinning disc known as the solar nebula. The sun formed at the hot and dense centre of this disc, while the planets grew by accretion in the cooler outer regions. The Kuiper Belt is believed to be made up of the remnants of this process, so there is a possibility that once the new system develops, it may look remarkably similar to our solar system._

The discovery shows that the proto-planetary environment of our Solar System may not be uncommon.

Read the entire study at _The Astrophysical Journal Letters_: “Direct Imaging and Spectroscopy of a Young Extrasolar Kuiper Belt in the Nearest OB Association.”

...

The Gemini Planet Imager is a collaborative project between:

The American Museum of Natural History (AMNH), Dunlap Institute, Gemini Observatory, Herzberg Institute of Astrophysics (HIA), Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Lawrence Livermore National Lab (LLNL), Lowell Observatory, SETI Institute, The Space Telescope Science Institute (STSCI), the University of Montreal,University of California, Berkeley, University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), University of California, Santa Cruz (UCSC), and the University of Georgia.

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## SvenSvensonov

*The Beautiful Art That Helped Inspire Space Travel*

Chesley Bonestell was born long before the flight of the first airplane, and yet he’s well-known as the most influential people in aerospace art. The painter, designer and illustrator died the year of the Challenger disaster—1986—but not before witnessing humankind embrace space in much the way he’d dreamed.

You see, Bonestell not only helped to popularize manned space travel and inspire sci-fi art and illustration, his ideas directly influenced the way US space scientists imagined the future of space exploration from Earth’s orbit to the Moon and other planets.

Wernher von Braun, the father of the US space program once wrote that “In my many years of association with Chesley I have learned to respect, nay fear, this wonderful artist’s obsession with perfection. My file cabinet is filled with sketches of rocket ships I had prepared to help him in his art work—only to have them returned to me with penetrating detailed questions or blistering criticism of some inconsistency or oversight.”

The following set of images shows a fraction of Bonestell’s very best works of art. They prove that he earned the title of “Father of Modern Space Art”.

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## SvenSvensonov

*The Space Shuttle’s Military Launch Complex In California That Never Was*






Everybody identifies Kennedy Space Center and Johnson Space Center as the epicenters of America’s now defunct Space Shuttle Program. What most people don’t know is that the Shuttle almost had a second home at Vandenberg Air Force Base on the south central coast of California.






For the last quarter of the 20th Century, launch pads 39A and 39B, the massive Vehicle Assembly Building, the sprawling Shuttle Landing Facility, the iconic Launch Control Center, the Orbiter Processing Facility and the Crawler Transporters were all icons of Kennedy Space Center.

Set among the lush backdrop of the Merritt Island Wildlife Refuge, on the central east coast of Florida, like the massive Apollo rockets that came before it and took man to the moon, this sprawling combination of infrastructure would be the operational home of America’s Space Shuttle Program — at least, NASA’s side of it.

While the Shuttle program was still getting off the ground (pun very much intended!), a miniaturized version of KSC’s Launch Complex 39 was being quietly built at Vandenberg AFB. Compared to the long distances and flat topography that separated critical and in some cases volatile infrastructure at Kennedy Space Center in Florida, Vandenberg’s compact Space Launch Complex Number 6 looked more like an elaborate Hollywood set of some evil villain’s secret space project, not another Space Shuttle launch facility.

Looking at pictures of the facility today conjures images of _Moonraker_. But it was here, at SLC-6, that the Air Force was planning on launching dozens of Shuttle missions, lofting and servicing everything from spy satellites to exotic “Star Wars” weapons platforms into space.

The Pentagon, along with their NASA partners, had bet heavily on the idea of a reusable ‘space plane’ for their orbital needs. High hopes were placed on the Shuttle’s ability to deliver reliable and constant access into low-earth orbit. Sadly, these hopes would prove hollow as the luster of the idea of a true Space Shuttle collided with the gritty realities of the real Space Shuttle’s actual design and the limits of its 1970’s era technology.

In summary, the U.S. Air Force alternative launch facility would largely support the ‘dark arm’ of the Shuttle program, one based around shadowy military payloads, not white-world science and discovery. Kennedy Space Center could also support these types of mission to a certain degree, although crucial polar orbit flights that were preferred for spy satellites were out of the question if they originated from KSC.

Such a flight path would send the Shuttle over populated areas during launch, traveling over an area ranging from South Carolina to the Great Lakes. The Shuttle’s boosters would drop somewhere near Brunswick, Georgia, and its main tank would end up whipping around the globe over Russia and China, and ending up in the Indian Ocean... Hopefully.

All this, as well as payload limiting issues, precluded Kennedy Space Center as a launch site for polar orbit flights. On the other hand, Vandenberg AFB’s locale had no such limitations, with the Shuttle being able to launch on a southwesterly direction over the Pacific on its way to polar orbit without any reservations about public safety and with little negative impact on the Shuttle’s potential payload for such a flight profile.

Vandenberg’s Space Launch Complex Six (SLC-6) was originally designed and built at a very high coast (some say $3B) as the launch pad for Titan II rockets that would support the 1960s equally as Bond-esque ”Manned Orbiting Laboratory.” Basically, this concept was a spy satellite-like space station that would be manually operated by astronauts for extended periods of time. The program was cancelled in 1969 as unmanned satellites could get the job done at a fraction of the cost and without the risk to human life. Looking back, this was an eerie foreshadowing of things to come for SLC-6’s next tenant.






A half decade or so later, the Shuttle Program was being developed at a rapid pace and the military wanted to take advantage of this new technology. In 1974, the then-defunct Space Launch Complex Six (nicknamed “Slick Six″) was reborn into the military Space Shuttle’s new west-coast home. Construction at the site began in 1979 and was mostly completed by 1985, with the Defense Department going so far as having the aerodynamic test Orbiter, the _Enterprise_, mocked up on the pad complete with its external tank tank and boosters. This was done to validate the pad’s proper fitment for Shuttle Launch System. This event also offered many of the pictures you see in this article.

Once the _Enterprise _arrived, the shuttle stack was assembled right on the pad, just as it would be during a real pre-launch evolution. This was far different than doing the complex and somewhat dangerous task at a dedicated Vehicle Assembly Building, like the one that sits some three and a half miles away from the launch pads at Kennedy Space Center.

During normal operations, SLC-6 would have had its orbiter delivered via roadway from a processing facility built 16 miles to the north, near Vandenberg AFB’s main runway. The Shuttle’s main fuel tank would have been delivered by barge from Louisiana and its boosters would be delivered in sections by train. Upon splash down, recovery of the Shuttle’s spent boosters and fuel tank would managed by Naval Surface Warfare Center Hueneme in Oxnard, California.






The whole setup was eerily compact for those who had brought the Space Shuttle to life at Kennedy during the half decade prior, and because of the secretive payloads that would be launched out of SLC-6, the whole operation had a high-security military twist to it. The safety of distance that was omni-present at Kennedy Launch Complex 39 was all but erased at SLC-6. Even the launch team and control was going to be located right at the launch complex in a fortified control center just 1,200 feet from the pad!






The small size of the facility was especially troubling considering the amount of damage a shuttle stack could do during a catastrophic failure on the launch pad or during assembly, an event that has been commonly described as analogous to a nuclear explosion. How accurate this description is remains unclear, but there is no doubt that the shuttle stack is a dangerous thing when sitting on the pad ‘cocked and locked.” Even when unfueled, the Shuttle’s Solid Rocket Boosters (SRBs) are 150 foot tall tubes packed with highly explosive material that has no ‘off switch’ once they are ignited.

After fitment checks were complete, the first flight of a USAF controlled Shuttle mission from SLC-6, dubbed officially STS-62-A*,* was slated to be made by_Discovery — _which was to be the USAF’s dedicated Orbiter_ — _on October 15th, 1986. The launch would put the Orbiter into polar orbit where its crew would deploy the highly classified Teal Ruby experimental surveillance craft and operate a package of classified sensors that were to be installed in _Discovery’s_expansive payload bay.

Then, on January 28th 1986, _Challenger_blew up shortly after launch, grounding the already delayed and far over-budget Space Shuttle Program indefinitely. This left the Air Force and the Defense Department to re-think their planned reliance on the costly and seemingly unreliable Shuttle for heaving critical and very expensive spy and communications satellites into orbit. The truth is that the Shuttle’s capability to provide anywhere near the number of flights that the program had promised was largely in question long before the loss of_Challenger_. With all this in mind, the decision was made to put SLC-6 on caretaker status and by 1989 the Pentagon’s Shuttle Program was officially shuttered.

In the end, 11 Shuttle flights did carry classified payloads into orbit for the military from 1982 to 1992, albeit none reached polar orbit as all were launched form KSC.






The fact that the Shuttle never used SLC-6 may have been a good thing in retrospect. There were numerous integration issues and unsolved problems with the site during its construction, and it seemed like as soon as one issue was solved another would pop up. Acoustic suppression was one of these problems that first reared its head when _Columbia _was launched from KSC in 1981, marking the Shuttle’s first flight.

During _Columbia’s_ launch, the acoustic waves that bounced back off the pad from the Shuttle’s main engines and its solid rocket boosters were so powerful that they could have caused the stack to rip itself apart, killing all onboard and destroying the Shuttle and its surrounding infrastructure in the process.






An elaborate water acoustic suppression system was added to Kennedy’s 39A and 39B launch pads after that inaugural flight in an attempt to deaden the damaging sound waves. Although SLC-6 was built with a water acoustic suppression system, it was a totally different and a much more modular design than KSC’s. This system would have only been validated during an actual Shuttle launch and there were concerns that there was not enough water onhand or enough storage for the contaminated waste water after the launch.

Nearby cliffs could have also bounced shock waves back at SLC-6 during launch, which could have caused damage to buildings and the shuttle itself, or even worse. Weather was also an issue, with high winds and cold temperatures, along with dense fog, being a regular issue at Vandenberg AFB. As such, the rolling shed-like buildings that covered the launch pad could be rolled into place around the shuttle stack, but these were austere structures and paled in comparison to the well-built and climate controlled interior of the Vehicle Assembly Building at Kennedy Space Center.

By the mid 1980s, the potential hazard of trapped liquid hydrogen during launch also became a huge issue with SLC-6s compact design and its reused exhaust ducts. It was feared that ambient hydrogen could ignite a fire below the Shuttle during launch, causing an explosion that would blow the Shuttle’s tail apart as it was lifting off the pad or even after an emergency engine shutdown.

The Shuttle’s acoustic and hydrogen abatement issues, along with the danger from the raw heat and blast of the Shuttle’s engines and SRBs during launch to the nearby structures, could have all ended up being non-factors. Still, just as mentioned earlier, there is no denying that SLC-6’s launch pad design and the Shuttle’s close proximity to its service structures and critical infrastructure, could have led to massive disaster if the there was a catastrophic accident during assembly or launch. Additionally, the shaking and concussion from launches may have demanded heavy maintenance to the facility after every launch, with nearby delicate computer systems being a major concern.






After the cancellation of the Defense Department’s arm of the Shuttle Program, SLC-6 was used by multiple defense contractors with varying results (see a full launch list here). By the early 2000s, a legend that the complex was badly cursed had grown to massive proportions, as so many billions of dollars had been poured into the installation, under the guise of a whole slew of programs, with very little to show for it in the end.






Finally, in the mid 2000s, Boeing took over the facility and re-utilized much of the Shuttle’s infrastructure for their Delta IV rocket program. The first Delta IV Medium rocket was triumphantly launched from the long beleaguered complex in 2006. Since then, the once doomed SLC-6 has performed extremely well launching large payloads into space, most of which contain America’s most high-tech and secretive space-based spying technologies. This is somewhat of an ironic reprieve for the site as it had unsuccessfully been envisioned as facilitating just that mission for close to half a century.

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## SvenSvensonov

*Here's Why The New Horizons Spacecraft Won't Be Stopping At Pluto*






In less than five weeks, New Horizons will zip past the Pluto-Charon system in a brief but historic encounter. Given the huge interest in Pluto, it’s fair to ask: Why won’t mission planners let the probe hang out a while?

The simple reason is that New Horizons _can’t_ make a stop at the Pluto-Charon system. It’s a constraint that has as much to do with engineering as it does with basic physics.






In order to get New Horizons to Pluto in a reasonable amount of time (in this case 9.5 years), NASA had to get the probe moving very, very fast. And a probe on the move can be difficult to slow down.






After its launch from Cape Canaveral on January 19, 2006, the probe entered into an escape trajectory featuring a speed of 16.26 kilometers per second (58,536 km/h; 36,373 mph), setting a new record for the highest launch speed of a human-made object flung from Earth. New Horizons’s encounter with Jupiter offered a subsequent gravitational assist that increased its speed by an additional 4 km/s (14,000 km/h; 9,000 mph). Once at the Pluto-Charon system, the spacecraft will pass through at a velocity of about 13.8 km/s relative to the dwarf planet (49,680 km/h; 30,800 mph).

That’s obviously a lot of momentum. To get New Horizons into Pluto’s orbit, mission planners would have to reduce its speed by over 90%, which would require more than 1,000 times the amount of fuel the probe can carry. That’s a technologically unfeasible proposition. And so, the probe will have no choice but to zoom past Pluto, feverishly snapping pics and taking measurements before being flung outward towards the Kuiper belt.

Which is a pretty neat consolation prize. The New Horizons mission will be far from over after its July 14 encounter with Pluto.

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## SvenSvensonov

*Skylab*

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## SvenSvensonov

*Orion recovery training




*

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## SvenSvensonov

*Is That A Massive Stripe Streaking Across Pluto's Surface?*







The latest image of Pluto taken by the New Horizons spacecraft may have yielded the dwarf planet’s first prominent surface feature — a dark diagonal stripe that stretches from one side to the other.

New Horizons took these two images 15 seconds apart on June 6 at a distance of 45.8 million kilometers. The images have been embiggened by a factor of four.






Here’s what Bjorn Jonsson of _Unmanned Spaceflight_ has to say about these two photos and the apparent feature (emphasis mine):

_The left version is the stack without any processing so it should show correct relative brightness. The right version has been sharpened using RegiStax. The sharpened version reveals a diagonal dark band on Pluto - *it’s now absolutely certain that this is a real feature*. In contrast, the apparently brighter terrain at the right limb is almost certainly a processing artifact. Charon may be starting to show large scale markings, i.e. possibly very slightly darker terrain in its upper left ‘quadrant’. But this could easily be an image processing artifact. [emphasis added] [...]_

_It wouldn’t surprise me if small dark spots started appearing within the bright terrain at much higher resolution and/or small bright spots started appearing within the dark terrain._

Over at _The Planetary Society_, Emily Lakdawalla quips: “Yay! Dark lines criscrossing a disk! It’s the discovery of canali on Pluto! We have reached Schiaparelli-quality mapping of Pluto’s surface!” She’s kidding of course...or is she?

...

Nothing to see here:

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## SvenSvensonov

*Delta IV Heavy*

*



*

*



*

The Delta IV Heavy is one of various versions of the workhorse launcher family of Delta IV Evolved Expendable Launch Vehicles. In the family of Delta IV rockets, the DIV Heavy is the most powerful launcher and, since the retirement of the Space Shuttle has been the most powerful launcher available in the United States, a role it will maintain until SpaceX introduces its Falcon Heavy booster. 

The Delta family has a storied history with the original Delta making its first launch in 1960. Over the years, several generations of Delta launch vehicles have been flown - currently, the Delta II and IV rocket families remain in operation. Delta IV is built by Boeing, operated by United Launch Alliance for commercial launches, military missions as well as NASA Flights. 

Delta IV rockets are operated from Space Launch Complex 37 at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, Florida, and Space Launch Complex 6 at Vandenberg Air Force Base, California. 

As one of the most powerful launch vehicles in the world, Delta IV heavy has a launch mass of 733 metric tons and can deliver payloads of 23 metric tons into orbit. The vehicle is comprised of a Common Booster Core as a central core stage with two additional CBCs attached to the core to deliver extra thrust in the early portion of the flight. Not employing propellant cross-feed, the two boosters fire at full throttle during their burn while the core saves propellants by throttling back shortly after launch to continue burning for another 90 seconds after strap-on separation.

Introduced in 2013, all Delta IV vehicles will transition to a more powerful version of the RS-68 cryogenic first stage engine known as RS-68A as soon as all existing RS-68 engines have been flown.

The Delta IV Heavy features the larger Delta Upper Stage with a 5-meter diameter and larger propellant tanks. The vehicle is outfitted with 5-meter payload fairings to accommodate large payloads. Delta IV is capable of delivering payloads to a variety of orbits such as Low Earth Orbit, Geostationary Transfer Orbit and Geostationary Orbit as well as interplanetary trajectories. 

The entire Delta family makes use of flight proven components and proven design concepts to improve Launcher Success Rate. Delta IV Heavy has made seven launches to date (Nov. 2014). The maiden voyage of Delta IV Heavy in December 2004 was cataloged as a partial failure as all three CBCs suffered a premature cutoff during the launch sequence. The remaining launches were successful. 

Other Delta IV Configurations: Delta Medium, M+ (4,2), M+(5,4), M+(5,2)

*Specifications*

Type Delta IV Heavy
Height 70.7m
Diameter 5m
Span 15.00m
Launch Mass 733,400kg
Stage 1 Common Booster Core
Boosters 2 Commom Booster Cores
Stage 2 5-Meter DCSS
Mass to LEO 22,950kg
Mass to GTO 13,130kg
Mass to GEO 6,275kg
Escape Capability 9,306kg
*
Launch Vehicle Description
*
The Delta IV Heavy Version consists of a Common Core Booster with two strap-on CBCs functioning as boosters attached to it, a 5-meter second stage and a 5-meter Payload Fairing. Each CBC uses a single RS-68 engine consuming cryogenic propellants, Liquid Oxygen and Liquid Hydrogen. Using the larger version of the Delta Cryogenic Second Stage, Delta IV Heavy sports a single RL-10B engine on its upper stage.

The Launcher stands 70.7 meters tall, has a main diameter of 5 meters and a liftoff mass of 733,400 Kilograms. With its three CBCs, the rocket has a span at its base of over 15 meters. 

Delta IV Heavy rockets using the conventional RS-68 engines can lift payloads of up to 22,950 Kilograms to Low Earth Orbit. Geostationary Transfer Capability is 13,130 Kilograms, the vehicle can lift 6,275 directly to Geostationary Orbit and send payloads of up to 9,306 Kilograms to interplanetary trajectories. A typical Delta IV Mission has a duration of 2.3 hours, but can be extended to 7 hours for specific mission profiles.
*
Common Booster Core
*
The Delta IV Heavy uses a Common Booster Core as its first stage. This booster, like its name says, is common across all variants of the Delta IV launcher family. The Common Booster Core consists of a Main Engine Compartment, facilitating the RS-68 powerplant, a Liquid Hydrogen Tank, an Intertank Section, a Liquid Oxygen Tank and an interstage section that builds the interface with the Delta Cryogenic Upper Stage. 

Both propellant tanks use an aluminum-isogrid structure with five isogrid structures welded together to make up the cylindrical section of the tanks. At both ends, the cylindrical tank section is welded to a bulkhead structure. Delta IV's CBC employs separate spherical bulkheads on the LH2 and LOX tanks. The tanks employ internal stringers for additional stability and the LOX tanks use anti-slosh baffles. The load-carrying external shell of the Common Booster Core is covered in rigid spray-on polyurethane foam for insulation and to prevent ice-build up around the cold cryogenic tanks. An external wiring tunnel runs down the length of the entire booster.

Sitting atop the LH2 tank, the 9.4-meter long Liquid Oxygen tank of the CBC holds 172,750 Kilograms (151 cubic meters) of the -183°C oxidizer at liftoff. LOX is fed to the RS-68 engine through a feedline that runs down the side of the CBC, external of the fuel tank. 

The Liquid Hydrogen Tank is about 26.3 meters in length and capable of holding 29,500 Kilograms (416 cubic meters) of the -253°C cold substance directly fed to the engine via a short fuel supply line. Both, LOX and LH2 tanks are loaded with commodities via interfaces at the base of the launch vehicle. 

The Common Booster Core is powered by a single RS-68 engine that, when flying in its RS-68A variant, is the most powerful Hydrogen-fueled engine in the world. The engine was developed by Rocketdyne Propulsion and Power, California and is now marketed by Aerojet Rocketdyne. RS-68 shares commonality with the Space Shuttle's RS-25 engines, but is overall of a simpler design to reduce manufacturing complexity and cost from $50 million for a single SSME to $14 million for RS-68. The engine requires about 80% fewer parts than the Shuttle's engine translating to a cut in labor of 92%. 

Differences between RS-68 and RS-25 become evident in their turbopump design. While SSME required 170 individual parts for its LOX pump and 200 components were part of the LH2 pump, RS-68 only needs 40 LH2 pump parts and 25 parts for the LOX pump.

RS-68 provides 2,950 Kilonewtons of thrust at liftoff and has a vacuum thrust of 3,370 Kilonewtons. It has a dry weight of 6,747 Kilograms and provides a specific impulse of 409 seconds. The engine can be throttled between 55% and 100% of rated thrust using a simple single-step throttle profile. It operates at a propellant mixture ratio of 5.97 and has an expansion ratio of 21.5, operating at a chamber pressure of 196 bar.

The RS-68 is a cryogenic booster engine using a basic gas generator cycle. The engine consists of a gas generator driving the turbines of two independent turbopumps feeding a combustion chamber that is using a channel-wall design. Inner and outer skins brazed to middle separators form cooling channels as part of a simple engine cooling design using the flow of hydrogen to cool the chamber while the engine nozzle uses ablative cooling through an ablative layer that slowly burns away during operation of the engine.

Employing an open-cycle design, the RS-68 consists of a central Gas Generator that uses part of the fuel and oxidizer flow from the two turbopumps of the engine that are spun-up by pressurized helium during engine start. To start up, RS-68 first opens its Gas Generator and Main Fuel Valves and GG LOX valve at T-5.5 seconds, applying helium for turbopump sin-up and actuating engine igniters. This ensures a fuel-rich engine start needed to maintain safe engine temperatures during the ignition sequence which can never be oxidizer-rich. The LOX side opens up its Main Valve at T-2.0 seconds and spins up its turbopump, delivering high-pressure oxidizer to the Gas Generator to sustain the operation of the turbines of the LOX and LH2 turbopumps to deliver propellants to the engine. 

The high-pressure gas from the Gas Generator is divided into two outflow paths, one over to the LOX pump's turbine, the other over to the fuel-turbopump. After driving the turbines, the gas is dumped overboard. On the oxidizer side, the gas generator gas flows through a heat exchanger that uses a portion of the LOX flow through the Main Oxidizer Valve to generate gaseous oxygen that is used for tank pressurization - delivered to the LOX tank through a pressurization line that includes pressure regulators to control the tank pressure.

The turbine gas from the LH2 side is directed through a movable nozzle that is actuated for roll control of the Common Booster Core when flying without its strap-on CBCs later in the mission. After passing through the Main Fuel Valve, the Liquid Hydrogen is run through the regenerative cooling cycle of the combustion chamber. Transitioned to a gaseous state, part of the Hydrogen flow is used to pressurize the LH2 tank during flight. Pre-launch pressurization of the propellant tanks is accomplished using Helium gas. 

Launch Vehicle Control during first stage flight is provided by the main engine. Pitch and Yaw are controlled by gimbaling the engine while Roll Control is accomplished by vectoring the RS-68 turbine exhaust gases.







*First Stage*

Type Common Booster Core
Inert Mass 26,400kg
Launch Mass 228,400kg
Diameter 5.1m
Length 40.8m
Propellant Liquid Hydrogen
Oxidizer Liquid Oxygen
Fuel&Oxidizer Mass 202,000kg
Tank Structure Al-Isogrid, Separate Bulkheads
LOX Tank Length 9.4m
LH2 Tank Length 26.3m
LOX Mass / Volume 172,500kg / 151m³
LH2 Mass / Volume 29,500kg / 416m³
Tank Pressurization Gasified Propellants
Guidance From 2nd stage
Propulsion 1 RS-68
Cycle Open Cycle, Gas Generator
Thrust (SL) 2,950kN
Thrust (Vacuum) 3,370kN
Chamber Pressure 196bar (at 100% Throttle)
Engine Length 5.20m
Engine Diameter 2.43m
Engine Dry Weight 6,747kg
ISP (Sea Level) 359s
ISP (Vacuum) 409s
Mixture Ratio 5.97
Nozzle Ratio 21.5
Throttle Capability 55%-102%
Pitch, Yaw Control Engine Thrust Vector Control
Roll Control Vectoring of GG Exhaust Nozzle
Restart Capability No
Burn Time 328sec
Stage Separation Pyro bolts, Springs

*Strap-On Common Booster Cores*

Delta IV Heavy uses two Common Booster Cores that are attached to the CBC in the center in a strap-on fashion to serve as liquid-fueled boosters, delivering additional thrust for the first minutes of flight. The CBCs functioning as boosters are attached to the central core using thrust struts that interface with the interstage section of the launcher to transfer loads from the boosters to the rest of the vehicle. Additional attachment points reside in the base of the vehicle right above the engine heat shields. All interface points include pyrotechnic separation devices that are used to jettison the boosters after burnout.

Delta IV Heavy does not have a propellant crossfeed capability. For launch, all three CBCs are fired at full thrust before the RS-68 engine of the central core throttles down to 55% of rated performance to save propellants. Depending on mission requirements, the throttle-down of the core occurs approximately 50 seconds into the flight.

The two Common Booster Cores functioning as boosters continue flight at full thrust, consuming all their propellants in 242 seconds with separation coming two seconds after RS-68 cutoff. 

By running on 55% for the initial portion of the flight, the Common Booster Core has propellants left to continue to power the vehicle after Booster Jettison. The RS-68 Engine throttles back up to 100% and burns for 88 seconds following booster separation. At T+328 Seconds, the Common Booster Core shuts down and separates from the vehicle shortly thereafter using pyrotechnic bolts and springs that push the spent CBC away.






*Strap-On Booster*

Type Common Booster Core
Inert Mass 26,400kg
Launch Mass 228,400kg
Diameter 5.1m
Length 40.8m
Propellant Liquid Hydrogen
Oxidizer Liquid Oxygen
Fuel&Oxidizer Mass 202,000kg
Tank Structure Al-Isogrid, Separate Bulkheads
LOX Tank Length 9.4m
LH2 Tank Length 26.3m
LOX Mass / Volume 172,500kg / 151m³
LH2 Mass / Volume 29,500kg / 416m³
Tank Pressurization Gasified Propellants
Guidance From 2nd stage
Propulsion 1 RS-68
Cycle Open Cycle, Gas Generator
Thrust (SL) 2,950kN
Thrust (Vacuum) 3,370kN
Chamber Pressure 196bar (at 100% Throttle)
Engine Length 5.20m
Engine Diameter 2.43m
Engine Dry Weight 6,747kg
ISP (Sea Level) 359s
ISP (Vacuum) 409s
Mixture Ratio 5.97
Nozzle Ratio 21.5
Throttle Capability 55%-102%
Pitch, Yaw Control Engine Thrust Vector Control
Roll Control Vectoring of GG Exhaust Nozzle
Restart Capability No
Burn Time 242sec
Stage Separation Pyro bolts cutting Thrust Struts

*Second Stage*

The Delta IV Heavy launch vehicle uses the larger of the Delta upper stages that has an increased diameter of five meters. The Delta Cryogenic Second Stage with a five-meter diameter has a stretched version of the original LOX tank of the four-meter stage, still remaining at the original diameter of 3.2 meters while the LH2 tank has its diameter widened to five meters, allowing the stage to carry a total of 27,220 Kilograms of cryogenic propellants for consumption by the RL-10B engine of the Upper Stage. 

The LH2 tank is located above the LOX tank with a truss structure connecting the two tanks that use individual bulkheads. The space in between the two tanks is used to facilitate helium pressurization bottles, attitude control system tanks and the launch vehicle’s avionics known as Redundant Inertial Flight Control Assembly (RIFCA), located on a shelf below the LOX tank.

Overall, the LOX tank of the DCSS measures 4.0 meters in length while the LH2 tank is 4.8 meters long. The entire engine compartment and LOX tank as well as the intertank section and lower segment of the LH2 tank are protected in the interstage section that remains with the Common Booster Core after separation. The upper section of the LH2 tank and the payload adapter are protected by the payload fairing so that only the 5-meter segment of the LH2 tank is actually visible on the exterior of the launcher when in its liftoff configuration. 

The Delta Cryogenic Second Stage is powered by a single RL-10B-2 engine that is part of the RL-10 family that can look back on a history of several decades having completed its first test in 1959 after being developed by Pratt & Whitney. Over the years, the engine underwent a number of modifications, going through several generations used on different launch vehicles. The RL-10A version of the engine has been powering the trusted Centaur upper stage for decades, currently used in its RL-10A-4-2 evolutionary stage while previous RL-10A version were employed by the Saturn I and DC-X vehicles. 

The RL-10B-2 version of the engine with enhanced performance through an extended nozzle is only used by the Delta IV launcher. Another version of the engine, RL-10C is currently being tested for use on Centaur and a derivative of the engine known as Common Extensible Cryogenic Engine (CECE) has completed demonstration tests that included a record-setting deep throttling capability.

The RL-10B engine delivers 110 Kilonewtons of thrust at a specific impulse of 464 seconds employing an expander cycle. The engine features an extendable nozzle that utilizes an electromechanical system that moves the radiatively cooled nozzle extension into position on the regeneratively cooled nozzle segment immediately after stage separation. Overall, the engine is 4.14 meters long with its extension in place, creating a diameter of 2.21 meters and a high expansion ratio of 250, optimized for operation in vacuum conditions. The engine has a dry mass of 277 Kilograms and operates at a mixture ratio of 5.88. 

RL-10 is a closed Expander Cycle Engine which does not rely on a gas generator to deliver the hot gas that drives the turbopump turbines of the engine. Instead, the turbines are driven by expanded hydrogen gas that is generated by running the flow of Liquid Hydrogen from the LH2 turbopump through the regenerative cooling system of the upper nozzle segment and the combustion chamber. The gasified Hydrogen then passes to the main turbine of the engine, spinning the LH2 turbopump as well as the LOX turbopump through a gearbox. 

Rl-10 includes seven engine valves starting on the fuel side with the Fuel Pump Inlet Shutoff Valve and on the oxidizer side with the Oxidizer Pump Inlet Shutoff Valve. Fuel flow into the combustion chamber can be stopped by the Fuel Shutoff Valve that is located just upstream of the combustion chamber injector. This valve is used to rapidly cut the fuel feed to the engine for shutdown and its closure also allows the chilldown of the LH2 turbopump through overboard vents without any fuel entering the chamber. Engine LH2 pump chilldown is accomplished by opening Fuel-Cool-Down Valves 1 & 2 that vent coolant overboard during chilldown. These two valves also provide fuel pump bleed during pre-start and pressure relief during shutdown. 

Thrust of the engine is controlled by a Thrust Control Valve located in a bridge between the fuel cooling outlet on the engine and the combustion chamber fuel inlet to bypass the turbine and thus regulate turbine power and overall engine thrust. Normally in a closed position, the system is mainly used to control thrust overshoot during engine start and to maintain a constant chamber pressure during steady state operation.

In the oxidizer line downstream of the pump is a Oxidizer Flow Control Valve that is used to regulate the LOX flow to the chamber for the regulation of the mixture ratio that is commanded by the Propellant Utilization Unit of the engine which controls the MR for an optimized propellant consumption. A second OCV is employed to regulate the bleed flow during engine start.

Engine start on the RL-10 is accomplished by using the pressure differential between the fuel feed and the near-vacuum in the chamber that forces fuel through the system after the Fuel Shutoff Valve is opened and FCV-1 is closed. FCV-2 remains in an open position to prevent stalling the LH2 pump of the engine in start-up. In the initial stages of start-up, heat from the ambient metal is sufficient to generate Hydrogen gas to start driving the turbopumps and initiate the combustion process in the chamber, heating up the chamber and nozzle to operational levels. For start, the Oxidizer Control Valve is partially closed to ensure a fuel-rich ignition, limiting chamber pressure in order to maintain a pressure differential in the fuel system until the turbopumps can accelerate. 

When the pumps are at flight speed, pneumatic pressure is used to close the Fuel Cooldown Valve and open the Oxidizer Control Valve to achieve the planned LOX pump discharge properties. The opening of the OCV leads to a sharp increase in chamber pressure that can lead to thrust overshoot which is prevented by a temporary opening of the Thrust Control Valve until stable steady-state conditions are reached for engine operation.

In steady state operation, RL-10 consumes 20.6 Kilograms of LOX per second while LH2 flow is approximately 3.5 Kilograms per second.

Engine shutdown is a simple process accomplished by closing the Fuel Shutoff and Fuel Inlet Valve and at the same time opening the Fuel Control Valves to bleed fuel from the system. Oxidizer flow is cut by closing the Oxidizer Control Valve and LOX Inlet Valve. Friction losses lead to the spin-down of the turbines and pumps.

The DCSS uses high-pressure Helium to keep its LOX tank at flight pressure while the LH2 tank uses gaseous hydrogen from the engine bleed that is delivered via regulators that ensure proper tank pressurization. 

Propellant management is accomplished by directing hydrogen boil-off from the tank to aft-facing thrusters that deliver sufficient thrust for propellant settling, keeping up a uniform two-phase system between liquids and gases within the propellant tanks. Propellant settling can also be provided by the attitude control system of the second stage.

The attitude control system of the Delta Cryogenic Second Stage consists of 12 hydrazine monopropellant thrusters installed in four modules on the upper stage to deliver control around all three axes as well as additional propellant settling capability. Each module features three thrusters, two lateral and one axial. Fed from several hydrazine bottles, the thrusters use the catalytic decomposition of hydrazine over a metallic catalyst bed.

The MR-106D thrusters are manufactured by Aerojet Rocketdyne with each lateral thruster delivering 21 to 41 Newtons of thrust (smaller 17-27N versions of the MR-106D are not used by DCSS). MR-106D can operate at propellant pressures of 13.8 to 21 bar with chamber pressures varying from 8.6 to 17.2 bar. Flow rate varies between 9.5-17.7g/sec. The thrusters use single seat valves operating at 28 Volts. The engines create a specific impulse of 227 to 234 seconds and are capable of operating in pulse mode with a minimum impulse bit of 0.63Ns while operation in steady state mode up to 1,000 seconds is also possible. Each thruster weighs about 0.6kg with an overall mass per Rocket Engine Module of 2.5 Kilograms. 

DCSS control in yaw and pitch is provided by an electromechanical Thrust Vector Control System that gimbals the RL-10 main engine while roll control relies on the attitude control system. The ACS is responsible for three-axis control during coast phases including thermal control maneuvers and re-orientations for spacecraft separation.

The DCSS also facilitates RIFCA, the Redundant Inertial Flight Control Assembly which provides primary guidance and control of all stages of the Delta IV flight. Manufactured by L-3 Space & Navigation, the RIFCA made its debut in 1994. The unit is triple redundant and measures 43 by 36 by 24 centimeters in size with a mass of 33 Kilograms and a power demand of 75 Watts. The system is connected to all launch vehicle actuators and sensors using a MIL-STD-1553 data bus. RIFCA uses six ring laser gyros and six accelerometers to accurately determine the vehicle’s attitude and body rates operating at rates of up to 30 degrees per second and achieving an accuracy of under 0.08 degrees. 

Powered by batteries, the DCSS and operate for 2.3 hours in its standard configuration, although batteries can be added to support missions up to 7 hours that also require additional hydrazine tanks for attitude control system propellant. After payload separation, the second stage can stay active to make a Contamination and Collision Avoidance Maneuver or a Deorbit Burn before passivation.






*Second Stage*

Type Delta Cryogenic Upper Stage
Diameter 5m
Length 13.7m
Inert Mass 3,490kg
Propellant Liquid Hydrogen
Oxidizer Liquid Oxygen
Fuel&Oxidizer Mass 27,220kg
Tank Structure Al-Isogrid, Separate Bulkheads
LOX Tank Length 4.0m
LH2 Tank Length 4.8m
Tank Pressurization Gasified Propellants
Guidance Inertial from RIFCA
Propulsion 1 RL-10B-2
Thrust 110kN
Engine Length 4.14m
Engine Diameter 2.21m
Engine Dry Weight 277kg
Specific Impulse 464sec
Nozzle Ratio 250:1
Nozzle Extension Yes
Ox. To Fuel Ratio 5.88:1
LOX Flowrate 20.6kg/sec
LH2 Flowrate 3.5kg/sec
Burn Time Variable (1,125sec)
Engine Start Spark Igniter, Restartable
Attitude Control RL-10 Gimbaling (Pitch, Yaw)
ACS Redundant Attitude Control System
ACS Propellant Hydrazine
ACS Thrusters 12 x MR-106D (4 Pods)
MR-106D Thrust 21 - 41 N
Specific Impulse 227 - 234 s
Chamber Pressure 8.6 - 17.2 bar
Propellant Pressure 13.8 - 21.0 bar
Flowrate 9.5 - 17.7 g/sec
Min. Impulse Bit 0.63Ns
Max Burntime 1,000sec
Thruster Mass 0.6kg

*Payload Adapters/Fittings*

Payload Adapters interface with the vehicle and the payload and are the only attachment point of the payload on the Launcher. They house equipment that is needed for Spacecraft Separation and ensure that the satellite or spacecraft is secured during powered flight. 

A variety of payload adapters is available to satellite customers in order to fit a large number of spacecraft dimensions and interfaces. 7 different adapter models are currently available. Most of those have a clamp band payload separation mechanism. It is also possible to design new adapters to accommodate a variety of spacecraft.

*Payload Fairing*

The Payload Fairing is positioned on top of the stacked vehicle and its integrated payloads. It protects satellites or other spacecraft against aerodynamic, thermal and acoustic environments that the vehicle experiences during atmospheric flight. When the launcher has left the atmosphere, the fairing is jettisoned by pyrotechnical initiated systems. Separating the fairing as early as possible increases ascent performance. Payload Fairing design limits Payload Volume.

For the Delta IV Heavy Version, only 5-meter diameter fairings can be used, because smaller fairings do not fit on top of the large second stage. Two different versions with lengths of 19.1 and 19.8 meters are available to accommodate different payload dimensions. The smaller version of the DIV heavy Fairing uses the conventional Graphite-Epoxy Sandwich Structure whilst the large 19.8-meter is an Aluminum Isogrid Structure. 

The fairing is separated by pyro bolts and spring jettison actuators that push the two halves away from each other. Payload Fairings are outfitted with acoustic panels, access doors and RF windows. Also, the Payload Fairing is connected to a purge air system to ensure a controlled environment. Off-pad encapsulation is provided to improve safety standards and limit on-pad time.











*Payload Fairing*

Type Long Delta IV Fairing
Diameter 5m
Length 19.1m
Separation Pyrotechnic Activation (Actuators)
Construction Sandwich Construction
Graphite-Epoxy/Foam Core

Type Long Delta IV Fairing
Diameter 5m
Length 19.1m
Separation Pyrotechnic Activation (Actuators)

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## SvenSvensonov

*Pegasus XL Launch Vehicle*

*



*

The Pegasus XL Launch Vehicle is a light-weight lift vehicle operated by Orbital Sciences Corporation. It can deliver Payloads of up to 443 Kilograms into Low Earth Orbit. The Rocket is launched from the L-1011Stargazer Aircraft which makes Pegasus a high flexibility launch system as it is not depending on a fixed Launch Location and associated ground weather. Also, launching from an Aircraft enables the vehicle to reach a variety of Orbits with different inclinations including nearly equatorial orbits. To date, Pegasus has made 40 Launches, 35 of which were successes and 2 partial failures. Pegasus made its first flight in 1990 delivering two satellites to orbit. The vehicle is a three-stage, solid propellant rocket with the option of a fourth, liquid fueled stage. The Launch System is a low cost option for smaller payloads not requiring precision injections.

*



*

*Vehicle&Flight Description*

*First Stage
*
At T-0 the Launch Vehicle is released by the L-1011 Aircraft and free-falls for five seconds before igniting its Orion 50S Solid Rocket Motor - the fist Stage of the Vehicle. It burns for about 69 seconds before shutting down at an altitude of about 61 Kilometers. During first stage flight, the Rocket is controlled by its fin actuators that provide pitch control. The Orion 50S does not have Thrust Vector Control Capabilities. A Delta Wing provides some lift and supports a pitch maneuver that is initiated shortly after ignition. After first stage cutoff, the vehicle holds on to the stage for several more seconds before stage separation occurs. The Wings and Fins are jettisoned with the first stage.
*
Second Stage
*
The second stage is similar to the first stage, however it uses thrust vector control and closed loop guidance to control the vehicle. Orion 50 also uses sold propellant and burn for nearly 70 seconds. Halfway through second stage flight, the payload fairing separates from the vehicle and fall into the ocean. Attitude control is provided by Thrust Vector Control for Pitch and Yaw and Nitrogen Thrusters for Roll Control.
*
Third Stage
*
After second stage cutoff and subsequent stage separation, the Orion 38 Solid Rocket Motor takes over powered flight and places the Payload in its desired orbit or injects the upper composite consisting of HAPS and Payload into a transfer orbit. Third Stage Navigation and Control is similar to that of the second stage. A typical Pegasus Ascent takes around 9.5 Minutes from Launch Vehicle Drop to Spacecraft Separation.
*
Fourth Stage
*
An optional fourth stage can be added to the Launch Vehicle stack to increase ascent performance or provide high-precision injections into a variety of orbits. The HAPS uses liquid propellants and provides a multi-ignition capability to enable payloads to be injected accurately. The fourth stage further limits payload volume as it has to fit inside the Payload Fairing with all associated interfaces and the actual Satellite.
*
Payload Fairing
*
The Payload Fairing is positioned on top of the stacked vehicle and its integrated payloads. It protects satellites or other spacecraft against aerodynamic, thermal and acoustic environments that the vehicle experiences during atmospheric flight. When the launcher has left the atmosphere, the fairing is jettisoned by pyrotechnically initiated systems. Separating the fairing as early as possible increases ascent performance. Payload Fairing design limits Payload Volume.
*
Payload Adapters
*
Payload Adapters interface with the vehicle and the payload and are the only attachment point of the payload on the Launcher. They house equipment that is needed for Spacecraft Separation and ensure that the satellite or spacecraft is secured during powered flight. Off-the-shelf and custom adapters are available to customers to accommodate a variety of payloads.






*Pegasus Specifications*

Type Pegasus XL
Height 16.9m
Diameter 1.27m
Launch Mass 23,130kg
Stages 3
Stage 1 Orion 50S XL
Stage 2 Orion 50 XL
Stage 3 Orion 38
Stage 4 - Optional HAPS
Mass to LEO 443kg
Launch Cost ~$11 Million (1994)

*First Stage*

Type Orion 50S XL
Inert Mass 1,369kg
Diameter 1.28m
Length 10.27m
Propellant Solid
Propellant Mass 15,014kg
Guidance Open Loop
Propulsion Orion 50S XL
Thrust (Vacuum) 726kN
Impulse 295s
Average Pressure 1,090psia
Burn Time 68.6sec
Attitude Control Fin Actuators

*Second Stage*

Type Orion 50 XL
Diameter 1,28m
Length 3.11m
Inert Mass 416kg
Propellant Solid
Propellant Mass 3,925kg
Guidance Closed Loop PEG
Propulsion Orion 50 XL
Thrust 196kN
Impulse 289s
Burn Time 69.4sec
Average Pressure 1,019psia
Attitude control Thrust Vector Control
Reaction Control System (GN2)

*Third Stage*

Type Orion 38 
Diameter 1.34m 
Length 0.97m 
Inert Mass 126kg 
Propellant Solid 
Propellant Mass 770kg 
Guidance Closed Loop PEG 
Propulsion Orion 38 
Thrust 36kN 
Impulse 287s 
Burn Time 68.5sec 
Average Pressure 656psia 
Attitude control Thrust Vector Control
Reaction Control System (GN2) 

*Fourth Stage*

Optional: Hydrazine Auxiliary Propulsion System

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## Hamartia Antidote

SpaceX 2014 year in review

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## SvenSvensonov

*’Repackage Our Margin’*






More than two decades have passed since one of the most spectacular EVA missions in U.S. history: the long-awaited first servicing of the Hubble Space Telescope (HST). Launched in April 1990, the $1.5 billion observatory was the jewel in NASA’s scientific crown, but shortly afterwards fell foul to the effects of a spherical aberration in its primary optics, which severely impaired the quality of its images. With funding for Space Station Freedom—later to evolve into the International Space Station (ISS)—hanging on the edge of a knife, a successful repair and rejuvenation of Hubble was critical not only to the telescope’s future, but to the future of NASA itself. In December 1993, the seven-member crew of Endeavour launched on STS-61, an 11-day flight to perform a record-setting series of five EVAs to bring Hubble back from the brink of disaster and restore the space agency’s tattered reputation. In doing so, they accomplished one of the most spectacular human space missions of the decade and demonstrated the shuttle’s capabilities for the future.

Central to the repair effort was the $50 million Corrective Optics Space Telescope Axial Replacement (COSTAR), fabricated by Ball Aerospace, which would correct the spherical aberration by positioning 10 small, coin-sized mirrors to restore the potential of Hubble’s affected scientific instruments. However, in order to make room for COSTAR, another instrument—the phone-booth-sized High Speed Photometer (HSP), rendered useless by “jittering” in the telescope’s solar arrays—would need to be removed and returned to Earth. “Once in place,” explained NASA’s STS-61 Press Kit, “COSTAR will deploy a set of mechanical arms, no longer than a human hand, that will place corrective mirrors in front of the openings that admit light” into the affected instruments. In doing so, it would refocus light from Hubble’s primary mirror _before_ it reached those instruments and was expected to bring their overall optical performance “very close” to original specifications. Follow-on instruments for the telescope would be specifically designed with their own corrective optics already pre-integrated.

Additional tasks included the installation of a new Wide Field Planetary Camera (WFPC-2), the replacement of Hubble’s twin solar arrays and drive electronics, two of three Rate Sensing Units (RSUs), one of two Electronic Control Units (ECUs), one of two magnetometers, and fuse plugs to correct wiring discrepancies. In March 1992, Story Musgrave was assigned as payload commander for the flight, and in August fellow astronauts Jeff Hoffman, Kathy Thornton, and Tom Akers joined him to support at least five ambitious EVAs. The final members of the crew—Commander Dick Covey, Pilot Ken Bowersox, and European Space Agency (ESA) astronaut Claude Nicollier—were named in December 1992, tracking a December 1993 launch. With the repair work, STS-61 had morphed into a far more complex mission than had been anticipated before Hubble’s launch.






In its January 1990 manifest, the agency listed SM-1 as a five-day flight with a crew of five, suggesting a maximum of only two or three EVAs, but as 1991 wore into 1992 and onward into 1993 it became increasingly clear that the mission would run to as long as 11 days and evaluations of underwater simulations convinced managers that they should schedule as many as five back-to-back EVAs over five days. According to Mission Director Randy Brinkley, the decision served to “repackage our margin” and offered the chance to “respond to the dynamics, or unknowns, of spacewalks.” (The flight plan actually provided for a sixth and seventh EVA, and a mission duration of up to 13 days, although this was did not become necessary.)

Such an enormous workload demanded a crew of seven, with two alternating teams of spacewalkers, to reduce fatigue and enhance the likelihood of mission success. Original plans called for all tools to be kept outside, in the shuttle’s payload bay, but the crew recognized at an early stage that EVA time was a critical limiting consumable and decided that the hour spent preparing equipment at the start of each excursion could be better spent starting the repair work. It was therefore decided that some tools would be kept inside Endeavour’s crew cabin, enabling the spacewalkers to “load-up” before opening the airlock and utilizing their suits’ consumables. “What we’ve done by going to five EVAs, rather than three, is to repackage our margin,” said Brinkley, “so that we have the capability to respond to the dynamics, or unknowns, of spacewalks. It improves the probabilities for mission success, while providing added flexibility and adaptability for reacting to real-time situations.”

“Doing five [EVAs] really pushed the bounds of what people thought we could do,” Covey recalled in his NASA oral history. “Even with four EVA crew members, even with an 11-day mission, it just started pushing the bounds. There was a lot of scrutiny on it and a lot of focus on it.” The size of their quarry posed additional problems. Hubble was far larger than anything with which the shuttle had previously rendezvoused in orbit, and Claude Nicollier was faced with the unenviable challenge of maneuvering his EVA crewmates, along with phone-booth-sized pieces of hardware, into position by means of the Remote Manipulator System (RMS) mechanical arm with extreme delicacy and precision. “The integrated operations,” said Covey, “of shuttle maneuvering, RMS activities and EVAs, although now commonplace, _wasn’t_ back then. So integrating all of those activities and the crew activities together was a big part of my role as the commander.”






All of the spacewalkers recognized the need to develop physical strength to handle the demands of their space suits and build the necessary stamina for six or seven hours outside. Kathy Thornton worked out in the gym, as did the others, although by Hoffman’s admission most of the servicing tasks did not demand immense physical strength, but placed greater emphasis on “technical co-ordination,” involving them “being very careful in how you moved things around and not messing anything up.”

Following a successful launch on 2 December 1993, it was recognized that the spacewalks would be performed daily, with Musgrave and Hoffman charged with the first, third, and fifth and Thornton and Akers assigned to the second and fourth. Encased within their pressurized suits, the astronauts were identified by the presence (or absence) of markings on their legs: Hoffman (EV1) would have red stripes, Musgrave (EV2) would have no stripes, Thornton (EV3) would have dashed red stripes, and Akers (EV4) would have diagonal broken red stripes. All four spacewalkers were extensively “cross-trained” to allow them to perform any one of the mission’s given EVA tasks and around 200 tools, from power ratchets and sockets to safety bars and articulating foot restraints and from portable work lights and locking connectors to instrument covers, handles, and umbilical connectors.

Looking back on those adrenaline-charged days, Covey was filled with pride that his crew accomplished everything they set out to do. “There wasn’t anybody that was chilling down on the middeck,” he said. “Everybody was up top, working. There was concern about whether we could sustain that tempo. We went five straight days doing EVAs and that was the right answer. Everybody felt good about that. Nobody was getting excessively fatigued. The EVA crew members, because they were getting a day off in between were okay with that and so that facilitated us pressing on with five straight days of spacewalks.”

All five EVAs were significant in reviving Hubble, but in the eyes of the public and politicians perhaps the most critical tasks were the installation of WFPC-2 by Musgrave and Hoffman on EVA-3 on 6/7 December 1993 and the installation of COSTAR by Thornton and Akers on 7/8 December. Before launch, Hoffman remembered being told not to worry if they did not accomplish everything on the manifest; as long as _either_WFPC-2 or COSTAR was successfully installed, the scientists on the ground would be “deliriously happy.” However, they were not fully appreciative of NASA’s collective mindset of having a 100-percent-successful mission.






WFPC-2 had originally been developed in 1985 as a “spare,” but after the discovery of the spherical aberration NASA had requested the installation of an optical corrector. “The new design incorporates an optical correction by the refiguring of relay mirrors already in the optical train of the cameras,” read NASA’s pre-flight press kit. “Each relay mirror is polished to a new specification that will compensate for the incorrect figure on [Hubble’s] primary mirror. Small actuators will fine-tune the positioning of these mirrors on-orbit, ensuring the very precise alignment that is required.” The WFPC team also upgraded the instrument, by reducing the number of cameras from eight to four in order to develop an alignment system and adding improved charge-coupled devices to aid its ultraviolet sensitivity.

An hour into the spacewalk, Hoffman crisply removed the original WFPC-1 from its housing in Hubble’s bowels and inserted it into a storage container in the payload bay. A protective hood was then removed from the new device and it was installed perfectly. Ground controllers ran an “aliveness” test and verified that the pie-wedge-shaped WFPC-2 was working correctly. The spacewalkers then replaced a pair of magnetometers, before returning inside Endeavour after six hours and 47 minutes. This proved exceptionally good time, when one considers that training for the WFPC-2 replacement alone had typically taken 4.5 hours in the water tank.

A day later, Thornton and Akers set about exchanging the HSP for COSTAR. This required them to open the telescope’s bay doors and loosening latches and removing electrical connectors in order to slide out the instrument. The new corrective optics package was then fitted. In training on Earth, the operation had taken around 3.5 hours. The intensity of the mission—an intensity which had impacted Story Musgrave for almost two years, to such an extent that he remarked, with the merest hint of jest, that the only peace and solace he could find from the mission was sitting in the dentist’s chair—began to lessen somewhat when Thornton and Akers successfully removed the photometer and installed COSTAR in its place. By the end of the EVA, both WFPC-2 the corrective optics had been triumphantly fitted.






Although these two EVAs restored much of Hubble’s science-gathering capability, the other three excursions of STS-61 replaced its solar arrays and other critical equipment and transformed the telescope into virtually a new spacecraft. From an EVA perspective, the records fell like ninepins during STS-61. By the time EVA-5 was completed, the four spacewalkers—Musgrave, Hoffman, Thornton, and Akers—had totaled more than 35 hours outside Endeavour and five excursions on a single flight was more than had ever been achieved on a single shuttle mission. Moreover, STS-61 was the first shuttle flight in which the _bounds_ of accomplishment, in terms of mission duration, complexity, and integrated EVA-RMS-orbiter operations, were pushed to their absolute limits.

That night, the night after the final EVA, the crew of STS-61 celebrated their success above the roof of the world. “Of all of the programs that I have been associated with,” Dick Covey remembered, years later, “it’s the one that was best planned and has been best executed, in terms of using astronauts and crewed vehicles to be able to support, enable and enhance the scientific mission of space.” STS-61 had done nothing less than save NASA itself. Few other human space missions since Apollo 11 had exerted such a positive influence on the agency’s subsequent fortunes. Of course, we know today that fixing Hubble’s optics was triumphantly successful, and the telescope repair team received the prestigious Robert J. Collier Trophy in May 1994 for their work. The citation praised their “outstanding leadership, intrepidity and the renewal of public faith in America’s space program by the successful orbital recovery and repair of the Hubble Space Telescope.”

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## Hamartia Antidote

1984




Manned Maneuvering Unit - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia










Flying 100 meters away from the Space Shuttle (a very brave man!!!!)

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Simplified Aid for EVA Rescue - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

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## SvenSvensonov

*Saturn's Massive Phoebe Ring is Even Larger Than Previously Thought*

Saturn’s Massive Phoebe Ring is Even Larger Than Previously Thought « AmericaSpace






Saturn is truly the “Lord of the Rings” and one of the most majestic places in the Solar System. It’s massive ring system is well-known, but in 2009 another previously unknown ring was discovered, much larger than the others but fainter, being composed of dark grains of dust thought to originate from the moon Phoebe. Now, new research indicates that the Phoebe ring is even larger than first thought.

The new findings come from NASA’s *Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer* (WISE) spacecraft; the tenuous ring is now seen to extend from 3.75 million to 10.1 million miles (6 million to 16.2 million km) from the planet, or about 100 to 270 times the radius of Saturn itself. Previous estimates from NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope said the ring extended distances of 128 to 207 times the radius of Saturn, or about 4.8 million to 7.7 million miles (7.7 million to 12.4 million kilometers). Even then, that would be about 12.5 times the average distance between Earth and the Moon, more than 10 times larger than Saturn’s next largest and more visible ring, the E ring. This massive, diffuse torus-like ring dwarfs Saturn’s other rings and the planet itself.






As noted by Douglas Hamilton, a planetary scientist at the University of Maryland, College Park, in*Space.com*, “We knew it was the biggest ring, but know we find it’s even bigger than we thought, new and improved.”

As he told *NPR*, the ring is “more than 200 times as big across as Saturn itself – it’s absolutely immense, much bigger than any other ring that we know of.”

“It’s fascinating that this ring can exist,” Hamilton continued. “We’re told in science textbooks that planetary rings are small and close to their parent planets – if they’re too far away from their planets, moons form rather than rings. This discovery just turns that idea on its head – the universe is a more interesting and surprising place than we thought.”

The findings were just published in the June 11 issue of *Nature*.

Another moon, Iapetus, had also provided clues to the existence of the new ring.

“Like our moon, Iapetus always has one side facing toward Saturn, which means it also always has one side pointing in the direction of its motion around Saturn, its leading side,” Hamilton said. “Iapetus is an icy moon, and intrinsically bright white, but its leading face is very strikingly jet black. That contamination is what led us to look for what turned out to be a surprisingly large ring.”

The dust particles in the ring are exceedingly tiny, only about 10 to 20 microns in size. They make up the bulk of the ring, with larger particles, up to about 7.8 inches (20 centimeters) or more, making up no more than 10 percent of the ring material. The Phoebe ring is darker and less prominent due to the dust particles being darker themselves and most likely coming off of the dark moon Phoebe. The particles absorb sunlight so the ring is less distinct in visible light, but more visible in infrared light. This makes it easier to see the ring in the infrared images taken by WISE. The particles are also well spread out, with most of the ring being empty space, kind of like atoms.

“A cubic kilometer of space in the Phoebe ring might have just a few dozen dust particles, maybe 100 at most,” Hamilton said. “It’s really empty.”

The ring has also been seen in *optical light* however, as reported in 2014, when it was observed by the ISS camera on the Cassini spacecraft.






The particles are also thought to be millions to billions of years old, since there is little chance of any of them colliding and destroying each other sooner in collisions. The findings also show how much variety there actually is in Saturn’s rings.

As Hamilton summarized, “Saturn’s main rings are like the fabled elephant graveyard – mysterious and filled with mostly large bones that contain clues about the recent past,” Hamilton said. “The E ring, then, is the chipmunk graveyard in which all of the bones are small and from the modern era, and the Phoebe ring is the dinosaur graveyard in which we find ancient bones of all sizes, most of them tiny fragments but some quite immense.”

Hamilton and his colleagues also think it is possible that Jupiter has a similar, as-yet undiscovered larger ring (besides its other already known rings which are visible but fainter than Saturn’s).

“Whenever a planet has a distant satellite, it will probably have a distant ring as well. We see Saturn’s because it’s bright enough to image; Jupiter’s is probably fainter and harder to spot.”

In related news, the Cassini spacecraft has taken beautiful new images of the moon *Tethys*, froma distance of approximately 118,000 miles (190,000 kilometers) and with an image scale of 3,280 feet (1 kilometer) per pixel. The largest crater, Odysseus, is 280 miles (450 kilometers) across, covering about 18 percent of the moon’s surface area; Tethys itself is only 660 miles (1,062 kilometers) across. For comparison, a similarly sized crater on Earth would be as big as Africa.

There are also some fantastic new views of Saturn’s “sponge moon” *Hyperion*. The unusual cratering on this small potato-shaped moon makes it look like a giant sponge, but it’s density is also similarly low, about half that of water, indicating the interior of the moon is quite porous. This helps to explain why Hyperion looks the way it does, since impactors would tend to compress the surface, rather than excavate it, and most of the material that is blown off the surface never returns. This is Cassini’s last close flyby of this odd moon, before the scheduled end of the mission in 2017. For its final act, Cassini will repeatedly dive through the space between Saturn and its rings before entering Saturn’s atmosphere.

Cassini’s next flyby encounter will be with the moon Dione on June 16, 2015. The spacecraft’s current position is posted and updated *here*.

More information on the Cassini mission is available *here*.

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## SvenSvensonov

*Falcon Heavy*

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Falcon Heavy is a super-heavy lift space launch system developed and operated by Space Exploration Technologies, SpaceX. Using the company’s Falcon 9 launcher as a basis, Falcon Heavy consists of three F9 cores with a total of 27 Merlin engines, topped by a Falcon 9 upper stage. Operated from Vandenberg Air Force Base and the Kennedy Space Center, Falcon Heavy can be used to access a variety of orbits including Low Earth Orbit, Geostationary Transfer Orbit and interplanetary trajectories. The vehicle includes re-usable technologies and aims to re-use its two side boosters and core stage that make guided boost-back maneuvers and propulsive landings to be refurbished with minimal effort.

Using a standard Falcon 9 and clustering two additional cores to it, Falcon Heavy employs the same overall design principle as the Delta IV Heavy that features three Common Booster Core stages, and theRussian Angara family based on Universal Rocket Modules that can be clustered to cover different payload classes. Falcon Heavy is larger than these two launchers and capable of reaching twice the payload capability of the Delta IV Heavy which currently is the most-powerful space launch system in the world.

SpaceX initiated the development of its heavy launch system in the first half of the 2000s with the goal of creating a launcher that can compete with the world’s heavy lifters such as Delta IV Heavy and Ariane 5 on the commercial launch market, focused on commercial satellites headed to Geostationary Transfer Orbit. Originally, Falcon Heavy was planned to make its first flight two years after Falcon 9, starting out as “Falcon 9 Heavy” since another version based on the now-canceled Falcon 5 was also planned.

Initial performance data for Falcon Heavy was published by SpaceX in 2006 showing a Low Earth Orbit payload capability of 24,750 Kilograms and a launch cost of $78 million. These numbers changed quite often, usually trending up with LEO capabilities rising to 28 metric tons by 2007 and to 32 metric tons by 2010 with a projected launch cost of $95 million. By 2011, Elon Musk announced that development of the launcher was completed, now using the v1.1 version of Falcon 9 as a baseline which further increased the size and performance of the Falcon Heavy.






Falcon Heavy’s first flight was originally planned out of Vandenberg with an initial target of 2013. After SpaceX took over operation of Launch Complex 39A at the Kennedy Space Center and Falcon Heavy fell behind schedule, its first mission was shifted from the west to the east coast.


As of 2015, Falcon Heavy is shown to have a payload capability of 53,000kg into LEO, 21,200kg to Geostationary Transfer Orbit and 13,200kg that can be inserted into a Trans-Martian Trajectory. Falcon Heavy employs re-usable technologies that are also used on the Falcon 9 such as grid fins, landing legs and re-ignition capability to fly the outer cores and the core stage back to the launch site or a floating platform in the ocean. Depending on the re-usability mode that is selected, Falcon Heavy will be facing payload penalties.

Falcon Heavy surpasses the payload capability of all current launch vehicles and only falls short to the Saturn V and Energia rockets that were capable of carrying more mass into orbit. All requirements for human-rating are being met or exceeded by Falcon Heavy, broadening its potential future applications.






*Launch Vehicle Description*

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*

Falcon Heavy stands 68.4 meters tall with a core diameter of 3.66 meters and a total launch mass of 1,462,836 Kilograms consisting of a Falcon 9 core stage with two stretched cores attached to the central stage. The launcher uses a standard Falcon 9 second stage and 5.2-meter diameter payload fairing.

Each of the cores sports nine Merlin 1D engines for a total number of engines on the first stage of 27, only surpassed by the Soviet N1 rocket in terms of the number of engines ignited at liftoff. Propellant crossfeed between the cores is an optional upgrade that will be used for the heaviest payloads (>45mT LEO), otherwise, the central core would throttle down its engines to be able to burn beyond the propulsion phase of the outer cores. The second stage is equipped with a Merlin 1DVac engine optimized for operation in vacuum.

All stages of Falcon Heavy use Rocket Propellant 1 fuel and Liquid Oxygen oxidizer, employing propellant densification to optimize the mass fraction of the vehicle, further pushing payload capabilities and allowing Merlin 1D+ to operate at its full potential.

*Core Stage & Merlin 1D Engine*

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*
*



*
Falcon Heavy uses a central core stage that is nearly identical to that of the Falcon 9 v1.1 (F9R) rocket with the only difference being the addition of interfaces with the outer boosters.

The Core Stage of Falcon Heavy stands about 45.7 meters tall and is 3.66 meters in diameter featuring the standard design with the oxidizer tank located above the fuel tank. Monocoque structure is utilized on the oxidizer tank while the fuel tank features a stringer and ring-frame design that adds strength to the vehicle. The first stage tank walls and domes are made from aluminum lithium alloy and utilize reliable welding techniques to provide maximum strength.

All components of Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy are designed with structural safety margins 40% above the expected flight loads, higher than the 25% margin that has become the standard in the industry.

The first stage uses Liquid Oxygen oxidizer and Rocket Propellant-1 as fuel which is highly refined Kerosene. The LOX feedline is routed through the center of the fuel tank to supply oxidizer to the engines.

The exact dimensions and mass of the core stage are unknown, but the common belief is that it is capable of carrying about 414,000kg of propellants when prop densification is employed. The stage is about 45.7 meters in length (with interstage), 3.66 meters in diameter and has an empty mass of about 23 to 26 metric tons.

Falcon Heavy sports nine Merlin 1D engines on each of its cores. Compared to its 1C predecessor, Merlin 1D uses improved manufacturing and quality control techniques to enable SpaceX to produce a greater number of engines per year while reducing overall risk. The M1D design is simplified over the M1C by removing no-longer-needed subassemblies. Electro-plating of a nickel-cobalt alloy on the chamber to create the jacket that endures the primary stress of the pressure vessel was replaced by using an explosively formed metal jacket. These changes provide the Merlin 1D with an increased fatigue life and greater thermal margins for the chamber and nozzle which come into play when operating the M1D in an enhanced setting, here referred to as M1D+.

Merlin 1D is an open-cycle gas generator engine. The gas generator operates fuel-rich, burning a small fraction of the LOX and RP-1 flow from the turbopumps to generate a hot high-pressure gas that drives a single turbine with the two turbopumps being driven by a single shaft. High-pressure RP-1 from the fuel turbopump is used in the hydraulic actuators that gimbal the nine main engines for thrust vector control. Generator gas flows through a heat exchanger which heats up Helium gas for tank pressurization in flight before the generator gas is being dumped overboard through an exhaust. The Kerosene flow from the pump is directed to the combustion chamber and nozzle where it passes through heat exchangers as part of the regenerative cooling scheme of the engine. After passing through the heat exchangers, the fuel is pumped into the combustion chamber where it comes into contact with the oxidizer. Merlin 1D operates at a high chamber pressure of 97bar to generate a sea level thrust of 654 Kilonewtons (66,700kg) and a vacuum thrust of 716kN (73,000kg) - giving Falcon Heavy a total liftoff thrust of 17,615kN (1,796,230 Kilogram-force). Vehicle control is provided by gimbaling the nine Merlin engines when the core stage is on its own, the outer boosters can also individually gimbal their engines.

The engine has an increased expansion ratio of 16 while the M1C engine had an expansion ratio of 14.5. Merlin 1D achieves the a thrust to weight ratio of 155 - the highest thrust-to-weight ratio in the liquid-fueled engine world. Merlin 1D uses a pyrophoric mixture of Triethylaluminum-Triethylborane (TEA-TEB) as igniter that is injected into the gas generator and combustion chamber to initiate the combustion process that is sustained as LOX and RP-1 flows into the GG/Chamber once turbopumps spin up, initially using high-pressure helium for spin-up.

Also, the engine has a deep throttling capability which allows Falcon to fly a flexible mission profile. The baselined throttle capability ranges from 70 to 112% of rated performance, however, there are strong indications that M1D can throttle down to 40 or even 30%. To facilitate the propulsive return of the cores, a subset the Merlin 1D engines of the first stage feature onboard re-ignition systems to be fired several times in flight.
All three cores of the Falcon Heavy feature the "Octaweb" engine arrangement. Eight engines are arranged in a circle - clustered around a single Merlin 1D in the center that is installed slightly lower with its nozzle protruding the others. The gas generator exhaust pipes of the individual engines installed on the perimeter of the first stage are arranged toward the inboard direction, their flow passing through the gap between the center and the outer engines, transporting excess heat out of the engine compartment.

The skin of the launcher is the primary load path for the launch vehicle and arranging most of the engines on the perimeter of the skin eliminates a lot of structure that needs to be installed to carry loads from the engines to the skin. The original tic-tac-toe engine pattern required these load-transferring structures, adding to the overall mass of the vehicle. The new engine arrangement also improves thermal properties as it avoids hot spots.

*Core Stage*

Type Falcon 9 v1.1 Stage 1
Length* 45.7m
Diameter 3.66m
Inert Mass* 25,600kg
Propellant Mass* 414,000kg
Fuel Rocket Propellant 1
Oxidizer Liquid Oxygen
RP-1 Mass* 124,000kg
LOX Mass* 290,100kg
LOX Tank Monocoque
RP-1 Tank Stringer & Ring Frame
Material Aluminum-Lithium
Guidance From 2nd Stage
Tank Pressurization Heated Helium
Propulsion 9 x Merlin 1D+
Engine Arrangement Octaweb
Engine Type Gas Generator, Open-Cycle
Propellant Feed Turbopump
M1D+ Thrust (100%) Sea Level: 654kN - Vac: 716kN
Engine Diameter ~1.0m
Engine Dry Weight 450 to 490kg
Burn Time* 260s
Specific Impulse 282s (SL) 311s (Vac) [for M1D]
Chamber Pressure 108 bar
Expansion Ratio 16
Throttle Capability 70% to 112% (Possibly Deeper)
Restart Capability Yes (Partial)
Ignition TEA-TEB
Attitude Control Gimbaled Engines (pitch, yaw, roll)
Cold Gas Nitrogen RCS
4 Grid Fins (S1 Interstage)
Shutdown Commanded Shutdown
Stage Separation Pneumatically actuated
mechanical collets

*Merlin 1D+ & Propellant Densification*

*



*

Using improved manufacturing techniques and materials, the Merlin 1D engine was developed with a great margin in operational conditions and a high degree of durability which would enable the engine to operate at higher thrust levels, pressures and temperatures than originally envisioned. In a 2013 press briefing, Elon Musk stated that Merlin 1D could be operated at a sea level thrust of 734 Kilonewtons, representing about a 12% increase in thrust (other unconfirmed numbers that floated around indicated thrust increases up to 20%). Perhaps SpaceX was already looking toward Falcon Heavy when designing the Merlin 1D for operation at this increased thrust setting. Running the engine at a greater propellant mass flow rate will lead to a higher chamber pressure and combustion temperature, increasing the overall stress on the engine. When flying on Falcon Heavy, this M1D+ engine would set up the proper initial thrust to weight ratio and reduce gravity losses in the early ascent phase.

Another technique to be employed by Falcon Heavy is propellant densification for an improved propellant mass fraction and a longer burn time with associated performance increase.

Elon Musk stated that propellant densification capability would be added to all SpaceX launch facilities and it is likely that all Falcon Heavy missions will rely on densification. Densifying propellants is possible through cooling – increasing the mass than can be loaded into the limited tank volume of the launcher. NASA studies have shown that LOX densification can increase the oxidizer mass by 8 to 10% compared to boiling-point LOX at –183°C. Cooling LOX below its boiling point is possible through the use of a Nitrogen subcooler that employs a Liquid Nitrogen bath (either at boiling point or sub-cooled) through which the LOX lines are running to allow an exchange of heat. 

LOX temperatures of below –200°C are achievable, however, an economic consideration is necessary when choosing the desired LOX temperature. Operational launchers that employ sub-cooled LOX are Antares (in its original version, using LOX at –196°C) and Soyuz 2-1v (-192°C LOX). Using sub-cooling, the oxidizer mass held in the central core stage's tank of Falcon Heavy could be increased by ~24,000 Kilograms. 

Sub-cooling the fuel, Rocket Propellant 1, is also possible, although its high freezing temperature of approximately –37°C and changes in viscosity as a function of temperature represent limitations when sub-cooling the fuel. Through sub-cooling the RP-1 to –25° to –30°C, the first stage could take on ~6 metric tons of additional fuel which will not match up with the increase in LOX. This could be compensated by filling an unused portion in the RP-1 tank (if part of the design) or have the M1D+ engines operate less fuel-rich, leading to increased temperatures and raising demand on the regenerative cooling system of the engine. Equipment for propellant densification including LOX subcoolers has been spotted at the SpaceX launch pad at Vandenberg Air Force Base in 2014 and the addition of this type of equipment at SLC-40 at CCAFS and LC-39 at KSC is likely planned or already in progress.

Just like the Falcon 9, FH provides engine-out capability for a large portion of its first stage flight. All 27 engines are ignited on the ground, about three seconds before launch. All must reach operational conditions and liftoff thrust for the launch release command to be issued.

The engines are monitored constantly in flight and computers can shut down any engine at any time to prevent RUD (rapid unplanned disassembly). Following the unplanned shutdown of an engine, the flight computer would re-plan the ascent trajectory to reach the cutoff target with the remaining engines by extending their burn and potentially cutting a booster return, forgoing re-usability to ensure success of the primary mission.

Flying 9 Merlin engines per core provides engine-out capability and it also allows Merlin 1D to quickly build up flight heritage as each mission provides performance data on 27 engines instead of a single engine that competing launchers are using.The core stage and boosters are equipped with a cold-gas Reaction Control System using Nitrogen for three-axis control during coast phases and during single-engine burns.

The Falcon Heavy cores employ an S-Band communications system to transmit performance telemetry throughout the flight and after stage separation. Each core is equipped with a Flight Termination System consisting of two strings of transmitters, receivers and safe and arm devices. The FTS works with C-Band Communications and can be used to terminate the flight in case of any major anomalies.

The core stage of the Falcon Heavy is connected to the second stage via a carbon fiber aluminum core composite structure acting as interstage adapter, housing the MVac engine of the second stage. Stage separation is accomplished via separation collets and pneumatic pushers in three interfaces connecting the two stages. SpaceX tries to avoid using pyrotechnics for separation events.






*Falcon Heavy Boosters*

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*

Like the Delta IV and Angara, Falcon Heavy aims to reduce complexity in its design by using as much commonality between its core stage and the strap-on boosters as possible. For Delta IV and Angara, the boosters are the same dimension as the core, only using aerodynamic caps and attachment mechanisms that make them different from the core. For Falcon Heavy, some complexity is added by stretching the outer cores as compared to the central core. (No specifics are available on this, however, all animations and scale drawings of Falcon Heavy clearly show the boosters being around six meters taller than the central core (without interstage). Additionally, adding up the masses of the components leaves a much greater mass for the boosters than the estimated mass of the F9 core.)

The boosters of Falcon Heavy share the 3.66-meter diameter of the core stage which allows the same tools and techniques to be used in the manufacturing process, the only difference in the structural design being the stretched tanks. Each of the boosters is approximately 48 meters in length and weighs around 470 metric tons when fully fueled for launch. The boosters each use nine Merlin 1D engines also arranged in an Octaweb pattern and each core is outfitted with independent Guidance, Navigation and Control Systems with communication paths between the computers of the central core and the boosters to allow the main flight computers to issue commands to the boosters and separation systems.

Atop each of the boosters sits a nosecone manufactured from composite materials to keep its weight at a minimum. The four grid fins of the boosters are installed in the uppermost portion of the propellant tank structures, matching up in height with the fins of the central core which reside on the interstage. Each booster has its own nitrogen cold gas reaction control system and is capable of executing an autonomous return to the launch site to be re-used.

The boosters are attached to the central core stage via structural interfaces in the aft section and interfaces that connect the upper portion of the boosters to the interstage area of the Falcon Heavy via thrust struts to transfer loads to the vehicle. Separation of the boosters is accomplished using collets in the structural interfaces, avoiding the use of pyrotechnics since SpaceX prefers to use systems that can be tested and re-used. The reaction control system of the boosters ensures a clean separation from the core stage.

*Falcon Heavy Boosters*

Type Falcon Heavy Booster
Length* ~47.7m
Diameter 3.66m
Inert Mass* 26,500kg
Propellant Mass* 443,000kg
Fuel Rocket Propellant 1
Oxidizer Liquid Oxygen
LOX Mass* 310,800kg
RP-1 Mass* 132,200kg
LOX Tank Monocoque
RP-1 Tank Stringer & Ring Frame
Material Aluminum-Lithium
Guidance From 2nd Stage
Tank Pressurization Heated Helium
Propulsion 9 x Merlin 1D+
Engine Arrangement Octaweb
Engine Type Gas Generator, Open-Cycle
Propellant Feed Turbopump
M1D+ Thrust (100%) Sea Level: 654kN - Vac: 716kN
Engine Diameter ~1.0m
Engine Dry Weight 450 to 490kg
Burn Time* 190s
Specific Impulse 282s (SL) 311s (Vac) [for M1D]
Chamber Pressure 108 bar
Expansion Ratio 16
Throttle Capability 70% to 112% (Possibly Deeper)
Restart Capability Yes (Partial)
Ignition TEA-TEB
Attitude Control Gimbaled Engines (pitch, yaw, roll)
Cold Gas Nitrogen RCS
4 Grid Fins
Shutdown Commanded Shutdown
Stage Separation Thrust Struts, RCS

*Throttle-Down vs. Crossfeed*

When Falcon Heavy was initially announced, one of its biggest innovations was to be a propellant crossfeed capability between the boosters and the central core. The design called for propellant lines being routed through the interfaces of the cores, delivering propellants from the oxidizer and fuel manifolds of the boosters to a number of engines on the core, allowing these engines to consume propellant from the booster tanks and leaving the tanks of the central core nearly full until the point of separation when interfaces would be isolated and supply switch to the core stage’s own tanks.

This feature was put on the backburner and SpaceX decided to introduce the Falcon Heavy without operational crossfeed system using a partial thrust mode on the core stage to allow it to save propellants that can be consumed beyond the burn of the side boosters. This procedure is also used by Delta IV Heavy and the Angara family, eliminating the additional mass of a crossfeed system that would only be required on flights with extremely heavy payloads. In a nominal flight scenario, Falcon Heavy would take off with all of its Merlin 1D engines at full throttle, likely to be the 112% setting as a standard. After the initial climb, the central core would throttle its engines down to a minimal thrust in order to save propellants while the boosters continue to fire at full thrust.

The two boosters would burn for roughly 180-200 seconds before separating from the core to begin their journey back to the launch site. Continuing powered ascent, the core would throttle up its engines and burn for just over a minute to continue boosting the velocity of the stack, achieving a much higher speed than any previous Falcon cores which makes its recovery more difficult given its much greater energy at separation.

SpaceX is still pressing ahead with the development of the Crossfeed Capability to be used on particular challenging missions with LEO payloads of over 45 metric tons or equivalent payloads to different orbits.

*Re-Usable Falcon Heavy*

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*

Re-usability of space launch vehicles is one of the biggest goals of SpaceX and Falcon Heavy aims to become the first partially re-usable super-heavy lift launcher. Like Falcon 9, FH will return its three cores to the ground through a series of propulsive maneuvers, a guided flight through the atmosphere and a soft landing on four deployable landing legs – either on land using a flat landing pad to be built near the launch site or on the Autonomous Spaceport Drone Ship inaugurated during the initial tests of returning Falcon 9 boosters to an on-target landing.

The overall goal is to get the rocket stages back to the launch site to avoid the cost of having them returned by ship or other means of transportation. This boost-back to the launch site is feasible for the two outer cores that separate from the launch vehicle at a much lower energy than the central core. Continuing powered flight, the core stage reaches a high energy that would cause a large payload penalty due to the additional fuel required for the boost back to the launch site.

Therefore, SpaceX will keep operating the drone ships (one for the east coast, one for Vandenberg launches and potentially another one for the Brownsville launch site) for the return of the core stages. SpaceX was also looking into the possibility of refueling the cores on the landing platform and having them fly back to land under their own engine power.

In an operational scenario, Falcon Heavy would blast off and burn its two outer boosters for close to three minutes before the two boosters separate and begin their journey back to the launch site. Immediately, the two boosters would rotate to an engines-first position and make their way to apogee for the boost back burn that would use a subset of the Merlin 1D engines.

This boost back would reverse the downrange velocity and allow the boosters to begin traveling back to the launch site. Passing through 70 Kilometers in altitude, the boosters would ignite three of their engines for the re-entry burn that serves two purposes – starting to slow the booster down and providing protection to the engine compartment from the aerodynamic re-entry environment. Falcon 9 re-entry burns had a typical duration of 19 seconds.

Beginning their descent through the atmosphere, the boosters would deploy four grid fins for precise steering.

The four grid fins are launched in a position stowed against the uppermost section of the booster near the nose cone before being deployed when Falcon re-enters the atmosphere. The four fins can be individually controlled in a two-degree of freedom type design, rotating and tilting at the same time, allowing for complex guidance and control during atmospheric flight.

The fins are an essential part of Falcon’s return sequence to provide control in atmospheric flight without active propulsion. Grid-fins have been widely used as a stabilizer on missiles & bombs and are shaped like miniature wings consisting of a lattice structure. The Russian Soyuz employs grid-fins in its launch abort system which would deploy when the launch escape rockets start firing in an abort scenario to stabilize the vehicle, but the fins used by SpaceX take it one step further as they can be moved independently to actively control the vehicle's flight and not only act as a stabilizer.

Grid-fins perform well in all velocity ranges including supersonic and subsonic speeds with the exception of the trans-sonic regime due to the shock wave enveloping the grid. These properties make them ideally suitable for the Falcon booster stages that start out at supersonic speeds and return to subsonic velocity as they travel through the atmosphere, en-route to the landing site. The four fins are rotated and tilted independently by an open hydraulic system that uses pressurized hydraulic fluid supplied from a pressurized tank that is dumped overboard after flowing through the hydraulic actuators of the fin system. The design was also driven by overall mass considerations.

The addition of the grid fins was expected to improve the accuracy of Falcon’s landing by three orders of magnitude – previous landing attempts in the ocean had a ten-Kilometer targeting accuracy while the return to a platform or a pad on land requires the stage to land within a few meters of its bulls-eye target.

Heading back in, the boosters would make final corrections to their flight path, modifying their pitch trim to precisely target their landing site. Around 28 seconds prior to touchdown, the center engine of the booster is re-ignited for the final landing burn. With a limited throttle range, the Center engine will generate a thrust that is greater than the mass of the stage. Landing at a thrust to weight ratio greater than one requires the stages to calculate their propulsive landing maneuver in a way that that reaches a minimum velocity when coming into contact with the ground. Falcon’s boosters are targeting to land at a velocity of less than 6 meters per second.

Ten seconds prior to touchdown, the four landing legs of the booster would deploy. The overall design driver for the landing legs was mass since adding significant weight to the first stage would have resulted in a significant payload penalty. Safety was also a major concern – the leg design had to be such that no premature deployment during powered ascent was possible which would result in a certain loss of the entire vehicle and payload.

Made of aluminum honeycomb and carbon-composite materials, the four legs have a total mass of around 2,100 Kilograms consisting of a single-load bearing strut and aerodynamic fairing assembly. The central struts of the legs interface with the load-carrying structure of the first stage while the fairings have two structural interfaces at the base of the engine compartment heat shield and one interface on the lower portion of the leg
During flight, the legs are stowed against the rocket body, covered by the fairings that ensure no additional aerodynamic disturbance is introduced by the legs. Deployment is accomplished by a pneumatic system using high-pressure helium. When deployed, the legs have a span of about 18 meters, capable of supporting the forces of landing and the mass of the nearly empty booster.

SpaceX has secured properties at Cape Canaveral and Vandenberg Air Force Base to be used as booster landing facilities. At Cape Canaveral, SpaceX signed a five-year lease of Launch Complex 13 in February 2015. An animation of the Falcon Heavy flight profile shows a conceptualized representation of LC-13. Five individual flat landing pads are seen in the animation with four smaller auxiliary pads and one larger central pad. The two boosters use two of the smaller pads, landing within seconds of each other after making their propulsive return from the edge of space.

LC-13 at CCAFS has been in operation from 1958 to 1978 supporting the Atlas launcher family with notable LC-13 launches including Lunar Orbiter 1 and a number of Atlas Agena launch vehicles. The launch pad was not in use for nearly three decades and had its mobile service tower demolished in 2005 followed by the demolition of the blockhouse in 2012. LC-13 will be used to return Falcon stages launching from SLC-40 and LC-39.

At Vandenberg Air Force Base, SpaceX has procured Space Launch Complex 4W for booster landings with SLC-4E serving as Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy launch pad.

SLC-4W was active for over four decades starting in 1963, supporting Atlas-Agena missions before being converted for the Titan II launch vehicles. In total, SLC-4W saw over 90 launches before becoming inactive after the last Titan 23G launch in 2003. In 2014, the complex was handed to SpaceX and the demolition of existing structures including the Mobile Service Tower started in September 2014. The finished landing facility will likely look very similar to that at Cape Canaveral.

Due to the central core stage of Falcon Heavy continuing onwards after booster separation, it faces a much higher speed when separating from the second stage. A return to the launch site would require a considerable amount of propellant leading to a large payload penalty. Therefore, SpaceX will keep using the Autonomous Spaceport Drone Ships that will be stationed downrange from the launch site to welcome the core stages. The downrange distance of the drone ship will depend on the surplus of propellant that is available for an active boost back.
Known as the Autonomous Spaceport Drone Ship, the floating landing platform was built at a Louisiana shipyard and measures 91 meters by 52 meters with a prominent Space“X marks the Spot” logo in the center. The ship sports four diesel-powered azimuth thrusters – similar to those on oil rigs - provided by Thrustmaster, a marine equipment manufacturer that also provided power modules and controls to outfit the ship with a Portable Dynamic Positioning System. Processing GPS data, the Autonomous Spaceport Drone Ship will be able to keep its assigned position with an impressive accuracy of three meters.

A high accuracy is required since Falcon will have to land on the platform with all four of its legs that span approximately 18 meters, leaving just over 30 meters for GPS errors between the two craft and position errors of the drone ship, sea swell as well as errors by Falcon, making its fast-paced hoverslam landing under the power of one of its nine Merlin 1D engines with a thrust to weight ratio greater than one.

The ASDS is outfitted with a water deluge system that dumps water onto the deck to protect it from the heat of the engine of the arriving booster. Numerous attachment fixtures are part of the deck structure that would allow the securing of the first stage after landing on the platform for the return to port and refurbishment.

Flying as fully expendable launch vehicle, Falcon Heavy could deliver 21,200 Kilograms to a standard Geostationary Transfer Orbit. With full reusability on all three cores, the launcher will only be able to put seven metric tons into GTO which is still within the mass range of the heaviest commercial communications satellites. Only returning the boosters and flying the central core as expendable booster will increase GTO capability well over ten metric tons.

*Second Stage*

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*

Falcon Heavy uses a standard Falcon 9 v1.1 second stage, potentially employing propellant densification to optimize launch vehicle performance.

The second stage of the Falcon 9 is based on the design of the v1.0 second stage which is essentially a smaller version of the first stage. SpaceX has always followed a policy of choosing simple solutions to reduce cost and risk in order to manufacture a robust launch system. Using the same materials, tools and manufacturing techniques for the two stages is a perfect example of this approach.

As with the first stage, the exact dimensions of the second stage have not yet been disclosed by SpaceX. It is estimated that the second stage is 15 meters long with an inert mass of around four metric tons and a fuel load of 97,000 Kilograms. The diameter is identical to the core stage.

Comparing it with the v1.0, the second stage of the v1.1 features stretched propellant tanks that are also built using Aluminum-Lithium Monocoque structure for both tanks. The second stage also uses Rocket Propellant 1 as fuel and Liquid Oxygen as oxidizer.

One Merlin 1D Vac engine is powering the second stage. This engine differs from the first stage engines as it is optimized for operation in vacuum featuring an extended nozzle with a high expansion ratio. M1D Vac is also a turbopump-fed gas generator engine, in its enhanced version, it operates at a chamber pressure of 108 bar.

Using an extended nozzle creates a high expansion ratio of greater than 117:1. M1D Vac has a high specific impulse of over 340s that could be as high as 347s. It generates a total vacuum thrust of 801 Kilonewtons (81,700 Kilograms) when flying as standard M1DVac, the M1D+ Vacuum version could achieve a thrust of 897kN. The engine can support multiple ignitions to be able to fly a flexible mission profile in order to reach a variety of orbits and trajectories. The second stage TEA-TEB ignition system is fully redundant.

Second Stage Burn time is variable with nominal firings of ~372 seconds.

The second stage is equipped with a Reaction Control System for three axis-control during coast phases and roll control during burns. The Falcon 9 v1.1 uses a cold-gas attitude control system employing a number of Nitrogen thrusters for three axis control during extended coast phases.

The second stage of the Falcon rocket facilitates the avionics and flight computers that control all aspects of the flight. The avionics of the Falcon feature a number of changes and upgrades from the v1.0 to the v1.1 and Heavy version. All avionics and controllers are manufactured in-house by SpaceX. The system is fully redundant, constantly checking itself to verify that all GNC components are functioning properly. SpaceX uses commercial off-the-shelf parts that are radiation tolerant instead of radiation hardened (cost reduction). The flight computers run on Linux with software written in C++.

Avionics are triple redundant and the rocket’s inertial navigation system uses GPS overlay for additional orbital insertion accuracy.

In addition to the main avionics units of the launch vehicle, each of the Merlin Engines is equipped with three processing units in a single engine controller. The engine controller monitors all parameters of the engine and interfaces with the main avionics units. Each of the three processing units are constantly checking on the others to provide fault-tolerance.
*
Second Stage
*
Type Falcon 9 v1.1 Stage 2
Length* 15.2m
Diameter 3.66m
Inert Mass* 4,000kg
Propellant Mass* 97,000kg
Fuel Rocket Propellant 1
Oxidizer Liquid Oxygen
LOX Mass* 68,800kg
RP-1 Mass* 28,200kg
LOX Tank Monocoque
RP-1 Tank Monocoque
Material Aluminum-Lithium
Guidance Inertial
Tank Pressurization Heated Helium
Propulsion 1 x Merlin 1D Vac +
Engine Type Gas Generator
Propellant Feed Turbopump
Thrust 897kN (M1D+)
Engine Dry Weight 450 to 490kg
Burn Time* 372s
Specific Impulse >340s (Est: ~345s)
Chamber Pressure 108 bar
Expansion Ratio >117
Throttle Capability Yes
Restart Capability Yes
Ignition TEA-TEB, Redundant
Pitch, Yaw Control Gimbaled Engine
Roll Control Reaction Control System
Shutdown Commanded Shutdown
Reaction Control S. Cold-Gas Nitrogen Thrusters

*Payload Fairing*

The Payload Fairing is positioned on top of the stacked vehicle and its integrated spacecraft. It protects the vehicle against aerodynamic, thermal and acoustic environments that the launcher experiences during atmospheric flight. When the launcher has left the atmosphere, the fairing is jettisoned. Separating the fairing as early as possible increases ascent performance.

Falcon 9's standard Fairing is 13.1 meters in length and 5.2 meters in diameter. The fairing consists of an aluminum honeycomb core with carbon-fiber face sheets fabricated in two half-shells. Separation is accomplished via a pneumatic system along the vertical seam that pushes the two halves apart.
Up to three spacecraft access doors or Radio Frequency Windows can be supported by the fairing. A small 3.6-meter fairing is also being developed.





*
Payload Adapters
*
Payload Adapters interface with the vehicle and the payload and are the only attachment point of the payload on the Launcher. They house equipment that is needed for Spacecraft Separation and ensure that the payload is secured during powered flight. Electrical and Communication connections are also part of the Adapter and route spacecraft Telemetry to the Flight Computers for downlink. A variety of different adapters is available to suite different spacecraft needs and requirements.

*EO Injection Accuracy (v1.0)*

Perigee +/- 10km
Apogee +/- 10km
Inclination +/- 0.1 deg
Right Ascension of
Ascending Node +/- 0.15 deg

*GTO Injection Accuracy (v1.0)*

Perigee +/- 7.4km
Apogee +/- 130km
Inclination +/- 0.1 deg
Right Ascension of 
Ascending Node +/- 0.75 deg
Arg of Perigee +/- 0.3 deg

*Payload Fairing*

Payload Fairing Composite Fairing
Diameter 5.2m
Length 13.1m
Weight ~1,750kg

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## SvenSvensonov

*Minotaur V*

*



*





The Minotaur V is an expendable launch system developed and operated by Orbital Sciences Corporation and the US Air Force. The launcher is based on the all-solid Minotaur IV launch vehicle which itself is based on the Peacekeeper Intercontinental Ballistic Missile.

Peacekeeper was a land-based ICBM that began development in 1972. At the time, silo-based Minuteman ICBMs were being deployed by the US. The development of the R-36M missile by the Soviets gave the Soviet Union the theoretical the ability to destroy the US Minuteman ICBM facilities before retaliation would have been possible. This prompted the development of the Peacekeeper launcher that could also deliver warheads to orbit via a Post Boost Vehicle and Deployment Module to independently target the individual warheads. The first test launch of the Peacekeeper took place in 1983 from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California and the system was deployed in 1986. In 2003, the retirement process of the Peacekeeper was started and by September 2005, the last Peacekeeper was removed from alert status.

Peacekeeper warheads are being deployed on Minuteman III missiles that is the only land-based ICBM currently in use by the United States. The Peacekeeper rockets themselves are being converted to orbital launch vehicles by Orbital Sciences. The rockets are converted by fitting them with a fourth stage (& optional 5th & 6th stages) and by installing Orbital’s enhanced avionics systems and advanced composite structures to facilitate its payloads. Combining the robust heritage components flown on the Peacekeeper and advanced avionics and support systems create a low-cost launch vehicle for use to support government-financed launches.

To make the launch systems more flexible, Orbital Sciences developed different versions of the basic four-stage Minotaur IV. In its Minotaur IV+ configuration, the vehicle uses a the more powerful Star-48V upper stage instead of the Orion-38. Flying entirely without a fourth stage, Minotaur IV Lite can be used for sub-orbital flights.

In the Minotaur V configuration, a Star 37 rocket stage is added to the IV+ four-stage stack for launches to trans-lunar trajectories and Geosynchronous Transfer Orbit. A six-stage Minotaur VI version has also been conceptualized.

Minuteman launch vehicles are operated from Space Launch Complex 8 at Vandenberg Air Force Base, Launch Pad 1 at Kodiak Launch Complex (Alaska) and Pad 0B at the Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport (MARS), Virginia.

Minotaur IV has launched five times starting in April 2010. The Minotaur V version has not flown and its first launch is planned to be to deliver NASA’s LADEE spacecraft to a trans-lunar trajectory.

*Launch Vehicle Description






*
The Minotaur V launch vehicle stands nearly 24.5 meters tall with a diameter of 2.34 meters and a liftoff mass of about 89,000 Kilograms. It uses the three stages of the Peacekeeper rocket designated SR-118, SR-119 and SR-120. These stages are provided by the US government and are used without any major modifications. Minotaur V uses two solid-fueled upper stages manufactured by Alliant Techsystems making it an all-solid launch vehicle. The fourth stage is an ATK Star 48 BV rocket motor and the fifth stage is the smaller Star-37 that can be flown in two different configurations.

Minotaur V can deliver small payloads to a variety of trajectories including Medium Earth Transfer Orbit, Geosynchronous Transfer Orbit and Trans-Lunar Trajectories.

*Minotaur V Specifications*

Type Minotaur V
Manufacturer Orbital Sciences
Operator OSC, USAF
Launch Site Vandenberg, Kodiak, MARS
Height ~24.5m
Diameter 2.34m
Launch Mass ~89,000kg
Stages 5
Stage 1 SR-118
Stage 2 SR-119
Stage 3 SR-120
Stage 4 Star 48 BV
Stage 5 Star 37 (FM or FMV)
Mass to GTO 532kg
Mass to MTO 650kg (CCAFS), 603kg (WFF)
Mass to TLI 342kg

*
First Stage
*
The first stage of the Minotaur V rocket is the first stage of the Peacekeeper that is flown without major modifications. SR-118 was manufactured by Thiokol and is also known as TU-903 and uses HTPB (Hydroxyl-terminated polybutadiene) based propellants. The first stage is loaded with 45,400kg of propellant that is consumed during the 56.5-second burn of the stage to provide 2,224 Kilonewtons of thrust (226,780 Kilograms).

Control during first stage flight is provided by a hydraulic Thrust Vector Control System steered with actuator commands provided by the Booster Control Module that links the flight computer to the TVC system.
*
First Stage
*
Type SR-118 (TU-903)
Diameter 2.34m
Length 8.4m
Propellant Solid - HTPB
Launch Mass 49,000kg
Empty Mass 3,600kg
Propellant Mass 45,400kg
Guidance via Booster Control Module
Propulsion TU-903
Thrust 2,224kN
Burn Time 56.5sec
Specific Impulse 229sec (SL), 284sec (Vac)
Control Hydraulic Thrust Vector Control

*
Second Stage
*
The second Stage of the Minotaur launcher was manufactured by Aerojet and also uses HTPB-based propellant. It is 2.34 by 7.9 meters in size with a launch mass of 27,700 Kilograms. It closely resembles the design of the first stage and also uses a hydraulic Thrust Vector Control System that provides attitude control during the 61-second burn of the second stage. It provides a thrust of 1,223 Kilonewtons (124,710 Kilograms).
*
Second Stage
*
Type SR-119
Diameter 2.34m
Length 7.9m
Propellant Solid - HTPB
Launch Mass 27,700kg
Empty Mass 3,200kg
Propellant Mass 24,500kg
Engine With extendable Exit Cone
Guidance via Booster Control Module
Thrust 1,223kN
Burn Time 61sec
Specific Impulse 308sec (Vac)
Control Hydraulic Thrust Vector Control

*
Third Stage
*
The SR-120 served as third stage of the Peacekeeper and is also used as the Minotaur third stage. SR-120 was manufactured by Hercules and uses NEPE propellant containing HMX with greater energy than ammonium perchlorate that is used in most composite HTPB propellants. Propellants containing HMX are not used on commercial launchers because of its explosive hazards, but as a converted ballistic missile, Minotaur uses the unmodified SR-120 with NEPE propellant.

SR-120 is 2.34 meters in diameter, 2.44 meters long and has a total mass of 7,700 Kilograms. It burns for 72 seconds and provides 289kN of thrust (29,470 Kilograms). It also uses a hydraulic thrust vector control system to provide attitude control during its burn.

After the third stage burn, the Minotaur usually performs a coast phase to reach higher altitudes so that the following upper stage burns can serve as circularization maneuvers and raise the perigee of the sub-orbital trajectory to achieve orbit.
*
Third Stage*

Type SR-120
Diameter 2.34m
Length 2.44m
Propellant Solid - NEPE
Launch Mass 7,720kg
Empty Mass 650kg
Propellant Mass 7,080kg
Engine With extendable Exit Cone
Guidance via Booster Control Module
Thrust 289kN
Burn Time 72sec
Specific Impulse 300sec (Vac)
Control Hydraulic Thrust Vector Control






*Star 48BV*

The fourth Stage of the Minotaur V launcher is the Star-48 Solid Rocket Motor built by Alliant Techsystems. The ATK Star 48BV is a solid-propellant upper stage that uses the flight proven Star 48B and adds Thrust Vector Capability (V). Star 48 was introduced in 1982 and has been used on a variety of spacecraft. Star 48B was spin stabilized and had smaller a performance than the TVC capable version.

The upper stage features a 1.24-meter diameter titanium casing holding a total of 2,010 Kilograms of solid propellant. It is 2.08 meters in length and has a launch mass of 2,165 Kilograms. It operates at an average thrust of 68.6 Kilonewtons (6,995kg) with peak thrust reaching 77.8kN (7,930kg). Star-48BV features the longer of two available nozzles for the conventional Star 48. The upper stage features an electromechanically actuated flexseal nozzle Thrust Vector Control System with a maximum nozzle gimbal of four degrees. Star-48 burns for 84 seconds.

Star 48BV is the final stage of the Minotaur IV+ launcher and is capable of relatively precise insertions. On the Minotaur V, an additional fifth stage is installed to improve performance for highly elliptical and trans-lunar trajectories.

*Star 48BV*

Type Star 48BV
Launch Mass 2,164.5kg
Diameter 1.24m
Length 2.08m
Propellant TP-H-3340
Propellant Mass 2,010.0kg
Casing Mass 58.3kg
Case Material Titanium
Nozzle Mass 52.6kg
Avg Thrust 68.6kN
Max Thrust 77.8kN
Isp 288s
Throat Diameter 0.1011m
Nozzle Diameter 0.7475m
Chamber Pressure 39.9bar (Avg) - 42.6bar (Max)
Expansion Ratio 54.8
Burn Time 84.1s
Ignition Delay 0.100s
Attitude Control TVC +/-4°
Roll ACS

*Star 37*

The Star 37 Solid Rocket Motor is also built by Alliant Techsystems and is the predecessor to Star 48. Two versions of the Star 37 can be used atop the Minotaur V. The Star 37FM version is spin-stabilized while the FMV version is equipped with a three-axis attitude control system. The extra-weight of the control equipment on the FMV version reduces payload capability.

Star 37 FMV weighs 1,170 Kilograms including 1,064kg of TP-H-3340 propellant, but the propellant load can be slightly adjusted based on payload and insertion requirements. It is 0.93 meters in diameter and 1.912 meters long featuring a Nozzle Assembly that uses a 3D carbon-carbon throat and a carbon-phenolic exit cone. Star 37 provides 48.8 Kilonewtons (4,975kg) of average thrust and 55.6kN of peak thrust (5,670kg). Like Star 48, the flexseal nozzle can be gimbaled by up to 4 degrees by the electromechanical Thrust Vector Control System.

A Cold Gas Reaction Control System is used to provide roll control during the upper stage burns and three-axis control during coast phases.

*Star 37FM*

Type Star 37FM
Launch Mass 1,148kg
Diameter 0.93m
Length 1.69m
Propellant TP-H-3340
Propellant Mass 1,065.9kg
Casing Mass 32.25kg
Case Material Titanium
Nozzle Mass 34.02kg
Avg Thrust 47.3kN
Max Thrust 54.8kN
Isp 290s
Throat Diameter 0.0894m
Nozzle Diameter 0.6215m
Chamber Pressure 37.2bar (Avg) - 44.3bar (Max)
Expansion Ratio 48.0
Burn Time 62.7s
Ignition Delay 0.130s
Stabilization Spin Stabilized - 60RPM

*Star 37FMV*

Type Star 37FMV
Launch Mass 1,170kg
Diameter 0.93m
Length 1.92m
Propellant TP-H-3340
Propellant Mass 1,063.8kg
Casing Mass 32.25kg
Case Material Titanium
Nozzle Mass 44.91kg
Avg Thrust 48.84kN
Max Thrust 55.6kN
Isp 294s
Throat Diameter 0.0894m
Nozzle Diameter 0.7483m
Chamber Pressure 37.2bar (Avg) - 44.3bar (Max)
Expansion Ratio 70.0
Burn Time 62.7s
Ignition Delay 0.130s
Attitude Control Nozzle TCV - +/-4°
Roll ACS





*
Avionics & Guidance System
*
Minotaur implements a Common Avionics Assembly that is used across the Minotaur family. The CAA is a ring structure that is mounted on the upper stage of the vehicle offering space for the various avionics boxes that comprise the assembly.

The Central Flight Computer of the Minotaur is based on Orbital’ s Modular Avionics Control Hardware (MACH) that provides power transfer, data acquisition, booster interfaces, and ordnance initiation. Up to 10 MACH devices can be combined to satisfy mission requirements. Minotaur’ flight computer uses a 32-bit multiprocessor architecture and a RS-422 serial bus for data connections to avionics and payload systems.

Additionally, the avionics assembly includes the Booster MACH, the Booster Control Module that provides actuator commands to the Thrust Vector Control Systems of the lower stages, the S- and C-Band Communications System that is used for telemetry downlink, Flight Termination System receivers and equipment, a GPS beacon and a vehicle encoder.

Also mounted on the avionics ring is the Attitude Control System of the launcher which is a cold gas system using pressurized Nitrogen. The attitude control system is used for roll control during the 4th and 5th stage burn as well as three-axis control during coast phases and the Contamination and Collision avoidance maneuver.

The Common Avionics Assembly gathers navigation data using an inertial platform that feeds the digital autopilot of the vehicle. The three-axis autopilot is programmed to fly a pre-programmed attitude profile during Stage 1, 2 and 3 flight and gather navigation data which is then used to optimize the trajectory during the Stage 4 & 5 burns.

The two upper stages use a pre-defined set of parameters for their target trajectory which they use to modify their flight profile based on actual achieved trajectory by the lower stages.

The Star 48 and 37 stages uses energy management to achieve the insertion trajectory. After the final boost phase, the three-axis cold-gas attitude control system is used to orient the vehicle for spacecraft separation, contamination and collision avoidance and downrange downlink maneuvers.
*
Payload Adapters
*
Minotaur can support a number of Payload Adapter Modules including off-the-shelf adapters and custom built devices. Payload Adapters interface with the launch vehicle and the payload and are the only attachment point of the payload on the Launcher. They provide equipment needed for spacecraft separation and connections for communications between the Upper Stage and the Payload.

A typical PAM consists of a Payload Adapter Fitting that is connected to the upper stage, a payload cone and a separation system. Minotaur can facilitate Orbital-built as well as Planetary Systems and RUAG Space payload attach systems.
*
Payload Fairing






*
Minotaur V uses the standard payload fairing that is also used on the Minotaur IV/IV+ launcher. It is about 6.4 meters long and 2.34 meters in diameter weighing approximately 450 Kilograms. It consists of two composite shell halves, a low-shock frangible rail and ring separation system, and an actuator/hinge fairing jettison system. The fairing structure is a aluminum honeycomb core covered by layers of graphic epoxy composite. The fairing is outfitted with acoustic blankets, a ventilation system and RF windows if required. The fairing also provides access doors to the payloads.

The two fairing halves are joined by a frangible rail joint and the PLF is connected to the second stage using a ring-shaped frangible joint. A cold gas initiation system is used to disconnect the ring and rail so that the two halves of the fairing can rotate outboard on two hinges installed on the vehicle in order to ensure the appropriate clearances during the separation event.

The payload envelope for the Minotaur V is defined by the Star 37 upper stage because it and its support structure has to fit under the fairing together with the spacecraft.

To accommodate larger payloads, Minotaur can be outfitted with a 2.79-meter diameter fairing that features a similar design, but comes at the cost of launch vehicle performance.

*Payload Fairing*

Type Minotaur IV Fairing
Diameter 2.34m
Length 6.4m (Standard)
Mass 450kg
Separation Ordnance, Frangible Joints,Pistons
Construction Graphite/Epoxy Face Sheets
Aluminum Honeycomb Core
Notes Protects Payload & 5th Stage

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## SvenSvensonov

*NASA Awards SpaceX $30 Million for Successful Dragon Pad Abort Test Milestone*

NASA Awards SpaceX $30 Million for Successful Dragon Pad Abort Test Milestone Under CCiCap « AmericaSpace





_A mockup SpaceX Crew Dragon takes flight for the company Pad Abort Test at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station on May 6, 2015. Photo Credit: Alan Walters / AmericaSpace_

NASA has officially declared SpaceX’s recent Crew Dragon Pad Abort Test (PAT) a success, awarding the Hawthorne, CA-based company $30 million for completion of that very important development milestone under their Commercial Crew integrated Capability (CCiCap) agreement with NASA’s Commercial Crew Program.

The flight test, which took place on May 6, marked a big step forward as SpaceX aims to deliver U.S. astronauts to and from the International Space Station (ISS), aboard a U.S.-manufactured spacecraft, and from U.S. soil, for the first time since the nation’s space shuttle fleet retired from service in 2011.

“This test was highly visible and provided volumes of important information, which serves as tangible proof that our team is making significant progress toward launching crews on American rockets from America soon,” said Jon Cowart, partner manager for NASA’s Commercial Crew Program. “The reams of data collected provide designers with a real benchmark of how accurate their analyses and models are at predicting reality. As great as our modern computational methods are, they still can’t beat a flight test, like this, for finding out what is going on with the hardware.”

Launching off a specially made truss to simulate the spacecraft atop a Falcon-9 rocket from Space Launch Complex-40, the 21,000 pound prototype capsule took flight quickly under 120,000 pounds of axial thrust from its eight SuperDraco engines, which are intended to carry astronauts to safety in the event of an emergency on the pad or during ascent (16,000 pounds of thrust each, compared to 100 pounds of thrust each with the original Draco thrusters on Dragon 1).

The eight SuperDraco engines, which are built directly into Crew Dragon’s walls, are the first fully 3-D printed engines intended for space to ever be developed.

After ascending 3,500 feet in six seconds the PAT Dragon jettisoned its trunk and deployed a pair of drogue chutes, followed by a trio of main parachutes and splashdown less than a mile offshore of the launch site minutes later.

The vehicle was outfitted with hundreds of instruments and sensors for data collection, and even had an instrumented mannequin as the sole passenger, providing SpaceX with important data and other information regarding the stresses put on the mannequin—information that will be critical in ensuring development of an abort system that prevents serious injury to crews.





_SpaceX’s Crew Dragon prototype parachuting back to Earth after a successful Pad Abort Test at Cape Canaveral AFS on May 6, 2015. Photo Credit: John Studwell / AmericaSpace_

Dragon’s PAT should provide SpaceX significant data in the areas of Sequencing, Closed-Loop Control, Trajectory, and External and Internal Environments. The PAT demonstrated the proper sequencing of the pad-abort timeline as well, serving to validate the execution of multiple critical commands in a very short period. Trajectory data for both maximum altitude and downrange distance from the pad was gather as well, including data on various internal and external factors to Crew Dragon to help ensure safe conditions for crew transport.

“This is the first major flight test for a vehicle that will bring astronauts to space for the entire Commercial Crew Program,” said Gwynne Shotwell, president of SpaceX. “The successful test validated key predictions as it relates to the transport of astronauts to the space station. With NASA’s support, SpaceX continues to make excellent and rapid progress in making the Crew Dragon spacecraft the safest and most reliable vehicle ever flown.”

The approval of the PAT milestone payment follows NASA’s authorization for Boeing to begin work toward its first post-certification mission with the CST-100 crew capsule, which also received a multi-billion dollar NASA contract for crew transport to and from the ISS. The company recently received the first of up to six orders to execute a crew-rotation mission to the ISS, which NASA stressed does not necessarily imply that a Boeing CST-100 capsule will fly ahead of a SpaceX Crew Dragon.





_Crew Dragon recovered just offshore of its launch site. Photo Credit: Mike Killian / AmericaSpace_

SpaceX will conduct one more abort test, an In-Flight Abort atop a Falcon-9 rocket launch, using the same Crew Dragon prototype capsule, later this summer.

Both SpaceX and Boeing are expected to begin carrying out the first operational crewed flights for NASA in 2017, but that is dependent on NASA funding, which is dependent on the federal government. The debate is still ongoing in Congress, but it appears that NASA’s Commercial Crew Program will receive several hundred million dollars less than what the space agency and the White House requested for FY2016, which will likely delay America’s return to human spaceflight from U.S. soil once again.

NASA Administrator Charles Bolden had this to say about it:

“I am deeply disappointed that the Senate Appropriations subcommittee does not fully support NASA’s plan to once again launch American astronauts from U.S. soil as soon as possible, and instead favors continuing to write checks to Russia. By gutting this program and turning our backs on U.S. industry, NASA will be forced to continue to rely on Russia to get its astronauts to space – and continue to invest hundreds of millions of dollars into the Russian economy rather than our own.”

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## waz

@fantastic thread, although wouldn't it be better if I moved it to the US section?


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## SvenSvensonov

waz said:


> although wouldn't it be better if I moved it to the US section?



I stuck it here to encourage casual the use and contribution by members who don't frequent the America's section, which based on the participation in that section seems to be a lot of people, but I'll leave the decision in your hands.

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## waz

SvenSvensonov said:


> I stuck it here to encourage casual the use and contribution by members who don't frequent the America's section, which based on the participation in that section seems to be a lot of people, but I'll leave the decision in your hands.



I'll keep it here my friend.

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## SvenSvensonov

*Antares





*
Antares is an expendable launch system being developed and operated by Orbital Sciences Corporation. It is a two stage launch vehicle with an optional third stage. The launcher can reach a variety of orbits including Low Earth Orbit, Sun Synchronous Orbit, Geosynchronous Transfer Orbit and Interplanetary Trajectories. 

Antares is currently being operated from the Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport at NASA's Wallops Flight Facility, however, the vehicle is also compatible with the Western Range at Vandenberg Air Force Base, the Eastern Range at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station and the Kodiak Launch Complex, Alaska. 

Orbital Sciences developed Antares under a Commercial Orbital Transportation Services (COTS) contract that the company was awarded from NASA to demonstrate cargo deliveries to the International Space Station. Orbital uses the Antares launcher to boost its Cygnus Capsule to orbit for flights to ISS. Once completing COTS, Orbital enters the Commercial Resupply Services Program. NASA has booked eight ISS resupply flights of Cygnus under Commercial Resupply Services for a total contract volume of $1.9 billion. Antares is also on the market for small and medium missions. 

The launch vehicle was originally known as Taurus II, but was renamed in late 2011. Antares made its first flight in April 2013.
The Antares launch vehicle stands 40.5 meters tall, has a main diameter of 3.9 meters and a liftoff mass of approximately 282,000 Kilograms. It uses a liquid fueled first stage that is powered by two powerful engines. 

The second stage of the vehicle is a solid-fueled rocket motor built by Alliant Techsystems. As a second stage, the ATK Castor 30A, 30B and XL can be used. For Cygnus missions to ISS, Antares will fly with two stages only, but other payloads may require a third stage. 


Two third stages are available for Antares, the Orbital-built Bi-Propellant Upper Stage that allows Antares to perform precise injections into a variety of orbits and the ATK Star 48 Solid Upper Stage that can be used to reach high-energy orbits. Antares is topped by a 3.94-meter payload fairing.

*Vehicle Description*

*Specifications
*
Type Antares 
Height 40.5m 
Diameter 3.90m 
Launch Mass 282,000kg (110) - 296,000kg (130) 
Mass to LEO 5,100kg (130) 
Mass to GTO 1,800kg (132) 
Mass to SSO 3,600kg (131) 


*First Stage*

*



*

Antares' first stage is designed by Yuzhnoye and built by Yuzhmash in the Ukraine. It is 27.6 meters long and 3.9 meters in diameter and contains Liquid Oxygen oxidizer and Rocket Propellant 1 fuel.

The Stage 1 assembly consists of the Stage 1 Core, the Main Engine System and the Flight Termination System. The Stage 1 Core is comprised of five bays and provides the structural support of the launch vehicle. It includes propellant tanks and associated plumbing, pressurization systems, instrumentation and avionics. 

The Liquid Oxygen Tank Bay and Rocket Propellant 1 Bay consist of their corresponding propellant tanks which feature level sensors to measure propellant levels during fueling and in flight. This measurement system is used by the engine controllers to determine engine mixture ratio adjustments to minimize leftover residuals in the tanks. The RP-1 tank utilizes an aluminum waffle structure and it features a tunnel through its core to accommodate the LOX feedline. Routing the LOX feedline from the LOX tank above to the engines through the RP-1 tank increases packaging efficiency. 

The LOX tank is manufactured from solid aluminum. It features Helium Pressurant Bottles which are submerged in the LOX tank for gas storage efficiency. Helium loading begins once the bottles are submerged in Liquid Oxygen in order to be chilled down to accommodate the Helium which is used to pressurize both, the RP-1 and LOX tanks. The pressurization system operates at a maximum pressure of 220 bar and supplies gas through a manifold of valves that are cycled open to regulate tank pressurization and propellant flow rates. Over pressurization is prevented by emergency relief valves. 

The remaining three bays are the inter-tank bay, the inter-stage bay and the aft bay that includes the Main Engine System. The aft bay also contains the primary interface between the Antares launch vehicle and ground support equipment. Most of the mechanical, fluid and electrical interfaces of the launcher are located on its base.

The Main Engine System consists of two Aerojet AJ-26-62 engines. These are modified NK-33 engines that are being converted by Aerojet, importing the Russian engines and adding US electronics, making modifications to the fuel systems, modifying the engine for proper gimbaling control and removing engine harnesses. NK-33 engines were originally built for the massive Soviet N1 Moon Rocket in the 1960s and 70s and have since been in storage, not being used on any launcher. 

The engine is a regeneratively cooled staged combustion engine with oxygen-rich preburners to drive the turbopumps. NK-33 provides a maximum sea level thrust of 1,630 Kilonewtons with length of 3.7 meters, an engine diameter of 2 meters and dry weight of 1,235kg. The engine can lift 137 times its weight and provides a vacuum impulse of 331s. Maximum vacuum thrust is 1,815kN. AJ-26 can be throttled from 56 to 108% of rated performance. The two AJ-26 engines of Antares are mounted on a thrust frame and each engine is equipped with independent Thrust Vector Control Systems for vehicle control during ascent. Engine gimbaling is controlled by a Moog hydraulic TVC system.

The two engines are fed by two separate LOX/RP-1 feed systems and have independent electrical hardware. The propellant inlets of the two engines are flexible to allow the engines to move relative to the core structure for Thrust Vector Control. The engine controllers are built by Orbital, but also incorporate engine sensors and propellant utilization systems provided by Yuzhnoye. Also part of the MES is the aft bay closure and the heat shield thermal blanket that protects aft bay components from the heat generated by the main engines. 

At liftoff, the two engines generate a total thrust of 332,400 Kilograms. The first stage has a burn time of 235 seconds.











*First Stage*

Type S1 Core Stage, Zenit Heritage
Bays 5
Dry Mass 18,700kg
Launch Mass 260,700kg
Diameter 3.90m
Length 27.6m
Fuel Rocket Propellant 1
Oxidizer Liquid Oxygen
Fuel Mass 64,740kg
Oxidizer Mass 177,260kg
Tank Pressurization Helium, up to 220bar
# Helium Bottles 8
Propulsion 2 x AJ-26-62 (Modified NK-33)
Throttling 56% - 108%
AJ-26 SL Thrust 1,510kN (100%) - 1,630kN (108%)
AJ-26 Vac Thrust 1,682kN (100%) - 1,815kN (108%)
Throttling 56% - 108% (Up to 135% achieved)
Impulse SL 297s
Impulse Vac 331s
Engine Length 3.71m
Engine Diameter 2.0m
Engine Dry Weight 1,235kg
Thrust to Weight 137
Chamber Pressure 145bar
Area Ratio 27
Ox. To Fuel Ratio 2.8
Burn Time 235sec
Attitude Control Hydraulic TVC for Yaw, Pitch & Roll
Stage Separation Hold Down Bolt Release

*Second Stage*

The second stage of the Antares launch vehicle is a solid rocket motor built by Alliant Techsystems, ATK. The first two mission of Antares, the Demo Flight and the Orb-D1 Demonstration Flight to ISS, will use a Castor 30A upper stage while the next two flights will feature the upgraded Castor 30B, flying on Orb-1 and Orb-2. Subsequent missions will use the stretched Castor XL to increase payload capability and allow an upgraded version of the Cygnus to carry more cargo to ISS.

*Second Stage*

Type Castor 30A
Length 3.51m
Diameter 2.34m
Dry Mass 1,220kg
Casing Mass 408kg
Ignition, Nozzle, TVC 340kg
Propellant Mass 12,815kg 
Launch Mass 14,035kg
Propellant HTPB H8299
Avg. Thrust 259kN
Max Thrust 393kN
Chamber Pressure 53Bar
Specific Impulse 301s
Nozzle Diameter 1.21m
Expansion Ratio 65
Burn Time 136s
Vehicle Control Electromechanical TVC
Stage Separation Non-contaminating frangible ring
Attitude control Cold Gas ACS

*Castor 30*

*



*

The Castor 30 solid rocket motor is based on ATK's Castor 120 which is a derivative of the first stage motor of the Peacekeeper missile that was in service from 1986 to 2005. Castor 120 was used on Lockheed Martin's Athena launch vehicles. 

Castor 30A is 2.34 meters in diameter and 3.51 meters long. It has an empty weight of 1,220 Kilograms and can hold 12,815 Kilograms of propellant. The solid rocket motor uses a 408-Kilogram composite graphite/epoxy wound case. 

Castor uses HTPB bound solid propellant. It is optimized for operation in vacuum conditions with an average thrust of 259 Kilonewtons, peaking up to 393 Kilonewtons. The second stage provides a specific impulse of 301 seconds. Castor 30A burns for 136 seconds. Ignition is accomplished with an IVB Ignitor. A flex seal design at the throat of the SRM allows nozzle motion during flight for Thrust Vector Control. The nozzle can be gimbaled as part of a Electromechanical Thrust Vector Control System. A 65:1 throat-to-exit-plane-ratio model provides the second stage performance for the initial Antares missions ahead of second stage upgrades.

The Castor 30B rocket motor is a higher-performance version of the Castor 30A with an increase in Isp of under 5 seconds. Its overall length is 4.17 meters and it has a diameter of 2.34 meters. The motor features and extended nozzle with a 76:1 expansion ratio and a diameter of 1.63 meters. The 30B version provides an average thrust of 293.4 Kilonewtons and a maximum thrust of 396.3 Kilonewtons. Castor 30B has a liftoff weight of 13,970 Kilograms and burns for 127 seconds.

*Castor 30*

Type Castor 30B
Length 4.17m
Diameter 2.34m
Propellant Mass 12,887kg
Launch Mass 13,970kg
Propellant HTPB H8299
Avg. Thrust 293.4kN
Max Thrust 396.3kN
Chamber Pressure 53Bar
Specific Impulse ~304s
Nozzle Diameter 1.63m
Expansion Ratio 76
Burn Time 127s
Vehicle Control Electromechanical TVC
Stage Separation Non-contaminating frangible ring
Attitude control Cold Gas ACS

*Castor 30 XL*

The Castor 30 XL is a stretched version of the Castor 30A solid rocket motor. It also uses a composite graphite/epoxy wound case and HTPB bound propellant. Castor 30 XL is 2.34 meters in diameter and 5.99 meters long. It has a liftoff mass of about 26,300 Kilograms. The stage delivers an average thrust of over 300kN peaking at 395kN.

Castor 30 XL uses a 2.4-meter long nozzle with a high expansion ratio of 56:1 and submerged design. A dual density exit cone improves performance for operation at high altitudes. The nozzle design features a number of changes to the Castor 30A nozzle such as a modified Propulsion Application Program flex bearing with a 3.5-degree maximum design vector angle. The Castor 30 XL also uses an Electromechanical Thrust Vector Control System that is identical to that of Castor 30A. 

*Castor 30 XL*

Type Castor 30 XL
Length 5.99m
Diameter 2.36m
Launch Mass ~26,300kg
Propellant HTPB H8299
Nozzle Length 2.4m
Expansion Ratio 56
Burn Time 156s
Vehicle Control Electromechanical TVC
Stage Separation Non-contaminating frangible ring
Attitude Control Cold Gas ACS

*Stage 2 Avionics & Guidance System*

The Antares avionics module is based on Orbital's Modular Avionics Control Hardware (MACH) that will provide power transfer, data acquisition, booster interfaces, and ordnance initiation. Most avionics are located in the avionics ring mounted on the second stage. Antares uses a three-axis autopilot that utilizes Proportional-Integral-Derivative control. The first stage flies a pre-programmed attitude profile based on trajectory design and optimization while the second stage adjusts its flight profile dynamically to achieve a pre-programmed set of orbital parameters. It uses energy management to place the vehicle into its target orbit. 

*Second Stage Attitude Control System*

During the second stage burn, a combination of TVC and ACS is used. Antares features a three-axis cold gas attitude control system on its second stage to provide orientation capability during coast phases, for spacecraft separation and subsequent collision avoidance maneuvers.






*Optional Third Stage*

Antares can fly with a third stage to increase payload capability and provide accurate insertion capabilities for high-energy insertions.

*Optional Third Stage: Star-48BV*

Type Star 48BV
Launch Mass 2,164.5kg
Diameter 1.24m
Length 2.08m
Propellant TP-H-3340
Propellant Mass 2,010.0kg
Casing Mass 58.3kg
Case Material Titanium
Nozzle Mass 52.6kg
Avg Thrust 68.6kN
Max Thrust 77.8kN
Isp 288s
Throat Diameter 0.1011m
Nozzle Diameter 0.7475m
Chamber Pressure 39.9bar (Avg) - 42.6bar (Max)
Expansion Ratio 54.8
Burn Time 84.1s
Ignition Delay 0.100s
Attitude Control TVC +/-4°

*Optional Third Stage: BTS*

Type BTS
Fuel Monomethylhydrazine
Oxidizer Nitrogen Tretroxide
Fuel Mass 358kg
Oxidizer Mass 322kg
Propulsion 3 x BT-4
BT-4 Thrust 450N
Total Thrust 1,350N
Engine Mass 4kg
Engine Length 0.65m

*ATK Star 48BV*

The ATK Star 48BV is a solid-propellant upper stage that uses the flight proven Star 48B and adds Thrust Vector Capability (V). Star 48 was introduced in 1982 and has been used on a variety of spacecraft. Star 48B was spin stabilized and had smaller a performance than the TVC capable version.

The upper stage features a 1.24-meter diameter titanium casing holding a total of 2,010 Kilograms of solid propellant. It is 2.08 meters in length and has a launch mass of 2,165 Kilograms. It operates at an average thrust of 68.6 Kilonewtons with peak thrust reaching 77.8kN. Star-48BV features the longer of two available nozzles for the conventional Star 48. The upper stage features an electromechanically actuated flexseal nozzle Thrust Vector Control System with a maximum nozzle gimbal of four degrees. Star-48 burns for 84 seconds and is suitable for payloads that are inserted into high-energy trajectories.

*Bi-Propellant Third Stage*

The Bi-Propellant Third Stage, BTS, is provided by Orbital Sciences and is based on Orbital's GEOStar satellite bus that is used for Geostationary Satellites. The Upper Stage features a Helium-regulated bi-propellant system with Monomethylhydrazine fuel and Nitrogen Tetroxide oxidizer. 

The propellants are stored in spherical tanks. A total of 358 Kilograms of MMH and 322 Kilograms of NTO can be carried by the vehicle. The propulsion system consists of three IHI BT-4 engines. BT-4 was developed by IHI Aerospace, Japan, and has a dry mass of 4 kilograms and a length of 0.65 meters. The engine provides 450 Newtons of Thrust.

The BTS can perform precise insertions and multiple engine burns for orbit circularization. Sun Synchronous Missions of Antares would typically use this upper stage.

*Payload Fairing*

*



*

The Payload Fairing is positioned on top of the launch vehicle and its integrated Payload. It protects the spacecraft against aerodynamic, thermal and acoustic environments that the vehicle experiences during atmospheric flight. When the launcher has left the atmosphere, the fairing is jettisoned by pyrotechnical initiated systems. Separating the fairing as early as possible increases launcher performance. 

Antares jettisons its fairing during the Coast Phase between the first and second stage burn during a typical LEO Flight.

The fairing is 3.94 meters in diameter and 9.87 meters long. It consists of two composite shell halves, a low-shock frangible rail and ring separation system, and an actuator/hinge fairing jettison system. The fairing structure is a aluminum honeycomb core covered by layers of graphic epoxy composite. The two fairing halves are joined by a frangible rail joint and the PLF is connected to the second stage using a ring-shaped frangible joint. 

Ordnances and a clean-separation frangible joint with a confined sealed stainless steel tube is used to fracture aluminum extrusions on the ring and rail. Disconnecting the ring and rail allows each half of the fairing to rotate on hinges installed on the second stage. A cold gas generation system is utilized to drive pistons that force the fairing halves to open.

*Payload Adapters*

Payload Adapters interface with the launch vehicle and the payload and are the only attachment point of the payload on the Launcher. They provide equipment needed for spacecraft separation and connections for communications between the Upper Stage and the Payload. 

Orbital Sciences offers a number standard payload adapters to install spacecraft on the Antares launch vehicle. Payload Adapters are provided by RUAG Space and include the 1194VS, 1666 and 937 payload systems that provide accommodations for a number of spacecraft and feature low-shock separation techniques. 

*Antares LEO Flight Profile*

Antares lifts off from its launch pad two seconds after the AJ-26 engines of the first stage are ignited to allow some time for them to achieve full thrust and monitor their ignition performance. After a short vertical ascent, Antares performs a roll & pitch maneuver to align itself with its pre-planned ascent trajectory.

The first stage burns for 235 seconds and separates after a brief, 5-second post-burn coast. Stage 1 separation occurs at an altitude of 109 Kilometers and a velocity of 4,547m/s. At that point, the stack enters a 100-second coast period to get close to apogee for the second stage burn. After 100 seconds of coasting, the Payload Fairing is jettisoned at an altitude of 184 Kilometers. Ten seconds later, the second stage begins its engine burn for orbital insertion and circularization. Stage 2 shutdown occurs about 471 seconds into the flight at an altitude of 205 Kilometers and a velocity of 7,521m/s. Payload separation occurs after 120 seconds of maneuvering by the second stage attitude control system. The typical Cygnus insertion orbit is 275 by 250 Kilometers at an inclination of 51.66 degrees.

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## SvenSvensonov

*’We've Got a Satellite!’*

’We’ve Got a Satellite!’





_With the possible exception of Columbia and the very first space shuttle mission, few orbiters had as dramatic and exciting a maiden voyage as Endeavour. On STS-49, she provided a reliable stage for the longest EVA in history and the first three-man EVA in history. Photo Credit: NASA_

“Ready. Ready. _Grab!_”

The words of Rick Hieb echoed through the silent Mission Control Center (MCC) at the Johnson Space Center (JSC) in Houston, Texas.

The view through Space Shuttle Endeavour’s aft flight deck windows on the evening of 13 May 1992 was quite different from anything ever seen before. Not only was this the maiden voyage of NASA’s newest orbiter—a vehicle which, but for the loss of Challenger, might have remained a set of structural spares—but it also involved the first (and only) EVA with as many as three people. This mission, STS-49, commanded by Chief Astronaut Dan Brandenstein, had long been anticipated to be the most visible shuttle flight of 1992, but it demonstrated that human space flight retains the ability to deliver unexpected surprise. When the crew was announced, their mandate was to retrieve the Intelsat 603 telecommunications satellite, delivered into an improper orbit by a Commercial Titan III booster in March 1990. Spacewalkers Hieb and Pierre Thuot would venture into Endeavour’s payload bay to attach a new rocket motor, after which Intelsat 603 would be boosted into its 22,300-mile (35,900-km) geosynchronous orbit, ahead of its pivotal role in covering the 1992 Summer Olympics in Barcelona.

After the Intelsat activities, a further two spacewalks—the first with Kathy Thornton and Tom Akers, the second with Thuot and Hieb—would rehearse Space Station Freedom construction techniques. Thornton’s inclusion made her only the third woman, after Russia’s Svetlana Savitskaya and NASA’s Kathy Sullivan, to perform an EVA. It was a role for which she had previously trained in preparation for her first shuttle mission, STS-33 in November 1989. “I absolutely insisted that she be the EVA person,” STS-33 Commander Fred Gregory recalled in his NASA Oral History, “over great protest. If we had not insisted, probably a person of her size would never have done something like this. Kathy [Sullivan] was a larger woman who could fit into the suits, but Kathy Thornton was not, so we really had to force the issue.” Doubtless, Dan Brandenstein was in full agreement that Thornton, nicknamed “K.T.”, was the most appropriate choice. She would go on to fly as part of the EVA team which first serviced the Hubble Space Telescope (HST) in December 1993.






The other three astronauts involved in the STS-49 EVAs were male. Rick Hieb was already in training to fly STS-39 at the time the Intelsat 603 crew was assembled in December 1990, and Tom Akers had returned only weeks earlier from the Ulysses deployment mission, STS-41. The man in charge of the team—designated “EV1” and wearing red stripes around the legs of his pure-white space suit for identification—was Pierre Thuot. When he flew STS-36 in the spring of 1990, Thuot became the first of his class to be assigned a mission and the first to actually fly.

If everything ran as timelined, STS-49 would thus be the first shuttle flight to feature as many as three spacewalks and the first to include two teams of spacewalkers; both of which were critical prerequisites if NASA was to execute as many as five EVAs per mission to service the Hubble Space Telescope (HST) and build Space Station Freedom. On the face of it, retrieving and repairing Intelsat 603, for all its drama, offered something of a backward glance to the shuttle’s pre-Challenger heyday and was unusual, for in the wake of the disaster it had been mandated that the reusable orbiters would henceforth not be used for commercial missions. STS-49 was thus the last of its kind. At the same time, as Space Shuttle Program Director Bob Crippen explained in June 1990, it offered “an opportunity for expanding our experience base in the planning, training and performance of EVA” by “helping preparations for Freedom.”

Others agreed that such a mission was useful for other purposes. It was “a throwback to the good old days,” said Endeavour’s first processing manager, John Talone, “when we used to go out and do these kinds of things.” Added NASA Associate Administrator for Space Flight, former astronaut Bill Lenoir: “It’s a mission we wanted to do. It gave me the opportunity to have _real_ work that _really_ mattered; that was going to get measured, where we either succeeded or failed.”

In the weeks and months following the botched delivery of Intelsat 603 to orbit in March 1990, prime contractor Hughes entered into a contract with NASA, worth in excess of $90 million, for the shuttle to reboost the satellite. Two possible scenarios quickly gained prominence: either to attach a new perigee kick motor or retrieve Intelsat and bring it back to Earth for refurbishment. Concerns about the extent to which the satellite’s surfaces might degrade over two years were allayed by the test flight of several solar array sample “coupons,” attached to Discovery’s Remote Manipulator System (RMS) mechanical arm during the STS-41 mission in October 1990. These were exposed to the harsh atomic oxygen environment for a minimum of 23 hours, with few ill-effects. Two months later, in December, the STS-49 crew was named to conduct the audacious salvage.

Dan Brandenstein found himself in command of the first flight of a new shuttle and a rendezvous and retrieval mission with EVAs which promised to be filled with drama. “One of my first concerns when we first got assigned and started working with Hughes on the mission,” he told the NASA oral historian, “was if we try and grab it, if we _bump_ it, is it going to go out of whack and float away? Part of the requirements from the customer were that we didn’t touch any sensitive area, which left you a very small ring that … had a limited accessibility and that was supposed to the way we grabbed it.”






_Armed with the capture bar mechanism, Pierre Thuot provides a measure of scale of the enormous size of Intelsat 603. Photo Credit: NASA_

The mechanism by which Thuot and Hieb would grab Intelsat was a so-called “capture bar,” designed and built by engineers in the Crew and Thermal Systems Division at NASA’s Johnson Space Center (JSC) in Houston, Texas. Weighing 160 pounds (73 kg), it measured 15 feet (4.6 meters) long by about 3.3 feet (1 meter) wide and included detachable beam extensions and a steering wheel. As Thuot rode on the end of Endeavour’s Remote Manipulator System (RMS) mechanical arm, he would be positioned close to the base of Intelsat 603 and after grappling it would lower it delicately into a Hughes-built cradle assembly. “There was a lot of analysis done,” continued Brandenstein, “and we were assured that because it was spinning slightly and it had a lot of mass, we could bump it and it would stay pretty much in place and wasn’t going to be a problem.” Throughout 1991 Thuot and Hieb trained underwater and on the air-bearing table, to such an extent that they could follow the procedure with their eyes closed.

More than two decades ago, on 7 May 1992, the last virgin space shuttle speared for the heavens. During the next couple of days Intelsat controllers maneuvered their satellite into a “control box,” some six degrees of arc of the shuttle’s orbit. These maneuvers also served to reduce Intelsat’s rotation from 10.5 to around 0.65 rpm. By the 10th, as they approached to within 8 miles (13 km) of the satellite, Thuot and Hieb completed their procedures of suiting-up and were assisted into the airlock by crewmate Akers. Shortly thereafter, at 4:25 p.m. EDT, they opened Endeavour’s outer hatch into the payload bay—then in the pitch black of orbital darkness—and Thuot fastened himself into a foot restraint on the end of the RMS, deftly operated by veteran astronaut Bruce Melnick. Drawing closer toward the satellite, Thuot extended the capture bar into position, but the latches failed to latch.

He tried again, without success.

A third attempt was similarly fruitless.

From his station on Endeavour’s aft flight deck, Brandenstein noticed that Intelsat 603 was beginning to oscillate and drift somewhat, “so I got in my chase-it mode, because I had to keep him aligned.” When Thuot’s third attempt failed, Brandenstein had used a “tremendous” amount of propellant and instinctively knew that the chances of success were slim at best. The RMS exacerbated the difficulty, because its joints were being driven into positions which they could not support. “We decided, though consultations with the ground, to get out of there and try another day,” Brandenstein recollected. “That was a pretty low point, because when we left, it had a pretty good rate. We thought we’d lost this $150 million satellite … and Pierre was particularly depressed because, obviously, he thought it was his fault.”





_In the first, and so far only, three-person EVA, astronauts Rick Hieb, Tom Akers, and Pierre Thuot manhandle Intelsat 603 into Endeavour’s payload bay for the attachment of a new rocket motor. Photo Credit: NASA_

Thuot and Hieb returned inside Endeavour after three hours and 43 minutes, and later that evening Hughes engineers confirmed that they had managed to stabilize Intelsat. Next day, at 4:30 p.m. EDT on 11 May, the spacewalkers were back outside for a second attempt. “Instead of doing it at night, we were going to wait and do it in daylight,” Brandenstein said. “We decided we weren’t going to even make an attempt until everything was just perfect. Pierre went in and the rotation slowed down.” From Hieb’s position, it looked as if Thuot had completed the capture, but, alas, the satellite again began to oscillate. The astronaut’s alignment was unquestionably correct, but the capture bar refused to seat itself properly and Intelsat wobbled. A few weeks after the mission, Thuot explained to this author that the satellite “was much more dynamic than our training had led us to believe.”

As the disappointed spacewalkers returned inside the cabin for the second time—this time after 5.5 hours—they at least knew that the Hughes engineers could regain control of Intelsat 603 for another attempt. However, although propellant reserves allowed for it, three separate rendezvous on a single shuttle mission had never been attempted, and Brandenstein recommended a day off to plan for the third attempt. In an interview for the Smithsonian, Rick Hieb remembered that the evening of the 11th was a sombre time. At one point, Kevin Chilton, the STS-49 pilot and the only “rookie” member of the crew, joined Hieb on the flight deck, and the pair entered an impromptu brainstorming session. It was a session that would mark a significant turnaround in the fortunes of a mission which seemed snake-bitten.

As Hieb and Chilton talked, other members of the crew floated upstairs to join them. The main concern was _where_ to manually grab Intelsat. The top of the satellite, where the delicate antennas were located, was not ideal, and it was Bruce Melnick who suggested an EVA with not two spacewalkers, but _three_. No excursion in history had ever involved more than two members, partly due to safety concerns and partly because of the sheer practicality of getting three people into the tiny airlock. On the other hand, Endeavour carried four suits for Thuot, Hieb, Thornton, and Akers, so in theory it was a possibility.

“When Bruce said that,” recalled Hieb, “a big mental switch flipped over, at least for me. In my mind, having a third set of hands out there meant that we would be successful, although we weren’t yet sure how.”

Mission Control knew that the astronauts were still awake, because Endeavour’s monitors had not been turned off. At length, the crew turned them off and continued talking in the dark, but eventually called the ground with Melnick’s idea. Years later, Brandenstein remembered that it was Chilton who sketched out the practicalities of the three-person EVA scenario and held it in front of the television camera to allow mission controllers to see it. “The big choke point,” Brandenstein said, “was can you put three people in the airlock to get them outside?” In the Houston water tank, fellow astronauts Story Musgrave, Jim Voss, and Michael “Rich” Clifford donned suits and demonstrated the techniques and geometries involved in setting themselves up to accomplish the feat.





_Proudly demonstrative of her nautical and exploratory heritage through Captain James Cook’s vessel, and bearing the colors of the elementary and secondary schools which named her, Endeavour’s first patch is bordered by the names of her first seven astronauts: Commander Dan Brandenstein, Pilot Kevin Chilton and Mission Specialists Rick Hieb, Bruce Melnick, Pierre Thuot, Kathy “K.T.” Thornton, and Tom Akers. Image Credit: NASA_

Their consensus: It was doable. On the evening of 12 May, Capcom Charles “Sam” Gemar radioed Mission Control’s approval to the crew.

Late on 13 May, the third attempt got underway. Truss members belonging to the Assembly of Station by EVA Methods (ASEM)—a Space Station Freedom demonstration payload, to be used during EVA tests later in the mission—were removed and arranged into a triangular structure for Thuot, Hieb, and Akers to anchor their feet. Brandenstein positioned the orbiter directly beneath Intelsat 603, and controllers verified that its surface temperatures would not exceed the 160 degrees Celsius (320 degrees Fahrenheit) touch limit of the astronauts’ gloves. With Hieb close to the starboard payload bay wall, Akers in the center, attached to an ASEM strut, and Thuot on the end of the RMS on the port side, the astronauts could do little but watch as Endeavour drew closer. They studied its slow rotation for about 15 minutes, until, on Hieb’s call, they moved in for the capture.

All at once, Thuot spotted a slight wobble. He called the attempt off.

Shortly thereafter, they tried again. This time, at last, the three men grabbed the satellite and held it firmly. The time was 7:55 p.m. EDT. “I actually thought the other two guys had stopped it from rotating,” Thuot said later, “so little force had I applied. Very gently, the thing came to a stop.” From the flight deck, Dan Brandenstein asked them if they had a good grasp. On Thuot’s response in the affirmative, the commander was able to advise ground controllers, with more than a hint of relief: “Houston, I think we’ve got a satellite!”

With Intelsat snared, the astronauts removed the steering wheel and installed an extension to the capture bar, which Melnick grappled using the RMS. The satellite was then positioned above its 23,000-pound (10,430-kg) Orbus-21 solid-fueled perigee kick motor, which sat vertically in its cradle. After closing four docking clamps to secure the pair, and attaching two electrical umbilicals between Intelsat and the motor itself, the spacewalkers set a pair of deployment timers and retreated to Endeavour’s airlock. Meanwhile, Kathy Thornton prepared to activate the springs to deploy the payload. At first, it did not move. “They had made a change in the wiring of the deploy system,” recalled Brandenstein, “and the change never made it through the process [and] never got into the checklist. Fortunately, somebody in Mission Control apparently knew about it. They just quick called up a different switch sequence and she did that sequence and it went.” Deployment occurred at 12:53 a.m. EDT on 14 May, and the satellite vacated the payload bay. Less than an hour later, the three spacewalkers repressurized the airlock and returned inside the cabin.

Speaking a decade or more after the flight, Dan Brandenstein regarded those few days of STS-49 as “one of those missions from hell,” and for newly-appointed NASA Administrator Dan Goldin it was truly “a baptism of fire.” Nevertheless, at 1:25 p.m. EDT on the following day, 15 May, Intelsat 603’s new motor ignited perfectly, and it was on-station in geosynchronous orbit by the 21st. As well as becoming the first shuttle crew to accomplish as many as three EVAs in a single mission—a record which they would break with a _fourth_ excursion—the triumphant three-man spacewalk established itself as the longest in history. Their eight hours and 29 minutes outside would remain unbroken until March 2001. By now, the difficulties had prompted the Mission Management Team (MMT) to extend STS-49 by 48 hours from its planned seven-day duration. On 14 May, a record-breaking fourth EVA got underway when Akers and Kathy Thornton ventured outside for the ASEM station tests.





_Kathy “K.T.” Thornton and Tom Akers participate in the mission’s record-breaking fourth EVA to perform Space Station evaluations. Photo Credit: NASA_

Originally scheduled to involve two EVAs—one by Thornton and Akers and the second by Thuot and Hieb—the Intelsat 603 retrieval forced the cancelation of one spacewalk.

Activities included the construction of a pyramid-shaped truss, the unberthing of a Mission-Peculiar Equipment Support Structure (MPESS)—maneuverd by the RMS—and efforts to evaluate the ability of spacewalkers to work at positions “above” and “forward” of the payload bay, including “over the nose” of the shuttle. The MPESS contained two node boxes for the pyramid, a releasable grapple fixture and interface plate, and a truss leg and strut dispenser. Five crew rescue techniques were to be trialed, including a lasso-like “astro-rope,” a seven-section telescoping pole, and a hand-held propulsive device. The latter, according to NASA’s STS-49 press kit, was “a redesigned hand-held maneuvering unit from the Skylab program,” in which pressurized nitrogen jets were employed as thrusters.

During their seven hours and 43 minutes in the payload bay, Thornton and Akers completed the construction and disassembly of the ASEM attachment fixture, tested the propulsive device, affixed six of eight legs onto the MPESS and, unexpectedly, were called upon to manually stow Endeavour’s Ku-band antenna, which had experienced a positioning motor failure. According to NASA’s post-mission report, this EVA was planned to be RMS-intensive, although the mechanical arm was used to accomplish only a single ASEM task and the spacewalkers’ timeline was further impacted by the Ku-band activity.

Returning inside Endeavour’s airlock after the excursion, the astronauts of STS-49 could now boast four EVAs—lasting a cumulative of 25 hours and 27 minutes—which had snatched success from the fangs of defeat. The physical appearance of the four spacewalkers in their snow-white suits was also quite distinct from previous missions, all of which had featured no more than two members. In order to distinguish them, Thuot (designated “EV1”) wore red stripes around his suit legs, whilst Hieb (EV2) wore a pure-white suit, and, for the first time, Thornton (EV3) wore dashed stripes around her suit legs and Akers (EV4) wore red diagonal hatches around his suit legs. In spite of the remarkable achievement of performing four back-to-back EVAs on a single mission, only relatively minor glitches plagued the spacewalkers—a failed joint on one of the portable foot restraints, a loud noise over the headsets when power tools were being used, and a battery problem, amongst others—and their suits held up exceptionally well.

In the aftermath of STS-49, the crew themselves would highlight the fact that their mission raised awareness of the need for more EVA experience in the years before the start of construction of Space Station Freedom. At one stage, in the late 1980s, as many as four EVAs per week were envisaged—an astonishing estimate which NASA Administrator Dick Truly deemed totally unacceptable. Yet as the plans for the station matured, it was obvious that the construction process would be EVA-intensive and _that_ required different ways of working and training. “We have to take a good look at the time it takes to do a job,” Brandenstein said. “We need better ways to train so that the learning curve isn’t quite so steep.” Pierre Thuot added that the Intelsat 603 retrieval task was something that the crew “couldn’t train for fully.”

After their return from STS-49, Kathy Thornton and Tom Akers—who would go on to service the Hubble Space Telescope (HST) together in December 1993—took an active role in developing new EVA methods in the Weightless Environment Training Facility (WET-F) in Houston. “Even in the tank, you still have the resistance of water,” Dan Brandenstein recalled, “so you can kick your feet and swim. In zero gravity, we’ve got movies of Tom going to that instinct. You can see him kicking his legs and _nothing’s_ happening. Also, if you move something in the water, as soon as you _stop_ moving it, the reason is the _water_ stops it. But in zero gravity, you start moving something and it just keeps moving until you come back on it. They made some significant chances in the tank training procedures.” The first flight of Endeavour’s career had gone spectacularly well and had played a significant role in shaping the missions—and the assembly of the space station—which would follow.


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## SvenSvensonov

*KSC to Build New Launch Complex 39C, Opens Opportunities for Small-Class Launch Providers*

KSC to Build New Launch Complex 39C, Opens Opportunities for Small-Class Launch Providers « AmericaSpace






_As KSC transitions to a multiuser spaceport, more and more opportunities are becoming available to businesses both big and small in the commercial space industry. Image Credit: Talia Landman / AmericaSpace_

Earlier this week NASA announced plans to build a new launch complex for small class launch vehicles at the agency’s Kennedy Space Center (KSC) in Florida. The new launch pad, Launch Complex-39C (LC-39C), will cater to private businesses looking to develop commercial space capabilities for launching small satellites. This goes hand-in-hand with KSC’s vision of becoming the world’s premier multiuser spaceport, and the development of this new launch complex adds to the versatility of the transforming space center by providing opportunities to ventures and start-up companies in the small satellite industry.

Located at Launch Pad 39B, which is currently undergoing renovation and construction to support launching NASA’s Space Launch System (SLS) rocket, the smaller LC-39C will have the capability to support small class launch vehicles that produce thrust under 200,000 lbs. A significant increase in the development of small satellites, and the lack of capabilities to launch them, recognizes the need for an appropriate launch complex.

Tom Engler, deputy director of Center Planning and Development at KSC, told AmericaSpace that the small class vehicle market was an exciting area for potential commercial space growth.

“This market is being driven through the development of small satellites, mainly in the 3U to 6U range, typically weighing in the 50 to 100 kg range. Due to the significant increase in the desire to develop and launch these small satellites and the lack of capacity in the current launch market, there is significant interest in the development of a small launcher to specifically launch these satellites,” explained Engler.

The development of a small launcher for small class vehicles to launch payloads into low-Earth orbit (LEO) is part of the 21st Century Launch Complex initiative at KSC. It is a mobile system called the Deployable Launch System (DLS) and based on a concept design that NASA describes as a “launch pad in a box.” The supporting ground equipment consists of a launch mount, flame deflector, propellant servicing system, and other basic components necessary for launching small class launch vehicles. The project is managed by the KSC Ground Systems Development and Operations (GSDO) Program and plans on being operational by the end of 2015.





_Deployable Launch System Concepts. (Top) Vertical processing/integration in the Vehicle Assembly Building (VAB), with transport to the pad. (Bottom) Vertical integration at the launch pad.
Image Credit: NASA_

There are multiple processing concepts that can be supported by the small class vehicle infrastructure at the space center. The small launch vehicle can be vertically processed/integrated in the Vehicle Assembly Building (VAB) and transported to the pad, or vertically integrated at the launch pad.

The Deployable Launch Structure (DLS) will have a total weight capacity of around 130,000 and thrust capability of 200,000 lbs. An umbilical tower will have to be provided by the customer.

According to NASA, the Universal Propellant Servicing System (UPSS) will consist of liquid oxygen (LOX) and liquid methane (LCH4) pressure fed propellant transfer systems with expendable storage volume. The UPSS will also be adaptable to other propellants like liquid hydrogen (LH2), kerosene, and more.

Engler told AmericaSpace that the “overall business for small launch vehicles could grow significantly once they begin flying to low earth orbit.” The capability to launch from KSC will further the development of the small class launch vehicle launch market and bring more growth to the area.

For Glenn Wagner, the opportunity to launch small vehicles from KSC will greatly benefit his start-up business. Wagner is CEO of WAGNER Industries in Orlando and a rapid prototyping engineer. He currently leads a team of young engineers and researchers building small launch vehicles for small payloads. Wagner was motivated to begin his venture company when he realized the complications associated with launching small payloads.

“Current launching costs of small payloads are near $40,000 per kg. Dedicated slots are limited. Secondary slots can be denied on date of launch. Waits average up to three years. Its cause is from a backlog of mini satellites pre-certified for a flight slot, and lack of dedicated launch slots and secondary launch slots to provide for them. The backlog itself is currently at eight years total with many mini satellites needed to be re-certified if they do not launch.”





_A map provided in the KSC Master Plan shows an additional launch complex (LC-39D) and a Vertical Landing Area above LC-39B and -39C. There is also a “Notional Small Vehicle Launch Site” between LC-39A and LC-41.
Image credit: NASA_

Wagner has been eyeing locations like Black Rock in Nevada and Cecil Field in Florida for launching his rockets. “Few locations to launch from,” he said. “Kodiak, Mojave, [and] Space Florida offer locations however space is limited to proven vehicles. Blackrock is available to many for ideal testing however distance and location are not ideal for launching. Launching from 39C would enable close proximity launches for our company. Potentially lowering launch costs overall.”

WAGNER Industries caters to a variety of customers in a number of diverse markets. Wagner said his specific customers for launches are those interested in interspatial communications, oceanic and geographic data, and information for humanitarian causes. The Orlando start-up currently has three launch vehicles in development: Konshu 1 (10 kg), Konshu VCLS (60 kg), and Konshu 2 (125 kg).

A map of future vertical launch areas provided in the KSC Master Plan shows various locations for future commercial use. It is important to note that there is a fourth launch complex, 39D, to the upper left of 39C and a vertical landing complex. There is also a “Notional Small Vehicle Launch Site Area” between LC-39A (operated by SpaceX) and LC-41 (operated by United Launch Alliance). AmericaSpace reached out to Engler about whether or not NASA plans on building an additional launch complex in the near future.

“KSC has released an Announcement for Proposals and a separate Notice of Availability that allows for commercial development of vacant land as launch sites and associated processing facilities and part of the implementation of the KSC Master Plan,” said Engler.

NASA recently created an Announcement for Proposals (AFP) for “launch service providers interested in developing vertical launch capabilities on KSC property in accordance with the KSC Master Plan.” Undeveloped land is being offered for commercial purposes to private companies that fit the Vertical Launch requirements. NASA does not expect to benefit from this AFP but instead promote National Space Policy.

According to the Agency Announcement for Proposals for Implementation of the KSC Master Plan, the government objectives for this are:


Increase commercial access to space
Enhance U.S. commercial competitiveness in the space launch industry
Diversify the user base and launch capabilities at KSC
Promote public-private partnerships to build, expand, modernize, or operate space launch and reentry infrastructure, through launch complex development at KSC
Not only is there a new launch pad for small class launch vehicles undergoing development, but there is land available for potential launching and landing sites as well. Business ventures and start-ups are invited to attend an Industry Day on June 16 to visit the sites and gain a better understanding of the opportunities being made available at KSC. Those interesting in attending Industry Day must fill out a request and have it completed and turned in to the Agreement Officer by 12 p.m. EDT on June 15, 2015.

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## Hamartia Antidote

John Young: The Prolific Astronaut





John Young, the ninth man to walk on the moon, flew on three NASA programs: Gemini, Apollo and the space shuttle.

John Young first joined NASA as an astronaut when the agency was flying two-man space capsules. He left when the agency was flying the space shuttle. In between, he flew six space missions – the first person to do so.

In his decades with the agency, Young racked up several milestones. He made it to the moon's neighborhood twice, and walked on it once. He commanded the first space shuttle flight and then came back into space yet again to command another. His flight experience spanned three different programs: Gemini, Apollo and the space shuttle.




hot-rodding on the moon during Apollo 16





first Space Shuttle flight

-------------------------------------------------------

What a lucky guy! The only man to walk on the moon AND fly on the Space Shuttle.

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## SvenSvensonov

*Astronomers Trace Spiral Structure of Milky Way With WISE*

Astronomers Trace Spiral Structure of Milky Way With WISE « AmericaSpace





_Using data from NASA’s WISE spacecraft, astronomers were able to trace the shape of our Milky Way galaxy’s spiral arms, by revealing the presence of hundreds of open clusters of very young stars shrouded in dust, called embedded clusters, which are known to reside in spiral arms. The image shows the location of the newly discovered stellar clusters along the Milky Way’s spiral arms. Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/R. Hurt (SSC/Caltech)_

In the fictional universe of Star Trek, the entire Milky Way galaxy is mapped in great detail and divided into four quadrants, each one with its own set of alien civilisations that are at the center of the series’ drama. In real life, this level of detailed mapping of our home galaxy still is the stuff of science fiction, with only small portions of our galactic neighborhood being having been charted in any significant detail. A new series of observations from NASA’s WISE spacecraft now comes to enhance our view of the Milky Way, allowing astronomers to trace its spiral structure by unveiling hundreds of previously unseen star clusters that were embedded deep within molecular clouds of dust and gas.

Ever since Edwin Hubble established in the early 1920’s that our 100,000 light-year-wide Milky Way was just one of the hundreds of billions of galaxies that populate the Universe, astronomers have been struggling to find more about the nature and overall structure of our expansive galactic complex. Comparative studies with ground-based telescopes of the Milky Way with other galaxies during the mid-20th century, had indicated that our own galaxy is a spiral one similar to the emblematic Pinwheel Galaxy, or M101, which is one of the most-known spiral galaxies in the local Universe. But what is the exact structure of the Milky Way? Since our Solar System is located within the galactic disk we can’t obtain an overview photo of our galaxy from above similar to those of other galaxies that have been taken with the Hubble Space Telescope and other space observatories. Nevertheless, our position inside the galactic plane gives us the opportunity to study the stellar population as well as the great amounts of interstellar gas and dust of the Milky Way to an extent that isn’t possible for even the nearest galaxies to our own. In this way, astronomers can gather valuable clues for deciphering our galaxy’s overall structure and morphology.





_An image collage of the Milky Way galaxy, as seen in various wavelengths across the entire electromagnetic spectrum. Image Credit: NASA Goddard Space Flight Center_

The advent of space-based infrared astronomy coupled with a long series of comprehensive all-sky surveys with ground-based radio telescopes that have taken place during the last half century, have provided great views into the plane of the Milky Way by allowing astronomers to penetrate the dust and gas of the interstellar medium which hinders observations in the visible part of the electromagnetic spectrum. The Two Micron All-Sky Survey, or 2MASS, which was a ground-based all-sky infrared survey that was conducted between 1997 and 2001 yielded many important discoveries, including the detection of hundreds of brown dwarfs and low mass stars within the Milky Way as well as the discovery of previously unseen open star clusters which are formed inside giant molecular clouds. The latter are mainly composed of very young and massive O and B-type blue and white stars with ages that are not greater than a few dozen million years, thus representing a brief evolutionary step in the lives of stars. Since the bulk of the galaxy’s stellar population is thought to form inside such open groups, the detailed study of the latter is fundamental in understanding stellar and galactic evolution in general as well as the overall structure of the galaxy itself. NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope has also been instrumental in this research effort. In 2005, the orbiting observatory made history by providing the first concrete evidence that the Milky Way isn’t just a simple spiral galaxy but a barred-spiral one instead, featuring a massive 27,000 light-year-wide bar that extends from its center. Subsequently, Spitzer caused much stir within the scientific community in 2008, when it returned tantalising evidence which had indicated at the time that the Milky Way might only have two major spiral arms instead of four as was previously thought to be the case. Then in 2013, the four-spiral arm picture of the Milky Way returned on the spotlight again, when the results of the all-sky survey in radio wavelengths revealed that our galaxy indeed had four spiral arms after all, each with a different stellar composition of old and read and blue and young stars respectively.

In their efforts to bring a greater consensus within the scientific community regarding the Milky Way’s true structure, a research team of astronomers from Brazil led by Denilso Camargo, an astronomer at the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul in Brazil, conducted a comprehensive analysis of archival data that had been taken with NASA’s Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer, or WISE. Launched in December 2009, WISE completed two high-resolution surveys of the entire sky at infrared wavelengths, before its hydrogen coolant eventually ran out in February 2011, allowing astronomers to discover hundreds of thousands of new previously unseen celestial objects within our home galaxy and beyond and peer deep into the massive molecular clouds of the Milky Way where star formation is actively taking place.





_A colour composite mosaic image of the Trapezium cluster, which is located at the central regions of the famous Orion Nebula. Such open star clusters have been of great importance to astronomers, in their efforts to decipher the true structure of the Milky Way. Image Credit: ESO/M.McCaughrean et al. (AIP)_

A sub-category of open star clusters is that of Embedded Clusters, which can be seen as the precursors of the former – very young stellar aggregations in the earliest stages of their evolution that are still heavily immersed in the massive interstellar gas clouds from which they were formed. Since embedded clusters have very short lifespans, in the order of a few million light years, they are excellent tracers of the Milky Way’s spiral structure inside which most of open star clusters lie. “It is widely accepted that spiral arms are the preferred sites of star formation and, as most stars form within embedded clusters, the arms are sites of cluster formation,” write the researchers in their study which was published in the May 20 online edition of the_Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society_. “Star formation may occur after the collapse and fragmentation of giant molecular clouds that occur within spiral arms transforming dense gas clumps into embedded clusters. Based on the absence of massive carbon monoxide-bright molecular clouds in the inter-arm space, [previous studies] argue that molecular clouds must form in spiral arms and be short-lived (less than 10 million light-years). Then, the spiral arms may be traced by young star clusters, especially embedded clusters that have not had enough time to move far from their birth places.” Operating under this assumption, Camargo team searched the WISE archives extensively, and was able to discover a total of 437 new embedded and open star clusters within the galactic plane, which allowed the researchers to put more constrains on the expected structure of the Milky Way.

Analysis of the WISE images as well as those taken with the 2MASS survey, revealed that in accordance with the results of previous similar studies, open clusters aren’t distributed randomly in interstellar space but follow a distinct spiral pattern instead that extends outwards dozens of thousands of light-years away from the center of the Milky Way across the galactic plane. The results of the recent study by Camargo’s team, which focused on seven of the newly discovered embedded clusters out of the total 437, showed that the latter were distributed along three of the Milky Way’s spiral arms, predominantly the Sagitarius-Carina, Perseus, and the Outer arm. “Most embedded clusters in the present sample are distributed in the second and third quadrants along the Perseus arm,” write the researchers in their study. “In this region, the Perseus arm is located at galactocentric distances in the range of 9 kiloparsec [approximately 29,000 light-years] in the second quadrant to 10.5 kiloparsecs in the third quadrant for a distance of the Sun to the Galactic Centre of 7.2 kpc [approximately 23,000 light-years], or in the range of 9.8–11.3 kpc for a distance of the Sun from the galactic center of 8 kpc…The Sagittarius–Carina spiral arm in the region traced by our embedded cluster sample is at a galactocentric distance of approximately 6.4 kpc [20,000 light-years]…In [previous studies] by Camargo et al. (2013), based on the distribution of embedded clusters we confirmed that the Outer arm extends along the second and third Galactic quadrants with galactocentric distances in the range of 12.5–14.5 kpc [40,000-48,000 light-years] for a distance of the Sun from the galactic center of 7.2 kpc…There is a large discrepancy between the stellar Outer arm and the gaseous Outer arm with a distance larger than 20 kpc [65,000 light-years], but it appears to be a common feature for large spiral galaxies.”





_An image taken with the WISE spacecraft, showing the newly discovered stellar cluster aggregate in the Milky Way’s Perseus arm. Image Credit: D. Camargo et al (2015)/Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, Vol. 450, Issue 4._

These new results by Camargo’s team come to complement a previous study by the same researchers, which recently unveiled the presence of two young open star clusters which were quite surprisingly found to lie approximately 16,000 light-years below the plain of the Milky Way, offering tantalising hints about our galaxy’s tumultuous history which possibly included great tidal interactions between the latter and its neighboring satellite galaxies, like the Large and Small Magellanic Clouds. “Our work shows that the space around the Galaxy is a lot less empty that we thought,” commented Camargo regarding the two newly found clusters far beyond the galactic disk. “The new clusters of stars are truly exotic. In a few million years, any inhabitants of planets around these stars will have a grand view of the outside of the Milky Way, something no human being will probably ever experience.”

As is always the case in astronomy and astrophysics, the study of a certain class of celestial objects, can provide great insights to other members of the cosmic zoo as well. “The Milky Way is our galactic home and studying its structure gives us a unique opportunity to understand how a very typical spiral galaxy works in terms of where stars are born and why,” says Dr. Melvin Hoare, a professor of astrophysics at the University of Leeds in the UK.

The detailed charting of the Milky Way galaxy as portrayed in the fictional universe of Star Trek may be the stuff of science fiction, but astronomers’ mapping efforts of our home galaxy in real life, nevertheless constitute a fine example of a science fiction concept that is slowly being turned into reality.

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## SvenSvensonov

*NASA Prepares for First Interplanetary CubeSats on Agency’s Next Mission to Mars*

NASA Prepares for First Interplanetary CubeSat Mission | NASA





_NASA's two small MarCO CubeSats will be flying past Mars in 2016 just as NASA's next Mars lander, InSight, is descending through the Martian atmosphere and landing on the surface. MarCO, for Mars Cube One, will provide an experimental communications relay to inform Earth quickly about the landing.
Credits: NASA/JPL-Caltech_

When NASA launches its next mission on the journey to Mars – a stationary lander in 2016 – the flight will include two CubeSats. This will be the first time CubeSats have flown in deep space. If this flyby demonstration is successful, the technology will provide NASA the ability to quickly transmit status information about the main spacecraft after it lands on Mars.

The twin communications-relay CubeSats, being built by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), Pasadena, California, constitute a technology demonstration called Mars Cube One (MarCO). CubeSats are a class of spacecraft based on a standardized small size and modular use of off-the-shelf technologies. Many have been made by university students, and dozens have been launched into Earth orbit using extra payload mass available on launches of larger spacecraft.





_The full-scale mock-up of NASA's MarCO CubeSat held by Farah Alibay, a systems engineer for the technology demonstration, is dwarfed by the one-half-scale model of NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter behind her.
Credits: NASA/JPL-Caltech_

The basic CubeSat unit is a box roughly 4 inches (10 centimeters) square. Larger CubeSats are multiples of that unit. MarCO's design is a six-unit CubeSat – about the size of a briefcase -- with a stowed size of about 14.4 inches (36.6 centimeters) by 9.5 inches (24.3 centimeters) by 4.6 inches (11.8 centimeters).

MarCO will launch in March 2016 from Vandenberg Air Force Base, California on the same United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket as NASA’s Interior Exploration using Seismic Investigations, Geodesy and Heat Transport (InSight) lander. Insight is NASA’s first mission to understand the interior structure of the Red Planet. MarCO will fly by Mars while InSight is landing, in September 2016.

“MarCO is an experimental capability that has been added to the InSight mission, but is not needed for mission success,” said Jim Green, director of NASA’s planetary science division at the agency’s headquarters in Washington. “MarCO will fly independently to Mars."

During InSight’s entry, descent and landing (EDL) operations on Sept. 28, 2016, the lander will transmit information in the UHF radio band to NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) flying overhead. MRO will forward EDL information to Earth using a radio frequency in the X band, but cannot simultaneously receive information over one band while transmitting on another. Confirmation of a successful landing could be received by the orbiter more than an hour before it’s relayed to Earth.

MarCO’s radio is about softball-size and provides both UHF (receive only) and X-band (receive and transmit) functions capable of immediately relaying information received over UHF.

The two CubeSats will separate from the Atlas V booster after launch and travel along their own trajectories to the Red Planet. After release from the launch vehicle, MarCO's first challenges are to deploy two radio antennas and two solar panels. The high-gain, X-band antenna is a flat panel engineered to direct radio waves the way a parabolic dish antenna does. MarCO will be navigated to Mars independently of the InSight spacecraft, with its own course adjustments on the way.

Ultimately, if the MarCO demonstration mission succeeds, it could allow for a “bring-your-own” communications relay option for use by future Mars missions in the critical few minutes between Martian atmospheric entry and touchdown.

By verifying CubeSats are a viable technology for interplanetary missions, and feasible on a short development timeline, this technology demonstration could lead to many other applications to explore and study our solar system.

JPL manages MarCO, InSight and MRO for NASA's Science Mission Directorate in Washington. Technology suppliers for MarCO include: Blue Canyon Technologies of Boulder, Colorado, for the attitude-control system; VACCO Industries of South El Monte, California, for the propulsion system; AstroDev of Ann Arbor, Michigan, for electronics; MMA Design LLC, also of Boulder, for solar arrays; and Tyvak Nano-Satellite Systems Inc., a Terran Orbital Company in San Luis Obispo, California, for the CubeSat dispenser system.

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## SvenSvensonov

*XCOR’s Lynx Spaceplane Meets Development Milestone Leading Up to First Test Flight*

XCOR’s Lynx Spaceplane Meets Development Milestone Leading Up to First Test Flight « AmericaSpace





_The XCOR Lynx Mark I vehicle being fabricated at the Mojave Air and Space Port in Mojave, Calif. Photo: Mike Massee / XCOR Aerospace_

XCOR Aerospace proudly announced continued progress on its Lynx spaceplane, a suborbital spacecraft designed to take humans and payloads to the edge of space. The Lynx strakes, a major portion of the Lynx aerodynamic shell, were successfully bonded to the fuselage of the Lynx Mark I spacecraft on April 30, marking a major milestone for the company as they can now begin the electric wiring and installing process on the Lynx reusable launch vehicle (RLV).

The Lynx is the company’s two-seat, piloted space transport vehicle and its entry into the competitive commercial RLV market. Lynx will take off and land horizontally, like an aircraft, but instead of a jet or piston engine the Lynx will use its own reusable rocket propulsion system of four XR-5K18 engines to safely depart and return on a runway. The vehicle will take humans and payloads on a 30-minute journey to the edge of space, topping out at 330,000 feet (100 km).





_Four XR-5K18 rocket engines will power XCOR’s Lynx launch vehicles. Credit: XCOR Aerospace_

The first XCOR Lynx suborbital vehicle is currently undergoing production at XCOR Aerospace Hangar 61 in Mojave, Calif. The 10,375-square-foot hangar houses their team of more than fifty skilled employees at the Mojave Air and Space Port. Rapid development on the Lynx Mark I spacecraft means that the company is coming closer and closer to Lynx full assembly and first flight. The vehicle will take a pilot and a participant to the edge of space and provide inexpensive suborbital launch services to numerous markets. The Lynx Mark I is the company’s initial flight test vehicle and is expected to begin a flight test program later this year.

The integration of the strakes to the Lynx Mark I spacecraft marks a big step toward final vehicle assembly for the growing aerospace company.






“Today marks another solid milestone in our progress toward first flight, clearing the path for a series of important moments that will accelerate Lynx development,” said XCOR President and Chief Executive Officer Jay Gibson.

Each strake is subdivided into four separate fuel tanks. They are pressurized during flight and provide the engines with a combustible hydrocarbon liquid used in jet engines called kerosene. Two reaction control thrusters and a main landing gear assembly are stored inside each strake. The lynx will use the reaction control thrusters while it is out of the atmosphere and making altitude changes.











Now that the strakes are successfully bonded to the vehicle, Chief Technology Officer Jeff Greason described the next steps for Lynx development: “We have an open path toward the integration of a number of subsystems, and this means we will now start electrical wiring, plumbing, installing the control system, and populating the landing gear bays.”

Last December, just five months ago, XCOR reached a significant milestone after it bonded the cockpit and the carry-through spar on to the back end of the Lynx fuselage. This crucial step had to be completed before the strakes were to be attached.

In order to carefully place the spar, the Lynx rocket truss was removed from its test stand and placed on the vehicle. Composite technicians worked tirelessly to perfectly align the spar and bond it in place.

“The carry-through spar is the heart of the loading structure on any winged craft – it supports the primary load of the wings and carries that load through the fuselage,” explained Jeff Greason. “Attaching the spar on a composite vehicle is a one-way operation, so it has to be done right the first time.”





_The fuselage and cockpit with carry-through spar mounted. Photo Credit: XCOR Aerospace_

The entire structure was put under a pressure test after the spar was successfully installed. It experienced pressure equivalent to a 6 g re-entry with the cabin pressured to 11 PSI.

The XCOR Lynx RLV is unique in many aspects. Unlike vertical rocket launches and air-launched rocket vehicles, the aircraft-like abilities allow for much more flexibility and re-use. The Lynx will provide up to four flights per day from a licensed spaceport with a 2,400-meter (7,900-ft) runway. It will have a quick turnaround of just two hours and go on 40 flights before needing routine maintenance. It will be affordable to operate and maintain and be heavily focused on providing safe and reliable flights to space.

An all-composite airframe makes the Lynx lightweight and incredibly sturdy. It is able to withstand the fiery re-entry from space because it is protected by a thermal protection system (TPS) on its nose and leading edges. Its wing area is structured for landing at average speeds around 90 knots. The entire spacecraft measures to be about 9 meters (~30 ft) in length with a double-delta wing, stretching out to a wide 7.5 meters (~24 ft) in length.






XCOR has several models of Lynx production vehicles that each serves a particular set of needs and/or markets.

The *Lynx Mark I*, as described above, is the prototype test vehicle currently under development at XCOR Aerospace Hangar 61. It will be used to test the various sub-systems within the aircraft such as structure, aeroshell, tanks, life support, propulsion, aerodynamics, and re-entry heating. It is designed to reach an altitude of 200,000 feet (~61 km). Eventually Lynx Mark I will be used to train pilots and crew for the Lynx Mark II.

The *Lynx Mark II* is designed to service both the space tourism market and markets that will utilize the payload capacity for microgravity research and experiments. The Mark II uses the same propulsion and avionics systems as its predecessor (Mark I) but give higher performance because of its lower dry weight. This vehicle has a lightweight composite LOX tank and other key components that are exclusive to the company. It is designed to fly up to 328,000 feet (~100 km) and take payloads and participants on suborbital trips to the edge of space.

Passengers can hitch an out-of-this-world experience aboard the Lynx for $95,000 a flight. Prior to the flight, participants will go through medical screenings, seminars, and g-force training to familiarize them with the suborbital spaceflight experience. The participant will sit to the right of the pilot inside the pressurized cabin and wear a pressure suit for added safety. Pilot and passenger will take off from a runway into the black sky. They will view the curvature of Earth and enjoy about 4.6 minutes in microgravity at apogee (328,000 ft). The spaceplane will then descend to lower altitudes and land on the same runway it took off from.






The *Lynx Mark III* is a more advanced version of the Mark II. It comes with the capability to carry an external dorsal pod with a total payload capacity of 650kg. The pod can host either a payload research experiment or an upper stage to launch a satellite into low earth orbit (LEO). The Mark III encompasses upgraded landing gear, aerodynamics, core structural improvements, and more, over the Mark II. The Lynx Mark III features a power-packed propulsion package to transport heavier payloads into space.

Four XR-5K18 rocket engines will power XCOR’s Lynx launch vehicles, each producing 12.9 kN (2900 lbf) thrust by burning a concoction of liquid oxygen and kerosene. The first hot fire of this rocket engine was in December 2008 and continues to be tested today.

XCOR is currently building a Research and Development Center in Midland, Texas, at Midland International Airport. The aerospace company plans on opening an operational and manufacturing site at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida, with the aid of Space Florida.

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## SvenSvensonov

*New 'Year of Pluto' Documentary Details Historic New Horizons Mission and Upcoming July Flyby*

New ‘Year of Pluto’ Documentary Details Historic New Horizons Mission and Upcoming July Flyby « AmericaSpace





_An artist’s illustration of New Horizons as it approaches the Pluto system for its close encounter at 35,000 mph on July 14, 2015. NASA has released a new documentary, Year of Pluto, as the anticipation builds towards the spacecraft;s historic encounter this summer. Image Credit: NASA_

The anticipation is building among the space and science community around the world as NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft has its sights set on the Pluto system, nearly 3 billion miles from home, taking aim for a historic first reconnaissance flyby of the tiny world that was demoted to a “dwarf planet” by the astronomy community several years ago. Currently cruising through the outer solar system at about 32,400 mph (as of June 12), the spacecraft is now nearly 32-times further from the sun than Earth is, taking aim for its long-awaited close encounter of this mysterious place that astronomers really do not know much about.

Now just 31 days before the close encounter, NASA has released a new hour-long documentary, titled “Year of Pluto”, which takes on the hard science and provides answers to how the decade-long mission came about and why it matters. Interviews with Dr. James Green, John Spencer, Fran Bagenal, Mark Showalter and others share how New Horizons will answer many questions, effectively writing the book on Pluto for generations to come and laying the road for future spacecraft to follow, same as has played out with NASA’s Mars exploration missions over the past several decades.





*WATCH:*_NASA’s “Year of Pluto” documentary and the historic New Horizons mission_
_
*AmericaSpace has covered New Horizons in-depth for several years, and will be providing regular updates as they come on our New Horizons Mission Tracker. Viewers can follow any time 24/7 for mission updates, new images and links to all of our New Horizons coverage and interviews – past and present. *
_
Now, almost ten years after it launched with the fastest escape velocity of any man-made object ever made, New Horizons is knocking on Hades’ door, and coincidentally, New Horizons’ arrival at Pluto in July will mark the 50th anniversary of the first-ever planetary imaging fly-by in the history of space exploration – Mariner 4’s fly by of Mars in July 1965.

Whichever way one looks at it, whether you believe Pluto to be a planet or not, our first visit by a machine fashioned by human hands promises to be an epochal moment in the history of our species; an illustrator of how far we have come, figuratively and literally, in just a handful of decades.





_New Horizons’ position as of June 12, 2015. Credit: NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Southwest Research Institute_

“The mission’s science and engineering teams have done a tremendous job of preparing for the Pluto system flyby, and we’re all very excited about all the new discoveries that await us when we get there,” said the mission’s Principal Investigator, Dr. Alan Stern of the Southwest Research Institute, in a previous interview with AmericaSpace. “We’re also excited to bring back first time exploration to the public’s attention – nothing like this has happened since Voyager reached Neptune in 1989!”

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## SvenSvensonov

*Elon Musk's Space Internet Plan Is Moving Forward*






In yet another episode of ‘What crazy idea is Elon Musk trying to disrupt the world with this week?,’ the billionaire’s space company has officially requested FCC permission to begin testing satellites for what could become a globe-spanning internet.

Rumors of said spacenet began to crystallize this past January, when _Businessweek_ published a report outlining SpaceX’s plan to cover every human being in a glorious blanket of high-speed wifi. Basically, Musk wants to use a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket to shoot a constellation of small satellites into low Earth orbit that’ll beam signals to the far corners of the planet. The space internet would eventually pick up a decent chunk of web traffic in urban and suburban regions, in addition to bringing billions of Internet-less people into the digital age.

That, at least, is the plan. And with the new FCC filing—which would allow SpaceX to test the antennae on its satellites and determine if they’re currently strong enough to send signals down to Earth—it’s one that the Musk seems to have a vested interest in pushing forward. If the FCC permits it, SpaceX could begin launching test satellites as early as next year. And if all goes well, the service could be up and running in as few as five.

But. There’s one big issue here that SpaceX seems to be skirting, and that’s the price tag for the whole shebang. Deploying satellites closer to home makes good sense from a speed perspective—it cuts down on latency, the time delay issue that makes traditional satellite internet (which involves much larger satellites positioned much higher above the planet) vexingly slow compared with fiber optic connections. But there’s a tradeoff— the signal from low-orbiting satellites won’t be able to cover nearly as much of the planet. So, you’ll need a lot of satellites. Four thousand, according to Musk’s latest math.

As Wired discusses this week, constructing and deploying four thousand satellites, even into low Earth orbit, could end up being very, very expensive. Indeed, a Bill Gates-backed effort to create a low Earth orbit space internet in the 90s folded when costs ballooned out of control. And when you’re talking about creating a service that’s accessible to folks in developing countries, it goes without saying that it’s going to have to be dirt cheap.

We’ll just have to wait and see if SpaceX can hack it. At this point, anyone that can offer me the tiniest sliver of hope for a Comcast-free future has my blessing. Godspeed, Elon.

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## Hamartia Antidote

It took NASA 27 years to explore the other 7 primary planets in our solar system.
1962 Venus (fly by): Mariner 2 - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
1965 Mars (fly by): Mariner 4 - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
1973 Jupiter (fly by): Pioneer 10 - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
1974 Mercury (fly by): Mariner 10 - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
1979 Saturn (fly by): Pioneer 11 - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
1986 Uranus (fly by): Voyager 2 - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
1989 Neptune (fly by): Voyager 2 - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Now the final piece of planetary exploration is about to be completed...
2015 Pluto (fly by): New Horizons - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia


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## Hamartia Antidote

Of course the New Horizons probe to Pluto isn't the only subject on NASA's radar.

Check out the weird stuff their other probe ( Dawn (spacecraft) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia ) is finding on a large asteroid floating between Mars and Jupiter

News - 'Great Pyramid' spotted on Ceres by NASA's Dawn spacecraft - The Weather Network

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## SenLin

A new video from SpaceX showing their attempt to land a Falcon 9 rocket on the drone ship in April.






Hopefully on this Sunday they will have success.
A new era in space exploration awaits!


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## Fenrir

*These Astronauts Will be the First to Launch With SpaceX and Boeing*






NASA Thursday named the first four astronauts who will fly on the first U.S. commercial spaceflights in private crew transportation vehicles being built by Boeing and SpaceX – marking a major milestone towards restoring American human launches to U.S. soil as soon as mid-2017, if all goes well.

The four astronauts chosen are all veterans of flights on NASA’s Space Shuttles and to the International Space Station (ISS); Robert Behnken, Eric Boe, Douglas Hurley and Sunita Williams. They now form the core of NASA’s commercial crew astronaut corps eligible for the maiden test flights on board the Boeing CST-100 and Crew Dragon astronaut capsules.

Behnken, Boe and Hurley have each launched on two shuttle missions and Williams is a veteran of two long-duration flights aboard the ISS after launching on both the shuttle and Soyuz. All four served as military test pilots prior to being selected as NASA astronauts.

The experienced quartet of space flyers will work closely with Boeing andSpaceX as they begin training and prepare to launch aboard the first ever commercial ‘space taxi’ ferry flight missionsto the ISS and back – that will also end our sole source reliance on the Russian Soyuz capsule for crewed missions to low-Earth orbit and further serve to open up space exploration and transportation services to the private sector.

Boeing and SpaceX were awarded contracts by NASA Administrator Charles Bolden in September 2014 worth $6.8 Billion to complete the development and manufacture of the privately developed CST-100 andCrew Dragon astronaut transporters under the agency’s Commercial Crew Transportation Capability (CCtCap) program and NASA’s Launch America initiative.

“I am pleased to announce four American space pioneers have been selected to be the first astronauts to train to fly to space on commercial crew vehicles, all part of our ambitious plan to return space launches to U.S. soil, create good-paying American jobs and advance our goal of sending humans farther into the solar system than ever before,” said NASA Administrator Charles Bolden, in a statement.

“These distinguished, veteran astronauts are blazing a new trail — a trail that will one day land them in the history books and Americans on the surface of Mars.”






_NASA Administrator Charles Bolden (left) announces the winners of NASA’s Commercial Crew Program development effort to build America’s next human spaceships launching from Florida to the International Space Station. Speaking from Kennedy’s Press Site, Bolden announced the contract award to Boeing and SpaceX to complete the design of the CST-100 and Crew Dragon spacecraft. Former astronaut Bob Cabana, center, director of NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida, Kathy Lueders, manager of the agency’s Commercial Crew Program, and former International Space Station Commander Mike Fincke also took part in the announcement. Credit: Ken Kremer_

The selection of astronauts for rides with NASA’s Commercial Crew Program (CCP) comes almost exactly four years to the day since the last American manned space launch of Space Shuttle Atlantis on the STS-135 mission to the space station on July 8, 2011 from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

Hurley was a member of the STS-135 crew and served as shuttle pilot under NASA’s last shuttle commander, Chris Ferguson, who is now Director of Boeing’s CST-100 commercial crew program. Read my earlier exclusive interviews with Ferguson about the CST-100 – here andhere.

Since the retirement of the shuttle orbiters, all American and ISS partner astronauts have been forced to hitch a ride on the Soyuz for flights to the ISS and back, at a current cost of over $70 million per seat.

“Our plans to return launches to American soil make fiscal sense,” Bolden elaborated. “It currently costs $76 million per astronaut to fly on a Russian spacecraft. On an American-owned spacecraft, the average cost will be $58 million per astronaut.

Behnken, Boe, Hurley and Williams are all eager to work with the Boeing and SpaceX teams to “understand their designs and operations as they finalize their Boeing CST-100 and SpaceXCrew Dragon spacecraft and operational strategies in support of their crewed flight tests and certification activities as part of their contracts with NASA.”

Until June 2015, Williams held the record for longest time in space by a woman, accumulating 322 days in orbit. Behnken is currently the chief of the astronaut core and conducted six space walks at the station. Boe has spent over 28 days in space and flew on the final mission of Space Shuttle Discovery in Feb. 2011 on STS-133.

The first commercial crew flights under the CCtCAP contract could take place in 2017 with at least one member of the two person crews being a NASA astronaut – who will be “on board to verify the fully-integrated rocket and spacecraft system can launch, maneuver in orbit, and dock to the space station, as well as validate all systems perform as expected, and land safely,” according to a NASA statement.

The second crew member could be a company test pilot as the details remain to be worked out.






_Boeing and SpaceX are building private spaceships to resume launching US astronauts from US soil to the International Space Station in 2017. Credit: NASA_

The actual launch date depends on the NASA budget allocation for the Commercial Crew Program approved by the US Congress.

Congress has never approved NASA’s full funding request for the CCP program and has again cut the program significantly in initial votes this year. So the outlook for a 2017 launch is very uncertain.

Were it not for the drastic CCP cuts we would be launching astronauts this year on the space taxis.

“Every dollar we invest in commercial crew is a dollar we invest in ourselves, rather than in the Russian economy,” Bolden emphasizes about the multifaceted benefits of the commercial crew initiative.

Under the CCtCAP contract, NASA recently ordered the agency’s first commercial crew mission from Boeing – as outlined in my story here.SpaceX will receive a similar CCtCAP mission order later this year.

At a later date, NASA will decide whether Boeing or SpaceX will launch the actual first commercial crew test flight mission to low Earth orbit.






_Boeing’s commercial CST-100 ‘Space Taxi’ will carry a crew of five astronauts to low Earth orbit and the ISS from US soil. Mockup with astronaut mannequins seated below pilot console and Samsung tablets was unveiled on June 9, 2014 at its planned manufacturing facility at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. Credit: Ken Kremer_

“This is a new and exciting era in the history of U.S. human spaceflight,” said Brian Kelly, director of Flight Operations at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston, in a statement.

“These four individuals, like so many at NASA and the Flight Operations Directorate, have dedicated their careers to becoming experts in the field of aeronautics and furthering human space exploration. The selection of these experienced astronauts who are eligible to fly aboard the test flights for the next generation of U.S. spacecraft to the ISS and low-Earth orbit ensures that the crews will be well-prepared and thoroughly trained for their missions.”

Both the CST-100 and Crew Dragon will typically carry a crew of four NASA or NASA-sponsored crew members, along with some 220 pounds of pressurized cargo. Each will also be capable of carrying up to seven crew members depending on how the capsule is configured.

The spacecraft will be capable to remaining docked at the station for up to 210 days and serve as an emergency lifeboat during that time.

The NASA CCtCAP contracts call for a minimum of two and a maximum potential of six missions from each provider.

The station crew will also be enlarged to seven people that will enable a doubling of research time.

The CST-100 will be carried to low Earth orbit atop a man-rated United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket launching from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, Florida. It enjoys a 100% success rate.

Boeing will first conduct a pair of unmanned and manned orbital CST-100 test flights earlier in 2017 in April and July, prior to the operational commercial crew rotation mission to confirm that their capsule is ready and able and met all certification milestone requirements set by NASA.

The Crew Dragon will launch atop a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket. It enjoyed a 100% success rate until last weeks launch on its 19th flight which ended with an explosion two minutes after liftoff from Cape Canaveral on June 28, 2015.

SpaceX conducted a successful Pad Abort Test of the Crew Dragon on May 6, as I reported here. The goal was to test the spacecrafts abort systems that will save astronauts lives in a split second in the case of a launch emergency such as occurred during the June 28 rocket failure in flight that was bound for the ISS with the initial cargo version of the SpaceX Dragon.

SpaceX plans an unmanned orbital test flight of Crew Dragon perhaps by the end of 2016. The crewed orbital test flight would follow sometime in 2017.

This post by Ken Kremer originally appeared at _Universe Today_.

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## Fenrir

*This is What We've Learned About Pluto in the Past 24 Hours*

New Horizons is racing to Pluto so quickly, we’re literally learning new things every single day. Exploration is a true planet-wide “Today I learned...” moment: we now know what makes up Pluto’s atmosphere, what makes up its ice cap, and exactly how big it is.






With data analyzed within the last day, researchers on the New Horizons team have processed enough Pluto flyby data to start nailing down all-new details. In the very first announcement of scientific discoveries from the New Horizons mission, we learned Pluto is the largest object in the Kuiper Belt, has gas escaping its atmosphere, and that the light-coloured polar cap is an ice cap.






_The latest, greatest image of Pluto captured on July 12, 2015 from a distance of 2.5 million kilometers (1.6 million miles). The heart rotating into view will be imaged in greater detail on July 14; the bullseye rotating out of view will not. Image credits: NASA/JHUAPL/SWRI_

Pluto is 2,370 kilometers (1,473 miles) in diameter, give or take 20 kilometers. This makes it undisputedly larger than Eris, the second largest object in the Kuiper Belt at 2,336 kilometers with a potential error of +/- 12 kilometers, and ends a decade-long debate over which object is larger. It’s been difficult to measure Pluto’s size because it has an atmosphere that acts as a mirage, blurring the boundaries of just how big the dwarf planet is. This new measurement sets off a whole train of new conclusions: it’s slightly larger than we thought it was, which paired with the mass that we already knew very well, means it’s lower density. A lower-density Pluto indicates it has a higher proportion of ice than we previously thought. That Pluto has more ice layered on its rocks might mean that its troposphere is lower than we thought (which has to-be-determined implications for atmospheric models), but also sets it compositionally apart from the smaller-but-heavier Eris.

Pluto’s largest moon Charon was far easier to pin down. Its lack of substantial atmosphere made it easy to determine the 1,208 kilometer (751 mile) diameter even using ground-based telescopes, although those numbers have now been confirmed. Today, New Horizon’s LORRI camera is peeking in on two of the smaller moons, Nix and Hydra. The wee moons are an estimated 35 kilometers (20 miles) and 45 kilometers (30 miles) across respectively, but we won’t be able to confirm those sizes until after processing today’s data. The tiniest moons Kerberos and Styx are even more wee and not nearly as bright, making them difficult to measure but we should be able to tease out their dimensions (and what’s happening with their weird orbits!) from later observations.






_Idealized Nix and Hydra dimensions, although we’re fairly certain the small moons will be far more irregular in shape. Image credit: JHUAPL/Google_

Meanwhile, we’ve started sniffing nitrogen escaping from Pluto. Our models anticipated we’d start detecting traces of the atmosphere about a day out from closest approach, but instead we started picking up traces a full five days away. That time difference equates to much farther away: the probe started picking up ionized nitrogen at around 6 million kilometers away from the dwarf planet instead of the predicted 1 to 2.5 million kilometers.

The early detection of nitrogen could mean anything from the source being stronger than we thought to the atmosphere being stripped from the dwarf planet more rapidly than we’ve modelled. It could also means something more exotic, like a yet-to-be-determined process concentrating the escaped gas and our probe just coincidentally intercepting the stream. Distinguishing between the options is going to take a lot more data, during which we’ll also be learning what else is in Pluto’s atmosphere, and if Charon and Pluto actually share an atmosphere within their odd little system.

Finally, those alleged ice caps on Pluto? They’re definitely made of ice — methane and nitrogen ice, specifically. If only the rest of the initial geological interpretations were so easy to confirm!






_Charon as seen on July 12, 2015 from a distance of 2.5 million kilometers (1.6 million miles). The potential chasms, craters, and ejecta rays are coming into focus. Image credits:NASA/JHUAPL/SWRI_

The New Horizons mission is going so incredibly well so far, with no new glitches to interrupt the collection of glorious data. In the next 24 hours, the probe will reach closest-approach, taking 150 photographs as it soars through the Pluto-Charon system and out into deeper space. Photograph resolution will improve by two orders of magnitude to 100 meters per pixel, putting all the current “best ever” images to shame. We’ll be live-streaming the closest approach celebration at 7:30am Eastern Time for everyone who wants to gleefully cheer on the probe in real time. The probe will be out of communication most of the day as it’ll be busy collecting data, but we’ve asked it to phone home by 8:30pm on Tuesday night.

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## Fenrir

*The Curiosity Rover Is Helping NASA Study the Far Side of the Sun*






As Curiosity works its way up Mount Sharp on Mars, studying rock and soil samples, it’s also helping scientists observe sunspots on the far side of the Sun.

From its vantage point on Mars, Curiosity currently has a good view of the side of the Sun that’s pointed away from Earth, and its mast camera (Mastcam) is sending home images of sunspots that can help scientists better understand solar emissions.

That’s not just a matter of academic interest. Sunspots that form on the far side of the Sun will rotate to face Earth within a few days, since it only takes about a month for the Sun to rotate completely. “One sunspot or cluster that rotated out of Curiosity’s view over the July 4 weekend showed up by July 7 as a source area of a solar eruption observed by NASA’s Earth-orbiting Solar Dynamics Observatory,” said NASA in a press release.






_Watch the sunspot rotate across Curiosity’s field of view. Image credit: NASA_






_The Solar Dynamics Observatory view of those same sunspots. Image credit: NASA_

It’s helpful to have information about sunspots before they rotate into view, so we can predict and prepare for the effects of solar emissions, which astronomers call space weather.

The trouble is that when a spacecraft is on the far side of the Sun, it’s also out of communication with Earth. That’s where NASA’s Sun-monitoring spacecraft STEREO-A is at the moment. Last month, Curiosity was also out of communication while Mars’ orbit carried it behind the sun, but it’s been back in touch since late June. STEREO-A will be able to phone again later in July, but for now, Curiosity is helping fill the gap.

That came about almost by accident. Part of Curiosity’s mission is to study how bright the Sun appears through the dusty Martian atmosphere, so the rover often takes images of the Sun from Mars. In April, Mastcam snapped an image of a Martian sunset while Mercury passed between Mars and the Sun — and also captured a few sunspots.

“We saw sunspots in the images during the Mercury transit, and I was trying to distinguish Mercury from a sunspot,” said Mastcam scientist Mark Lemmon in a NASA press release. “I checked with heliophysicists who study sunspots and learned that STEREO-A was out of communications, so there was no current information about sunspots on that side of the sun. That’s how we learned it would be useful for Curiosity to monitor sunspots.”

The moral of the story? Even if you’re a hard-working robot, climbing on a mountain on another planet, it pays to look up once in a while.

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## Fenrir

*How We Keep 'New Telescope Smell' From Killing Space Telescopes*

Like new cars, new telescopes come with their own unique smell. Unlike cars, telescopes are delicate enough that this smell can damage the high-precision instruments, killing them with their own outgassing. Here’s how NASA protects fragile space telescopes from themselves.






New materials outgas, releasing volatile organic chemicals that quickly disperse into the surrounding environment. The mix of residual solvents outgassing from new vehicles makes a distinctive, occasionally-enjoyable new car smell that may not be particularly healthy but aren’t critical damaging. With telescopes, that outgassing can be far more damaging.

The mix of outgassing solvents, epoxies, lubricants and other materials involved in the manufacture of telescopes and other delicate spacecraft create gasses that can easily damage the high-precision machines. NASA engineers determined to protect telescope mirrors, thermal control units, electronics boxes, detectors, solar arrays, and cryogenic instruments are always looking for new ways to protect their charges from contamination. The latest efforts led by Sharon Straka and Mark Hasegawa at NASA Goddard resulted in a low-cost, easy-to-apply sprayable paint. The paint absorbs outgassed molecules, preventing them from latching on to fragile instruments and their components.

The Molecular Adsorber Coating (MAC) is a sprayable paint made from zeolite paired with a colloidal silica binder to glue the coating together.





_The large pores and cavities of zeolite crystals are ideal for trapping outgassing contaminants. Image credit: NASA
_
Zeolite is a common mineral that is highly permeable and porous to trap outgassing contaminants (and explains its industrial use in water purification), and lacks in any volatile organics that would add their own outgassing to the problem. The paint can be applied directly to surfaces without additional mounting equipment, and can be used to coat strips of tape that can be strategically tucked around the instrument.






_The permeable, porous surface of zeolite paint is perfect for trapping volatile chemicals outgassed by new telescopes. Image credit: NASA_

The paint is currently undergoing qualifications tests at NASA facilities, and is ready to be used during future flight or ground vacuum systems projects.

Several custom-designed test panels spray-coated with the paint were recently installed as a contamination mitigation tool for the Chamber A. Chamber A is NASA’s thermal-vaccuum space simulator, and the largest test facility of its type in the world. The 16.8 meter (55 foot) diameter, 27.4 meter (90 foot) tall chamber is where the space capsules for NASA’s Apollo missions were tested, both with and without crew, and has been upgraded for testing the James Webb Space Telescope. The matte interior walls look perpetually grubby, with an occasional burnished marks from where tools rubbed up against the walls, an ironic situation given the obsession with cleanliness.






_Chamber A at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas. Image credit: NASA

The panels were installed in Chamber A in advance of upcoming tests of the James Webb Space Telescope’s first Optical Ground Support Equipment (OGSE-1). The paint will capture any outgassed contaminants from outside the test chamber, protecting the telescope. NASA engineer Nithin Abraham explains:

Although we cannot stop contaminants within the vacuum chamber from outgassing, we can try to capture them with MAC before it tries and reaches the expensive hardware, which are housed inside the test chamber.

While NASA obviously does its best to ensure its test chambers are sparkling clean and clear of anything that may cause damage to the instruments being tested, some silicone-based contaminants are near-impossible to prevent.

The MAC panels were installed in very strategic locations within Chamber A to capture vacuum chamber contamination originating from persistent sources, such as silicone pump oil residue and hydrocarbons.

Now, even if the components outgas, the volatiles will hopefully be trapped by the MAC panels instead of migrating and depositing onto the Webb telescope’s optical surfaces.






Engineer Nithin Abraham taping a panel coated in outgas-adsorbing paint along the bottom of Chamber A in advance of James Webb Space Telescope space simulation tests. Image credit: NASA
_
The paint is an improvement over existing technology, which uses the same zeolite mineral but coated over cordierite, a mineral used to manufacture ceramic, to create puck-like devices. The pucks act like water-absorbing silica packets in shoeboxes, with each puck adsorbing a limited capacity of outgassed volatiles. Yet as Hasegawa complains, “These devices are big, heavy and chunky, and take up a lot of real estate,” making them less than ideal compared to the more flexible form-factor and lower-mass alternative of zeolite paint. The paint sticks to aluminum, stainless steal, and any other metal with a silicate-based coating, the most common structural materials for telescopes and spacecraft. The new paint even has about five times the adsorbtive capacity of other experiments with coating slurries, making it more useful for space applications where every gram adds launch costs. The paint is also cheaper than the other current alternative, electronic box bake-outs.

In future iterations, Straka is hoping to tweak the paint’s composition to enhance volatile adsorption even further, and possibly to tint it black so it can also suck up stray light. This would add another feature, protecting telescope sensors from being overwhelmed by noisy surplus photons during observations. The team is also experimenting with mixing the paint with high surface area systems like velvets and fibre mats are being conducted to try increasing adsorbtive capacity even further while simultaneously prohibiting electrostatic discharge.

In the future, this paint could move beyond terrestrial test chambers and be incorporated onto telescope structures directly to provide continuous protection. They could even help make living in space a bit more livable, with a quick paint job on the International Space Station trapping pollutants and odors in crew quarters. In an enclosed space with no laundry facilities, anything that reduces the stench of space habitats has to be a good idea.

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## Fenrir

*This Ice Rover's Descendants Will Explore Europa's Ocean *






The allure of a warm, liquid ocean beneath Europa’s icy surface has inspired science fiction andreal NASA missions alike. But if and when we get around to extraterrestrial oceanography, what will our undersea explorers look like?

Probably, a bit like this little guy. Meet BRUIE, the Buoyant Rover for Under Ice Exploration. This autonomously controlled bot is designed to float on the underside of ice sheets, rolling itself around on wheels, snapping photos and collecting data. Last year, BRUIE became the first satellite operated under-ice vehicle, when NASA engineers wheeled it around beneath an ice-sheet near Barrow, Alaska.

Since that successful trial, BRUIE has undergone a series of upgrades, and a second gen version—which looks markedly different from its predecessor—is now almost ready to be set loose beneath the Arctic ice once more. But first, BRUIE’s engineers decided to show it off to tourists at the California Science Center in LA this week while they tested out some new features.

According to NASA:

_The new version is longer, has a thicker body and is designed for ocean depths up to about 700 feet (200 meters). The central body contains computers, sensors and communication equipment. On either side of the central section is a “pod,” each with sensors, lights, a camera, batteries, instruments and two motors. The software for this rover is similar to what is being used for Mars Cube One, two communication-relay CubeSats that will launch with NASA’s InSight Mars lander in 2016.

Researchers are currently working to increase the rover’s autonomy and beef up its hazard avoidance, with an eye toward eventually letting the rover survey a frozen lake on its own.

“Our work aims to build a bridge between exploring extreme environments in our own ocean and the exploration of distant, potentially habitable oceans elsewhere in the solar system,” said Kevin Hand, a co-investigator for the rover and planetary scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Lab._

Today: Aquarium tanks. Tomorrow? Distant alien moons.


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## Fenrir

*NASA's Stubby 747 Has A Big Telescope In The Back That Can See Pluto*







NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft has recently begun sending back the first color images of Pluto and Charon, and they are spectacular. But prior to the probe making its close approach to Pluto on July 14th, scientists have been scouting Pluto’s atmosphere using a 98-inch telescope mounted inside a highly modified Boeing 747SP.






A combined effort between NASA and the German Aerospace Center (DLR), the aircraft is called SOFIA (registration N747NA, callsign “NASA747”), which stands for Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy. SOFIA probably isn’t the best-known 747 belonging to NASA, but it is enabling valuable scientific observations because of its unique capabilities.

And while SOFIA has been flying astronomy missions since 2010, the idea of putting a telescope in an airplane to study the stars is almost 100 years old.

*Telescope Planes*

In the early 1920’s, Sherman Mills Fairchild developed the then-revolutionary electrically-driven K-3 aerial camera for mapping and reconnaissance missions. While the cameras were originally intended to be pointed towards Earth and not skyward, this ultimately spurred the earliest airborne astronomy flights from biplanes during the 1920’s and 1930’s, which were undertaken primarily for observing solar eclipses.

On September 10th, 1923, the U.S. Navy attempted to measure the centerline of a solar eclipse from the air using K-3 type mapping cameras and hypersensitized film aboard 16 different aircraft flying simultaneously. While precise details about all of the aircraft that were used during the attempt are elusive, one of the aircraft involved was reportedly a Felixstowe F5L “flying boat” biplane.

The convergence of smooth running jet aircraft, improved telescope technology and infrared sensors in the 1950s and 1960s led to the field of airborne astronomy taking on research beyond eclipse observations. In 1968, Gerald Kuiper (yes, that Kuiper) aimed a 12-inch telescope through the window of a NASA Learjet. Today, Kuiper is revered as a pioneer in airborne astronomy and planetary science, his work spurring a series of unique aircraft built to carry telescopes aloft.






One of NASA’s early airborne telescopes was the Galileo Observatory, a converted Convair 990airliner that supported scientists at the Ames Research Center. That aircraft met an untimely demise in a 1973 mid-air collision with a US Navy P-3C Orion while on final approach at Moffett Field. A replacement aircraft called Galileo II was built, but unfortunately it was destroyed in a fire following an aborted takeoff in 1985.






Despite such unfortunate luck with the two Galileo Observatory aircraft, NASA operated theKuiper Airborne Observatory (KAO) from 1974-1995, a Lockheed C-141A Starlifter modified with a 36-inch reflecting telescope. SOFIA is KAO’s follow-on program, offering scientists increased capabilities via a higher performance aircraft with a larger aperture telescope.





_The Kuiper Airborne Observatory and SOFIA on the tarmac at NASA’s Ames Research Center._

*Meet SOFIA*

SOFIA’s donor aircraft is a Boeing 747SP widebody airliner, one of only 13 current airworthy examples. The 747SP (SP stands for “Special Performance”) was originally designed to compete with the Douglas DC-10 and Lockheed L-1011 tri-jets in the early 1970’s. Lacking a competitive product in their lineup at the time, Boeing chose to offer airline customers a scaled-down version of the 747 instead of scaling up a smaller jet.

Boeing introduced the 747SP in 1973 with changes including a fuselage shortened by over 48 feet, lighter wings, solid flaps and the removal of under-wing canoes. All of this added up to an empty 747SP weighing around 45,000 pounds less than an empty 747-200, making the jet ideal for long-range intercontinental flights. Because the shorter, lighter 747SP retained the same four engines and as the original 747, it could also fly faster and higher.

These special characteristics of the Boeing 747SP lend themselves perfectly to SOFIA’s mission, as they enable long loiter times and extended range, all while flying at higher altitudes. At an operating height of 41,000-43,000 feet, SOFIA flies above over 99 percent of the atmosphere’s water vapor, giving SOFIA opportunities to gaze into the heavens with clarity rivaled only by telescopes in orbit.






The specific 747SP aircraft that was selected for modification for the SOFIA program originally entered commercial service with Pan American World Airways in 1977, where it was christened_Clipper Lindbergh_, a name it still officially retains today. Pan Am sold the aircraft to United Airlines in 1986, for whom it operated in commercial service until 1995, when it was sent to storage.





_SOFIA wearing an early livery during a 1998 test flight._

In 1997, it was retrieved from storage and NASA acquired it for conversion into an airborne observatory. Raytheon began the first step of SOFIA’s conversion in 1998 by installing a 13.5 foot wide retractable door behind the wing on the aft side. SOFIA’s door arcs 18 feet upward along the fuselage and can retract in flight, protecting the highly sensitive onboard instruments from the sun until conditions are ideal for data collection.






Beyond the huge door that reveals the enormous telescope onboard, SOFIA was modified with heavy shock absorbers, pressure bulkheads and counterweights to accommodate the telescope instruments. The aircraft’s interior was also retrofitted to provide space for educators to work during missions. Throughout the course of the program, SOFIA will invite thousands of science teachers, planetarium scientists and others to fly onboard. This ensures that the benefits of SOFIA’s science missions will reach as many people on Earth as possible.






SOFIA remained in budgetary and developmental purgatory until late 2009, when the optical systems were finally integrated into the airframe and it was first flown with the door open. Routine scientific flights began in 2010, and full capabilities were set to come online in 2014. Then, NASA abruptly announced that they would drastically cut SOFIA’s funding request for FY 2015, indicating that they planned to place the aircraft into storage and that, “savings from SOFIA can have a larger impact supporting other science missions.”

A 2014 report from NASA’s Inspector General found that SOFIA is one of the most expensive programs in NASA’s science portfolio. With total program life cycle costs estimated at $3 billion, SOFIA costs more than $100,000 per planned research flight hour to operate. After publicly stating that SOFIA’s “contributions to astronomical science will be significantly less than originally envisioned,” the program hung in limbo for about a year, when suddenly NASA changed their minds in early 2015.

For now, the program appears to be on stable budgetary footing, with the aircraft having flown regularly throughout the first half of the year. Even so, NASA’s spastic decision-making and SOFIA’s estimated $1 million per mission costs should illustrate that SOFIA could easily be a sacrificial lamb for future NASA budgets. Pulling the plug on SOFIA as soon as the program finally starts to perform science missions is hasty and ignores the unique capabilities that no other observatory can provide.

*Seeing What We Can’t See*

SOFIA is currently deployed to Christchurch, New Zealand until July 2015 and is observing parts of the sky that aren’t visible from the Northern Hemisphere with four main instruments, more than ever before. Hopefully the program will be allowed to continue unfettered now that it is finally mature enough to generate substantial scientific observations.

While there is no argument that orbital telescopes are ideally situated to capture images that improve our understanding of the universe, there are a few areas where airborne telescopes have advantages over orbital telescopes. Instruments aboard SOFIA are far easier to maintain and service, whereas missions to repair orbital telescopes (such as STS-125 in 2009) are hugely expensive and risky.






Additionally, SOFIA is not vulnerable to the ever-increasing risk of space junk, whereas the Hubble Repair mission in 2009 had a one-in-221 chance of colliding with orbital debris(although NASA deemed this risk acceptable). During the mission, a four inch piece of debris from a recently-exploded Chinese weather satellite came less than two miles away from the Hubble telescope and Space Shuttle _Atlantis_.

The ability to place optical instruments in the ideal place and time to observe rare astronomical events is central to appreciating the value of an asset like SOFIA. In 2011, SOFIA was at the right place at the right time to observe Pluto’s occultation in 2011. Notably, NASA says that it was the only observatory capable of doing so in the world at the time.






Ground-based telescopes can only observe a certain tract of the sky, and orbital telescopes aren’t easily repositioned. However, a telescope mounted on an intra-atmospheric aircraft that can produce a snapshot of the sky at precisely where and when desired is a unique capability, and one that is worth preserving in the event that orbital telescopes become incapacitated.

Night after night, SOFIA prowls the skies while making observations about comets, the life cycles of distant stars, the formation of planets and the chemical makeup of interstellar space. Requests from the scientific community for time aboard SOFIA far outpace the number of flight hours available, showing how the aircraft is hugely versatile for studying our celestial neighbors both near and far away.

Throughout the last century of flight, airborne telescopes have clearly proven their worth to the science community, and SOFIA should remain the pinnacle of airborne telescope technology for many years to come, especially seeing as NASA now has two retired 747 Shuttle Carriers to use for spares free of charge. The big flying telescope also sits as yet one more reminder of just how versatile the 747 design remains almost 50 years after its first flight.

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## jamahir

Technogaianist said:


> *These Astronauts Will be the First to Launch With SpaceX and Boeing*
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> NASA Thursday named the first four astronauts who will fly on the first U.S. commercial spaceflights in private crew transportation vehicles being built by Boeing and SpaceX – marking a major milestone towards restoring American human launches to U.S. soil as soon as mid-2017, if all goes well.
> 
> The four astronauts chosen are all veterans of flights on NASA’s Space Shuttles and to the International Space Station (ISS); Robert Behnken, Eric Boe, Douglas Hurley and Sunita Williams. They now form the core of NASA’s commercial crew astronaut corps eligible for the maiden test flights on board the Boeing CST-100 and Crew Dragon astronaut capsules.
> 
> Behnken, Boe and Hurley have each launched on two shuttle missions and Williams is a veteran of two long-duration flights aboard the ISS after launching on both the shuttle and Soyuz. All four served as military test pilots prior to being selected as NASA astronauts.
> 
> The experienced quartet of space flyers will work closely with Boeing andSpaceX as they begin training and prepare to launch aboard the first ever commercial ‘space taxi’ ferry flight missionsto the ISS and back – that will also end our sole source reliance on the Russian Soyuz capsule for crewed missions to low-Earth orbit and further serve to open up space exploration and transportation services to the private sector.
> 
> Boeing and SpaceX were awarded contracts by NASA Administrator Charles Bolden in September 2014 worth $6.8 Billion to complete the development and manufacture of the privately developed CST-100 andCrew Dragon astronaut transporters under the agency’s Commercial Crew Transportation Capability (CCtCap) program and NASA’s Launch America initiative.
> 
> “I am pleased to announce four American space pioneers have been selected to be the first astronauts to train to fly to space on commercial crew vehicles, all part of our ambitious plan to return space launches to U.S. soil, create good-paying American jobs and advance our goal of sending humans farther into the solar system than ever before,” said NASA Administrator Charles Bolden, in a statement.
> 
> “These distinguished, veteran astronauts are blazing a new trail — a trail that will one day land them in the history books and Americans on the surface of Mars.”
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> _NASA Administrator Charles Bolden (left) announces the winners of NASA’s Commercial Crew Program development effort to build America’s next human spaceships launching from Florida to the International Space Station. Speaking from Kennedy’s Press Site, Bolden announced the contract award to Boeing and SpaceX to complete the design of the CST-100 and Crew Dragon spacecraft. Former astronaut Bob Cabana, center, director of NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida, Kathy Lueders, manager of the agency’s Commercial Crew Program, and former International Space Station Commander Mike Fincke also took part in the announcement. Credit: Ken Kremer_
> 
> The selection of astronauts for rides with NASA’s Commercial Crew Program (CCP) comes almost exactly four years to the day since the last American manned space launch of Space Shuttle Atlantis on the STS-135 mission to the space station on July 8, 2011 from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida.
> 
> Hurley was a member of the STS-135 crew and served as shuttle pilot under NASA’s last shuttle commander, Chris Ferguson, who is now Director of Boeing’s CST-100 commercial crew program. Read my earlier exclusive interviews with Ferguson about the CST-100 – here andhere.
> 
> Since the retirement of the shuttle orbiters, all American and ISS partner astronauts have been forced to hitch a ride on the Soyuz for flights to the ISS and back, at a current cost of over $70 million per seat.
> 
> “Our plans to return launches to American soil make fiscal sense,” Bolden elaborated. “It currently costs $76 million per astronaut to fly on a Russian spacecraft. On an American-owned spacecraft, the average cost will be $58 million per astronaut.
> 
> Behnken, Boe, Hurley and Williams are all eager to work with the Boeing and SpaceX teams to “understand their designs and operations as they finalize their Boeing CST-100 and SpaceXCrew Dragon spacecraft and operational strategies in support of their crewed flight tests and certification activities as part of their contracts with NASA.”
> 
> Until June 2015, Williams held the record for longest time in space by a woman, accumulating 322 days in orbit. Behnken is currently the chief of the astronaut core and conducted six space walks at the station. Boe has spent over 28 days in space and flew on the final mission of Space Shuttle Discovery in Feb. 2011 on STS-133.
> 
> The first commercial crew flights under the CCtCAP contract could take place in 2017 with at least one member of the two person crews being a NASA astronaut – who will be “on board to verify the fully-integrated rocket and spacecraft system can launch, maneuver in orbit, and dock to the space station, as well as validate all systems perform as expected, and land safely,” according to a NASA statement.
> 
> The second crew member could be a company test pilot as the details remain to be worked out.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> _Boeing and SpaceX are building private spaceships to resume launching US astronauts from US soil to the International Space Station in 2017. Credit: NASA_
> 
> The actual launch date depends on the NASA budget allocation for the Commercial Crew Program approved by the US Congress.
> 
> Congress has never approved NASA’s full funding request for the CCP program and has again cut the program significantly in initial votes this year. So the outlook for a 2017 launch is very uncertain.
> 
> Were it not for the drastic CCP cuts we would be launching astronauts this year on the space taxis.
> 
> “Every dollar we invest in commercial crew is a dollar we invest in ourselves, rather than in the Russian economy,” Bolden emphasizes about the multifaceted benefits of the commercial crew initiative.
> 
> Under the CCtCAP contract, NASA recently ordered the agency’s first commercial crew mission from Boeing – as outlined in my story here.SpaceX will receive a similar CCtCAP mission order later this year.
> 
> At a later date, NASA will decide whether Boeing or SpaceX will launch the actual first commercial crew test flight mission to low Earth orbit.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> _Boeing’s commercial CST-100 ‘Space Taxi’ will carry a crew of five astronauts to low Earth orbit and the ISS from US soil. Mockup with astronaut mannequins seated below pilot console and Samsung tablets was unveiled on June 9, 2014 at its planned manufacturing facility at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. Credit: Ken Kremer_
> 
> “This is a new and exciting era in the history of U.S. human spaceflight,” said Brian Kelly, director of Flight Operations at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston, in a statement.
> 
> “These four individuals, like so many at NASA and the Flight Operations Directorate, have dedicated their careers to becoming experts in the field of aeronautics and furthering human space exploration. The selection of these experienced astronauts who are eligible to fly aboard the test flights for the next generation of U.S. spacecraft to the ISS and low-Earth orbit ensures that the crews will be well-prepared and thoroughly trained for their missions.”
> 
> Both the CST-100 and Crew Dragon will typically carry a crew of four NASA or NASA-sponsored crew members, along with some 220 pounds of pressurized cargo. Each will also be capable of carrying up to seven crew members depending on how the capsule is configured.
> 
> The spacecraft will be capable to remaining docked at the station for up to 210 days and serve as an emergency lifeboat during that time.
> 
> The NASA CCtCAP contracts call for a minimum of two and a maximum potential of six missions from each provider.
> 
> The station crew will also be enlarged to seven people that will enable a doubling of research time.
> 
> The CST-100 will be carried to low Earth orbit atop a man-rated United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket launching from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, Florida. It enjoys a 100% success rate.
> 
> Boeing will first conduct a pair of unmanned and manned orbital CST-100 test flights earlier in 2017 in April and July, prior to the operational commercial crew rotation mission to confirm that their capsule is ready and able and met all certification milestone requirements set by NASA.
> 
> The Crew Dragon will launch atop a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket. It enjoyed a 100% success rate until last weeks launch on its 19th flight which ended with an explosion two minutes after liftoff from Cape Canaveral on June 28, 2015.
> 
> SpaceX conducted a successful Pad Abort Test of the Crew Dragon on May 6, as I reported here. The goal was to test the spacecrafts abort systems that will save astronauts lives in a split second in the case of a launch emergency such as occurred during the June 28 rocket failure in flight that was bound for the ISS with the initial cargo version of the SpaceX Dragon.
> 
> SpaceX plans an unmanned orbital test flight of Crew Dragon perhaps by the end of 2016. The crewed orbital test flight would follow sometime in 2017.
> 
> This post by Ken Kremer originally appeared at _Universe Today_.



@levina @thesolar65

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## Fenrir

*NASA's incredible 3 billion mile journey to Pluto, explained*

Distances like "3 billion miles" are well beyond the scale of anything we experience here on Earth (the circumference of our planet is a mere 25,000 miles). So we made this video to help make sense of the immense journey that the New Horizons spacecraft has traveled over the past 9 years:






In the 1960s and '70s, NASA's Mariner missions showed us Mars, Venus, and Mercury, and in the 1970s and '80s, the Voyager missions showed us Jupiter, Saturn, Neptune, and Uranus. In much the same way, New Horizons will give us a close-up view of Pluto for the first time on July 14.






New Horizons launched from Cape Canaveral in January 2006. At that time, Pluto hadn't yet officially been demoted from planet to dwarf planet, and the mission was initially billed as a visit to the solar system's only unexplored planet. That's not the only thing that has changed here on Earth since the launch. Two of Plutos five known moons (Kerberos and Styx) have also been discovered since then.






New Horizons will pass within 6,200 miles of Pluto on July 14th. Until this mission, Voyager 1 was the spacecraft that flew closest to Pluto, and New Horizons will be 158,000 times closer than that. It will return detailed images of Pluto and its moons, far better than the blurry pictures our telescopes have managed.






The images won't be available immediately though. The data will travel billions of miles over radiowaves and then undergo processing.

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## Fenrir

*This is the Soundtrack of a Martian Marathon*






The first Martian marathon was no easy trek: the Opportunity rover had to struggle through smooth, soft sand and clamber over sharp rocks. This is the sounds of the terrain it covered in its 11-year journey exploring the red planet.

In July 2014, the Mars Opportunity rover broke the off-world driving marathon. In March 2015,it completed the first extraterrestrial marathon. It wasn’t an easy marathon: this was an off-track, all-terrain monster of a race. This is the view from the rover’s hazard-avoidance camera[left frame] and a map tracking progress [right frame] set to a soundtrack where the auditory intensity reflects the roughness of the terrain, condensing 11 years into under 8 minutes.






The video is a compilation of images from NASA’s Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity as it journeyed over 42.2 kilometers (26.2 miles) from its landing location in January 2004 to Marathon Valley in April 2015. The rover has been studying the rim of the 22 kilometer (14 mile) diameter Endeavour Crater since 2011. Almost all the tracks from its journey are now gone, blown away by the frequent dust storms of Mars.

The soundtrack reflects the roughness of the terrain, recorded as vibration measurements. When Opportunity rolled over soft, squishy sands, the soundtrack mellows into a quiet hiss (especially when the poor rover was stuck in a sand dune in May 2005); when it hauled its 185 kilogram mass over rough rocks, the soundtrack climbs to an angry growl.





_Traces of Opportunity’s landing rocket blasts and earliest rover tracks were already fading between April 2004 [top] and November 2006 [bottom]. Image credit: NASA/JPL/Malin Space Science Systems/University of Arizona/JGR_

After the epic trek, Opportunity took a three-week break of reduced activity as the Martian solar conjunction interrupted communication. Since the rover no longer has the capacity to store data and needs to call home every night with a data downlink, it would’ve been futile for it to blast ahead with full sciencing when it couldn’t report back to Earth. Now it will bask on the sun-facing slopes of Marathon Valley, poking at clay-rich outcrops.





_Opportunity completed its first Martian marathon in March 2015, immediately beginning its second by venturing into Marathon Valley. Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Univ. of Arizona_

Opportunity didn’t always rely exclusively on short-term memory. The non-volatile flash memory used to store data during overnight power-downs, but started glitching out. It was temporarily restored by reformatting, but started dying again this spring. Instead of arguing with the aging rover that robots aren’t supposed to develop amnesia, mission control switched to using random-access memory only, which can only retain data when the power is on, and downloading everything daily. As Opportunity Project Manager John Callas explains:

_Opportunity can continue to accomplish science goals in this mod. Each day we transmit data that we collect that day. Flash memory is a convenience but not a necessity for the rover. It’s like a refrigerator that way. Without it, you couldn’t save any leftovers. Any food you prepare that day you would have to either eat or throw out. Without using flash memory, Opportunity needs to send home the high-priority data the same day it collects it, and lose any lower-priority data that can’t fit into the transmission._





_The durable Mars Opportunity rover basking in sunset on the rim of Endeavour Crater in 2012. Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Cornell/Arizona State Univ._

The Opportunity rover is working on its second marathon eleven years into its 90-day mission. Its twin Spirit worked for six years before declaring it had enough poking about for evidence of ancient wet environments.

_Top image: Opportunity looking back towards the west rim of Endeavour Crater in August 2014. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Cornell Univ./Arizona State Univ._

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## Norwegian

Technogaianist said:


> *This is the Soundtrack of a Martian Marathon*
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> The first Martian marathon was no easy trek: the Opportunity rover had to struggle through smooth, soft sand and clamber over sharp rocks. This is the sounds of the terrain it covered in its 11-year journey exploring the red planet.
> 
> In July 2014, the Mars Opportunity rover broke the off-world driving marathon. In March 2015,it completed the first extraterrestrial marathon. It wasn’t an easy marathon: this was an off-track, all-terrain monster of a race. This is the view from the rover’s hazard-avoidance camera[left frame] and a map tracking progress [right frame] set to a soundtrack where the auditory intensity reflects the roughness of the terrain, condensing 11 years into under 8 minutes.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> The video is a compilation of images from NASA’s Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity as it journeyed over 42.2 kilometers (26.2 miles) from its landing location in January 2004 to Marathon Valley in April 2015. The rover has been studying the rim of the 22 kilometer (14 mile) diameter Endeavour Crater since 2011. Almost all the tracks from its journey are now gone, blown away by the frequent dust storms of Mars.
> 
> The soundtrack reflects the roughness of the terrain, recorded as vibration measurements. When Opportunity rolled over soft, squishy sands, the soundtrack mellows into a quiet hiss (especially when the poor rover was stuck in a sand dune in May 2005); when it hauled its 185 kilogram mass over rough rocks, the soundtrack climbs to an angry growl.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> _Traces of Opportunity’s landing rocket blasts and earliest rover tracks were already fading between April 2004 [top] and November 2006 [bottom]. Image credit: NASA/JPL/Malin Space Science Systems/University of Arizona/JGR_
> 
> After the epic trek, Opportunity took a three-week break of reduced activity as the Martian solar conjunction interrupted communication. Since the rover no longer has the capacity to store data and needs to call home every night with a data downlink, it would’ve been futile for it to blast ahead with full sciencing when it couldn’t report back to Earth. Now it will bask on the sun-facing slopes of Marathon Valley, poking at clay-rich outcrops.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> _Opportunity completed its first Martian marathon in March 2015, immediately beginning its second by venturing into Marathon Valley. Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Univ. of Arizona_
> 
> Opportunity didn’t always rely exclusively on short-term memory. The non-volatile flash memory used to store data during overnight power-downs, but started glitching out. It was temporarily restored by reformatting, but started dying again this spring. Instead of arguing with the aging rover that robots aren’t supposed to develop amnesia, mission control switched to using random-access memory only, which can only retain data when the power is on, and downloading everything daily. As Opportunity Project Manager John Callas explains:
> 
> _Opportunity can continue to accomplish science goals in this mod. Each day we transmit data that we collect that day. Flash memory is a convenience but not a necessity for the rover. It’s like a refrigerator that way. Without it, you couldn’t save any leftovers. Any food you prepare that day you would have to either eat or throw out. Without using flash memory, Opportunity needs to send home the high-priority data the same day it collects it, and lose any lower-priority data that can’t fit into the transmission._
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> _The durable Mars Opportunity rover basking in sunset on the rim of Endeavour Crater in 2012. Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Cornell/Arizona State Univ._
> 
> The Opportunity rover is working on its second marathon eleven years into its 90-day mission. Its twin Spirit worked for six years before declaring it had enough poking about for evidence of ancient wet environments.
> 
> _Top image: Opportunity looking back towards the west rim of Endeavour Crater in August 2014. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Cornell Univ./Arizona State Univ._



Welcome to PDF. Another Norwegian!


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## Fenrir

*How Did We Get to Pluto So Fast?*






On July 14th, the New Horizons spacecraft will make history when it sails past Pluto, formerly known as the ninth planet. Even more incredible is how fast we got there. The spacecraft traveled 3 billion miles in nine and a half years. That’s about a million miles a day for almost ten years. How the heck did we do it?

Size and timing mattered a lot. So did Jupiter. Since the early days of the Space Age, we’ve learned to exploit nature to shave years off our interplanetary journeys. Here’s how humanity’s very first Pluto mission made the long haul at breakneck speed.

*The Fastest Launch In History*

On the afternoon of January 19th, 2006, a piano-sized spacecraft weighing 1,040 pounds roared into the sky aboard an Atlas V rocket. Separating from its solid fuel-kick motor after just 45 minutes, New Horizons was flung away from the Earth at solar system escape velocity, roughly 36,000 miles per hour. It was the highest speed at which a spacecraft has ever escaped Earth’s gravity well, besting the previous launch speed record (32, 400 mph) set by the Pioneer 10 probe in 1972.





_New Horizons Launch aboard an Atlas V rocket. Goodbye forever, Earth. Image credit: NASA/KSC_

How did we get New Horizons off the ground so fast? Basically, size. The compact craft was designed to run light on power and fuel, reserving most of its payload for its sevenonboard science instruments. At liftoff, the New Horizons propulsion system included only 170 pounds of hydrazine propellant. That’s a minuscule amount when you consider the craft’s journey, but it was intended to be used only for trajectory corrections and spinup/spindown maneuvers.

In other words, New Horizon’s ten year, 3 billion-plus mile journey would be basically propulsion-free. (Now if that doesn’t sound like the best car sales pitch, ever.)

After liftoff, New Horizons received additional velocity boost from Earth’s orbital motion around the sun, which is approximately 18.6 miles per second tangential to the orbital path. Altogether, then, the spacecraft barreled into the solar system with a heliocentric (sun-relative) speed of nearly 100 thousand miles per hour.

The timing of the launch was critical. Based on the orbital position of the Earth, NASA was looking at a short window, from mid-January through early February 2006, in which the New Horizons spacecraft could be launched in order to make a close pass by Jupiter in 2007. And we needed Jupiter big time.

The fastest route between two points on Earth may be a straight line, but when it comes to outer solar system exploration, nothing beats a little cosmic kick from Jupiter’s massive gravity well.

*Jupiter’s Big Gravity Assist*

Thanks to its quick start, New Horizons made the 500 million mile journey to Jupiter in just over a year, faster than any of the seven previous Jupiter-bound missions.But the sun’s gravitational pull is relentless, and by the time New Horizons reached Jupiter in early 2007, it had slowed to (a mere!) 43,000 miles per hour. Jupiter would help New Horizons regain what it had lost.

As it neared the gas giant, New Horizons began to speed up once more, reeled in by Jupiter’s prodigious gravity, which also acted to bend the spacecraft’s trajectory. On February 28th, 2007, the tiny probe made its closest approach to the gas giant and then flung itself away, snagging a bit of Jupiter’s momentum in a move that rocket scientists call a ‘gravity assist.’ Essentially, as New Horizons was dragged into Jupiter’s gravitational field, it gained kinetic energy amounting to nearly 9,000 miles per hour worth of speed, increasing its velocity to over 52,000 miles per hour.

To balance the books, Jupiter lost as much kinetic energy as New Horizons gained, causing it to fall a little closer to the sun. A year on Jupiter today is slightly shorter than it was before—all because humans wanted to get a good look at Pluto.





_New Horizons’ heliocentric velocity during its mission, via JHU mission design document by Guo & Farquhar_

The effect of Jupiter’s gravity assist can be seen on the graph above, which shows us the spacecraft’s heliocentric velocity as a function of distant from the Sun. For comparison, the graph below shows Voyager 2’s trajectory across our solar system from 1977 to 1989. As you can see, Voyager 2 used several gravity assists to keep up a quick pace as it toured the planets in our outer solar system. Both spacecraft continued to lose velocity as they headed into the outer solar system, but at a decreasing rate as the Sun’s gravity field weakened. (The weakening gravitational pull of the Sun also explains why solar system escape velocity decreases as we travel outward.)





_Image via Cmglee, Wikipedia_

Voyager’s clever route afforded the spacecraft a series of speed boosts while allowing it to collect a trove of planetary science data. Likewise, New Horizon’s Jupiter detour sent back a wealth of fascinating intel on our solar system’s largest planet, revealing lightning near the poles, the internal structure of volcanoes on Io, and the path of charged particles traversing the length of the gas giant’s long magnetic tail.

Oh, and it also shaved _three full years_ off the trip to Pluto.

*The Approach and Beyond*

For the next seven and a half years, New Horizons sailed quietly across interplanetary space, on the longest leg of its journey. Its last major waypoint before the Pluto approach came on August 25, 2014, when made another record, crossing Neptune’s orbit some 2.75 billion miles away from the Earth in eight years, eight months. (Coincidentally, NASA’s Voyager 2 spacecraft made its much closer Neptune pass 25 years earlier to the day. A cosmic coincidence, perhaps, but one that everybody took as a promising sign of what was to come.)

To put the full trajectory in perspective, here are a few images from NASA:






For the past year, New Horizons has continued to stay the course, losing speed slowly as it approaches Pluto. Still, New Horizons’s historic flyby won’t exactly be a leisurely stroll. At 11:50 UTC on July 14th, the spacecraft will sail past Pluto at a blistering 30,000 miles per hour relative to the dwarf planet’s surface.






After New Horizons spends some time exploring Pluto and its three moons, it’ll hopefully continue on to the Kuiper belt, a vast rim of primordial, icy debris that encircles our solar system. The three promising Kupiter Belt Objects, or KBOs, NASA has ID’d as targets are all roughly a billion miles from Pluto, and it’ll take New Horizons another three to four years to reach any of them. NASA is waiting to get some science back from the primary Pluto mission before making a final decision on the Kuiper Belt extension. In the meanwhile, we’re left with the mind-blowing possibility that by 2020, New Horizons could be beaming home data on a cosmic graveyard four billion miles away.

And after the Kuiper belt? New Horizons is expected to eventually join Voyager 1 and 2 as the third human probe to enter interstellar space. Launched nearly 40 years ago, both of the Voyager probes are still in communication with the Earth as they wander about the cosmic hinterlands. It’s impossible to say just how far from home any of these probes will get.

But if one thing’s clear, it’s that New Horizon’s astounding journey has only just begun.

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## Fenrir

*New Horizons*

*Spacecraft Systems and Components*

*



*

Designed and integrated at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) in Laurel, Maryland — with contributions from companies and institutions in the United States and abroad — the New Horizons spacecraft is a robust, lightweight observatory designed to withstand the long, difficult journey from the launch pad on Earth to the solar system's coldest, darkest frontiers.

The New Horizons science payload was developed under direction of the Southwest Research Institute (SwRI), with instrument contributions from SwRI, APL, NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, the University of Colorado, Stanford University and Ball Aerospace Corporation. Fully fueled, the agile, piano-sized probe weighed 478 kilograms (1,054 pounds) at launch. Designed to operate on a limited power source — a single radioisotope thermoelectric generator — New Horizons needs less power than a pair of 100-watt light bulbs to complete its mission at Pluto.

On average, each of the seven science instruments uses between 2 and 10 watts — about the power of a night light — when turned on. The instruments send data to one of two onboard solid-state memory banks, where data is recorded before later playback to Earth. During normal operations, the spacecraft communicates with Earth through its 2.1-meter (83-inch) wide high-gain antenna. Smaller antennas provide backup communications. And when the spacecraft was in hibernation through long stretches of its voyage, its computer was programmed to monitor its systems and report its status back to Earth with a specially coded, low-energy beacon signal.

New Horizons' "thermos bottle" design retains heat and keeps the spacecraft operating at room temperature without large heaters. Aside from protective covers on five instruments that were opened shortly after launch, and one small protective cover opened after the Jupiter encounter, New Horizons has no deployable mechanisms or scanning platforms. It does have backup devices for all major electronics, its star-tracking navigation cameras and data recorders.

New Horizons has operated mostly in a spin-stabilized mode while cruising between planets, and also in a three-axis “pointing” mode that allows for pointing or scanning instruments during calibrations and planetary encounters (like the Jupiter flyby and, of course, at Pluto). There are no reaction wheels on the spacecraft; small thrusters in the propulsion system handle pointing, spinning and course corrections. The spacecraft navigates using onboard gyros, star trackers and Sun sensors. The spacecraft's high-gain antenna dish is linked to advanced electronics and shaped to receive even the faintest radio signals from home — a necessity when the mission's main target is more than 3 billion miles from Earth and round-trip transmission time is nine hours-plus.

*Structure*






New Horizons' primary structure includes an aluminum central cylinder that supports the spacecraft body panels, supports the interface between the spacecraft and its radioisotope thermoelectric generator (RTG) power source, and houses the propellant tank. It also served as the payload adapter fitting that connected the spacecraft to the launch vehicle.

Keeping mass down, the panels surrounding the central cylinder feature an aluminum honeycomb core with ultra-thin aluminum face sheets (about as thick as two pieces of paper). To keep it perfectly balanced for spinning operations, the spacecraft was weighed and then balanced with additional weights just before mounting on the launch vehicle.

*Command and Data Handling*

The command and data handling system – a radiation-hardened 12 megahertz Mongoose V processor guided by intricate flight software – is the spacecraft’s “brain.” The processor distributes operating commands to each subsystem, collects and processes instrument data, and sequences information sent back to Earth. It also runs the advanced “autonomy” algorithms that allow the spacecraft to check the status of each system and, if necessary, correct any problems, switch to backup systems or contact operators on Earth for help.

For data storage, New Horizons carries two low-power solid-state recorders (one backup) that can hold up to 8 gigabytes each. The main processor collects, compresses, reformats, sorts and stores science and housekeeping (telemetry) data on the recorder – similar to a flash memory card for a digital camera – for transmission to Earth through the telecommunications subsystem.

The Command and Data Handling system is housed in an Integrated Electronics Module that also contains a vital guidance computer, the communication system and part of the REX instrument.

*Thermal Control




*

New Horizons is designed to retain heat like a thermos bottle. The spacecraft is covered in lightweight, gold-colored, multilayered thermal insulation – like a survival camping blanket – which holds in heat from operating electronics to keep the spacecraft warm. Heat from the electronics has kept the spacecraft operating at between 10-30 degrees Celsius (about 50-85 degrees Fahrenheit) throughout the journey.

New Horizons’ sophisticated, automated heating system monitors power levels inside the craft to make sure the electronics are running at enough wattage to maintain safe temperatures. Any drop below that operating level (about 150 watts) and it will activate small heaters around the craft to make up the difference. When the spacecraft was closer to Earth and the Sun, louvers (essentially heat vents) on the craft opened when internal temperatures were too high.

The thermal blanketing – 18 layers of Dacron mesh cloth sandwiched between aluminized Mylar and Kapton film – also helps to protect the craft from micrometeorites.

*Propulsion*

The propulsion system on New Horizons is used for course corrections and for pointing the spacecraft. It is not needed to speed the spacecraft to Pluto; that was done entirely by the launch vehicle, with a boost from Jupiter’s gravity.

The New Horizons propulsion system includes 16 small hydrazine-propellant thrusters mounted across the spacecraft in eight locations, a fuel tank, and associated distribution plumbing. Four thrusters that each provide 4.4 newtons of force (1 pound) are used mostly for course corrections. Operators also employ 12 smaller thrusters – providing 0.8 newtons (about 3 ounces) of thrust each – to point, spin up and spin down the spacecraft. Eight of the 16 thrusters aboard New Horizons are considered the primary set; the other eight comprise the backup (redundant) set.

At launch, the spacecraft carried 77 kilograms (170 pounds) of hydrazine, stored in a lightweight titanium tank. Helium gas pushes fuel through the system to the thrusters. Using a Jupiter gravity assist, along with the fact that New Horizons does not slow down or go into orbit around Pluto, reduced the amount of propellant needed for the mission.

*Guidance and Control




*

New Horizons must be oriented precisely to collect data with its scientific instruments, communicate with Earth, or maneuver through space.

Attitude determination – knowing which direction New Horizons is facing – is performed using star-tracking cameras, Inertial Measurement Units (containing sophisticated gyroscopes and accelerometers that measure rotation and horizontal/vertical motion), and digital Sun sensors. Attitude control for the spacecraft – whether in a steady, three-axis pointing mode or in a spin-stabilized mode – is accomplished using thrusters.

The IMUs and star trackers provide constant positional information to the spacecraft’s Guidance and Control processor, which like the Command and Data Handling processor is a 12-MHz Mongoose V. New Horizons carries two copies of each of these units for redundancy. The star-tracking cameras store a map of about 3,000 stars; 10 times per second one of the cameras snaps a wide-angle picture of space, compares the locations of the stars to its onboard map, and calculates the spacecraft’s orientation. The IMU feeds motion information 100 times a second. If data shows New Horizons is outside a predetermined position, small hydrazine thrusters will fire to re-orient the spacecraft. The Sun sensors back up the star trackers; they would find and point New Horizons toward the Sun (with Earth nearby) if the other sensors couldn’t find home in an emergency.

Operators use thrusters to maneuver the spacecraft, which has no internal reaction wheels. Its smaller thrusters are used for fine pointing; thrusters that are approximately five times more powerful are used during the trajectory course maneuvers that guide New Horizons toward its targets. New Horizons spins – typically at 5 revolutions per minute (RPM) – during trajectory-correction maneuvers and long radio contacts with Earth, and while it “hibernated” during long cruise periods. Operators steady and point the spacecraft during science observations and instrument-system checkouts.

*Communications




*

New Horizons’ X-band communications system is the spacecraft’s link to Earth, returning science data, exchanging commands and status information, and allowing for precise radiometric tracking through NASA’s Deep Space Network of antenna stations.

The system includes two broad-beam, low-gain antennas on opposite sides of the spacecraft, used mostly for near-Earth communications; as well as a 30-centimeter (12-inch) diameter medium-gain dish antenna and a large, 2.1-meter (83-inch) diameter high-gain dish antenna. The antenna assembly on the spacecraft’s top deck consists of the high, medium, and forward low-gain antennas; this stacked design provides a clear field of view for the low-gain antenna and structural support for the high and medium-gain dishes. Operators aim the antennas by turning the spacecraft toward Earth. The high-gain beam is only 0.3 degrees wide, so it must point directly at Earth. The wider medium-gain beam (4 degrees) is used in conditions when the pointing might not be as accurate. All antennas have Right Hand Circular and Left Hand Circular polarization feeds.

Data rates depend on spacecraft distance, the power used to send the data and the size of the antenna on the ground. For most of the mission, New Horizons has used its high-gain antenna to exchange data with the Deep Space Network’s largest antennas, 70 meters across. Even at Pluto, because New Horizons will be more than 3 billion miles from Earth and radio signals will take more than four hours to reach the spacecraft, it can send information at about 1,000 bits per second. It will take 16 months to send the full set of Pluto encounter science data back to Earth.

New Horizons is flying the most advanced digital receiver ever used for deep space communications. Advances include regenerative ranging and low power – the receiver consumes 66% less power than earlier deep-space receivers. The Radio Science Experiment (REX) to examine Pluto’s atmosphere is also integrated into the communications subsystem.

The entire telecom system on New Horizons is redundant, with two of everything except the high gain antenna structure itself.

*Power




*

New Horizons' electrical power comes from a single radioisotope thermoelectric generator (RTG). The RTG provides power through the natural radioactive decay of plutonium dioxide fuel, which creates a huge amount of heat. Unlike fission or fusion nuclear reactions, the RTG simply harnesses the heat produced and turns it into electricity.

The New Horizons RTG, provided by the U.S. Department of Energy, carries approximately 11 kilograms (24 pounds) of plutonium dioxide. Onboard systems manage the spacecraft’s power consumption so it doesn’t exceed the steady output from the RTG, which has decreased by about 3.5 watts per year since launch.

Typical of RTG-based systems, as on past outer-planet missions, New Horizons does not have a battery for storing power.

At the start of the mission, the RTG supplied approximately 245 watts (at 30 volts of direct current) – the spacecraft’s shunt regulator unit maintains a steady input from the RTG and dissipates power the spacecraft cannot use at a given time. By July 2015 (when New Horizons flies past Pluto) that supply will have decreased to about 200 watts at the same voltage, so New Horizons will ease the strain on its limited power source by cycling science instruments during the encounter.

The spacecraft’s fully redundant Power Distribution Unit (PDU) – with 96 connectors and more than 3,200 wires – efficiently moves power through the spacecraft’s vital systems and science instruments.

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## Fenrir

*New Horizons - Instrument Overview*

Spacecraft Overview, Mission Section

The New Horizons spacecraft is outfitted with six primary science instruments and one student-operated payload, driven by the power and mass requirements of the mission.

The instruments are installed fixed to the spacecraft structure, requiring the craft itself to change its orientation for pointing of the instruments. New Horizons is equipped with instruments covering optical imaging, spectroscopy in multiple bands, as well as plasma, particle and dust sensing to obtain a detailed picture of Pluto, its composition both on the surface and its atmosphere, its moons and its environment.

These are New Horizons' instruments:

Alice – Ultraviolet Imaging Spectrometer
Ralph – Imaging Telescope
REX – Radio Science Experiment
LORRI – Long-Range Reconnaissance Imager
SWAP – Solar Wind at Pluto
PEPSSI – Pluto Energetic Particle Spectrometer Science Investigation
VB-SDC – Venetia Burney Student Dust Counter

[Alice and Ralph are also collectively referred to as PERSI – Pluto Exploration Remote Sensing Investigation.]

The fundamental (Group 1) science objectives of the New Horizons mission can be achieved with the core science payload comprised of Alice, REX and Ralph.

The supplemental payload deepens and broadens the mission science, but is not required to achieve the minimum criteria for a mission success. The boresights of the Ralph, LORRI, and Alice airglow channel are aligned with the spacecraft –X axis allowing them to operate simultaneously:






*Alice – Ultraviolet Imaging Spectrometer*

The ALICE instrument of the New Horizons spacecraft is an imaging spectrometer sensitive for wavelengths in the ultraviolet range. It is an improved version of the ALICE instrument of the Rosetta comet exploration craft, featuring the addition of a second channel and different bandpass characteristics than the system flown on Rosetta. As an imaging spectrometer, ALICE separates the different wavelengths of ultraviolet radiation while simultaneously capturing an image of the target so that the finished data product is an image that, within each of its pixels, contains a full spectrum of that pixel.The primary task of ALICE is studying the atmosphere of Pluto, determining the abundance of different atomic and molecular constituents of the atmosphere, but also delivering information on the atmospheric structure. UV Spectroscopy has become a powerful tool for the investigation of physical and chemical properties in the field of astrophysics as the ultraviolet range of the spectrum can be used to extract a wealth of information on atmospheric constituents and all interplanetary spacecraft making a first journey to a planet carried ultraviolet sensors, highlighting ALICE’s role on New Horizons as one of the core instruments.






ALICE will address the New Horizons mission objective of characterizing the neutral atmosphere of Pluto and its escape rate. Specifically, the instrument will determine the mixing ratios of major atmospheric constituents including nitrogen, carbon monoxide, methane, hydrogen and noble gases. Also, ALICE can study the vertical density and thermal structure of the upper layers of the atmosphere, look at the hydrocarbon and nitrile photochemistry ongoing in the upper reaches of the atmosphere and determine whether hydrodynamic escape occurs on Pluto. The instrument makes its measurements in part by observing a solar occultation, that is, observing the sun through the Plutonian atmosphere and recording the UV spectrum. At wavelengths smaller than 100nm, nitrogen is responsible for the majority of opacity allowing sampling of the uppermost atmosphere while methane dominates between 100 and 150nm providing a look at the middle atmosphere from 300 to around 1200 Kilometers. At higher wavelengths, hydrocarbons with strong Far-UV absorption bands can expected to be optically important as well as hazes which will deliver information about the lowest part of the atmosphere down to about 100 Kilometers. ALICE can also shed light on the thermal structure of the atmosphere that is suspected to be dominated by a steep temperature increase from 10 Kilometers up due to absorption of infrared radiation by methane bands. Further heating by Lyman-Alpha Photodissociation could increase temperatures to 120K at 600km in altitude. At even higher altitudes, absorption of solar extreme UV radiation by Nitrogen may be at work to deliver additional heating, but atmospheric temperature likely decreases above 600km due to cooling associated with hydrodynamic escape.

The ALICE instrument can also look at the mixing ratio profiles and their variation with altitude to examine winds within the atmosphere which is a crucial piece of information when assessing the planet’s escaping wind. Furthermore, studies will be made to determine condensable species within the atmosphere and possible precipitation of these photochemical reaction products to the surface. Another open question is the abundance of Argon within Pluto’s atmosphere which can be easily answered by ALICE.ALICE uses a common UV spectrometer design utilizing a Rowland circle. Overall, the instrument weighs around 4.5 Kilograms and fits within an envelope of 20 by 41 by 12 centimeters with a low power consumption of 4.4 Watts. The instrument covers a spectral range of 46.5 to 188 nanometers, covering the far and extreme UV spectral ranges. ALICE achieves a spectral resolution up to 3.6 Angstroms and a spatial resolution of 0.05 by 0.6 degrees. The ALICE-P instrument differs to the ALICE instrument on Rosetta in a number of characteristics, the most notable being the use of two separate entrance apertures that feed light to the telescope, the main aperture known as the Airglow Channel AGC and the Solar Occultation Channel SOC. Light entering the telescope section of the instrument through the AGC passes through an aperture of 40 by 40 millimeters while the SOC uses a one-millimeter diameter opening perpendicular to the telescope section of the instrument, requiring an additional relay mirror to direct the radiation collected through SOC into the telescope. Light entering either aperture is collected and focused by an off-axis paraboloidal mirror.

The light is focused on the entrance slit of the spectrograph from where it reaches the dispersive element, a toroidal holographic grating, before entering the microchannel plate detector. The slit, grating and detector are arranged on a 0.15-meter rowland circle. Light entering the telescope section of ALICE first passes through the aperture that is equipped with a door that is opened after launch using a limited angle torque motor that allows the door to be closed and opened on command to protect the instrument during thruster operation and lengthy periods of cruising. ALICE uses a variety of baffles and low-scatter materials inside the instrument to reduce stray light within the optics section.

The off-axis parabolic mirror of the telescope section of the instrument has a clear aperture of 41 by 65 millimeters and reflects the incoming radiation to the spectrometer section of ALICE. The mirror and its mounting fixture is made of a monolithic piece of Aluminum that is coated with electroless Nickel and polished using a low-scatter technique. The optical surface of the mirror is coated with Silicon Carbide for optimized reflectivity in the Extreme and Far-UV range. Heaters are installed on the OAP mirror to avoid cold-trapping of contaminants during flight.The focused light from the mirror is passed onto the Spectrograph Entrance Slit that is composed of two sections – one for the Airglow Channel and one for the Solar Occultation Channel. The AGC slit is an actual slit with a field of view of 0.1 by 4.0° while the SOC uses a square with a field of view of 2.0 by 2.0 degrees. This slit design was driven for the Airglow Channel by the combination of spectral resolution and stray light minimization, encompassing the center boresight and providing and extended source spectral resolution of around 9 Angstroms. The choice of a rather large square for the Solar Occultation Channel was driven by the requirement to have the sun within the instrument field of view during the very short measurement window of solar occultations by Pluto and Charon which also occur nearly simultaneously with the occultation observation of the Radio Science Experiment.

ALICE-P is aligned on the spacecraft with a 2° tilt on the instrument’s spatial axis so that the sun is centered within the SOC field of view when the High Gain Antenna is pointing to Earth for radio science. The large SOC field of view will allow misalignments up to +/-0.9 degrees between the SOC FOV and the antenna boresight. From the slit, the light is passed to the toroidal holographic grating that has low-scatter and near-zero line ghost problems. The grating also uses a Silicon Carbide coating and heaters. The ALICE spectrograph uses the first diffraction order throughout the 520 – 1,870-Angstrom passband, although the lower half of the first order wavelength coverage also appears in second order between the first order wavelengths.

ALICE uses a 2D imaging photon-counting detector utilizing a microchannel plate Z-Stack that feeds the readout array which utilizes double-delay readout. The MCP front surface is coated with opaque photocathodes of Potassium Bromide for the 520-1180Å range and Caesium Iodide for the 1250-1870Å range. The detector tube is a lightweight brazed alumina-Kovar structure that is welded to a housing. The entire tube body is enclosed in a vacuum chamber housing using stainless steel and aluminum.






This chamber is used to protect the photocathodes against damage from moisture exposure during ground processing and outgassing once in space. The housing is equipped with a door to be opened early in flight and allow light to enter the detector. This door includes a Magnesium Fluoride window that allows UV radiation of >1200Å to pass for ground testing and in case the window failed to open. Opening the door is accomplished by using a dual-redundant torsion spring.

ALICE Detector Protection Mechanism & Door

The MCP detector has an effective area of 35 by 20 millimeters in the dispersion and spatial dimensions with a pixel format of 1024 by 32 pixels (dispersion direction by spatial dimension) – the 6-degree spatial field of view is imaged onto the central 22 of the detector’s 32 channels to be able to use the remaining channels for dark current measurements. The MCP Z-Stack uses three 80:1 length-to-diameter microchannel plates that are curved with a radius of 75 centimeters to match the Rowland circle geometry to ensure an optimum focus. The MCPs are 46 by 30 millimeters in size with 12-micrometer pores on 15μm centers. A repeller grid located above the MCP is biased at a negative voltage (-900V) to reflect electrons that may be liberated in the interstitial regions of the MCP Z-Stack to improve the efficiency of the detector. The MCP Z-Stack itself requires a high negative voltage bias of –3kV and an additional –600V is needed between the MCP stack and the anode array.

One concern for the instrument is the saturation of the detector at the Lyman-Alpha emission which requires physical attenuation that is achieved by masking the MCP detector where the emission comes to focus. The bare MCP glass exposed in this area has a quantum efficiency around ten times less than that of KBr at 1216 Angstroms. This masking approach has been flown successfully on Rosetta and other Space-based UV instruments.Signals generated by the MCPs are passed to the detector electronics that are located on three 63.5 by 76.2-millimeter circuit boards mounted inside an aluminum housing installed behind the detector vacuum chamber. Using pre-amplifiers, the analog MCP output is amplified and the electronics also convert the output pulses to pixel address locations. To be processed by ALICE, the signal pulses need to have an intensity above a set threshold level. For each event that meets the minimum intensity, a 10-bit x address and 5-bit y address is generated by the electronics for transmission to the data handling electronics. In addition to the address, the digitized amplitude of each event is sent to the command & data system. A pulse simulator can be used to test the pixel location read-out and data transfer path to allow testing of the entire ALICE detector and data system without activating the high-voltage power supply of the detector.
The ALICE support electronics include the Power Controller Electronics, Command & Data Handling Electronics, telemetry and command interface electronics, the decontamination heaters and a High-Voltage Power Supply for the detector. The ALICE instrument is controlled by an Intel 8052 microprocessor that has 32KB of local program RAM and 128KB of acquisition RAM as well as 32KB of SRAM and 128KB of EEPROM.The Power Controller Electronics include DC-to-DC converters that interface with the spacecraft power bus to convert it to a stable 5-Volt ALICE instrument bus that is used by the various electronics of ALICE and the High-Voltage Supply. The PCE also includes the switching circuit that controls the heaters as well as circuitry to command the limited angle torque motor of the front aperture door.

The Command and Data Handling electronics are responsible for the execution of commands sent to ALICE from the spacecraft, data acquisition & handling from the detector, formatting of telemetry and science data, control & monitoring of the high-voltage power supply and control of the aperture door. A 4MHz Intel 8052 microprocessor is used to build the interface with the spacecraft for data transmission and command receipt. Housekeeping telemetry is delivered to the C&DH system of the spacecraft via an RS-422 analog bus.ALICE uses two decontamination heaters – one installed behind the off-axis parabolic mirror and one behind the grating. These heaters are 1 Watt resistive heaters and are accompanied by two redundant thermistors to provide feedback control of the heaters. The heaters can be separately activated by the ALICE command system. The High-Voltage Power Supply for the MCP detector is located in a bay behind the OAP mirror. It conditions the –4.5kV required for the operation of the detector.

The voltage of the Z-Stack is fully commandable over a range of 0 to –6.1kV in 25V steps. The HVPS consumes 0.6W of power during operations.ALICE can be operated in three different modes – image histogram, pixel list and count rate mode. Each mode uses a 32k x 16-bit acquisition memory.In the Image Histogram Mode, the acquisition memory is used as a two-dimensional array in its size corresponding to the spectral and spatial dimensions of the detector array. A read-increment-write sequence is performed for each event as the x and y values are used as an address in a 16-bit cell in the 1024 by 32 element histogram memory. During a programmed integration time, the events are accumulated one at a time to create a 2D image. In the pixel list mode, the acquisition memory is used as a one dimensional array to allow the sequential collection of the x,y event address into the linear pixel list memory. Time-binning of events is accomplished by inserting a time marker in the array at specified intervals. The Count Rate Mode uses the memory as a linear array and periodically collects the total detector array count rate sequentially in the linear memory array. ALICE also includes a feature that allows certain areas of the detector to be excluded in suppression of hot pixels and other defects – this filtering is performed ahead of data processing to avoid large fractions of acquisition memory to be taken up by erroneous data.

*Ralph – Imaging Telescope*






Ralph is a visible/near infrared multispectral imaging and short wave infrared spectral instrument that delivers the primary imagery of Pluto and Charon for the study of their geology, morphology and composition.

The instrument is basically comprised of two sub-instruments, the Multispectral Visible Imaging Component (MVIC) covering four bands in the visible spectral range and the Linear Etalon Imaging Spectral Array (LEISA) that includes three detectors sensitive for infrared radiation. Ralph is a collaboration between NASA’s Goddard Spaceflight Center, the Southwest Research Institute and Ball Aerospace. The two components of Ralph share a single optical telescope bringing the total instrument weight to 10.5 Kilograms. Ralph requires a peak power of 7.1 Watts.The MVIC part of Ralph is in charge of delivering full-color images of Pluto and Charon at a resolution of up to 1 Kilometer per pixel. Imagery includes stereo images and nighttime acquisitions to provide data for the refinement of Pluto and Charon’s radii and aid the search for clouds and hazes in Pluto’s atmosphere, help in the search for rings and additional moons in orbit around Pluto.

First and foremost, MVIC imagery will deliver the first color photos of a new world, unlocking the mystery of what Pluto – once the ninth planet in our solar system – actually looks like when resolved beyond a few pixels. Geological maps can be generated from MVIC data which is the primary objective of this part of the Ralph instrument.LEISA is responsible for the mapping of water, methane, carbon dioxide, nitrogen ice and other materials on the sunlit face of Pluto and Charon. Infrared imagery can also provide insights into surface temperatures across Pluto and Charon. Visible and infrared imagery of previously unknown bodies can deliver a wealth of critical data such as cratering history, surface structures, spatial variability of the surface, volatile transport and many more. Furthermore, Ralph looks at the distribution of the main species on Pluto/Charon, examines the areas of pure ices and mixed areas, studying seasonal transport, searching for complex species, and it assesses the connection between geology and composition.

The Ralph instrument is comprised of a single optical telescope that feeds the two focal planes of MVIC and LEISA. Ralph’s telescope uses an unobscured, three-mirror anastigmatic design that was chosen as it provides a larger field of view than the conventional Cassegrain or Ritchey-Chrétien systems. Light enters the telescope through a 75-millimeter aperture and falls onto the primary mirror that directs the radiation to the secondary and tertiary mirrors which focus it onto the focal plane. In between the tertiary mirror and the focal plane assembly is a dichroic beam splitter that transmits infrared radiation at a wavelength greater than 1.1 micrometers to the LEISA focal plane and reflects shorter wavelengths to the MVIC focal plane located perpendicular to the LEISA detectors. The overall focal length created by the three-mirror design is 658 millimeters.The entire telescope assembly is manufactured from grain aligned 6061-T6 aluminum and so are the three mirror assemblies. This creates a lightweight, athermal and thermally conductive design ensuring the optical performance of the system is minimally influenced by temperature as thermal gradients are largely eliminated. The telescope entrance is heavily baffled for stray light rejection and additional measures are taken within the telescope in the form of a field baffle at an intermediate focus between the secondary and tertiary mirrors plus a Lyot stop at the exit pupil of the optics after the tertiary mirror. A protective door in front of the instrument aperture protects the instrument from contamination during ground processing and accidental exposure to direct sunlight during the early mission phase. The door has a 20% throughput and is opened in a one-time mission event.

Ralph is a scanning instrument, requiring the New Horizons spacecraft to move the instrument field of view across its target while the detectors are read-out as part of a pushbroom design, forming the image swath as the spacecraft sweeps out the targeted image.

The MVIC Focal Plane Assembly consists of seven independent Charged Coupled Device arrays mounted on a single thermally controlled substrate, each CCD array equipped with its own specific bandpass filter for the generation of multi-band imagery with the filters mounted 700 microns above the detector surface.

Two of the 32 by 5024-pixel arrays are operated in Time-Delay Integration mode to deliver panchromatic imagery in the 400 to 975-nanometer range. Four 32 x 5024-pixel arrays are used for multi-band imaging covering a blue band (400-550nm), a red band (540-780nm) and the near infrared region (780-975nm) as well as a narrow-band methane channel at 860 to 910 nanometers. The Time Delay Integration TDI is accomplished by synchronizing the parallel transfer rate of each of the 32 CCD rows (each 5024 pixels wide) to the relative motion of the image across the detector surface. TDI is suitable for the generation of large-format images acquired as the spacecraft scans across the target. The presence of 32 rows increases the integration time by the same factor and thus allows for high signal-to-noise measurements. Using two detector arrays for the panchromatic imagery yields a double sampled spatial resolution to be used in the processing of data into hemispheric maps of Pluto and Charon. The normal body rates required for MVIC imaging are 1600 microrad/sec for panchromatic and 1000microrad/sec for multispectral imaging which correspond to integration times of 0.4 and 0.6 seconds, respectively. Spacecraft attitude control is sufficient to keep image smear within a quarter of one pixel over a 0.7sec integration, eliminating any smear-related concerns.

Each of the TDI arrays has a static field of view of 5.7 by 0.037°. When acquiring images of Pluto, 4600 pixels will be filled by the object, the rest being margin for pointing errors while 12 pixels on either side are dark pixels used as reference and for injected charge. All pixels used on MVIC are 13 by 13 micrometers in size.The remaining detector elements of MVIC measuring 128 by 5024 pixels are operated in staring mode with a 0.15 by 5.7° field of view. This framing array is to be used in optical navigation of the spacecraft.

The LEISA instrument is a wedged infrared spectral imager capable of generating spectral maps in the short wave infrared spectral region from 1.25 to 2.5 micrometers. It uses a linear variable filter that is placed around 100 micrometers above the detector array. LEISA features a 256 by 256-pixel Mercury Cadmium Telluride array detector (40 by 40 micrometer pixels) operated as a push-broom sensor just like the MVIC instrument.

Employing Time Delay Integration, LEISA reads out its detector at a speed that is synchronized to the rate of the scan and automatically creates a spectral map as the image is swept out due to the use of a linear variable filter. This LVF is manufactured so that the transmit wavelength varies along the in-scan direction only so that the row-to-row image motion builds up a spectrum (analog to TDI increasing the signal over a single spectral interval on MVIC). The LEISA instrument field of view is 0.9 by 0.9 degrees.






LEISA requires spacecraft rotations of 120 microrad/sec for a frame rate of 2Hz, however, frame rate can be varied from 0.25 to 8Hz to accommodate imaging in various spacecraft rotation modes. Read-out is accomplished through two ribbon cables and a multilayer fan-out board fabricated into a single element.The filter is comprised of two segments, the first covers wavelengths from 1.25 to 2.5 microns at an average spectral resolving power of 240. This creates the composition maps to be obtained from LEISA. The second segment of the filter covers a narrow range from 2.1 to 2.25 microns at a spectral resolving power of 560 to gather compositional information, but also collect surface temperature maps by measuring the characteristic spectral shape of frozen Nitrogen.

Both of the focal plane assemblies, in particular LEISA’s, require active cooling to limit dark currents especially in the long wavelength range of the instrument. A radiator on the top of the Ralph instrument is directly exposed to space and thermally coupled to the focal plane and the Telescope Detector Assembly. The entire telescope structure is kept at 220K in order to limit the conductive and radiative load on the focal planes. MVIC is further cooled to around 175K at the CCDs while LEISA is operated at a focal plane temperature under 130K. For calibration of MVIC and LEISA, the Ralph instrument includes a second radiation input whose field of view is offset by 90 degrees to the instrument, aligned with the spacecraft antenna pointing to allow solar radiation to provide diffuse illumination within the telescope assembly. When the spacecraft is in its nominal Earth/Sun-pointing orientation, sunlight can enter the instrument through the Solar Illumination Assembly aperture that is 4 millimeters in diameter.

A small fused silica lens with a focal length of 10mm is part of SIA and images the light onto the input end of a 125-micrometer core fiber, 10cm in length with the end of the fiber illuminating a pair of lenses directly under the Lyot stop behind the tertiary mirror and just 10cm from the two Focal Plane Assemblies.The overall goal of the Solar Illumination Assembly is to create a repeatable pattern that can be used for tracking the stability of the pixel-to-pixel response (flat-fielding) during the long mission duration. SIA illuminates the entire LEISA detector and about 3000 pixels of each MVIC array. Even though the sun will only measure 50 microns in diameter when imaged onto the fiber at Pluto distance, it will still underfill the fiber. A second fiber with a high attenuation can be used for flat-fielding when New Horizons is still close to the sun.Another use of SIA is its alignment with the Solar Occultation Channel of ALICE, so that Ralph could also be used to create an atmospheric spectrum during the occultation when the Plutonian atmosphere is placed between the entrance of the instrument and the sun. Although SIA only delivers diffuse radiation into the instrument’s telescope, a vertical spectral profile can still be acquired by summing the spectra from all rows into a single spectrum.

The Ralph electronics assembly contains three boards – the detector electronics, the command and data handling board and a low voltage power supply. The electronics box of the instrument is installed directly to the spacecraft below the Telescope Detector Assembly to be able to operate at the spacecraft surface temperature. The detector board delivers biases and timing signals to both focal planes, amplifies the signals received from MVIC and LEISA and performs the analog-to-digital conversion of the imaging data. The science data uses 12-bits per pixel. The command and data handling system executes the spacecraft commands, converts low-rate engineering data from the analog to the digital format and delivers the high-speed imaging data interface to the Instrument Card within the Integrated Electronics Assembly and the low-rate engineering feed directly to the spacecraft C&DH processor. The power supply is in charge of converting the 30V spacecraft bus to the various low-voltages required by the Ralph electronics.

The entire electronics assembly of Ralph is fully redundant in architecture with two strings of components that feature abundant cross-strapping to flexibly bypass any failed components and ensure Ralph can fulfill its function as part of the core instrument suite of New Horizons. Redundancy within the MVIC instrument can not be guaranteed but at least some functionality of the instrument could be preserved in case of a failure by grouping the CCD arrays in two segments with two color and one panchromatic CCDs so that at least some data is still available in case of a single-point failure. LEISA has four independent outputs from the 128 by 128 pixel frames so that science can still be completed in case one quadrant stops working.

*REX – Radio Science Experiment*






The New Horizons Radio Science Experiment makes use of the spacecraft’s high-gain antenna and associated signals processors to obtain temperature and pressure profiles of Pluto’s tenuous atmosphere by measuring radiometric temperature, gravitational moments and ionospheric structure.

The instrument can also look for an ionosphere around Pluto or an atmosphere around Charon and conduct a bistatic surface scattering study on Pluto. REX functions by receiving a 4.2-centimeter wavelength radio signal (7.2GHz) from Earth (transmitted at high power) and recording the signal attenuation (or changes in the signals caused by the radio waves traveling through the atmosphere) as the New Horizons spacecraft passes behind Pluto so that the atmospheric layers are placed in between the signal source and receiver, causing an effect on the structure of the signal that allows the 4.2cm thermal emission to be deduced.

Normally, such measurements are made with the spacecraft sending the signal and a ground station capturing it and recording it, reducing resources needed on the craft in terms of power, memory and mass. However, this was not possible on New Horizons due to the large distance between the Earth and Pluto. A combination of occultation measurements and two-way tracking can be used to determine the total mass of the Pluto system to about 0.01% and also improve the accuracy of the Pluto-Charon mass ratio. The dedicated REX hardware weighs just 160 grams as the only addition to the operational communication system is an additional Uplink Receiver/Decoder card that can process the REX signal into science data. On approach to Pluto, REX measures the radiometric temperature of Pluto and Charon and completes an occultation measurement on Charon to search for a discernible atmosphere. During the close portion of the flyby, REX is in charge of measuring the spacecraft’s velocity vector with high accuracy so that the masses of Pluto and Charon can be separated. After closest approach come the critical occultation measurements on Pluto and Charon to obtain the profile of the refractivity of Pluto’s atmosphere. The precision reached by REX for atmospheric pressure and temperature is 0.1Pa and 3K. It is also possible for REX to be used for the study of the solar wind, the interplanetary plasma and the solar corona when being used during cruise.The requirement to use a ground station to transmit the signal instead of the spacecraft arose from the desired signal to noise ratio of the measurements, the large distance to Pluto and the high flyby speed of the spacecraft. Large transmitter powers are needed to support an accurate measurement of the tenuous atmosphere of Pluto which is hardly possible with the energy constraints of an RTG powered spacecraft. Additionally, the flyby velocity limits the occultation observation to minutes for the upper atmosphere and mere seconds for the lower layers of the atmosphere, increasing the required Signal to Noise Ratio.

New Horizons, within its radio system, incorporates an Ultra-Stable Oscillator USO as an inherent component of the design, both of the REX experiment and the Doppler-Tracking technique employed for navigation. The spacecraft transmitter is always referenced to the USO frequency which is entirely independent of the received uplink signals. Normally, systems use the uplink signal transmitted from the ground to form the frequency of the downlink signal for doppler tracking which creates a direct relationship between the frequency of the received uplink and the transmitted downlink which makes a calculation of the spacecraft radial velocity possible through the comparison of uplink and downlink.New Horizons does not implement the formation of the downlink signal directly from the uplink signal. Instead, it analyzes the uplink and then uses the USO reference frequency to calculate the difference between the number of radio cycles arriving at the spacecraft and the number of USO cycles in the same period.

The observed frequency difference is sent back to the ground as part of telemetry data and makes possible the determination of the Doppler shift and the USO frequency by taking into account the inherent difference in frequency between the ground transmitter and the USO. This brings the advantage of a simpler radio system on the spacecraft, the increased stability of the downlink and the increased flexibility in using the radio link for scientific studies.Within the receiving system of New Horizons, the noise performance has been improved by the placement of the leading Low-Noise Amplifier closer to the antenna to reduce the physical temperature of the X-Band waveguide connecting the amplifier to the high-gain antenna. The REX system follows the 4.5MHz buffer and the anti-phasing filter includes an analog-to-digital converter feeding a triple-redundant Field Programmable Gate Array. Within the FPGA, the two core functions of REX are handled – the calculation of the total power within the 4.5MHz bandwidth from the uplink signal entering the antenna that is being put through a total power integrator, and processing of the 4.5 MHz data in a digital filter to isolate the 1kHz portion of the frequency spectrum that contains the occultation signals relevant for the experiment. These signals are then processed into digital science data and routed to the data recorder to be sent to the ground for further processing and analysis.
*
LORRI – Long-Range Reconnaissance Imager*






LORRI, the Long Range Reconnaissance Imager, is the high-resolution imaging instrument of the New Horizons Spacecraft tasked with the observation of Pluto, its giant satellite Charon and the smaller moons Nix and Hydra as well as other Kuiper Belt objects. The instrument is a narrow-angle telescope that can acquire high-resolution imagery of objects even at great distances.

Its primary purpose is the acquisition of imagery to provide information on Pluto’s geology and surface morphology as well as collisional history, atmosphere-surface interactions and any signs of activity such as plumes or cryovolcanoes, surface layering, atmospheric haze, and other phenomena occurring on the surface or within the atmosphere. Imagery acquired during the flyby will show features as small as 100 meters on the surface of Pluto and 260 meters on the surface of Charon.LORRI is a panchromatic imager sensitive for the visible wavelengths. Imagery from the instrument finds application in optical navigation, the determination of the orbits of Pluto’s satellites before delivering the sharpest images ever obtained of Pluto and its moons. The instrument was developed and manufactured at Johns Hopkins University and SSG Precision Optronics Inc.

The LORRI instrument consists of four principal components, the Optical Telescope Assembly, the Aperture Door, the Associated Support Electronics and the Focal Plane Unit. All components are interconnected by an electrical harness and the instrument includes no moving parts except for the aperture door. All instrument components aside from the door are installed on the Central Deck of the New Horizons spacecraft while the door is mounted to an external spacecraft panel.

Thermal considerations were an important aspect in the development of LORRI since the telescope views cold space while residing within the spacecraft body that is kept well above freezing at all times. To optimize optical performance, a material with high thermal conductivity and low coefficient of thermal expansion was needed for the construction of the optical system.

As a result, the Optical Telescope structure, the primary and secondary mirrors and a metering structure were all manufactured from silicon-impregnated silicon-carbide which offers favorable thermal characteristics. LORRI employs a telescope with a 20.8-centimeter aperture diameter using a Ritchey-Chretien design consisting of a hyperbolic primary mirror and a hyperbolic secondary mirror to eliminate third-order coma and spherical aberration. The telescope has a focal length of 263 centimeters and a narrow field of view of 0.29 by 0.29 degrees.

In total, LORRI has a mass of 8.6 Kilograms, 5.6kg of which are the optical telescope. The instrument requires 5 Watts of electrical power plus up to 10W of heater power. The telescope was designed to have a high light throughput given the low light level at Pluto that is about 1/1000 of that found at Earth. This is also required because LORRI is limited to short exposure times given the stability of the spacecraft that only uses thrusters for attitude control.
The entire telescope structure is monolithic consisting of the primary mirror bulkhead, a short cylindrical section, and the three-blade spider hosting the secondary mirror. A field flattener assembly is installed on the primary mirror mounting plate protruding through the mirror and facilitating fused silica lenses which are the only refractive elements of the LORRI telescope. The telescope structure is mated to the composite baffle tube via three titanium feet that provide vibration isolation. The baffle is attached to the spacecraft structure itself using six glass-epoxy legs that provide thermal isolation.

Multilayer insulation is used to cover the entire Optical Telescope Assembly for thermal protection while thermal gradients are reduced through the choice of materials. The silicon-carbide structures of the Optical Telescope Assembly have a very low expansion with temperature and Invar 36 was chosen for all inserts that allow bolting together of the assembly given its comparable thermal characteristics in the expected temperature range. All Invar inserts and the secondary mirror feet are epoxy-bonded to the Optical Telescope Assembly.

The telescope itself is installed within the telescope baffle tube that consists of highly conductive graphite epoxy and forms a uniform cold sink around the entire structure to help reduce thermal gradients.The interior of the telescope is protected from contamination and solar illumination by a door mechanism that is opened after launch. The door is mounted external to the spacecraft and interfaces with the baffle to build a contamination seal.

The door is machined from a single piece of aluminum and is covered in multilayer insulation for thermal control while the door is closed. In a one-time event, the door is opened using redundant sets of loaded springs and paraffin actuators to guarantee a successful deployment.Baffling within the telescope assembly is accomplished using graphite composite baffle vanes to suppress stray light and reduce image ghosting. A second inner baffle is extending out from the hole in the primary mirror with inner and outer vanes plus threading.

The Focal Plane Assembly of the LORRI instrument features a temperature-controlled Charged Coupled Device detector installed on a bracket that is mounted on the Optical Telescope Assembly via titanium flexures while the bracket itself is attached to a gold-coated beryllium conduction bar that interfaces with a radiator installed on an outside spacecraft panel. Because the radiator is installed separate from the telescope, a highly-conductive aluminum alloy S-link is used to connect the radiator to the Focal Plane Assembly to allow for some motion between the two. The Focal Plane Unit hosts a back-illuminated, high-quantum efficiency CCD detector supplied by E2V Technologies, 1024 by 1028 pixels in size, with four dark columns to create usable imagery of 1024 by 1024, using the standard 13-micrometer pixel size. The instrument has a passband of 350 to 850 nanometers, covering the visible wavelengths. The CCD is highly sensitive and employs anti-blooming technologies. The charge level within each pixel of the CCD is represented by a 12-bit binary word and the entire CCD has a frame transfer time of 13 milliseconds. LORRI supports exposure times from 1 millisecond to 29.9 seconds, however, typical exposures are 50 to 200 milliseconds optimized for the spacecraft pointing capabilities. The Focal Plane Assembly includes a switchable 4x4 on-chip binning option to deliver 256 by 256-pixel images. For calibration, the Optical Telescope Assembly uses two incandescent bulbs that can illuminate the CCD through light scattered throughout the OTA.

Located within the Focal Plane Unit is an AD9807 analog integrated circuit that is in charge of double sampling of the CCD, amplification of the read-out signals and analog to digital conversion to the digitized 12-bit data format. This conversion occurs at a maximum rate of 6MHz, well above the pixel read out speed at 1.5Mhz.

A dedicated latch-up protection circuit is in place to avoid radiation-related latch-up of the analog device. The signal delivered to the double sampler is already amplified using a low-noise, wide-band amplifier located between the CCD and sampler to avoid having to run the analog amplifier within the sampler at high gain. Clocking signals for the CCD are provided by dedicated MIC4427 drivers delivering phase, image zone and memory zone clocking.

The digitized signals are delivered from the Focal Plane Unit to the Associated Support Electronics that are comprised of three components – a Low-Voltage Power Supply, an Event Processor Unit and an Input/Output slice.

The Event Processing Unit communicates with the spacecraft via an RS-422 link to receive commands and transmit engineering data. EPU hosts a RTX2010RH Field Programmable Gate Array as Central Processor.

The main function of the Input/Output board is the reception of serial image data from the Focal Plane Unit and and transmission of that data to one of the Instrument Interface cards of the two Integrated Electronics Modules of the spacecraft for storage within the onboard memory. Data transmission is possible on an RS-422 bus and an LVDS link, both links exist separately to either of the IEMs.

Further tasks of the Input/Output slice are to store/transmit the image header, to receive commands from the RTX processor, command the Focal Plane Unit mode and set exposure times based on inputs from RTX. The Input/Output board contains two Field Programmable Gate Arrays(FPGA) – an imager-interface and and RTX-bus interface. The first reads the images from the FPU and transmits them to the IEM, but it also generates test pattern images for transmission to the IEM. The imager-interface can also receive data from the RTX to be sent to the Focal Plane Unit setting the FPU mode and exposure time and to write the 408-bit image header that is written over the first 34 image pixels. The header information is used to match engineering data with image data. The RTX-bus calculates the 32-bin histogram of the FPU image currently being transmitted to then calculate future exposure times in a dynamic scheme to avoid overexposed images. It also gathers FPU status and temperature parameters that are made available to RTX.






The Low-Voltage Power Supply of the instrument is comprised of a redundant set of DC-to-DC converters and delivers 2.5, 6, and 15V power as required by the other electronics within LORRI.

Also, LVPS actuates the instrument heaters and delivers power bus health data back to the Power Distribution Unit.

LORRI begins Pluto observations 90 days prior to the encounter with Pluto and Charon already resolved as separate objects. These initial observations are used to refine the orbits of Pluto and Charon and the smaller moons, Nix and Hydra. Single frames and 2x1 mosaics are acquired to cover ten full orbits until about 14 days before encounter. Imagery provided in the week leading up to encounter are used for the search for librations of Pluto and Charon. The last full frame of Pluto comes ten hours prior to closest approach and two 3x3 global mosaics are taken during closest approach showing the illuminated disk of the dwarf planet. Additional images taken around the time of closest approach show a smaller area but at a great resolution for morphological studies of the surface and atmosphere. The full disk of Charon is imaged with 3x3 mosaics.

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## Fenrir

*New Horizons - Instrument Overview*

*SWAP – Solar Wind at Pluto*

*



*

All major interplanetary missions carry a Solar Wind Analyzer and New Horizons is no exception as it offers the first opportunity to study the interaction of Pluto with the solar wind. SWAP, the Solar Wind at Pluto instrument, is the largest-aperture instrument ever built to measure solar wind particles given the large distance of Pluto to the sun and the low intensity of the solar wind. 

Despite its distance to the sun, Pluto is not safe from solar wind interaction. In fact, scientists believe that, due to its minute gravity, Pluto is losing a significant amount of material through escape processes driven by the solar wind as atmospheric gas molecules or atoms are stripped away by interactions with the solar wind. The SWAP instrument sets out to quantify the loss encountered by Pluto and also look at the underlying loss mechanisms to compare them with other planets. Learning about atmospheric loss also provides valuable information on the structure of the atmosphere itself.

The SWAP instrument combines a Retarding Potential Analyzer (RPA) with an Electrostatic Analyzer (ESA) to make extremely fine and accurate energy measurements of the solar wind, capable of detecting even minute changes in solar wind speed. SAP was developed by the Southwest Research Institute like many other electrostatic instruments flown to all kinds of places throughout the solar system. The instrument weighs 3.4 Kilograms and draws 2.8 Watts of power.

The electro-optics of SWAP are comprised of the RPA, a deflector and the ESA which work together to select the angles and energies of the solar wind to be measured. Energetic ions selected by the electro optics based on the voltage settings are then registered with a coincidence detector system ahead of signal digitization and storage. The RPA rejects an ions with energy per charge values that are under the voltage setpoint of the system. Ions arriving at angles can be deflected into the subsequent electro-optics by applying a voltage to the deflector ring. The final selection of ions occurs within the ESA that rejects ions outside its set Energy/charge range and also eliminates UV light and neutrals. The ion passband can be solely determined by ESA in case the RPA is turned off, but high-resolution differential measurements of the incident ion beam can only be made by differentiating adjacent RPA/ESA combinations. 
The ions that are selected by the analyzers then enter the detector section which features an ultra-thin carbon foil to create secondary ions and two channel electron multipliers (CEMs) to generate a measurable electron signal. Both, the primary particle and the secondary electrons are measured as part of the coincidence measurement by Charge Amplifiers that service the CEMs.

Overall, SWAP has a field of view of 276 by 10 degrees that is deflectable by over 15 degrees. Ion energies of 35 electron-volt to 7.5 kilo-electron-volt are supported by the instrument. The instrument can acquire either full energy and detailed peak measurements or deliver additional full energy sweep data when stepping through 128 discrete voltage steps with 0.39-second step lengths to deliver full energy spectra. SWAP is installed on the –Z corner of the spacecraft where its field of view is free of any structure. This location also allows the spacecraft to point its imaging instruments on the +Z axis and still permit SWAP to acquire measurements.

To account for the low density of the solar wind at Pluto distance, the SWAP instrument had to utilize a unique design with a very large aperture. Nevertheless, the SWAP instrument is similar in its overall architecture to various top-hat electrostatic analyzers that have flown before. To be able to detect fine-changes in solar wind speed, ESA was coupled with RPA.

The RPA consists of four concentric aluminum cylinders/screens with 90,000 close-packed holes to create a grid structure that is self-supported and has a 65% transmission rate. The grid is 0.25 millimeters thick and the holes 0.34mm in diameter drilled into 0.38mm thick nickel. The four cylinders have diameters of 17.44, 16.96, 16.64 and 16.16 centimeters. The outside and innermost cylinder are not biased and are kept at ground potential while the two central cylinders are biased between 0 and –2000 Volts in 0.49V steps. Ceramic insulators are used to isolate these cylinders from the rest of the system.

The RPA provides a low-pass filter with a sharp energy cutoff, allowing SWAP to make fine sweeps across the solar wind beam once it is located with a coarse ESA scan. Ions need to have sufficient energy to pass the grids. In the process of passing, the ions are decelerated which requires SWAP to re-accelerate the ions to their original energy which is completed in the path from the inner RPA grids to the final grounded grid.

The deflector used by SWAP is used to deflect particles from further out in –Z direction into the central plane of the instrument. It is located just inboard of the RPA and operates at a voltage of 0 to +4000 Volts applied to a metal ring. It can deflect ions of up to 7000eV/q to an angle of up to 15 degrees. Deflections for lower energies are higher.

The Electrostatic Analyzer provides a coarse energy selection and protects the detectors from UV radiation. The outer sphere of the top hat is blackened with an Ebanol coating to reduce scattering of light and particles while the inner surface is blackened but not serrated. A grounded cone completes the ESA design by providing a field-free region through which particles enter the detector area. The ESA can be operated at voltages of 0 to –4000V.






After passing through the field free region, the selected particles are accelerated towards a Focus Ring which holds the ultra-thin carbon foil with a thickness of 1 micrometer. The foil is held in place by a grid with 66% transmission. When striking the grid, the particle generates secondary electrons which, along with the primary particle, continue onward to the Primary Channel Electron Multiplier, accelerated in a 100V potential on the PCEM strip. Electrons scattered backwards are directed to a Secondary Channel Electron Multiplier to be collected.

Counts from the two CEMs are registered by the CHAMP (Charge Amplifier) and the associated electronics. A pulse from one of the CEMs starts a 100-nanosecond anti-coincidence counter during which the other CEM has to provide a pulse as well for the signal to be taken into account to rule out dark counts, UV noise and other erroneous measurements.

There are two detectors within SWAP to provide redundancy over the course of the long mission duration. A second focus ring was added to the SCEM to draw back scattered electrons for measurements without PCEM. SWAP features a two-segment door that is opened once in flight using a tensioned spring assembly. The doors are coated with back nickel and have grounding wires to keep them at spacecraft potential.

The SWAP instrument contains within it all electronics needed for the operation of the instrument, specifically, the High-Voltage Power Supply (a HVPS Driver and High Voltage Boards) and Control Board, located in an electronics volume below the SWAP instrument. Separately, the CHAMP boards are located closer to the sensor to prevent excessive noise.
The Charge Amplifiers convert a charge pulse from the CEMs to a TTL pulse that can be accepted by the Control Board for subsequent processing. The CHAMPs are located in enclosures to the top of the instrument Strong Back to keep them close to the detectors. The pulses from the CEMs are delivered to the CHAMPs through short coaxial cables. A threshold voltage for the CHAMPS can be set by a Digital to Analog Converter on the Control Board through commanding. A resistor sets the output pulse width to 70 nanoseconds and also controls the 100ns amplifier dead time. The output pulses are buffered by two Schmitt trigger buffers before being transmitted through a back-terminated series resistor to the interface cable leading to the Control Board.






The High Voltage Power Supply sets the voltage on all optical surfaces, the RPA, the deflector, the ESA and the Focus Rings. It also supplies power to the CEMs requiring six different voltage to be generated and adjusted based on the instrument mode of operation or external commands. HVPS delivers a 0 to –4500 Voltage to PCEM, 0 to +4500 to SCEM, 0 to 100 to the focus ring, 0 to +2000 to RPA, 0 to +4000 to the deflector, and 0 to –4000 to ESA. Accuracy for the deflector and ESA are 4V, the CEMs 5V and the RPA just 0.5V. The HVPS system is fully redundant to ensure reliable generation of bias voltages.

The Control Board provides the data interface between the SWAP instrument and the New Horizons spacecraft, receiving and executing commands from the spacecraft by using an 8051 microprocessor that responds to commands, controls the operation of the instrument, sets the power sequences and collects the data, also formatting the housekeeping data stream. The Control Board is connected to the two Integrated Electronics Modules of the spacecraft via an RS-422 data bus. DC-to-DC converters on the Control Board deliver the 5-Volt instrument power bus.

The instrument microcontroller runs at 4.9 MHz and 0.4 MIPS (Million Instructions Per Second). The instrument boot code is stored in 32KB PROM, with two 128KB EEPROMs providing redundant storage, 64KB bit storage for the program code and 64KB of Look-Up Tables. A 128KB SRAM memory provides code and data memory space. All instrument memory allocations are controlled by a dedicated Field Programmable Gate Array.

The Control Board receives all CHAMP pulses once a data acquisition window is opened which only occurs when all voltages have been set and initial settling is complete. From that point on, all pulses are registered and those with signals from both CEMs within a 100ns interval are converted to digital science data. Commanding the HVPS board via an interboard connection, the Control Board sets all voltages and receives feedback on current and voltage that is input into housekeeping telemetry.

CEM health monitoring is also performed by the Control Board which can take action to keep the instrument safe in case count rates or any health parameters exceed specified limits.

SWAP can operate in different modes – a simple BOOT mode in which the instrument is booted from the PROM image enabling the upload of new code, a LVENG (Low Voltage Engineering Mode) running from an EEPROM image considered the instrument safe mode, a LVSCI (Low Voltage Science Mode) used to verify instrument performance through CHAMP test pulses, a HVENG Mode when high voltage is set through commands for calibration and checkout, and HVSCI, the main science mode of the instrument running ESA/RPA/DFL voltages according to science run tables.

In its nominal mode of operation, SWAP completes 64-second runs to acquire data, starting with a 32-second coarse sweep across the complete instrument range in 32 steps taking 0.5 seconds each. Then, the Control Board calculates the peak that is then set as the center of the fine sweep which covers a narrow energy range and again employs 32 energy steps to 0.5 seconds each.

*PEPSSI – Pluto Energetic Particle Spectrometer Science Investigation*






PEPSSI is the most compact directional energetic particle spectrometer flown on a space mission and complements the SWAP instrument by covering electrons and ions at high energies to deliver additional data on solar wind interactions of the Plutonian atmosphere. Built at Johns Hopkins University’s Applied Physics Laboratory, the instrument studies the density, composition, and nature of energetic particles and plasmas that are the result of escape processes ongoing at Pluto. As a spectrometer, the instrument can identify species escaping from the atmosphere which also provides valuable information on the structure of the atmosphere itself.

PEPSSI weighs 1.5 Kilograms and requires 2.3 Watts of power. It is a classic time of flight particle spectrometer and measures electrons from 25 kilo-electronvolt to 500keV, ions from 700eV to 1MeV, CNO ions from 15 keV to 1.2MeV, and protons from 40keV to 1MeV. PEPSSI has a field of view of 160 by 12 degrees and measures 19.7 by 14.7 by 21.6 centimeters in size in its launch configuration.

The instrument is mounted on a bracket that provides the proper angular offset of the fan-shaped field of view from any of the spacecraft decks. The viewing geometry was optimized for the study of freshly ionized pick-up ions in the vicinity of Pluto caused by charge exchange from Pluto’s atmosphere. The bracket allows the spacecraft to be mounted on the spacecraft deck while looking past the large High Gain Antenna and not being obscured by the dish structure.

Alignment control for PEPSSI was kept within 1.5 degrees. The installation of PEPSSI allows the instrument to detect solar ions when the spacecraft is in its nominal communications attitude while not directly looking into the sun.

The instrument is installed on the top deck of New Horizons with four stainless steel bolts while thermal isolation from the bracket is provided by thermal washers between the bracket and PEPSSI’s base plate.

The instrument consists of a collimator and sensor assembly known as the Sensor Module sitting atop an Electronics Board Stack facilitating six electronics boards within a box. Contained within the Sensor Head is the time of flight section about 6 centimeters in length feeding an array of Silicon Solid State Detectors that measures energy and delivers timing signals for the calculation of the time of of flight of the particles. Event energy and time of flight (velocity) can be combined to calculate the particle mass (E=0.5mv²) to determine the particle species.

The PEPSSI instrument was launched with the deployable door mechanism, consisting of two door segments that provided protection from contamination during ground operations as well as acoustic environments occurring during launch that could have damaged the ultra-thin foils within the Sensor Module.

Each half of the door covers half of the 160° aperture and swings outward on deployment that is driven by torsion springs initiated by firing an actuator that retracts a retaining pin. Tension of the springs keeps the doors open for the remainder of the mission.

For the examination of ions, PEPSSI uses an approach known as Time-of-Flight (TOF) by Energy and TOF by Microchannel Plate Pulse Height to determine the energy and velocity of ions which allow their mass to be calculated, allowing an identification of the ion species. Electrons are detected by solid state detectors that sense energy and directional distribution.

The Sensor Module consists of an aperture opening, electron deflectors, start foils and anodes, a microchannel plate detector, stop anodes and foils, solid state detectors and pre-amplifiers as well as supporting electronics. The PEPSSI Sensor Module includes TOF sections 6 centimeters across that feed the silicon solid-state detectors. The SSD array and the individual pre-amplifiers are connected to an Event Board that determines particle energies.

The direction of an incoming particle is determined as a function of the solid state detector that is struck by the particle, with six different viewing directions along the 160° fan represented by six physical Solid State Detector Elements covering 25° with 2° of spacing in between individual elements providing an accuracy sufficient to estimate the overall direction of particle inflow. Sectors 1, 3, 6 consist of two SSD detectors, one for ions and one for electrons. The electron detectors are covered with a 1-micron Aluminum layer to reject low-energy protons and heavy ions. Sections 2, 4, 5 are pure ion detectors. For ions, the directionality is determined by the detection of the entrance position on the microchannel plate time-delay anode nearest to the start foil.

As an ion enters the instrument, it first passes through a thin foil in the collimator before reaching the start foil (aluminum-polyamide-aluminum) and generating secondary electrons. These electrons are then directed from the primary particle path to the microchannel plate detector where the Start Signal is generated for the Time of Flight measurement.
A 500-Volt potential between the foil and the MCP directs the secondary electrons to the TOF detector with high accuracy (0.4ns dispersion in transit time). The segmented MCP anodes with one start anode for each of the six angular segments provide data on the direction of travel of the ion.

Secondary electrons that are created as a result of the ion passing through the stop foil (palladium-polyimide-palladium) are again directed to the MCP and cause a Stop Signal. The time-difference between the two signals represents the time it took the ion to pass through the 6-centimeter TOF instrument. Both foils, start and stop, are installed to a high-transmittance stainless steel grid for structural support.

After the stop foil, ions impact the Solid State Detectors that either consist of electron and ion pixels or are pure ion pixels. The SSD determines ion energy which coupled with the TOF measurement delivers ion mass and particle species data.

Electrons entering the instrument are first decelerated by a 2.6kV potential which is part of the TOF system for ion measurements. After passing the stop foil, the electrons are again accelerated by a 2.6kV potential. Reaching the SSD detectors, the electrons are detected in the electron pixels that can measure electrons at energies of 25 keV to 0.5 MeV.

The electron detectors are covered with 1-micrometer aluminum metal flashing that rejects protons with energies under 100keV. Light ions are blocked as well, but for heavy ions with energies over 100keV coincident TOF measurements are needed to discriminate between ions and electrons to only register electrons.

Particle energy can be measured for protons starting at 40keV and heavy ions (such as the CNO group) starting at 150keV up to over 1MeV. Lower-energy ion fluxes are measured via TOF only while the MCP pulse height can only point to a coarse indication of low-energy particles.

Housed within the electronics box below the Sensor Module are six electronics boards that provide all functionality to the PEPSSI instrument and build the interface between instrument and spacecraft. The Energy Board accepts the SSD event signals on 12 channels with amplitudes proportional to particle energy.
These analog signals are converted to 10-bit digital numbers by processing through a charge sensitive amplifier and peak shaping algorithm before being put through an Analog to Digital Converter. A dedicated TOF board processes the time of flight data – amplifying the start and stop signals, computing the time of flight duration between the two signals and converting the measurement into a digital format.

The High Voltage Power Supply generates the voltage bias on the entry/exit foils (-2600V), the microchannel plates (-2100 and –100V), the deflector plates (-2900V) and the SSD bias of –100V. A Digital Interface Board is in charge of running the event validation logic monitoring energy and TOF event counters and running interface functions. The Events Processor board receives energy and TOF data from the other boards that is processed into science data transmitted to the spacecraft via RS-422. It also delivers instrument status telemetry and accepts spacecraft commands that are then executed by the instrument. Finally, the Low Voltage Power Supply delivers the 15 and 5-Volt instrument buses to the electronics boards, generated from the 30V main spacecraft bus.

Operational modes supported by PEPSSI are a TOF-plus-Energy mode, TOF-Only and Energy-Only. All of them are made concurrently based on the data that is available. TOF-Plus-Energy is determined using TOF and SSD data from the same particle. TOF-Only occurs when TOF data can be gathered from secondary electron pulses but no SSD response is registered which is the case for light particles such as protons, although heavy ions at low energies can also lack an SSD signal when below the given energy threshold. Energy-Only measurements occur when ions fail to generate secondary electrons and when the TOF time is sufficiently close to zero.

*VB-SDC – Venetia Burney Student Dust Counter*






SDC is a student-developed instrument designed at the Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics, University of Colorado at Boulder. Its purpose is to detect microscopic dust grains in the solar system from 1AU to at least 30 Astronomical Units. Dust particles can be released by asteroids, comets, and Kuiper Belt objects, for example as the result of collisions. Obtaining an accurate count and size distribution of dust particles can provide insight into the collision rate of such bodies in the outer solar system. SDC can also search for dust in the Pluto system to look at the impact rate of tiny impactors on Pluto’s moons.

The measurement of the spatial and size distribution of interplanetary dust particles is needed to verify the existence of predicted structures within the Zodiacal cloud. Five previous deep space missions have carried dust sensors into deep space – Pioneers 10 and 11, Ulysses, Galileo and Cassini. None of these missions was able to conduct dust measurements beyond 18 AU which means SDC, despite being a student-built instrument, will deliver a truly unique data set. The instrument is expected to continue working after the Pluto flyby to examine the dust environment within the Kuiper Belt which has not yet been explored what so ever. These measurements can advance the current understanding of the formation and evolution of the solar system and deliver new data for models of planet formation out of dust disks in other planetary systems.

The SDC instrument is comprised of two major pieces – a detector assembly with an active dust-sensing system that is exposed to the space environment, and an electronics box residing within the spacecraft. Overall, the instrument weighs 1.9 Kilograms and requires up to five Watts of electrical power. It is the first student-built payload to fly on a NASA planetary mission.

The SDC instrument features a set of polyvinylidene fluoride PVDF film impact sensors that are mounted on a detector support panel that is installed on the exterior of the New Horizons spacecraft and facing the ram direction when the spacecraft is in is nominal Earth-pointing attitude to maximize the probability of dust impacts. Signals from the sensors are relayed via an intra-harness to the instrument Electronics Box facilitated within the warm spacecraft body.






The instrument was designed to provide a spatial resolution of 0.1 Astronomical Units to be able to resolve expected resonance structures.

SDC is capable of detecting the mass of particles between one picogram and one nanogram which corresponds to grain sizes of one to 10 micrometers in radius. Heavier particles can still be detected, though their masses can not be determined.

The dust impact detector has an active area of around 0.1 square meter and uses permanently polarized PVDF films. When a particle hits, a depolarization change is caused as it impacts the film which can be measured by relatively inexpensive sensors that are stable even in extreme thermal, mechanical, electrical and radiation environments.

The magnitude of the depolarization change within the PVDF depends on the momentum of the particle and whether it fully penetrates the film. SDC uses a film 28 micrometers in thickness which is known to stop particles with a mass of 10 nanograms at a speed of 20 Kilometers per second.

The SDC sensor element consists of 12 sensor patches each 14.2 by 6.5 centimeters in size plus two detector patches on the backside of the detector assembly used as a reference to monitor the background noise level caused by mechanical vibration or cosmic ray hits to the electronics. The detector elements are installed atop a one-centimeter thick aluminum honeycomb panel which itself is attached to the exterior of the spacecraft via a three-point compliant mount consisting of titanium flexures for thermal expansion flexibility.

To protect the PVDF film from overheating, the honeycomb panel is directly attached to a high-emissivity polyimide tape that is radiatively coupled to the support panel below to spread out the heat from below the detectors. The top surface is covered with Teflon tape capable of reflecting 90% of incident solar energy.

The PVDF film on the sensors features a thin (1000 Angstroms) Aluminum-Nickel electrode material on the top and bottom surfaces. The detecting element is bonded between a pair of fiberglass frames that have built-in electrical contact wires to the two electrode surfaces bonded to the electrodes with conductive silver filled epoxy. The small signal wires run to the connection tabs where they interface with a coaxial cable. The wire is harnessed so that is can withstand dust impacts.

The electronics of the SDC instrument are facilitated on two printed wiring assemblies housed inside the electronics board. Signals from the detector are delivered through the harness to the analog Printed Wiring Assembly where amplification occurs followed by signal conditioning and conversion to the 16-bit digital regime. The digitized data is collected by registers of the Field Programmable Gate Array of the digital Printed Wiring Assembly and then directed to the microprocessor of the instrument that adds time-stamps and stores the data frames in a long-term non-volatile memory. The digital PWA also hosts the instrument power supply, health monitoring system and the interface between the instrument and the spacecraft.

The SDC Digital Board hosts an Actel RT54SX72S FPGA that completes address decoding functions, conditions the housekeeping data stream, facilitates an interrupt controller and watchdog timer for instrument safety functions and it collects the science data from the analog board.
It is also in charge of delivering housekeeping and science data one of the two Integrated Electronics Modules of New Horizons and accepts commands from the spacecraft. It watches over the performance of the instrument microcontroller and has the authority to reset it. The FGPA has access to 32KB of PROM holding the boot code, 32KB of SRAM and 4MB of Flash RAM to hold science data.

The Amtel 80C32E Microcontroller handles the communications with the spacecraft, executes commands, manages the flash memory and handles the science data, all through the FPGA.

The SDC instrument has been designed for stand alone operations to be able to keep recording dust events even when the New Horizons spacecraft is in hibernation mode. It can manage itself for up to 500 days without the need to communicate with the spacecraft or the ground. A number of autonomy rules are stored within the instrument to provide adequate response for any number of anomalies that could be encountered during the cruise to Pluto. Daily checks of the memory health are part of the instrument’s routine and the number of interrupts on each channel are measured to allow the system to take action by switching channels for lower sensitivities or block them altogether to keep the instrument in a good configuration for actual science collection.

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## Fenrir

*New Horizons flew by Pluto this morning — and we just got the signal confirming it!!!*

It's official: NASA's New Horizons became the first spacecraft ever to fly by Pluto today, passing within 7,750 miles of the dwarf planet at 7:49 am ET.

This fact was widely celebrated this morning, but in reality no one knew whether the probe successfully made it until scientists received a signal this evening. That's because New Horizons was busy collecting data during the flyby — not transmitting it — and once it did send a signal, the transmission took 4.5 hours to reach Earth.

Now, after receiving the signal this evening, mission scientists have confirmed that the probe made it through as planned (there was roughly a 1-in-10,000 chance it could have been hit by a piece of errant space debris). The first photos of the encounter should arrive sometime tomorrow, and over the next weeks and months, we'll see gorgeous, high-resolution photos of Pluto — 10 times sharper than anything taken so far.

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## Fenrir

New Horizons; from Pluto's perspective






I still love you Pluto, you'll always be a planet to me.


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## Fenrir

*Fly Through the Largest Ever Map of Our Galaxy's Cosmic Dust*






A team of astronomers has created the largest ever three-dimensional map of our galaxy’s cosmic dust—and you can fly right through it.

The researchers, from Harvard University, have mapped out the distribution of space dust across three quarters of the night sky. They did that using data about 800 million stars taken with the Pan-STARRS telescope in Hawaii. They calculated exactly where dust existed by measuring the red hue that it lends to stars in the data acquired by the telescope—in much the same way that particles around Earth cause sunsets to look reddish orange.

The results, soon to be published in the _Astrophysical Journal_, have been turned into a series of fly-through videos by the researchers. The one above, for instance, takes you on a spin around our very own Sun, labelled Sol. Elsewhere, though, you can explore the team’s 3D Dust Mapping site which contains even bigger tours of the galaxy. 

Aside from looking amazing, the resulting maps should help astronomers understand the Milky Way in more detail than ever.

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## Fenrir

*Charon, You are a Glorious, Beautiful Moon*






This is Pluto’s largest moon, Charon, in the most beautiful, detailed, highest-resolution single frame image we’ll be downlinking from the flyby this month. And it is amazing.

This image was taken just 466,000 kilometers (290,000 miles) from Charon within hours of New Horizon’s closest approach early on July 14, 2015. The image was taken with the spacecraft’s high-resolution high-resolution, monochromatic LORRI camera at 02:41:49 UTC, just over nine hours before the critical mission flyby. The approximately 2.3 kilometers per pixel resolution makes this the most detailed single-frame image of the moon we’ll be getting during these initial failsafe downlinks. We’ll eventually see mosaics of Charon in more detail, but not until after the primary science-gathering phase is past and the probe switches over into downloading all of its data to Earth. This image was included in the first data downlink early this morning after the New Horizons probe reestablished contact late last night.

*The Massive Moon of Pluto*

Charon is by far the largest of Pluto’s five known moons. At 1,200 kilometers diameter, it’s nearly half the diameter of Pluto, making it the largest moon in the solar system compared to its parent. The entire moon has a surface area of just 4.6 million square kilometers. That’s only a whisper larger than India (3.2 million km2), and half the size of Australia (7.7 million km2).

At just over 10% the mass of Pluto, tidally-locked Charon has enough heft to pull the dwarf planet into a distinctive orbital wobble about their mutual center of mass (barycenter). This makes it not only the largest moon in the solar system compared to its parent, but makes a solid argument for declaring that Pluto-Charon is the first binary dwarf planetary system.

Charon is small enough that its gravity isn’t even 3% that on Earth: the escape velocity to launch from the moon is just 0.58 kilometers per second, or roughly twice the current land speed record at 2,088 kilometers per hour (1297 mph).

*Charon, Pluto’s Partner in the Cosmic Underworld*

As many astronomical bodies are, Charon was discovered by accident. In 1978, US Naval observatory astronomer James Christy was studying photographic plates of Pluto taken at the 1.55 meter Flagstaff telescope when he noticed a slight, periodic bulge. Later observations would show that the bulge was due to a smaller accompanying body, whose periodicity corresponded to Pluto’s rotational period. This finding—strong evidence that the bulge was due to another close by body in a synchronous orbit—led astronomers to reassess Pluto’s size, mass, and other physical characteristics.





_Charon’s discovery at the Naval Observatory Flagstaff Station as a time-varying bulge on the image of Pluto (seen near the top at left, but absent on the right)_

But Charon’s existence wouldn’t be confirmed until 1985, when the two planetary bodies entered a five-year period of mutual transits, crossing each others’ path in Earth’s line of sight. This is an event that only occurs twice in Pluto’s 248 year rotation around the sun, when the Pluto-Charon plane is edge on as seen from the Earth. And we’re damn lucky it happened when it did, or we might have spent many additional years doubting Charon’s existence.

Christy first suggested the moon be called ‘Charon’ after his wife Charlene, nicknamed ‘Char.’ Only later did he realize what a coincidence the name actually was: Those versed in Greek mythology will know that Charon is the mythological ferryman of the dead, closely associated with Hades, the god of the underworld. And it just so happens the Roman underworld god, Pluto is a direct derivation of Hades. It’s incredible that these two planetary bodies, dancing around each other in an endless gravitational embrace in the cold, dark hinterlands of the solar system, get their names from two mythological figures who shared very much the same relationship.

Official adoption of the name Charon announced by the International Astronomical Union on January 3, 1986. Notable features on Charon are going to follow an exploration theme. It’s still to be announced if that theme is exploration destinations, exploration vessels (“New Horizons” would make a lovely name for a plateau), or the explorers themselves.

*Coming Into Focus*

Until the New Horizons flyby, we had very, very few images that resolve Charon as anything more than a bulge off Pluto’s backside. Here’s the best image of the 1990s, taken by the Hubble Space Telescope. Pluto and Charon appear as small, enigmatic worlds, barely visible through one of the most powerful telescopes of the time.





_Pluto and Charon seen by the Hubble Space Telescope on February 21, 1994. Image credit: ESA/NASA_

Hubble swung around for another look in 2006, getting another shot at the moon that was just as squint-inducing but captured a few pixels of the smaller moons Nix and Hydra. In a bit of historical symmetry, part of the imaging team this time included Alan Stern, Principal Investigator for the New Horizons Mission.





_The Pluto-Charon seen by the Hubble Space Telescope on June 22, 2006. Image credit: ESA/NASA_

Grainy and low-res though they may be, this fascinating image helped convince NASA that the Pluto system was worth an exploratory trip.

After New Horizons woke up for its Pluto approach, Charon started zooming into focus. In February, the spacecraft beamed back this time-lapse video showing an entire ‘Pluto day’ (roughly 6.5 Earth days) in the Pluto-Charon system, captured from a distance of 203 million kilometers (126 million miles). The composite of shots, taken from January 25-31, shows the gravitational wobble around the system’s mutual center of mass.






Fuzzy, pixelated Charon has continued to grow, sharpen, and develop geologic surface features before our eyes. A batch of images downlinked in mid-June revealed a prominent dark splotch on one of the moon’s poles, taken by New Horizons’ high-definition, monochromatic LORRI camera at a distance of 50.7 million kilometers (31.5 million miles). The dark spot was totally unexpected, sending the science team into a flurry of still-ongoing speculation.






We got our first-ever detailed look at Charon’s surface one week ago on July 8, 2015. From 6 million kilometers (3.7 million miles) away from the Pluto-Charon system, the still-unexplained dark cap on its northern pole started coming into focus. We also got our first hints of the moon’s cratering, an idea that filled Geology, Geophysics and Imaging team leader Jeff Moore with glee as he revelled in the possibility of impact-generated windows below the surface.

Days later, we saw the moon in enough detail to start our first geological interpretation. The possibility of craters was upgraded to specific probable locations, and new linear features joined the list as potential chasms. The speculation about that odd northern pole increased — could it be the same dark material we were seeing on Pluto, evidence of a shared atmosphere or at least the capture of Pluto’s sublimating ices clinging to the moon?





_The view of Charon by New Horizons on July 11, 2015 reveals potential craters and chasms. Image credit: NASA/JHUAPL/SWRI_

As part of the final failsafe data downlink before the New Horizon probe’s closest approach to the Pluto-Charon system, we got our first colour look at the moon yesterday. The colours are real as in the red filter is displayed as red, but enhanced and saturated to over-exaggerate changes so isn’t what we’d see with our own eyes.

Mission scientists offered the interpretation of the red polar cap as hydrocarbons, tholins formed when methane and nitrogen are exposed to ultraviolet radiation. Those elements have already been confirmed in Pluto’s polar ice cap and tholins are molecules small enough to aerosolize, so it’s theoretically possible that Charon’s cap is formed by capturing sublimated ice escaping form the dwarf planet. If New Horizons finds an atmosphere on the moon, and if that atmosphere is uncannily similar to Pluto’s, it gets downright probable the dark cap is a consequence of the two objects are swapping gas.

Alternately, instead of material transported from the dwarf planet, the patch could be coming from Charon’s interior. To confirm that, we’ll need to take a look at that mottled surfaces covering the rest of the moon, checking if any crater interiors reveal matching material.





_Charon in enhanced real colour on July 13, 2015. Note the distinct red cap, and the diverse mottling in the southern hemisphere. Image credit: NASA/APL/SwRI_

One of the other mysteries that we might solve in the next few days is why Charon’s surface is so much more cratered than Pluto’s. Both objects should be roughly the same age and subject to the same history of bombardment, so something is happening on Pluto to smooth out its surface that isn’t also happening on Charon. If it’s an internal process on Pluto, we’re left confused by how something so small could still be warm enough to be active. If it’s ice-related, we’ve got a new mystery into how the cryogenic processes are different than on Charon.

In that final pre-flyby package of data, New Horizons also sent home one last image of Charon taken with its high-resolution camera. Taken on July 13, 2014 from just under 1.5 million kilometers away from the moon, the 7.2 kilometer per pixel resolution image was impressive but no where near as glorious as the photograph we’d see the very next day.

As we’re learning right now based on the the latest image, Charon has far fewer craters than we expected. This raises the fascinating possibility that the moon is geologically active! But, to be fair, we don’t know exactly how many craters are on this image, and we’ll get additional data tomorrow. The fascinating gash across Charon’s surface is also revealed in the highest resolution to date—this feature is way, way bigger than the Grand Canyon, perhaps up to 3 miles deep and 600 miles long.

So, it looks like there’s some process that’s keeping heat and geologic activity going on Charon. It can’t be tidal energy—Pluto and Charon are in tidal equilibrium, meaning there’s no significant exchange of tidal energy between the two bodies. One possibility is that the decay of radioactive material inside Charon is powering a lot of the geologic activity on the surface. It’s also possible that Charon has managed to store heat from its formation for a long, long time. But the New Horizons team doesn’t want to speculate too much—yet.

The New Horizons probe has safely completed its closest approach to the Pluto-Charon system, but the mission is far from over. The probe is continuing to collect additional observations on its way out of the system, including more photographs of Charon as a crescent moon and lit by reflected light of Pluto-shine. Because the probe can only make observations or send data home, not both, we won’t be getting any higher-resolution full-disk images of the moon this month. When the probe does switch to data-transmission mode, it’ll take over a year to send all the data back to Earth. After that, it will continue to explore deep space, hopefully with extended mission funding to fly past a second Kuiper Belt Object.

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## Fenrir

*Earth, Meet Hydra*






Hydra is the outermost of Pluto’s known moons, and until now, we’d only ever seen it as a faint pixel of light. Today, planet Earth gets its first _real_ glimpse of this tiny, enigmatic satellite.

This never-before-seen view of Hydra’s surface was captured yesterday at a distance of 645,000 km, within hours of New Horizons closest approach on the morning of July 14th, 2015. Captured with the spacecraft’s high-resolution, monochromatic LORRI camera at approximately 3.2 kilometers per pixel, we’re literally watching a point of light transform into a bonafide moon. That is a big fucking deal.

For the first time, we know the size of Hydra. It’s about 48 kilometers by 30 (28 miles by 19 miles), a decidedly elongated, lopsided lump of rock and ice. It has an intermediate albedo, a brightness about halfway between Pluto and Charon. That means the surface must be almost entirely icy.

We _think_ that Hydra is either the second or third-largest moon of Pluto, but we won’t know for certain until tomorrow when we get our first high-resolution at the other contender, Nix.

The image above is also the most detailed single-frame image we’ll be getting during the initial series of failsafe downlinks. Hydra was included in the first data downlink early this morningafter the New Horizons probe reestablished contact late last night.

*Recent Additions to the Pluto Family*

Charon might have been the first moon spotted in the Pluto system, but within the past decade, we’ve added four additional satellites to the flock— Nix, Styx, Kerberos, and Hydra. We were already preparing to launch the New Horizons probe to Pluto when Hydra and Nix were discovered in June of 2005 by the Hubble Space Telescope’s ‘Pluto Companion Search Team.’ Kerberos was detected later, in 2011 during a Hubble survey searching for rings around Pluto, while teeny tiny little Styx wasn’t spotted until July of 2012, when the New Horizons team was conducting a search for potential hazards to the reconnaissance mission.

On June 21st, 2006, the name ‘Hydra’ was assigned by the International Astronomical Union. Hydra, a nine-headed serpent from Greek mythology, pays double homage to Pluto’s then-tenure as the ninth planet in our solar system (Pluto was reclassified as a dwarf planet in August 2006), with the ‘H’ also indicating its discovery by Hubble.

*An Enigma of a Moon...Until Now!*

Hydra orbits Pluto at roughly 64,800 kilometers (40,264 miles) from the gravitational center (barycenter) of the system. Its nearly circular, prograde orbit is in the same plane as the moon Charon. Hydra is sometimes brighter than the other oblong moon, Nix, suggesting that it is either larger or that the surface of the moon varies in brightness.

Until the New Horizons flyby, astronomers had no direct measurements of Hydra’s size. We had worked out some very rough size estimates based on the assumption that Hydra is the same brightness as Charon. That assumption, however, would imply Hydra is compositionally very similar to Charon (roughly a 50 / 50 mix of ice and rock), and we really had no good reason to expect that it is. There could be any number of processes—collisions between planetary bodies, different ices or gases siphoned off Pluto—that might make Pluto’s system compositionally diverse, similarly to the moons surrounding Jupiter, Saturn, and Neptune.

That Charon, Hydra and Nix are all relatively the same brightness is simply the best guess we were able to make based on incredibly limited information. But with our first real image of Hydra, we can start to make some more sophisticated observations and hypotheses about what this enigma of a moon is actually made of.

Despite the fact that we were really just guessing at Hydra’s size before today, we were correct in supposing the moon isn’t massive enough to form a spheroid under its own gravity. Like Mars’ moon Phobos, Hydra (and Nix) are rather oblong little things:






*Zooming in On Hydra*

During the New Horizons mission to fly through the Pluto-Charon system, our previous best look at the smaller moons Nix and Hydra was way back in February.





_Pluto, Charon, Nix, and Hydra seen by the Hubble Space Telescope in 2006. Image credit:NASA/ESA/H. Weaver/A. Stern_





_Nix and Hydra each orbit Pluto about once a month. Image credits: NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Southwest Research Institute_





_Heavy processing brings out Nix and Hydra more clearly while losing pesky details like background stars. Image credits: NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Southwest Research Institute​_

And her she is again, as revealed moments ago:






Fascinated by Hydra? Hold onto your keyboards, nerds! This is only the beginning. We’ll be getting back even higher resolution images of Hydra in the coming days, and learning much, much more about Pluto’s outermost known moon in the weeks and months ahead. We’ll get our first downlink of Pluto’s other oblong moon, Nix, later tonight.​

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## Chanakya's_Chant



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## Fenrir

*Atlas V blasts off on GPS-Satellite Delivery Mission*







An Atlas V 401 rocket carrying the GPS IIF10 satellite blasted off from Space Launch Complex 41 at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station on Wednesday at 15:36 UTC, embarking on a mission of three and a half hours to deliver the GPS IIF10 satellite to an orbit over 20,000 Kilometers in altitude. Atlas V successfully reached a parking orbit for a three-hour coast phase ahead of a critical burn of its Centaur upper stage to circularize the orbit for spacecraft separation at 18:59 UTC.

Atlas V went through a quiet countdown operation picking up seven and a half hours prior to the opening of the day’s 18-minute launch window. The first several hours of the count were dedicated to detailed checkouts of the Atlas V and final hands-on work at the launch pad to configure the 58-meter tall rocket and all ground systems for blastoff. The vehicle headed into propellant loading when clocks resumed counting at T-2 hours to begin the process of filling the two stages of the rocket with Liquid Oxygen and Liquid Hydrogen – Rocket Propellant 1 had been loaded into the first stage on Tuesday.






Tanking was completed without issue and clocks ticked down to T-4 minutes for a 30-minute hold giving teams time for final setup tasks and the required GO/NoGO polls. All stations were able to report a GO for launch including the Eastern Range and the Launch Weather Officer as cumulus clouds stayed away from the Cape and conditions were seen improving throughout the countdown. Heading into T-4 minutes, Atlas V executed the final steps needed to transition to its liftoff configuration.

Three seconds prior to blastoff, the massive two-chamber RD-180 engine soared to life, reaching a liftoff thrust of 390 metric ton-force. Climbing from its pad after lifting off at 15:36:00 UTC, Atlas V balanced in a vertical posture for 18 seconds before pitching and rolling onto a north-easterly flight path, targeting an obit inclined 55 degrees. The first stage showed good performance throughout its burn of four minutes and 3 seconds that was followed by the separation of the Centaur Upper Stage and the ignition of the RL-10C engine, reaching its full thrust of 11,200kgf. 






Centaur burned for 12 minutes and 43 seconds and successfully placed the stack into an elliptical transfer orbit with its apogee close to the GPS orbital altitude. This successful first burn set the vehicle up for a three-hour coast phase that will take it to a position near the high point of the orbit so that the second burn can serve as circularization maneuver. This lengthy coast takes the vehicle across the Atlantic, over the UK, a large portion of Central and Eastern Europe, the Black Sea, the Arabian Peninsula and out over the Indian Ocean to head to a position to the south of Australia for the second burn.

Re-start of the RL-10C engine of Centaur is expected three hours and 17 minutes after liftoff on a short burn of one minute and 28 seconds to raise the perigee and aim for a circular orbit. GPS IIF10 is targeting the standard GPS orbit of 20,459 Kilometers inclined 55° to take its place within Plane C of the GPS constellation. Spacecraft separation is expected at 18:59 UTC on Wednesday.

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## Fenrir

*The Ice of Pluto is More Diverse Than We Realized*






We give up: Pluto is out to surprise us. This time it’s the ice. We thought it’d be easy once we confirmed ice caps of methane and nitrogen, but the story is much more complicated. The entire world has methane ice, but it’s concentrated at the equator and relatively thin at the pole.

Yesterday, NASA released the first data back from the Linear Etalon Imaging Spectral Array (LEISA). You can think of the spectra as a methane distribution map for the dwarf planet. Both the red and blue bands cover where shortwave infrared light is strongly absorbed by methane ice, while the green band is unaffected.

In our first detailed spectra of Pluto, we can see an abundance of unevenly distributed methane ice. The ice is present across the world, but in a complex distribution we’re just barely starting to describe, and certainly don’t yet understand. Both the pole and equator have ice, but what that ice is made of, what it looks like, and how it behaves are totally different. This is Pluto’s version of playing with how textures and contamination impact an an ice’s behaviour and appearance. Although this spectra is looking at methane and nitrogen ice, you can think of it being somewhat analogous to how flawless deep blue ice and fluffy clean white snow look different despite both being pure, and how pristine snowy wilderness is immediately distinguishable fromgrungy street-clearing snowbanks.






New Horizons scientist Will Grundy describes the north polar region, confirmed as an ice cap just days ago, as an uneven mix of methane and nitrogen:

_We just learned that in the north polar cap, methane ice is diluted in a thick, transparent slab of nitrogen ice resulting in strong absorption of infrared light._

From the spectra, the cap has a deep methane absorption. Meanwhile, equatorial patches that are so dark in optical light have shallow infrared absorption. This led Grundy to speculate:

_The spectrum appears as if the ice is less diluted in nitrogen, or that it has a different texture in that area._

The more shallow dip in the spectra suggests that something is scattered more infrared light.

Methane, a carbon atom bonded to four hydrogen atoms, is considered one of the simplest organic compounds—although the term ‘organic’ is often confused to mean that methane can only be produced biologically. As we’ve learned exploring our own solar system, and by pointing our telescopes into distant clouds of interstellar dust, methane forms spontaneously all over the galaxy. Geochemically, it can be formed via a process known as serpentenization, involving water, carbon dioxide, and the mineral olivine—this is thought to be the dominant methane-forming process on Mars. It can also be formed by inorganic reactions with strong oxidizing agents, things like chlorine and fluorine, and biologically, through a type of anaerobic (oxygen-free) metabolism known as methanogenesis.

The discovery of methane on Pluto actually places the dwarf planet in line with every single other planet in our solar system—we’ve found methane everywhere, from trace quantities in Mercury’s thin atmosphere, to small amounts in the Martian crust, to literal oceans of the stuff on Saturn’s moon Titan (methane turns condenses from gas to liquid at a blistering −161.49 °C or −258.68 °F.) So abundant is liquid methane on Titan that scientists have run computer simulations to model the formation of a living cell based on methane rather than water.

But again, methane-based life is only speculation. Using Earth biology as an example, extraterrestrial methane would only be taken as strong potential evidence of life if it was found in disequilibrium in the atmosphere—that is, in combination with something like oxygen that would naturally consume methane. Liquid water and a heat source would make that case even stronger.

We don’t yet know what the frozen methane spread across Pluto’s surface means—this is just the very barest beginning of a hint of the science story going on here. It’s going to get more interesting as more spectra are returned back to Earth, and downright fascinating once we get a glimpse at what happened when LEISA spun around to peek at Charon. With spectra of both worlds, we’ll finally be able to start playing the matching game of seeing if we can find the same materials on both worlds, hopefully drawing connections between the two.

LEISA is a spectrometer on Ralph that operates in infrared wavelengths (1.25-2.50 micrometers) to map surface compositions. A different instrument, Alice, keeps an eye on the composition of atmospheres. Both instruments have their individual strengths and weakness, but between them we’ll hopefully slowly build a more complete map of how different elements are scattered around these alien worlds. For example, later spectra from LEISA will be able to distinguish between methane, ethane, and propane, but it will always be blind to any argon on the surface.

Only a portion of the first spectrum was returned for this initial downlink. This is a false colour image, where three infrared wavelength bands are mapped into the optical spectra for us to be able to see them. Red is remapped to capture the longest wavelengths (2.30 to 2.33 micrometers), followed by green (1.97 to 2.05 micrometers) and blue at the short end of infrared (1.62 to 1.70 micrometers). Pluto glows brightly in these short infrared bands, with a distinctly green northern cap with a limb reaching down to the equator, an a much more red southern hemisphere. To the right are individual spectral lines, recordings of the exact distribution of infrared light at the regions outlined with a thick dashed line. The northern pole (green) has a more extreme spectra with both higher peaks and troughs than the equator (red). The notable dips mark methane absorptions.

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## Fenrir

*STEREO-A Spacecraft Returns Data From the Far Side of the Sun*






This image of the sun was taken on July 15, 2015, with the Extreme Ultraviolet Imager onboard NASA's Solar TErrestrial RElations Observatory Ahead (STEREO-A) spacecraft, which collects images in several wavelengths of light that are invisible to the human eye. This image shows the sun in wavelengths of 171 angstroms, which are typically colorized in blue. STEREO-A has been on the far side of the sun since March 24, where it had to operate in safe mode, collecting and saving data from its radio instrument. The first images in over three months were received from STEREO-A on July 11.

The three-month safe mode period was necessary because of the geometry between Earth, the sun, and STEREO-A. STEREO-A orbits the sun as Earth does, but in a slightly smaller and faster orbit. The orbit ensured that over the course of years, Earth and the spacecraft got out of sync, with STEREO-A ending up on the other side of the sun from Earth, where it could show us views of our star that we couldn’t see from home. Though the sun only physically blocked STEREO-A from Earth’s line of sight for a few days, STEREO-A was close enough to the sun—from our perspective -- that from March 24 until July 8, the sun interfered with STEREO-A’s data transmission signal, making it impossible to interpret.

As STEREO-A kept orbiting, it eventually made its way far enough from the sun to come out of this transmission dark zone. In late June, the STEREO-A team began receiving status updates from the spacecraft, confirming that it had made it through its long safe-mode journey unharmed.

STEREO is the third mission in NASA's Solar Terrestrial Probes program (STP). The mission, launched in October 2006, has provided a unique and revolutionary view of the sun-Earth system. The two nearly identical observatories - one ahead of Earth in its orbit, the other trailing behind - have traced the flow of energy and matter from the sun to Earth.

_Image Credit: NASA/STEREO_

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## Fenrir

*How our view of Pluto has changed over the years*






Pluto was discovered back in 1930 and that cute dwarf planet has been a blurry gray pixelated object to us ever since. Though our view of Pluto has gotten better ever so slightly over the years, we’ve never seen it in detail until the New Horizons spacecraft flew by everyone’s favorite former planet.

SpaceSciNewsroom put together this video showing how much our view of Pluto has been improved:

The first frame is a digital zoom-in on Pluto as it appeared upon its discovery by Clyde Tombaugh in 1930 (image courtesy Lowell Observatory Archives). The other images show various views of Pluto as seen by NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope beginning in the 1990s and NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft in 2015. The final sequence zooms in to a close-up frame of Pluto released on July 15, 2015.

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## Fenrir

*Battling Wildfires from Space: NASA Adds to Firefighters’ Toolkit*






U.S. firefighters battling wildfires this year will get a clearer view of these threats with new NASA-funded satellite-based tools to better detect fires nationwide and predict their behavior.

The new fire detection tool now in operation at the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) Forest Service (USFS) uses data from the Suomi National Polar-orbiting Partnership (NPP) satellite to detect smaller fires in more detail than previous space-based products. The high-resolution data have been used with a cutting-edge computer model to predict how a fire will change direction based on weather and land conditions.

This tool is another example of the high-value benefits from cooperative efforts between NASA and the USDA, the future of which was formalized Thursday when NASA Deputy Administrator Dava Newman and USDA Deputy Secretary Krysta Harden signed an agreement that establishes a framework for future enhanced cooperation in the areas of Earth science research, technology, agricultural management, and the application of science data, models and technology in agricultural decision-making.

The new active fire detection product using data from Suomi NPP’s Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite (VIIRS) increases the resolution of fire observations to 1,230 feet (375 meters). Previous NASA satellite data products available since the early 2000s observed fires at 3,280 foot (1 kilometer) resolution. The jump in detail is helping transform how satellite remote sensing data are used in support of wildfire management.

The data are one of the intelligence tools used by the USFS and Department of Interior agencies across the United States to guide resource allocation and strategic fire management decisions.

“The high-resolution data gleaned from VIIRS are available in a short time period and significantly enhances the Forest Service’s current strategic fire detection and monitoring capabilities,” said Brad Quayle, program lead at the USFS Remote Sensing Applications Center in Salt Lake City. “They are welcomed by the end users we serve in the interagency wildfire management community.”





_The jump in detail provided by the new Suomi National Polar-orbiting Partnership (NPP) satellite 375-meter fire detection product is helping transform how satellite remote sensing is supporting wildfire management. These images of the progression of the September 2014 King Fire in California demonstrate the improved resolution over previous fire detection products.
Credits: *University of Maryland/W. Schroeder*_

Compared to its predecessors, the enhanced VIIRS fire product enables detection every 12 hours or less of much smaller fires and provides more detail and consistent tracking of fire lines during long duration wildfires – capabilities critical for early warning systems and support of routine mapping of fire progression. Active fire locations are available to users within minutes from the satellite overpass through data processing facilities at the USFS Remote Sensing Applications Center, which uses technologies developed by the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center Direct Readout Laboratory in Greenbelt, Maryland.

The new VIIRS 375m fire detection product was developed with support from NASA’s Earth Science Applied Sciences Program, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Joint Polar Satellite System Proving Ground Program, and the U.S. Forest Service. The project team was led by Wilfrid Schroeder at the University of Maryland College Park with scientists at the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR), Boulder, Colorado.

NCAR developed a new cutting-edge weather-fire model that has demonstrated potential to enhance firefighter and public safety by increasing awareness of rapidly changing fire behavior. The model uses data on weather conditions and the land surrounding an active fire to predict 12-18 hours in advance whether a blaze will shift direction. The VIIRS fire detection product has been applied to these models, successfully verifying the wildfire simulations.

The state of Colorado recently decided to incorporate the weather-fire model in its firefighting efforts beginning with the 2016 fire season.

“We hope that by infusing these higher resolution detection data and fire behavior modeling outputs into tactical fire situations, we can lessen the pressure on those working in fire management,” said Schroeder.

In 2014, an international field campaign was organized in South Africa’s Kruger National Park to validate fire detection products including the new VIIRS active fire data. In advance of that campaign, the Meraka Institute of the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research in Pretoria, South Africa, an early adopter of the VIIRS 375m fire product, put it to use during several large wildfires in Kruger.

“We had some serious wildfires in September 2014, and the VIIRS 375-meter data performed excellently,” said Philip Frost of the Meraka Institute.

The demand for timely, high-quality fire information has increased in recent years. Wildfires in the United States burn an average of 7 million acres of land each year. For the last 10 years, the USFS and Department of Interior have spent a combined average of about $1.5 billion annually on wildfire suppression. Large catastrophic wildfires have become commonplace, especially in association with extended drought and extreme weather.

NASA’s expertise in space and scientific exploration contributes to essential services provided to the American people by other federal agencies, such as natural resource management and weather forecasting. Suomi NPP is a joint mission of NASA and NOAA launched in 2011.

The multispectral imaging capabilities of the Suomi NPP VIIRS instrument support atmospheric studies and a variety of operational products including imaging of hurricanes, sea surface temperature, sea ice, landscapes, and the detection of fires, smoke and atmospheric aerosols.

NASA uses the vantage point of space to increase our understanding of our home planet, improve lives, and safeguard our future. NASA develops new ways to observe and study Earth's interconnected natural systems with long-term data records. The agency freely shares this unique knowledge and works with institutions around the world to gain new insights into how our planet is changing.

Active fire maps of the United States are available online at:

http://activefiremaps.fs.fed.us

For more information on how NASA Earth science aids people, visit:

Benefits on Earth | NASA

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## Fenrir

*Soar Over Pluto's Heart at 77,000 Kilometers in This New Animation*






This animated flyover of the Norgay mountains and Sputnik plains on Pluto are based on the freshly-delivered close-approach images from the New Horizons flyby. See features just a single kilometre big as you experience what it would be like to hitch a ride on the spacecraft as it skimmed past the dwarf planet.

This flyby is over part of Tombaugh Regio, the massive heart of Pluto. The mountains, Norgay Montes, are named for Tenzing Norgay. Norgay was the Nepalese sherpa who accompanied Edmund Hillary, making him one of the first two people to summit Mount Everest in 1935. This is the first extraterrestrial landscape to be named for someone from Nepal. The plains, Sputnik Planum, are named for the original space explorer: Sputnik 1, the first artificial satellite above the Earth. These names fit the secondary exploration theme for place names on Pluto, and make a more pleasant change from the dark gods populating the dwarf planet so far.






The animation was created from images taken by the Long Range Reconnaissance Imager (LORRI) on the New Horizons probe during the Pluto flyby on July 14, 2015. Using photographs taken from just 77,000 kilometers (48,000 miles) away from the surface, the resolution in the subsequent animation is good enough that features as small as a kilometers across (0.5 miles) are visible.

So much geology and geomorphology is going on in this animation that we’re going to need to get back to you later with a full breakdown. For now, check out this how-to guide to learn how a geomorphologist looks at a new landscape like this.

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## Hamartia Antidote

more Pluto

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## Fenrir

*Pedal to the Metal – RS-25 Engine Revs Up Again*






In auto racing parlance, NASA engineers put the “pedal to the metal” during a July 17 test of its Space Launch System (SLS) RS-25 rocket engine at Stennis Space Center. During a 535-second test, operators ran the RS-25 through a series of power levels, including a period of firing at 109 percent of the engine’s rated power. Data collected on performance of the engine at the various power levels will aid in adapting the former space shuttle engines to the new SLS vehicle mission requirements, including development of an all-new engine controller and software. Four RS-25 engines will use the added performance to help power the SLS core stage during launch. The SLS is being developed to carry humans deeper into space than ever before, to such destinations as an asteroid and Mars. When fully developed, the heavy-lift version of the spacecraft will be the largest, most powerful rocket ever built. Prior to the first launch – Exploration Mission-1, the SLS first stage will be tested on the B-2 Test Stand at Stennis, which will involve simultaneously firing its four RS-25 engines just as they would during an actual launch. Modifications are continuing to prepare the B-2 stand for the test series. Meanwhile, during the July 17 development engine test on the nearby A-1 Test Stand, operators continued to collect data on engine performance under various conditions. They also collected data on performance of the new controller, which monitors and controls engine performance. Aerojet Rocketdyne of Sacramento, California, is the prime contractor for the RS-25 engine work. Two additional tests of the RS-25 engine are planned before the current test series concludes by early September and a new test series begins on four engines for a future flight.

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## Fenrir

*Hubble's Portrait Of The Crowded Quintuplet Cluster*






This latest image from the Hubble Space Telescope is utterly stunning: it’s of the Quintuplet Cluster, named for its five brightest stars. Up until 1990, we had no idea that this existed: because it’s so close to the center of the galaxy, dust has blocked our view of it.

This image was taken by observing region of space with infrared observations, which has allowed us to take a look at the region’s stars. There’s extremely bright ones present: The Pistol Star is a blue hypergiant and one of the most luminous in our galaxy. It’s not expected to last long: it will burn through its fuel in just a couple of million years. The cluster is also home to a number of red supergiants, which indicate that the stars in this region of space are very, very short lived.

What’s also interesting is that this image is a really great example of how much better the Hubble Space Telescope has gotten at viewing the cosmos. Here’s our first image of the cluster:

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## Fenrir

*NASA’s New Horizons Discovers Frozen Plains in the Heart of Pluto’s ‘Heart’*





_In the center left of Pluto’s vast heart-shaped feature – informally named “Tombaugh Regio” - lies a vast, craterless plain that appears to be no more than 100 million years old, and is possibly still being shaped by geologic processes. This frozen region is north of Pluto’s icy mountains and has been informally named Sputnik Planum (Sputnik Plain), after Earth’s first artificial satellite. The surface appears to be divided into irregularly-shaped segments that are ringed by narrow troughs. Features that appear to be groups of mounds and fields of small pits are also visible. This image was acquired by the Long Range Reconnaissance Imager (LORRI) on July 14 from a distance of 48,000 miles (77,000 kilometers). Features as small as one-half mile (1 kilometer) across are visible. The blocky appearance of some features is due to compression of the image. *Credits: NASA/JHUAPL/SWRI*_

In the latest data from NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft, a new close-up image of Pluto reveals a vast, craterless plain that appears to be no more than 100 million years old, and is possibly still being shaped by geologic processes. This frozen region is north of Pluto’s icy mountains, in the center-left of the heart feature, informally named “Tombaugh Regio” (Tombaugh Region) after Clyde Tombaugh, who discovered Pluto in 1930.

“This terrain is not easy to explain,” said Jeff Moore, leader of the New Horizons Geology, Geophysics and Imaging Team (GGI) at NASA’s Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, California. “The discovery of vast, craterless, very young plains on Pluto exceeds all pre-flyby expectations.”

This fascinating icy plains region -- resembling frozen mud cracks on Earth -- has been informally named “Sputnik Planum” (Sputnik Plain) after the Earth’s first artificial satellite. It has a broken surface of irregularly-shaped segments, roughly 12 miles (20 kilometers) across, bordered by what appear to be shallow troughs. Some of these troughs have darker material within them, while others are traced by clumps of hills that appear to rise above the surrounding terrain. Elsewhere, the surface appears to be etched by fields of small pits that may have formed by a process called sublimation, in which ice turns directly from solid to gas, just as dry ice does on Earth.

Scientists have two working theories as to how these segments were formed. The irregular shapes may be the result of the contraction of surface materials, similar to what happens when mud dries. Alternatively, they may be a product of convection, similar to wax rising in a lava lamp. On Pluto, convection would occur within a surface layer of frozen carbon monoxide, methane and nitrogen, driven by the scant warmth of Pluto’s interior.

Pluto’s icy plains also display dark streaks that are a few miles long. These streaks appear to be aligned in the same direction and may have been produced by winds blowing across the frozen surface.

The Tuesday “heart of the heart” image was taken when New Horizons was 48,000 miles (77,000 kilometers) from Pluto, and shows features as small as one-half mile (1 kilometer) across. Mission scientists will learn more about these mysterious terrains from higher-resolution and stereo images that New Horizons will pull from its digital recorders and send back to Earth during the next year.

The New Horizons Atmospheres team observed Pluto’s atmosphere as far as 1,000 miles (1,600 kilometers) above the surface, demonstrating that Pluto’s nitrogen-rich atmosphere is quite extended. This is the first observation of Pluto’s atmosphere at altitudes higher than 170 miles above the surface (270 kilometers).

The New Horizons Particles and Plasma team has discovered a region of cold, dense ionized gas tens of thousands of miles beyond Pluto -- the planet’s atmosphere being stripped away by the solar wind and lost to space.

“This is just a first tantalizing look at Pluto’s plasma environment,” said New Horizons co-investigator Fran Bagenal, University of Colorado, Boulder.

"With the flyby in the rearview mirror, a decade-long journey to Pluto is over --but, the science payoff is only beginning,” said Jim Green, director of Planetary Science at NASA Headquarters in Washington. "Data from New Horizons will continue to fuel discovery for years to come.”

Alan Stern, New Horizons principal investigator from the Southwest Research Institute (SwRI), Boulder, Colorado, added, “We’ve only scratched the surface of our Pluto exploration, but it already seems clear to me that in the initial reconnaissance of the solar system, the best was saved for last."

New Horizons is part of NASA’s New Frontiers Program, managed by the agency’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama. The Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Maryland, designed, built and operates the New Horizons spacecraft and manages the mission for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate. SwRI leads the mission, science team, payload operations and encounter science planning.

New Horizons Discovers Frozen Plains in the Heart of Pluto’s ‘Heart’ | NASA

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## Fenrir

*How One Company Plans to Launch Rockets Using Beams of Microwaves*






More people than ever are joining the private space race, developing new ways to loft craft into the night sky. But the Colorado space startup Escape Dynamics has an unusual plan to achieve that goal, which will use beams of microwaves to power a rocket into space.

Late last week, Escape Dynamics announced that it has successfully tested prototypes of its new spaceship engine. But unlike normal rockets, their engines use high-power microwave sources to power electromagnetic motors aboard the craft. The idea is that the removal of some of the on-board power systems would allow for craft that could make it into space in one piece, without jettisoning components—making them fully and rapidly reusable.

In reality, Escape Dynamics would need to create a large-scale energy storage system, charged from the grid or renewable sources, which would be used to drive its microwave system. Then, a series of phased array microwave transmitters would be used to focus beams of microwaves at the underbelly of the craft, where they’d power a heat exchanger that ignites on-board hydrogen to supply the rocket with energy. As the craft takes off, the microwaves would track the ship, providing continued energy as it moves through the sky.






It’s a bold aim. But tests of prototypes devices here on Earth suggest it’s plausible. Engine efficiency for space craft can be measured in units of Specific Impulse, measured in seconds, with normal chemical rockets topping out at about 460 seconds. The new Escape Dynamics system has shown to achieve 500 seconds, and the company claims that if it swapped out the prototype helium fuel source system for hydrogen that could easily become 600 seconds. That could perhaps be enough to loft a craft into orbit with just one fuel stage.

There’s still a little way to go, though. Next, the team behind the technology plans to carry out open-air tests of the set-up in the desert, before moving on to setting up a repeatable system to power drones using the technology. Only then will Escape Dynamics try to put craft into space using the technique—first sending them into space and, later, properly into orbit. There’s a lot to be done, then, but the company reckons that it payloads of over 1,000 kg into orbit by 2025.

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## Fenrir

*NASA's 'GoreSat' Mission Just Released Its First Image of Earth*





_The first image of Earth released by NASA's Deep Space Climate Observatory, whose camera, a million miles away, will send home new photos every day. Source: NASA_

NASA's 10-year, 3-billion-mile mission to Pluto electrified the world last week when it dispatched images of a tiny planet that's dynamic in ways even experts never anticipated. So while 3 billion miles is the current bar to ignite mission-mania in the public eye, a million-mile jaunt still isn't too shabby. 

NASA has released the first image taken from the Deep Space Climate Observatory (DSCOVR), a collaboration with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) that will study both the Sun and the Earth.

The satellite was launched in February. In early June it reached its new home, 1 million miles away. That faraway point, which astronomers refer to as L1, is a kind of gravitational balancing point between the Earth and the Sun. A satellite occupying that position remains more or less stationary relative to the two orbs. 


DSCOVR will send back new images every day so that people around the world can see the whole planet in living color. The project was conceived by then-Vice President Al Gore in 1998, built within two years, and set aside. "GoreSat," as the Earth-camera became known informally, was reborn in 2008 as a sideshow to DSCOVR's main mission, which is to monitor the Sun's "weather" for NOAA and give earthlings a heads-up if electromagnetic storms are headed our way.

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## Fenrir

*A Single Weak Strut Caused That SpaceX Rocket to Blow Up*






Every strut counts, as we say. On June 28th, a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket carrying a Dragon capsule stuffed full of supplies for the International Space Station blew up in mid-air, minutes after launch from Cape Canaveral, Florida. Today, Elon Musk revealed the cause: A single, flimsy strut.

As Musk told members of the press at a teleconference this afternoon, shortly after launch a steel strut holding a helium tank in place in the rocket’s second stage snapped. Helium bottles are stored within the rocket’s liquid oxygen fuel tank to provide pressure as the rocket consumes fuel during flight. The incident set off a chain reaction that consumed the rocket before any counter measures could be taken.

The strut, which came from a SpaceX supplier, appeared undamaged before launch. Musk assumed full responsibility for the failure and promised that, going forward, there will be rigorous in-house certification of rocket parts from suppliers, independent of any material certifications.

Another key takeaway from the failure is the need for better monitoring software within Dragon VI capsules, so that payloads can deploy parachutes and escape in the event of future mishaps. The recent failure eviscerated 4,000 pounds of supplies, including food, fuel, hardware, 30 student projects and two HoloLens devices.

SpaceX engineers have spent the last several weeks analyzing 3,000 channels of telemetry data to parse what could have happened during those final few seconds of flight. Before today, the only word we’d had from the private rocket company on the failure was a tweet from Musk, stating that it could have been the result of an overpressure event in rocket’s oxygen tank:

_There was an overpressure event in the upper stage liquid oxygen tank. Data suggests counterintuitive cause._

Musk has been up-front about the fact that the launch failure—the very first of its kind for SpaceX—could be a major blow to the company, which currently has a multi-billion dollar contract with NASA to ferry supplies to the ISS, and is expected to start bringing human astronauts into orbit as soon as 2017. But today, we didn’t hear any indication that SpaceX’s timeline for manned launches is going to be pushed back.

We’re moving forward, it seems—albeit a bit more cautiously than before. As SpaceX likes to remind us, rockets are hard. In this case, at least, there seems to be a straightforward solution: More Struts. Better Struts.

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## Fenrir

*NASA Robotic Servicing Demonstrations Continue Onboard the Space Station*

Robotic Servicing Demonstrations Continue on Space Station | NASA





_High above Earth on the International Space Station, the Dextre robot (at end of robot arm, center right) prepares for operations on the RRM module (platform at top right of image, bottom left of platform). Credits: NASA_

It's back, it's updated, and it's making great progress – all on the International Space Station (ISS).

NASA's Robotic Refueling Mission (RRM), a groundbreaking demonstration of new satellite-servicing technologies and techniques, recently resumed operations on the space station after a two-year hiatus. Within five days, the RRM team had outfitted the RRM module with fresh hardware for a series of technology demonstrations and tested a new, multi-capability inspection tool.

“The International Space Station is the ultimate test bed for new technologies,” explains Benjamin Reed, deputy project manager of the Satellite Servicing Capabilities Office (SSCO) at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center. “It gives us the opportunity to practice and test technologies in an environment that just cannot be replicated on the ground.”

Known by its creative team as the "little ISS experiment that could," RRM broke uncharted ground in 2011-2013 with a set of activities that debuted robotic tools and procedures to refuel the propellant tanks of existing satellites. Its second phase of operations, which took place in April and May and will resume again later in 2015, offers something entirely different and just as disruptive, says Reed.

"We’ve outfitted the RRM module with new hardware so we can shift our focus to satellite inspection, instrument life extension, and even techniques for instrument swap-out,” says Reed. Such servicing technologies could open new possibilities for owners of spacecraft in low and geosynchronous Earth orbit, he says.





_RRM operations demonstrate satellite-servicing technologies using the RRM module (right) and the Dextre robot (top center). Behind them, the ISS solar array is visible. Credits: NASA_

*Shifting the Paradigm*

Limited options currently exist for satellite owners when the unexpected occurs on orbit. If a solar array fails to deploy, or a micrometeorite strike affects a spacecraft's component, there is typically no way to see the potential cause of the anomaly or the extent of the damage. 

Even healthy satellites will eventually deplete the valuable commodities that keep them, and their instruments, running at top condition. The SSCO team, the creators of RRM, want to change the status quo. 

“We envision a future where robots, outfitted with a caddy stocked with tools, can help satellite owners diagnose and deliver timely aid to their spacecraft – ultimately extending their service lives,” says Frank Cepollina, veteran leader of the five servicing missions to the Hubble Space Telescope, and current associate director of the Satellite Servicing Capabilities Office. “Each task that RRM demonstrates gives NASA and the fledgling satellite-servicing community the confidence that these capabilities are real, that the technologies are proven, and that they can eventually work on a subsequent mission."





_VIPIR’s three cameras – the Motorized Zoom Lens (left), a video borescope, (center) and a camera for situational awareness (right) were put to the test during RRM operations in May 2015. Credits: NASA_

*Operations on the International Space Station*

The new RRM hardware launched to the ISS in two shipments, on board the Japanese HTV-4 cargo vehicle in August 2013, and the European Automated Transfer Vehicle-5 in August 2014. 

The second phase of RRM activities kicked off in April with the Canadian Space Agency’s Dextre robot transferring and installing two new RRM task boards and a tool onto the existing RRM module. From there, the team dove straight into a set of operations that debuted a new, multi-capability inspection tool named VIPIR, the Visual Inspection Poseable Invertebrate Robot.

Shiny and silver, with a shape reminiscent of an old-time movie reel projector, the team built VIPIR to test a set of cameras for spacecraft inspection and anomaly diagnosis.

"When we asked the satellite community about their needs, we repeatedly heard how valuable an inspection capability could be for insurance companies and satellite manufacturers," says Reed. "Being able to see exactly how or why a component failed on orbit could mean the difference between launching more spacecraft with the same faulty design, or making a fix on the ground assembly line." 

Robotic inspection capabilities can also be used for routine spacecraft maintenance and anomaly recovery, he explained, potentially saving astronauts from taking a trip into the harsh space environment. 

To demonstrate a range of inspection capabilities, NASA equipped VIPIR with two unique inspection cameras, as well as a fixed camera that helps human operators on the ground control the tool during operations.

On its side, VIPIR holds its workhorse mid-range inspection camera with a miniature, motorized 8-24mm optical zoom lens, about the size of a roll of quarters. This motorized zoom lens (MZL) can resolve worksite details as tiny as 0.02 inch – an area thinner than a credit card – while maintaining a tool distance of a few feet.

For close-up inspection jobs, VIPIR also carries a tiny, color, 1.2 mm diameter camera, nestled at the end of a 34-inch deployable video borescope. Operators can command the borescope’s tip to articulate up to 90 degrees in four opposing directions. With its miniscule dimensions, this borescope camera is one of the world’s tiniest cameras, and is the smallest camera to ever be flown by NASA in space. Developed commercially, it is typically used by the medical industry for endoscopies and other similar procedures. 





_Held by the Dextre robot (not shown), the VIPIR tool (right) approaches the RRM module (left) to demonstrate the tool’s video borescope. Credits: NASA_

*Successful Operations in Space*

Held by the Dextre robot and commanded from the ground, VIPIR worked through its on-orbit checklist during its operations. First, it used its zoom lens to capture images of RRM hardware and the space station. VIPIR’s borescope camera also captured imagery as it worked its way through an obstacle course on an RRM task board, like a snake burrowing through a nest. 






In the end, VIPIR operations were declared a success. Collected data, now under analysis, will help the RRM team determine what type of camera system and operational techniques would be best suited for different tasks on potential future missions.

“Doing RRM on the ISS gives us a controlled, representative environment to evaluate new technologies, gain invaluable experience, and get the type of data that help inform future efforts,” says Reed. For example, the team detected resolvable image motion during the motorized zoom lens operations, which had not been present during ground testing.

Before VIPIR opened its eyes in space, another RRM-hosted experiment also saw the light of “day” during its transfer to the RRM module. A set of advanced solar cells, mounted to one of the new RRM task boards, was exposed to the space environment to provide data on how these energy-generating packs perform in space conditions. The RRM team hosted this experiment on behalf of the Photovoltaic and Electrochemical Systems Branch at the Glenn Research Center. 





_VIPIR’s borescope camera successfully captured imagery as it worked its way through an obstacle course on an RRM task board. Credits: NASA_

*What’s Next*

"We’re very happy with the RRM results to date,” says Jill McGuire, RRM Project Manager,“ and we're excited to see what RRM unlocks for NASA and the satellite community.”

With these two demonstrations complete, the RRM team is taking a breath before they plunge into the next set of operations, occurring later in 2015. Using the two new task boards, the RRM team will demonstrate technologies and procedures that could be used to prepare a spacecraft for cryogen replenishment. They will also practice making the types of electrical connections that would be needed to install plug-and-play satellite instruments.

"Step by step,” says Cepollina, “these technologies are building essential capabilities that, in turn, equip us to boldly build and maintain a robust space infrastructure. Keep on watching RRM on the International Space Station. There is more to come."

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## Fenrir

*NASA Fluid Shifts Study Advances Journey to Mars*
NASA Fluid Shifts Study Advances Journey to Mars | NASA

NASA and the Russian Space Agency (Roscosmos) are studying the effects of how fluids shift to the upper body in space and how this adaptation to space flight affects changes in vision. This research will help prepare for a human journey to Mars. The Fluid Shift investigation is part of the groundbreaking research taking place during the One-Year Mission, in partnership between NASA's Human Research Program and Roscosmos to tackle the complex, unanswered questions of how space flight changes the human body.





_NASA Image: European Space Agency astronaut Luca Parmitano, Expedition 37 flight engineer, works with a Russian Lower Body Negative Pressure (LBNP) or Chibis suit in the Zvezda service module of the International Space Station. He donned the suit to prepare for a return to gravity following a lengthy stay onboard the station._

“The Fluid Shifts investigation is very complex because it’s really a combination of three independent research studies with similar goals but different specific aims,” said Michael Stenger, Ph.D. co-principal investigator for NASA’s Fluid Shifts investigation. “We brought together investigators from NASA, Henry Ford Medical Center, University of California, San Diego and Wyle Science, Technology and Engineering Group. Additionally, we are working jointly with Roscosmos on the International Space Station to conduct the investigation and are using more crewmembers and crew time on this investigation than ever before.”

The investigation tests the hypothesis that the normal shift of fluids to the upper body in weightlessness contributes to increased intracranial pressure and decreased visual capacity in astronauts. It also tests whether this can be counteracted by returning the fluids to the lower body using a “lower body negative pressure” suit, called Chibis, provided by the Russians.

While it sounds simple in theory, everyone responds differently to the upward fluid shift experienced in space flight, and this may explain the varying severity of the visual deficits experienced by astronauts. The physiological part of the investigation is only one challenge to the study.

This is not only the largest investigation on the space station, but one of the most challenging to set up. For the first time, substantial medical equipment is being moved from the U.S. segment to the Russian segment on the space station to perform this investigation.





_NASA Image: Using an ultrasound, NASA’s Human Research Program is currently testing noninvasive techniques to evaluate and measure intracranial pressure as part of the One-Year Mission research. NASA is collaborating with the Russians to test a potential countermeasure using a Russian Lower Body Negative Pressure (LBNP) or Chibis suit which could help shift fluids from the upper body to the lower body in crews before returning to Earth._

The main complication is that the Chibis suit is located in the Zvezda service module on the Russian side of the space station and cannot be moved because its medical monitoring equipment and real-time data downlink are in fixed racks. This means all the necessary hardware and equipment from the U.S. side of space station are being relocated from the opposite end of the station to the Russian module.

“From an engineering perspective, the set up for this investigation is no easy task but something we are working through,” said Erik Hougland, NASA flight project manager. “The physical and power interfaces are completely different too so we are redesigning these to work and fit the Russian outlets.”

This type of experiment may have its share of challenges but according to Stenger the information learned from this study will make it well worthwhile for not only the crew but for patients on Earth as well.

Rather than conducting invasive procedures to measure intracranial pressure such as a lumbar puncture or intraventricular catheter (drilling into the skull), the crew is using and testing new noninvasive techniques and technologies in space. For example, the cerebral and cochlear fluid pressure (CCFP) device and distortion product otoacoustic emissions (DPOAE) are being used in place of the invasive methods to measure changes in intracranial pressure. These devices work by assessing characteristics of sound and pressure waves reflecting off the inner ear, which are reflective of changes in intracranial pressure. In the future, these devices may become available for patients on Earth suffering from elevated intracranial pressure, such as hydrocephalus patients. Additionally, NASA converted the Optical Coherent Tomography (OCT) imaging machine, commonly used in optometrist offices, into a portable camera so it can maneuver in a free floating area.





_NASA Image: The cerebral and cochlear fluid pressure (CCFP) device is being used in place of the invasive methods to measure changes in intracranial pressure. This device works by assessing characteristics of sound and pressure waves reflecting off the inner ear, which are reflective of changes in intracranial pressure._

“We’ve never actually measured intracranial pressure inflight and its possible role in the Visual Impairment Syndrome,” said Stenger. “If we want to stay in space longer than six months to explore, we have to determine what causes these vision changes so that we can begin developing countermeasures to prevent them.”

While there is a need for these noninvasive technologies on Earth, NASA’s main focus is on the crews in space as it prepares for missions to Mars, which could be a 30-month trip. Several months without gravity is a challenge to the human body, which is why the Fluid Shifts study is so important. More than two-thirds of NASA crewmembers have experienced ocular changes during space flight. This is currently one of NASA’s highest priority medical concerns.

The One-Year Mission is the first step in determining the mechanisms associated with visual changes in space flight. NASA’s Human Research Program is carefully evaluating how the bodies of Scott Kelly and Mikhail Kornienko respond to a year in space because the opportunity to have humans explore Mars could lead to insights, discoveries and technologies that will further humanity. And chances are, NASA won’t be doing it alone.

NASA's Human Research Program enables space exploration beyond low Earth orbit by reducing the risks to human health and performance through a focused program of basic, applied and operational research. This leads to the development and delivery of: human health, performance, and habitability standards; countermeasures and risk mitigation solutions; and advanced habitability and medical support technologies for a more compatible world wherever we explore.

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## Fenrir

*Pluto's Tiny Moons Are Coming Into Colorful Focus*







Last week, Nix and Hydra transformed before our eyes from specks of light to bonafide moons. Today, NASA released a new set of images, bringing Pluto’s oblong satellites into even better focus. The latest astonishing finds? Nix has a rosy glow and Hydra has craters.

The image on the left, captured by the New Horizons Ralph instrument from a distance of 102,000 miles, is our very first color shot of Nix. Colors have been enhanced, revealing a surprisingly reddish region on the rocky satellite that measures a mere 26 miles long and 22 across. According to NASA:

_Although the overall surface color 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. “Additional compositional data has already been taken of Nix, but is not yet downlinked. It will tell us why this region is redder than its surroundings,” said mission scientist Carly Howett, Southwest Research Institute, Boulder, Colorado. She added, “This observation is so tantalizing, I’m finding it hard to be patient for more Nix data to be downlinked.”_

Meanwhile, the new image of Hydra, captured from a distance of 143,000 miles, also offers tantalizing hints of complexity. There appear to be at least two large craters on Hydra’s surface, and the moon’s upper portion seems slightly darker than its lower half, perhaps suggesting a transition from a rockier to a more ice-rich composition.

“Before last week, Hydra was just a faint point of light, so it’s a surreal experience to see it become an actual place, as we see its shape and spot recognizable features on its surface for the first time,” mission science collaborator Ted Stryk said.

Remember, folks: This is just the beginning. We’ve downlinked a mere 2 percent of the New Horizons data at this point, and it’ll take us another 16-months to gather the rest. I’m also finding it hard to be patient, but such is the nature of doing science over the solar system’s worst dial-up connection.

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## Fenrir

*NASA’s New Horizons Finds Second Mountain Range in Pluto’s ‘Heart’*

NASA’s New Horizons Finds Second Mountain Range in Pluto’s ‘Heart’ | NASA






A newly discovered mountain range lies near the southwestern margin of Pluto’s Tombaugh Regio (Tombaugh Region), situated between bright, icy plains and dark, heavily-cratered terrain. This image was acquired by New Horizons’ Long Range Reconnaissance Imager (LORRI) on July 14, 2015 from a distance of 48,000 miles (77,000 kilometers) and sent back to Earth on July 20. Features as small as a half-mile (1 kilometer) across are visible.

Pluto’s icy mountains have company. NASA’s New Horizons mission has discovered a new, apparently less lofty mountain range on the lower-left edge of Pluto’s best known feature, the bright, heart-shaped region named Tombaugh Regio (Tombaugh Region).

These newly-discovered frozen peaks are estimated to be one-half mile to one mile (1-1.5 kilometers) high, about the same height as the United States’ Appalachian Mountains. The Norgay Montes (Norgay Mountains) discovered by New Horizons on July 15 more closely approximate the height of the taller Rocky Mountains.

The new range is just west of the region within Pluto’s heart called Sputnik Planum (Sputnik Plain). The peaks lie some 68 miles (110 kilometers) northwest of Norgay Montes.

This newest image further illustrates the remarkably well-defined topography along the western edge of Tombaugh Regio.

“There is a pronounced difference in texture between the younger, frozen plains to the east and the dark, heavily-cratered terrain to the west,” said Jeff Moore, leader of the New Horizons Geology, Geophysics and Imaging Team (GGI) at NASA’s Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, California. “There’s a complex interaction going on between the bright and the dark materials that we’re still trying to understand.”

While Sputnik Planum is believed to be relatively young in geological terms – perhaps less than 100 million years old - the darker region probably dates back billions of years. Moore notes that the bright, sediment-like material appears to be filling in old craters (for example, the bright circular feature to the lower left of center).

This image was acquired by the Long Range Reconnaissance Imager (LORRI) on July 14 from a distance of 48,000 miles (77,000 kilometers) and sent back to Earth on July 20. Features as small as a half-mile (1 kilometer) across are visible. The names of features on Pluto have all been given on an informal basis by the New Horizons team.






*Curiosity Finds First Evidence For Possible 'Continental Crust' on Mars*

Curiosity Finds First Evidence For Possible ‘Continental Crust’ on Mars




_View of an igneous clast named Harrison, which is embedded in a conglomerate rock in Gale crater, and features elongated light-toned feldspar crystals. This mosaic is a combination of an image from Mastcam with higher-resolution images from ChemCam’s Remote Micro-Imager. Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/LANL/IRAP/U. Nantes/IAS/MSSS_

The Curiosity rover, still roaming in Gale crater, has discovered the first evidence for a potential ancient “*continental crust*” on Mars, which would be a very significant finding regarding Mars’ early history and to what degree it may have paralleled Earth’s.

The new results, announced July 13, come from the ChemCam instrument on the rover, which uses its laser to identify the mineralogical and chemical makeup of rocks, and they are similar to what is found in granitic continental crust rocks on Earth.

According to Roger Wiens of Los Alamos National Laboratory and lead scientist on the ChemCam instrument: “Along the rover’s path we have seen some beautiful rocks with large, bright crystals, quite unexpected on Mars. As a general rule, light-colored crystals are lower density, and these are abundant in igneous rocks that make up the Earth’s continents.”





_Close-up image of some of the granite-like rock found in Gale crater by the Curiosity rover. Photo Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS_

The findings are in contrast to what has usually been seen elsewhere on the planet before, which is mainly a basaltic composition of rocks. Gale crater, however, still contains pieces of igneous rocks, which were analyzed by ChemCam. Twenty-two such rock fragments were studied via Curiosity by U.S. and French scientists, led by Violaine Sautter of the National Museum of Natural History in Paris, who determined that the pale-colored rocks are rich in feldspar, along with some possible quartz. They are surprisingly similar to rocks in Earth’s granitic continental crust. In particular, they strongly resemble a terrestrial a rock type known as TTG (Tonalite-Trondhjemite-Granodiorite), which are rocks that predominated in the terrestrial continental crust in the Archean era more than 2.5 billion years ago. Some of the rocks contain silicon oxides and alkalis with fine-grained to crystalline textures, while others are coarser-grained, like quartz diorite and granodiorite.

In general, there are three rock types found; some had large crystals in them, others had microscopic crystals, and still others with both large and microscopic crystals, which may indicate magma which cooled slowly before erupting. The ones with the large crystals closely resemble the granodiorite type of granite.

The new results were just published in _*Nature Geoscience*_.

Most of Mars’ rocks have been produced through volcanism, so the discovery is a surprising and exciting one, and suggests that Mars’ early history was more similar to Earth’s than previously thought. These granite-like rocks are similar to ones in Earth’s ancient continental crust, quite different from the basalt which composes the seafloor. As *also noted* by the researchers, the rocks “challenge the simple idea of continuous cooling of the Martian mantle over geologic time, pointing to more complex global or local variation in mantle temperature.”

The walls of Gale crater provide a natural geological cut-away view 1-2 miles down into the crust, ideally suited for a rover to study; some of the rocks found would not be easily visible to orbiting satellites.





_It is still unclear whether Mars ever had plate tectonics like Earth, but new evidence suggests it at least had the precursors to them. Photo Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech_

It was previously thought that the Earth was the only planet in our Solar System with a continental crust, since it typically takes a long time for lighter rocks to rise to the surface and become the continental crust. Earth’s crust is divided into tectonic plates, which move over the softer mantle below. The plates which make up the oceanic crust are thinner, darker, and heavier, while the continental crust plates are thicker, lighter-colored, and lighter in weight.

As noted by the researchers in the paper, “We conclude that silica-rich magmatic rocks may constitute a significant fraction of ancient Martian crust and may be analogous to the earliest continental crust on Earth.”

“This tells us that Mars is more Earth-like than we ever thought,” added Wiens. “These are rocks with large feldspar crystals and potentially excess silica, so Mars does not just consist of dense dark looking rocks, but also has rocks that really look like they could be on any continent on Earth, and that’s a first on Mars.”

“The conventional wisdom from previous Mars missions has been that Mars is all basaltic like the oceanic crust on Earth, fairly high density, dark-colored, with a lot of mineral called olivine, and that’s what previous rovers found,” said Wiens.

While this isn’t direct evidence for actual plate tectonics on ancient Mars, it does provide evidence for at least the *precursors to them*.

“There’s a bit of evidence for the precursor to tectonics, because there are magnetic domains that were found in parts of the southern hemisphere on the surface of Mars,” *said Wiens*. “The planet doesn’t have a magnetic field now, but it suggests that it did have one in the past.”

The findings, combined with many others regarding Mars’ geological history, are helping scientists to better understand the complex history of this fascinating world, and whether it could have supported life.

“So we’re coming a long way in several different areas in piecing together what several billion years ago was a world probably much more like Earth than we ever imagined,” said Wiens. “And that’s pretty exciting because Earth is this oasis of life now, and we wonder what Mars was like at one point in time.”

Curiosity is continuing to explore its environs in Gale crater, after having just passed through the period of solar conjunction when communications were necessarily halted for a couple of weeks. It will now continue to move through the valleys ahead and into the foothills of Mount Sharp, which will provide even greater geological context for new discoveries and learning about Mars’ ancient history in this region.

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## Fenrir

Something to look forward to in 2016
*
NASA Preparing for Juno's Historic Arrival at Jupiter, One Year Out*

NASA Preparing for Juno’s Historic Arrival at Jupiter, One Year Out « AmericaSpace





_Artist’s concept of the Juno spacecraft approaching Jupiter in 2016. Image Credit: NASA / JPL_

_“Jupiter’s welcome to more from his Juno if he can get it.” – Johann Wolfgang von Goethe_

While NASA and space enthusiasts the world over are waiting for New Horizons’ unprecedented Pluto flyby, the space agency is gearing up for another planetary encounter to be made in July 2016. Juno, the second New Frontiers mission (the first being New Horizons), is scheduled to arrive at our Solar System’s largest world on July 4 next year. But before the solar-winged spacecraft makes its initial Jovian encounter, engineers and controllers have made some modifications to Juno’s flight plan in order to optimize mapping and science operations.

According to NASA, Juno’s mission objectives include extensively mapping the planet in order to better understand its gravity and magnetic characteristics, which may provide clues into its atmosphere’s water vapor content. In addition, Juno will give scientists their first glances at Jupiter’s polar regions, as the spacecraft will make a series of highly elliptical orbits around the planet. The spacecraft will come within a few thousand miles of the planet’s cloud tops, which will give scientists a look into Jupiter’s atmosphere, as well as what may lurk within it (namely the planet’s core, which is hypothesized to consist of metallic hydrogen).





_The launch of NASA’s JUNO to Jupiter. Photo Credit: Alan Walters / AmericaSpace_

However, before Juno gets to Jupiter, NASA has divulged some changes made to the spacecraft’s flight plan. Juno will make a shorter engine burn to lengthen its Jovian orbit to 14 days, as opposed to the previous 11 days. NASA stated this change was made to allow the spacecraft to take a “global look” at Jupiter earlier in its mission: “Over successive orbits, Juno will build a virtual web around Jupiter, making its gravity and magnetic field maps as it passes over different longitudes from north to south. The original plan would have required 15 orbits to map these forces globally, with 15 more orbits filling in gaps to make the map complete. In the revised plan, Juno will get very basic mapping coverage in just eight orbits. A new level of detail will be added with each successive doubling of the number, at 16 and 32 orbits.”

The space agency added that these particular changes also were made to give Juno’s team some time to determine how the spacecraft reacts to its close encounter with Jupiter—at the very least, Juno will encounter a strong magnetic field and huge doses of radiation. The orbital change will lengthen Juno’s mission to 20 months, by two orbits (32 versus 30). At the end of Juno’s mission, it will make a “death plunge” into the hostile Jovian atmosphere.

Moreover, Juno’s initial orbit around Jupiter, its “capture orbit,” is being split into two, which will allow the spacecraft to test its science instruments prior to commencing scientific operations. NASA is also preparing for Juno’s close encounters with Jupiter by making observations of the planet via powerful telescopes, including the Hubble Space Telescope. These ground- and space-based observations will give researchers a better prediction of what the spacecraft might see during its mission.

Juno launched aboard a United Launch Alliance Atlas V 551 variant launch vehicle on Aug. 5, 2011, from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station’s Launch Complex 41. The spacecraft completed an Earth flyby on Oct. 10, 2013. Juno’s principal investigator, Scott Bolton of the Southwest Research Institute based out of San Antonio, Texas, discussed the changes in Juno’s plans, and the surprises that lie ahead:

“We’re already more than 90 percent of the way to Jupiter, in terms of total distance traveled. With a year to go, we’re looking carefully at our plans to make sure we’re ready to make the most of our time once we arrive. We have models that tell us what to expect, but the fact is that Juno is going to be immersed in a strong and variable magnetic field and hazardous radiation, and it will get closer to the planet than any previous orbiting spacecraft. Juno’s experience could be different than what our models predict…that’s part of what makes space exploration so exciting.”

This intrepid spacecraft continues NASA’s rich heritage exploring our Solar System’s largest, yet most enigmatic, gas giant. Juno will give the world its closest, most in-depth view of Jupiter since various spacecraft, starting with NASA’s Pioneer 10 performing a “flyby” in 1973, began exploring the outer Solar System planet. Pioneer 11 followed in 1974 with another flyby. Voyagers 1 and 2 both famously visited Jupiter during 1979, investigating the planet, its ring system, and many of its moons; the images returned from these spacecraft remain iconic.

Jupiter has also been investigated by Ulysses, Cassini, and New Horizons , with Galileo becoming the first Jovian orbiter in the mid-1990s. And in July 2016, NASA and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory will once again visit this Solar System colossus shrouded in mystery, in another historic trek to “sort out the unknowns.”





_Spectators crowd the shoreline as an Atlas 5 rocket launches NASA’s JUNO spacecraft to Jupiter, as photographed from Playalinda Beach. Photo Credit: Mike Killian / AmericaSpace_

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## Fenrir

*NASA and Commercial Satellites Map Hidden Glacier Margins In Turkey*

NASA and Commercial Satellites Map Hidden Glacier Margins In Turkey





A small glacier crowning one of the Kaçkar Mountains in eastern Turkey appears as a blurry cluster of blue pixels in an image captured in September 2011 by NASA’s and U.S. Geological Survey’s Landsat 5 satellite. A view of the same glacier, taken by the commercial satellite WorldView-2 in the same month, reveals areas of ice that escaped Landsat, hidden in the shadows cast by nearby peaks or obscured by debris deposits.





_A comparison of images of a small glacier in the Kaçkar Mountains in northeastern Turkey: the one on the left was taken by Landsat-5 on September 19, 2011, and the one on the right was captured by the commercial satellite WorldView-2 on September 8, 2011. The blue line shows the margins of the glacier as seen by Landsat – the delineated margins correspond to 0.07 square miles (0.2 square kilometers) of glacier ice. The WorldView-2 image reveal areas of ice in the shadows cast by nearby peaks or obscured by debris deposits over glacier ice: using this data, the researchers were able to map 0.28 square miles (0.74 square kilometers) of sunlit glacier ice, plus 0.07 square miles (0.2 square kilometers) of ice in the shadows (delineated in yellow). Credits: NASA_

These are just two of the images analyzed in a new study by researchers from NASA and Turkey’s Ege University. The team used satellite scenes from research and commercial satellites to map changes in the extent of Turkey’s 14 glaciers from the 1970s to the present. Most of Turkey’s glaciers are small, less than one square mile in area.

The study, published on June 15 in the journal _Remote Sensing of Environment_, showed that the area of glaciers in Turkey shrunk by more than half in four decades: they went from 9.6 square miles (25 square kilometers) in the 1970s to 4.2 square miles (10.85 square kilometers) in 2013. During this period, five glaciers disappeared completely. The scientists attributed the recession of Turkey’s glaciers to increasing summer minimum temperatures. There were no changes in precipitation nor in cloud cover in Turkey’s glacier regions from the 1970s to the present.

This is the first attempt to map the small glaciers of a whole country using a combination of imagery from government and commercial satellites. In total, the researchers analyzed 72 Landsat images and 41 commercial satellite images (from IKONOS, Quickbird-2, GeoEye-1 and WorldView-1 and -2), in addition to five scenes captured by the ASTER instrument on NASA’s Terra spacecraft.

The images from the satellites of the Landsat program have a spatial resolution (the area of Earth’s surface contained in each pixel of a satellite image) that varies from 196 feet (60 meters) per pixel for the first three Landsat missions —the first one launched in 1972— to up to 49 feet (15 meters) per pixel for Landsat 8, launched in 2013. In comparison, Digital Globe commercial satellites offer much sharper views: they can “zoom in” as much as 16 inches (40 centimeters) per pixel. The availability of commercial satellite images dates back to 2000, while the Landsat satellite series started collecting information in 1972.

The longer Landsat record allowed the researchers to reconstruct the extension of Turkey’s glaciers at five time periods between the 1970s and 2013, while the higher resolution of the commercial satellite data let them delineate the current margins of the glaciers more precisely.





_Two views of Gedik Glacier, a small glacier in the Mercan Mountains in central Turkey. On the left, an image captured by Landsat 5 on September 10, 2011. On the right, a scene taken by the commercial satellite WorldView-2 on September 13, 2011. Landsat-5 data mapped 0.02 square miles (0.06 square kilometers) of glacier ice while WorldView-2 data mapped 0.02 square miles (0.06 square kilometers) of sunlit ice, plus an area of glacier ice in the shadow (delineated in yellow) amounting to 0.015 square miles (0.04 square kilometers). “This shows that Landsat data give comparable mapping accuracies for the sunlit portions of small glaciers while underestimating the total glacier area by 40% due to shadows,” said Compton Tucker, one of the authors of the study. “This disparity is more pronounced for smaller glaciers and less so for larger glaciers.” Credits: NASA_

WorldView-2’s 16-inch spatial resolution enabled the researchers to find ice camouflaged by debris, by spotting striations in the in the dirt-blanketed glacier sections created by the movement of the underlying ice. The commercial satellites’ higher radiometric resolution (capability to discriminate differences in brightness) provided the ability to map glacier ice hidden in shadows.

The scientists did not always find more glacier ice in the commercial satellite images: for several Turkish glaciers, they also identified areas where seasonal snow had previously been confused for ice.

"The commercial satellite data’s higher spatial detail and higher radiometric resolution are like being able to see in dark," said Compton Tucker, one of the authors of the study and an Earth scientist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland.

"Landsat data, with their systematic mapping of large areas, told us where to look in greater detail. Without Landsat’s long record, studies like ours would be impossible to undertake, because we don’t have a time machine to go back to the 1970s and 1980s and see how Turkey’s glaciers were doing then," Tucker said. "Using Landsat and commercial satellite data together, we can map glaciers with high accuracy. It’s a powerful combination for studying the Earth from space."

The commercial satellites’ ability to spot ice obscured by shadows would be particularly useful for mapping other glaciers in mountainous terrain, such as the Himalayas and the Andes, Tucker said.


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## Fenrir

*Could 'Windbots' Someday Explore the Skies of Jupiter?*

Could 'Windbots' Someday Explore the Skies of Jupiter? | NASA
_





An artist's rendering shows a windbot bobbing through the skies of Jupiter, drawing energy from turbulent winds there. This notional windbot is portrayed as a polyhedron with sections that spin to absorb wind energy and create lift, although other potential configurations are being investigated. Credits: NASA/JPL-Caltech_

Among designers of robotic probes to explore the planets, there is certainly no shortage of clever ideas. There are concepts for robots that are propelled by waves in the sea. There are ideas for tumbleweed bots driven by wind, rolling across Antarctica or Mars. Recently a team of engineers at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, wondered if a probe could be buoyant in the clouds of Earth or a distant gas giant planet, like Jupiter.






That team has recently begun studying their question, thanks to a one-year, $100,000 study, funded by NASA's Innovative Advanced Concepts (NIAC) program. They're investigating the feasibility of creating a windbot, a new class of robotic probe designed to stay aloft in a planet's atmosphere for a long time without wings or hot-air balloons. The NASA-funded study will systematically investigate how future spacecraft of this kind could stay airborne and harvest energy.

Although no mission is currently scheduled to utilize windbots, the researchers hope their study will open new avenues for atmospheric science on gas giant planets using high-mobility robotic explorers.

Unlike the moon and Mars, which have already been explored by robotic rovers, gas giant planets like Jupiter and Saturn have no solid surface on which a probe to land on. In 1995, NASA's Galileo spacecraft dropped off an atmospheric probe that descended into Jupiter under a parachute. The battery-powered probe survived only about an hour before succumbing to high heat and pressure as it fell into the planet's ponderously deep atmosphere. In contrast to the plummeting probe, a windbot could have rotors on several sides of its body that could spin independently to change direction or create lift.

Adrian Stoica, principal investigator for the windbots study at JPL, points to a great example to think about from nature: a dandelion seed. "A dandelion seed is great at staying airborne. It rotates as it falls, creating lift, which allows it to stay afloat for long time, carried by the wind. We'll be exploring this effect on windbot designs."

Stoica and colleagues think that, to stay airborne for a long time, a windbot would need to be able to use energy available in the planet's atmosphere. That energy might not be solar, because the probe could find itself on the planet's night side for an extended period. Nuclear power sources also could be a liability for a floating probe because of their weight. But winds, temperature variations and even a planet's magnetic field could potentially be sources of energy an atmospheric probe could exploit.

As they begin their study, the team suspects the best bet for an atmospheric robot to harvest energy is turbulence -- wind that's frequently changing direction and intensity. The key is variability. High wind velocity isn't enough. But in a dynamic, turbulent environment there are gradients -- differences in energy from high to low -- that can be used.

"It's a spring of energy a probe could drink from," said Stoica, who thinks a windbot might generate power in a similar way to some wristwatches that can be wound by shaking.

Embracing turbulence to make power and stay aloft is a departure from the approach taken by conventional aircraft, which carry their own internal power sources and perform best in smooth air. Commercial airliners, for example, cruise in Earth's stratosphere, where winds tend to be much smoother and flow faster than in the dense air closer to the ground.

The JPL team is starting out by characterizing winds among the clouds of Jupiter to understand what kinds of places might be best for sending a windbot and to determine some of the technical requirements for its design. "There are lots of things we don't know," Stoica said. "Does a windbot need to be 10 meters in diameter or 100? How much lift do we need from the winds in order to keep a windbot aloft?"

One thing the team is pretty certain of is that a windbot would need to be able to sense the winds around itself in order to live off the turbulence. To that end, they plan to build a simple windbot model as part of their study. The aerodynamic modeling for this type of craft is particularly difficult, so Stoica thinks having a physical model will be important.

The model windbot would be subjected to carefully controlled turbulent airflows to determine how best to design systems that react and reorient the robot to keep it aloft. After that, the team would move on to investigating means, such as electronic sensors, for a windbot to perceive the wind field in the environment around itself. Putting these capabilities together into a functional prototype would be left for a future study.

If the cost of building windbots turned out to be sufficiently affordable, Stoica thinks it would be useful to have multiple units sending back data from different places in a planet's atmosphere. "One could imagine a network of windbots existing for quite a long time on Jupiter or Saturn, sending information about ever-changing weather patterns," he said. "And, of course, what we learn about the atmospheres of other planets enriches our understanding of Earth's own weather and climate."

In fact, windbots might also come in handy as an additional tool to help scientists understand turbulent weather phenomena on Earth, such as hurricanes, without venturing beyond our planet's atmosphere. A windbot designed to sense and feed off turbulence might not only survive such hazardous environments, but also transmit valuable data all the while.

Despite its potential, the windbot concept is not without its tradeoffs. The buoyant probe might have to sacrifice travel time in moving to interesting destinations on a planet to simply stay alive -- trading a shorter route from point A to point B to follow the energy available from winds to stay aloft. At other times, when it has sufficient energy, it might be able to head to its destination via a more direct path.

The windbot concept is a long way from being ready to launch to Jupiter, but Stoica and colleagues are excited to dive into their initial study. "We don't yet know if this idea is truly feasible. We'll do the research to try and find out," he said. "But it pushes us to find other ways of approaching the problem, and that kind of thinking is extremely valuable."

NIAC is part of NASA's Space Technology Mission Directorate, which innovates, develops, tests and flies hardware for use in NASA's future missions. The California Institute of Technology manages JPL for NASA.




Another Way of Looking at Pluto






Data from the New Horizons mission have revised Pluto’s diameter to just 2370 kilometers across. That’s smaller than the moons Triton, Ganymede, Callisto, Io, Europa, and Titan, not to mention Earth’s own satellite. In more immediately relatable terms: Here’s what it would look like if someone plopped Pluto onto Australia.

This striking scale render was created by one David Murray and comes to us by way of his friend, Nathan Lee:

_Pluto's diameter is 2,370km. Sydney to Perth is 3,274km. Adelaide to Darwin is 2,620km. Australia has beer though!_

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## Fenrir

*We've Taken Another Big Step Toward Asteroid Mining*






Many components in your phones and batteries are made with “rare Earth metals.” You know why they call them that? Because they are actually rare on Earth, and we’re going to run out. But they’re not rare in space. Which is why today a company launched the prototype for a vehicle that will search for asteroids to mine beyond Earth.

The Arkyd 3, launched successfully today from the International Space Station, begins a 90-day low-Earth orbit mission to test its software and control systems. If all goes well, it will be followed in December by the Arkyd 6 spacecraft (pictured above), which will test a mid-wave infrared sensor, which could take measurements from the surface of asteroids in order to detect metals and water.

Of course, the Arkyds aren’t just on the prowl for rare Earth metals like neodymium and yttrium. The Arkyd 6 will look for any precious metal, and also water. If we can find water deposits locked up in local asteroids, it would be a huge help for space vessels that need to stock up on the life-giving liquid (and fuel source) during long journeys.

The Arkyd 3 was created by Planetary Resources, a private space agency funded in part by Larry Page, Richard Branson, and other techno-utopian entrepreneurs. But the Arkyd missions are also part of an ongoing effort by public and private groups to make asteroid mining a reality. Late last year, ESA’s Rosetta spacecraft landed the Philae probe on a moving comet, which could be viewed as an early proof of concept for asteroid mining operations. The Rosetta mission showed that it isn’t unrealistic for us to make plans to set up a mine on an asteroid, using remote-controlled equipment.

Planetary Resources co-founder Peter Diamandis said in a statement:

_The successful deployment of the A3R is a significant milestone for Planetary Resources as we forge a path toward prospecting resource-rich asteroids. Our team is developing the technology that will enable humanity to create an off-planet economy that will fundamentally change the way we live on Earth._

Not only could space mining help supplement diminishing resources on Earth, but it could also usher in a new space age. One of the main problems with getting humanity off the Earth has been funding. Mining could provide the space industry with a source of funds, and maybe turn the asteroid Ceres into the next gold rush town.

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## Hamartia Antidote

Technogaianist said:


> *We've Taken Another Big Step Toward Asteroid Mining*
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Many components in your phones and batteries are made with “rare Earth metals.” You know why they call them that? Because they are actually rare on Earth, and we’re going to run out. But they’re not rare in space. Which is why today a company launched the prototype for a vehicle that will search for asteroids to mine beyond Earth.
> 
> The Arkyd 3, launched successfully today from the International Space Station, begins a 90-day low-Earth orbit mission to test its software and control systems. If all goes well, it will be followed in December by the Arkyd 6 spacecraft (pictured above), which will test a mid-wave infrared sensor, which could take measurements from the surface of asteroids in order to detect metals and water.
> 
> Of course, the Arkyds aren’t just on the prowl for rare Earth metals like neodymium and yttrium. The Arkyd 6 will look for any precious metal, and also water. If we can find water deposits locked up in local asteroids, it would be a huge help for space vessels that need to stock up on the life-giving liquid (and fuel source) during long journeys.
> 
> The Arkyd 3 was created by Planetary Resources, a private space agency funded in part by Larry Page, Richard Branson, and other techno-utopian entrepreneurs. But the Arkyd missions are also part of an ongoing effort by public and private groups to make asteroid mining a reality. Late last year, ESA’s Rosetta spacecraft landed the Philae probe on a moving comet, which could be viewed as an early proof of concept for asteroid mining operations. The Rosetta mission showed that it isn’t unrealistic for us to make plans to set up a mine on an asteroid, using remote-controlled equipment.
> 
> Planetary Resources co-founder Peter Diamandis said in a statement:
> 
> _The successful deployment of the A3R is a significant milestone for Planetary Resources as we forge a path toward prospecting resource-rich asteroids. Our team is developing the technology that will enable humanity to create an off-planet economy that will fundamentally change the way we live on Earth._
> 
> Not only could space mining help supplement diminishing resources on Earth, but it could also usher in a new space age. One of the main problems with getting humanity off the Earth has been funding. Mining could provide the space industry with a source of funds, and maybe turn the asteroid Ceres into the next gold rush town.



you should post this here: Huge asteroid with $5 trillion worth of platinum to pass by Earth


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## Fenrir

*NASA’s Kepler Mission Discovers Bigger, Older Cousin to Earth*

NASA’s Kepler Mission Discovers Bigger, Older Cousin to Earth | NASA




_This artist's concept depicts one possible appearance of the planet Kepler-452b, the first near-Earth-size world to be found in the habitable zone of star that is similar to our sun. Credits: NASA/JPL-Caltech/T. Pyle_

NASA's Kepler mission has confirmed the first near-Earth-size planet in the “habitable zone” around a sun-like star. This discovery and the introduction of 11 other new small habitable zone candidate planets mark another milestone in the journey to finding another “Earth.” 





_This artist's concept compares Earth (left) to the new planet, called Kepler-452b, which is about 60 percent larger in diameter. Credits: NASA/JPL-Caltech/T. Pyle_

The newly discovered Kepler-452b is the smallest planet to date discovered orbiting in the habitable zone -- the area around a star where liquid water could pool on the surface of an orbiting planet -- of a G2-type star, like our sun. The confirmation of Kepler-452b brings the total number of confirmed planets to 1,030.

"On the 20th anniversary year of the discovery that proved other suns host planets, the Kepler exoplanet explorer has discovered a planet and star which most closely resemble the Earth and our Sun," said John Grunsfeld, associate administrator of NASA’s Science Mission Directorate at the agency’s headquarters in Washington. “This exciting result brings us one step closer to finding an Earth 2.0."





_This size and scale of the Kepler-452 system compared alongside the Kepler-186 system and the solar system. Kepler-186 is a miniature solar system that would fit entirely inside the orbit of Mercury. Credits: NASA/JPL-CalTech/R. Hurt_

Kepler-452b is 60 percent larger in diameter than Earth and is considered a super-Earth-size planet. While its mass and composition are not yet determined, previous research suggests that planets the size of Kepler-452b have a good chance of being rocky.

While Kepler-452b is larger than Earth, its 385-day orbit is only 5 percent longer. The planet is 5 percent farther from its parent star Kepler-452 than Earth is from the Sun. Kepler-452 is 6 billion years old, 1.5 billion years older than our sun, has the same temperature, and is 20 percent brighter and has a diameter 10 percent larger.





_There are 4,696 planet candidates now known with the release of the seventh Kepler planet candidate catalog - an increase of 521 since the release of the previous catalog in January 2015. Credits: NASA/W. Stenzel_

“We can think of Kepler-452b as an older, bigger cousin to Earth, providing an opportunity to understand and reflect upon Earth’s evolving environment," said Jon Jenkins, Kepler data analysis lead at NASA's Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, California, who led the team that discovered Kepler-452b. "It’s awe-inspiring to consider that this planet has spent 6 billion years in the habitable zone of its star; longer than Earth. That’s substantial opportunity for life to arise, should all the necessary ingredients and conditions for life exist on this planet.”

To help confirm the finding and better determine the properties of the Kepler-452 system, the team conducted ground-based observations at the University of Texas at Austin's McDonald Observatory, the Fred Lawrence Whipple Observatory on Mt. Hopkins, Arizona, and the W. M. Keck Observatory atop Mauna Kea in Hawaii. These measurements were key for the researchers to confirm the planetary nature of Kepler-452b, to refine the size and brightness of its host star and to better pin down the size of the planet and its orbit.





_Since Kepler launched in 2009, twelve planets less than twice the size of Earth have been discovered in the habitable zones of their stars.
Credits: NASA/N. Batalha and W. Stenzel_

The Kepler-452 system is located 1,400 light-years away in the constellation Cygnus. The research paper reporting this finding has been accepted for publication in The Astronomical Journal.

In addition to confirming Kepler-452b, the Kepler team has increased the number of new exoplanet candidates by 521 from their analysis of observations conducted from May 2009 to May 2013, raising the number of planet candidates detected by the Kepler mission to 4,696. Candidates require follow-up observations and analysis to verify they are actual planets.

Twelve of the new planet candidates have diameters between one to two times that of Earth, and orbit in their star's habitable zone. Of these, nine orbit stars that are similar to our sun in size and temperature.

“We've been able to fully automate our process of identifying planet candidates, which means we can finally assess every transit signal in the entire Kepler dataset quickly and uniformly,” said Jeff Coughlin, Kepler scientist at the SETI Institute in Mountain View, California, who led the analysis of a new candidate catalog. “This gives astronomers a statistically sound population of planet candidates to accurately determine the number of small, possibly rocky planets like Earth in our Milky Way galaxy.”

These findings, presented in the seventh Kepler Candidate Catalog, will be submitted for publication in the Astrophysical Journal. These findings are derived from data publically available on the NASA Exoplanet Archive.

Scientists now are producing the last catalog based on the original Kepler mission’s four-year data set. The final analysis will be conducted using sophisticated software that is increasingly sensitive to the tiny telltale signatures of Earth-size planets.

Ames manages the Kepler and K2 missions for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate. NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, managed Kepler mission development. Ball Aerospace & Technologies Corporation operates the flight system with support from the Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics at the University of Colorado in Boulder.

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## Fenrir

*Updated Kepler Catalog Includes 521 New Possible Exoplanets*






Earlier today, during the announcement of the most Earth-like planet ever discovered, researchers working on the Kepler mission released an updated catalog—which now includes 521 new candidate planets. Add that to the 4,175 already discovered by the space-based telescope.

_Above. An artist’s conception of habitable-zone planets with similarities to Earth: from left, Kepler-22b, Kepler-69c, the just announced Kepler-452b, Kepler-62f and Kepler-186f. Last in line is Earth itself._

Kepler is truly turning out to be an extraordinary planet hunter. The space-based telescope has now detected 4,696 objects of interest, including the new candidate planets. Confirmation of the new super-Earth brings the total number of known planets to 1,030. The data analyzed by the scientists was captured by Kepler from May 2009 to May 2013, a four year span.

The new catalog—the seventh to be released by the Kepler team, and the first since January 2015—is the first to be fully automated. Typically, the first step in the planet hunting process is to find signals that show periodic dips in brightness (i.e. the transit method of exoplanetary detection), followed by a more thorough analysis in which KOIs, or Kepler Objects of Interest, are highlighted for future study. This second step is traditionally handled by a team of scientists, but that can be tremendously time consuming.

But now, NASA has written an automated software program that effectively replicates this tedious process. As a result, planet hunters are able to assess all the Kepler planets in a more uniform and coherent fashion.






_The number of planets in each subsequent catalog keeps growing and growing (Credits: NASA Ames/W. Stenzel and SETI Institute/J. Coughlin)_

“Now that the process is automated, we’re able to assess every single transit-like signal and do so automatically,” noted Jeff Coughlin, Kepler research scientist at SETI Institute in Mountain View, California, at a press conference earlier today.

What’s more, the new-and-improved process will allow astronomers to better determine the number of small, cool planets that are best candidates for hosting life.






_NASA released this graphic earlier today. The blue dots show planet candidates from previous catalogs, while the yellow dots show new candidates from the seventh catalog. (Credits: NASA Ames/W. Stenzel)_

“New planet candidates continue to be found at all periods and sizes due to continued improvement in the detection techniques,” noted NASA during the media briefing. “Notably, several of these new candidates are near-Earth-sized and at long orbital periods, where they have a chance of being rocky with liquid water on their surface.”

More specifically, the new catalog includes 12 planetary candidates that are less than twice Earth’s diameter and are in orbit within their star’s habitable zone, i.e. that sweet-spot in a solar system where a rocky planet can sustain liquid water at its surface. Nine of these planets orbit stars that are similar to our sun in terms of size and temperature. That’s incredibly encouraging; astronomers are increasingly finding that terrestrial, or rocky, planets are among the most common in the Galaxy.

Of the dozen Earth-like candidates announced, only Kepler 452b—the exoplanet described earlier today as being the most Earth-like yet—has been confirmed. The remaining eleven will have to be verified by astronomers in the months and years to come.






_(Credits: NASA Ames/W. Stenzel)_

Above is a visualization of the new potentially Earth-like, habitable zone planetary candidates (shown in open yellow circles). The dark green area represents liberal estimates for the habitable zone, while the light green area represents more conservative estimates. The open blue circles are candidates from previous catalogs, while filled-in circles are confirmed planets. 

“Kepler 452b takes us one step closer to understanding how many habitable planets are out there,” noted Joseph Twicken, a member of the SETI Institute and a Kepler scientist, in a statement. “Continued investigation of the other candidates in this catalog and one final run of the Kepler science pipeline will help us find the smallest and coolest planets. Doing so will allow us to better gauge the prevalence of habitable worlds.”

And as Coughlin noted at the press conference: “In a year, we’re going to release the eighth planet catalog, and we’re optimistic we’ll discover more habitable zone planets.”

In more good news, all the data is publicly archived—and will remain that way for years to come.


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## Fenrir

*NASA's Space Launch System Design 'Right on Track' for Journey to Mars*

NASA's Space Launch System Design 'Right on Track' for Journey to Mars | NASA

You know the feeling of pride and achievement when you've worked really hard on a term paper, and finally turn it in? That's how the critical design review team for NASA's Space Launch System is feeling this week as the program completed its review.

The in-depth review – the first in almost 40 years for a NASA exploration class vehicle -- provides a final look at the design and development of the integrated rocket before full-scale fabrication begins. Throughout the course of 11 weeks, 13 teams – including representatives from several NASA field centers – reviewed more than 1,000 files of data as part of the comprehensive assessment process. 





_NASA's Space Launch System Program Manager Todd May and others on the critical design review team pore over hundreds of design and development documents on the SLS Block 1 configuration. The critical design review provides a final look at the design and development of the integrated rocket ahead of full-scale fabrication. SLS will be the most powerful rocket ever built for deep space missions, including to an asteroid and ultimately Mars. __Credits: NASA/MSFC_

SLS will be the most powerful rocket ever built for a new era of exploration to destinations beyond Earth’s orbit. It will launch astronauts in the agency’s Orion spacecraft on missions to an asteroid placed in lunar orbit, and eventually to Mars.

"Now that we've completed our review, we will brief NASA leadership, along with the independent review team, about the results and readiness to proceed to the next phase. After that step is complete, we'll move on to design certification," said Todd May, SLS program manager at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama. "Critical design review represents a major commitment by the agency to human exploration, and through these reviews, we ensure the SLS design is on track to being a safe, sustainable and evolvable launch vehicle that will meet the agency's goals and missions.

"It's an exciting time for NASA and our nation," May continued, "as we prepare to go to places in deep space that we've never been before."

The critical design review is for the first of three configurations planned for SLS, referred to as SLS Block 1. It will stand 322 feet tall, provide 8.4 million pounds of thrust at liftoff, weigh 5.5 million pounds and carry 70 metric tons or 154,000 pounds of payload, equivalent to approximately 77 one-ton pickup trucks’ worth of cargo. Its first mission -- Exploration Mission-1 -- will launch an uncrewed Orion spacecraft to demonstrate the integrated system performance of the SLS rocket and Orion spacecraft before a crewed flight.





_The critical design review team, including members of the Standing Review Board, listen to presentations during the SLS critical design review. This week, the SLS Program completed its critical design review -- a first in almost 40 years for a NASA exploration class vehicle. SLS Program managers will present the results from the critical design review board and Standing Review Board to Marshall’s Center Management Council. After receiving the council’s concurrence, the results then will be briefed to the Human Exploration and Operations Mission Directorate at NASA Headquarters. Credits: NASA/MSFC
_
Block 1 requires many critical parts to get it off the ground and safely into space, including twin solid rocket boosters, powerful engines, flight computers, avionics and the core stage. The core stage, towering more than 200 feet tall with a diameter of 27.6 feet, will carry cryogenic liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen that will feed the vehicle’s four RS-25 engines.

The team turned in its work to a Standing Review Board composed of seasoned experts from NASA and industry who are independent of the program. The board will review and assess the program’s readiness and confirm it remains on target to meet the established schedule and cost goals.

"Much of the benefit of this review is what we do to prepare for it because that's where we really bring things out," said Jim Reuter, head of the Standing Review Board. "And you can tell it in the spirit of the people here. They are excited about what they're doing. They can see that this is the review that's going to make it real."

SLS Program managers will present the results from the critical design review board and Standing Review Board to Marshall’s Center Management Council. After receiving the council’s concurrence, the results then will be briefed to the Human Exploration and Operations Mission Directorate at NASA Headquarters.





_Artist concept of the SLS Block 1 configuration. Credits: NASA/MSFC_

Element-level critical design reviews for the SLS core stage, boosters and engines have been completed successfully. The integrated spacecraft and payloads are nearing completion on their critical design review.

The Engineering Directorate at Marshall, where the SLS program is managed, provided the majority of the initial phase CDR documents, including drawings and data.

"A thorough review requires a wide range of engineering skills and experts to assess everything from avionics and software that fly the vehicle to ground transportation and integrated systems testing designs and plans," said Preston Jones, deputy director of Marshall's Engineering Directorate. "We have gone through every design interface and rechecked analysis to ensure we are meeting all SLS mission performance and crew safety requirements."

The Orion Program at Johnson Space Center in Houston and the Ground Systems Development Office at Kennedy Space Center in Florida also will undergo similar reviews this year. After those reviews are done, NASA will set a date for Exploration Mission-1.

"We've nailed our review schedules," said Garry Lyles, chief engineer for the SLS Program Office at the Marshall Center. "The team is performing at a really high level. And I’m unbelievably positive in the structural robustness of this vehicle; it has tremendous performance. We’ve picked the right vehicle for the journey to Mars."

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## Fenrir

*Pluto is Something Way More Awesome Than a Mere Planet*






Stop hoping that Pluto will regain its former designation as a planet. It isn’t going to happen. But the good news is, Pluto is something much cooler than a mere planet. It’s the largest dwarf planet we know, and one half of the first binary planet system. Pluto didn’t get demoted, it got promoted.

We’re all feeling the Pluto-love, with all the new data flowing in from the New Horizons probe. I keep getting asked, “When will we get the ‘Pluto is a planet again!’ article? Or is it silly and nostalgic to hope?” That article isn’t coming—but instead of sorrow over Pluto losing its old title, I’m celebrating all the awesome titles getting piled on to this little world after its reclassification.

I am in love with Pluto and all its moons. I love the weirdly young surface. I love its strange thermal-driven geomorphology. I love that I’m constantly surprised by all its mysteries. But Pluto isn’t a planet, and I’m happy for it. Ever since Pluto’s reclassification as a dwarf planet, it’s been piling on far cooler titles. See for yourself!

*The Largest of the Dwarf Planets, and the King of the Kuiper Belt*

Instead of being the very smallest planet, Pluto is confirmed as the largest dwarf planet. We had trouble measuring the world’s size from afar due to the haze of its thin atmosphere creating a fuzzy mirage. The New Horizons probe finally pinned down its size: 2,370 kilometers (1,473 miles) in diameter with a potential error of plus/minus 20 kilometers (12 miles). This means that Pluto is the undisputed largest dwarf planet. The next in line is Eris, with a diameter of 2,336 kilometers (1,451 miles) with an error of plus/minus 2 kilometers (7 miles). Even if Pluto is at the very smallest end of its potential size range and Eris at the very top of its range, Pluto still comes out bigger as the largest dwarf planet.





_It’s close, but Pluto narrowly edges out Eris for title of the largest dwarf planet. It also gets a more interesting moon system, even if it is less dense. Image credit: NASA_

This also means Pluto is slightly larger than our earlier estimates—which means that it is a bit less dense, with a larger proportion of ice layered onto the active world. A deeper layer of ice means, in turn, that the troposphere is lower than our previous atmospheric models. The weirdest bit is that this also means that Pluto is less dense than Eris, which is smaller yet heavier. For all the strange wonders we’re finding at Pluto, whatever is going on at the next-largest dwarf planet Eris is going to be entirely different.

The dwarf planets in our solar system are located in two places: in the main asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter, and in the Kuiper Belt beyond Neptune. Like the main asteroid belt,the Kuiper Belt is full of dwarf planets, jagged asteroids, and shards of ice. Being largest of the dwarf planets also makes Pluto the de facto King of the Kuiper Belt.

*The Namesake of Both the Plutoids and the Plutinos*

Classifying objects serves a function by organizing similar objects together to make them easier to analyze. Despite our nostalgic affection for classifying Pluto a planet, its dramatically eccentric, inclined orbit makes it stand out as the outlier in a game of, “Which of these is not like the others?” Instead, the dwarf planet is the namesake for an entirely new class of solar system objects: the plutoids.





_Pluto’s orbit is far too eccentric and inclined to match the planets in the rest of the solar system. Image credit: NASA_

Plutoids are dwarf planets outside of Neptune’s orbit. These trans-Neptonian objects have highly elliptical orbits that send them on journeys outside the plane defined by the rest of the planets in our solar system. As dwarf planets, these bodies are massive enough to be near-spheres, but not so massive that they clear out their orbit. In a more technical definition, every plutoid is massive enough that their self-gravity overcomes rigid body forces so they’re in hydrostatic equilibrium (aka, spherical), but not massive enough to gravitationally dominate their orbit.

While some moons are big enough to border on dwarf planets, any satellite of a plutoid is a moon, not a plutoid.





_Pluto is the namesake of the plutoids, dwarf planets in trans-Neptunian orbits. Image credit: NASA_

Pluto and Eris are both plutoids with orbits farther out than Neptune. But Ceres isn’t a plutoid because it’s located in the main asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter. Haumea andMakemake are also plutoids, and Quaoar might be one. Sedna may be a plutoid, but it doesn’t have a moon so we won’t know its mass (and thus if it’s massive enough to be a sphere) unless we send a probe out to investigate. It’s also possible that Neptune’s largest moon Triton is actually a former plutoid that was captured into orbit around the gas giant.

Pluto is also the namesake of plutinos, which are any trans-Neptonian object of any size that are in orbital resonance with Neptune. Most plutinos have an orbital period about 1.5 times that of Neptune, clustering with an average of 247 years to make a complete trip around the sun. Along with Pluto, other plutinos include Orcus, Ixion, Huya, and an entire scattering of objects.

*Our First Binary Planetary System*

By far the coolest title Pluto has earned isn’t a solo title, but a joint honor shared with Charon.Charon is Pluto’s largest moon: at half the diameter of Pluto and 10% of its mass, Charon is the largest moon in relation to its primary world in our entire solar system. Charon is big enough that if it weren’t orbiting Pluto, it’d be a dwarf planet in its own right.

The mass ratio between parent and moon for Pluto and Charon is 10:1, far closer to parity than the usual hundreds to one of terrestrial planet-moon systems, or the thousands or even tens of thousands to one of the mass of gas giants to their diminutive moons.





_Pluto and Charon mutually orbit their barycenter in these photographs taken b the New Horizons spacecraft. Image credit: NASA/JHUAPL/SwRI_

That’s where things get interesting: Charon orbits Pluto, and Pluto orbits Charon. The center of mass between the two worlds — the barycenter — is in empty space, not nestled within Pluto’s rocky core. This goes beyond the distinct wobble that our moon induces in Earth’s orbit—instead, this creates a distinct point that both Pluto and Charon orbit around.

When it comes to stars, any time the barycenter of two stars’ orbit is beyond the surface of the primary object, and is instead out in space somewhere, that’s enough to declare them a binary star system. The same is true for asteroids — we’ve found asteroid pairs with barycenters outside both rocks, and declared them binary asteroid systems. Since the barycenter of Pluto and Charon is an empty point in space, surely that means that Pluto-Charon a binary planetary system. This would make Pluto and Charon not only the first binary planet system in our solar system, but the first one we’ve found among the literally hundreds of Kepler exoplanet worlds.





_Pluto and Charon are tidally locked in orbit around a mutual barycenter. Image credit:Stephanie Hoover_

One final argument in favor of listing Pluto and Charon as a binary dwarf planet system is that they are the undeniable pair dominating all the little moons. Nix and Hydra are the larger of the remaining moons, but are just a tiny fraction of a percent of the size of Charon. Styx and Kerberos are even smaller yet. This family of tiny moons doesn’t even orbit Pluto directly: they all orbit the barycenter between Charon and Pluto.

The dance of the tiny moons is even stranger than just the fact that they orbit Pluto-Charon: they also interact with each other, inducing severe gravitational wobbles when they get too closein a bizarre dance we’re just starting to understand.





_The smaller moons Styx, Nix, Kerberos, and Hydra orbit the gravitational center between Pluto and Charon. Image credit: NASA/STScI/Showalter_

We’re not the only ones making this argument. The notorious International Astronomy Union (IAU) who originally redefined Pluto away from being a planet are open about their receptiveness to reclassifying Charon from moon to dwarf planet:

_Charon may receive consideration because Pluto and Charon are comparable in size and orbit each other, rather than just being a satellite orbiting a planet. Most important for Charon’s case as a dwarf planet is that the centre of gravity about which Charon orbits is not inside of the system primary, Pluto. Instead this centre of gravity, called the barycentre, resides in free space between Pluto and Charon._

The IAU considered a proposal to name Pluto and Charon as a binary system in 2006. It was neither accepted nor rejected, but instead was merely abandoned, as they went on to more pressing issues of nomenclature and classification. That leaves the organization open to giving Pluto and Charon their rightly-earned title as the first binary planetary system, and the first binary dwarf planets.





_Pluto is far cooler than a mere planet. Image credit: NASA/JHUAPL/SwRI_

Pluto doesn’t need to be a planet to be cool. We already have eight planets. Instead of being the smallest of the four rocky, terrestrial worlds, Pluto gets to be something truly special. With all these awesome titles — the most massive dwarf planet, the namesake of an entire classification of solar system objects, and the primary body in the first binary planetary system of any variety — Pluto was never downgraded. Instead, it was upgraded to become something far more interesting.

_Top image: Styx, Nix, Kerberos and Hydra orbit around the barycenter of Pluto and Charon. Styx and Kerberos are represented by a potato and a banana as actual images of the small moons are not yet available from the New Horizons flyby. Credit: Dorien Gunnels_

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## Fenrir

*Delta IV Using Upgraded RS-68A Engine Launches Advanced USAF WGS-7 Satcom*

Delta IV Using Upgraded RS-68A Engine Launches Advanced USAF WGS-7 Satcom « AmericaSpace





_A spectacular sunset launch from Cape Canaveral by a United Launch Alliance Delta IV Medium+ rocket placed the U. S. Air Force/ Boeing WGS-7 Wideband Global SATCOM into super synchronous transfer orbit July 23, after a 24 hr. delay due to dangerous thunderstorms in the area. Photo Credit: Talia Landman / AmericaSpace_

A spectacular sunset launch from Cape Canaveral by a United Launch Alliance Delta IV Medium+ rocket placed the U.S. Air Force/ Boeing WGS-7 Wideband Global SATCOM into super synchronous transfer orbit July 23, after a 24 hr. delay due to dangerous thunderstorms in the area.

The 8:07 p.m. EDT launch came at the opening of a 39 minute launch window for the mission to place WGS-7 into a 36,107 x 238 nautical mile orbit, inclined 24 degrees to the equator. The satellite’s own propulsion system will be used to lower apogee and raise perigee to about a 19,232 nautical mile geosynchronous altitude where the satellite will remain fixed over the equator at a specific location, with the rest of the WGS fleet positioned around the planet.





_Launch of WGS-7 July 23, 2015. Photo Credit: Alan Walters / AmericaSpace_

The USAF’s 45th Space Wing Weather Squadron worked aggressively July 23 to keep ULA apprised that approaching severe thunderstorms mandated a scrub to keep the 205 ft. launch vehicle and its $566 million satellite payload safely under cover in its mobile service tower. Then July 24 the Weather Squadron was again challenged by numerous, but weaker thundershowers around Cape Canaveral, that remained barely within limits to allow an on time rollback of the service tower and then fueling to begin 3 hours before liftoff.

According to Jim Sponnick, ULA vice president for Atlas and Delta Programs, WGS satellites are an important element of a new high-capacity satellite communications system. WGS 7 will provide enhanced communications capabilities to troops in the field for the next decade and beyond.

“WGS 7 will enables more robust and flexible execution of Command and Control, Communications, Computers, Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance (C4ISR), as well as battle management and combat support information functions” Sponnick said.

The Delta IV Medium+ (5,4) vehicle lifted off from Launch Complex 37 on 1.47 million lb. thrust, half of it provided by four Aerojet solid rocket boosters and the rest from the 702,000 lb. thrust uprated RS-68A oxygen/hydrogen engine making its debut on a Delta IV Medium.

Three RS-68As first flew in June, 2012 on the triple bodied Delta IV Heavy launch of the National Reconnaissance Office NRO-15 spacecraft to geosynchronous orbit.

NRO-15 is a massive electronic intelligence satellite with an eavesdropping antenna spanning up to 360 ft. (110 m). The uprated A version of the RS-68 was developed specifically for this mission and similar giant NRO antennas to follow. The A version will now be used on all Delta IV’s allowing ULA to standardize the assembly and internal structure of all the Common Booster Cores (CBCs) used by the launcher.

The RS-68A has 39,000 lb. more liftoff thrust than the first version of the engine that had powered all previous Delta IV missions.

The four solids separated in pairs just past the 90 sec. mark in the ascent, followed by the 5 meter faring separation past the 3 min. point. The burnout and separation of the CBC first stage occurred at 4 min into the flight.

The Delta IV’s cryogenic second stage, powered by an Aerojet Rocketdyne 24,750 lb. thrust RL10B-2 engine, was then ignited for about a 16 min. a firing that ended just off the west coast of north Africa.

The vehicle then coasted until the second stage ignited for a second time, burning 3 min. 18 sec. until 33 min. into the flight, with cutoff over south central Africa. The vehicle then coasted for 9 min. to just east of Madagascar, where the spacecraft was released 42. mi. after liftoff.

WGS-7 is the first Block II follow-on WGS spacecraft from the original 6 satellites in the WGS Block l and ll constellations.

At liftoff WGS weighed about 13,000 lb, but by the time it uses its fuel to reach its stationary orbit, spacecraft mass was down to 7,600 lbs. according to USAF Capt. Doug Downs, a WGS engineer at Los Angeles Air Force Station.





_The WGS 7 spacecraft is placed in its 5 meter fairing at the commercial Astrotech Space Operations facility near Cape Canaveral. Photo Credit: ULA_

According to the Air Force, WGS-7 will support communications links in the X-band and Ka-band spectra. While Block I and II satellites can instantaneously filter and downlink up to 4.575 MHz from 39 primary channels, WGS-7 can filter and downlink up to 5.375 MHz from 46 primary channels.

As with the Block II satellites, WGS-7 includes a high-bandwidth radio frequency (RF) bypass capability, which allows for larger bandwidth allocations to users, said USAF Depending on the mix of ground terminals, data rates, and modulation and coding schemes employed, a single WGS satellite can support data transmission rates between 2.1 and 3.6 Gbps.

WGS-7 is also designed for up to ~800 MHz of additional bandwidth through the use of “Redundant Port Activation.”

WGS has 19 independent coverage areas, 18 of which can be positioned throughout its field-of-view. This includes eight steerable/shapeable X-band beams formed by separate transmit/receive phased arrays; 10 Ka-band beams served by independently steerable duplexed antennas; and one transmit/ receive X-band Earth-coverage beam. WGS can tailor coverage areas and connect X-band and Ka-band users anywhere within its field-of-view.

Five globally-located Army Wideband SATCOM Operations Centers provide 24/7 payload monitoring and command and control of the WGS constellation. Each Global Satellite Configuration and Control Element has the capability to control up to three satellites at a time.

Spacecraft platform control and anomaly resolution will be accomplished by the 3rd Space Operations Squadron at Schriever Air Force Base in Colorado Springs, CO.

According to the space engineering website Spaceflight-101 the RS-68 to RS-68A upgrade included two major design modifications. The first was a switch of the engine turbine nozzles from an axis-symmetric design to three-dimensional nozzles to reduce turbine blade loading and to expand the operational range of the LOX and LH2 turbopumps.

The site says engine specific impulse was improved by increasing the number of main injector combustion elements for better mixing and combustion efficiency. Additional upgrades made to the engine include a new bearing material that is more resistant to stress corrosion cracking.

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## Fenrir

*Hubble Looks in on a Galactic Nursery*

Hubble Looks in on a Galactic Nursery | NASA





This dramatic image shows the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope’s view of dwarf galaxy known as NGC 1140, which lies 60 million light-years away in the constellation of Eridanus. As can be seen in this image NGC 1140 has an irregular form, much like the Large Magellanic Cloud — a small galaxy that orbits the Milky Way.

This small galaxy is undergoing what is known as a starburst. Despite being almost ten times smaller than the Milky Way it is creating stars at about the same rate, with the equivalent of one star the size of our sun being created per year. This is clearly visible in the image, which shows the galaxy illuminated by bright, blue-white, young stars.

Galaxies like NGC 1140 — small, starbursting and containing large amounts of primordial gas with far fewer elements heavier than hydrogen and helium than are present in our sun — are of particular interest to astronomers. Their composition makes them similar to the intensely star-forming galaxies in the early Universe. And these early Universe galaxies were the building blocks of present-day large galaxies like our galaxy, the Milky Way. But, as they are so far away these early Universe galaxies are harder to study so these closer starbursting galaxies are a good substitute for learning more about galaxy evolution.

The vigorous star formation will have a very destructive effect on this small dwarf galaxy in its future. When the larger stars in the galaxy die, and explode as supernovae, gas is blown into space and may easily escape the gravitational pull of the galaxy. The ejection of gas from the galaxy means it is throwing out its potential for future stars as this gas is one of the building blocks of star formation. NGC 1140’s starburst cannot last for long.

_Image credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA_
_Text credit: European Space Agency_

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## Fenrir

*New Horizons Discovers Flowing Ices on Pluto*

New Horizons Discovers Flowing Ices on Pluto | NASA





_New Horizons discovers flowing ices in Pluto’s heart-shaped feature. In the northern region of Pluto’s Sputnik Planum (Sputnik Plain), swirl-shaped patterns of light and dark suggest that a surface layer of exotic ices has flowed around obstacles and into depressions, much like glaciers on Earth. Credits: NASA/JHUAPL/SwRI_
NASA’s New Horizons mission has found evidence of exotic ices flowing across Pluto’s surface, at the left edge of its bright heart-shaped area. New close-up images from the spacecraft’s Long-Range Reconnaissance Imager (LORRI) reveal signs of recent geologic activity, something scientists hoped to find but didn’t expect.

“We’ve only seen surfaces like this on active worlds like Earth and Mars,” said mission co-investigator John Spencer of SwRI. “I'm really smiling.”

The new close-up images show fascinating detail within the Texas-sized plain (informally named Sputnik Planum) that lies within the western half of Pluto’s heart-shaped region, known as Tombaugh Regio. There, a sheet of ice clearly appears to have flowed—and may still be flowing—in a manner similar to glaciers on Earth.





_In the northern region of Pluto’s Sputnik Planum, swirl-shaped patterns of light and dark suggest that a surface layer of exotic ices has flowed around obstacles and into depressions, much like glaciers on Earth.
Credits: NASA/JHUAPL/SwRI_

Meanwhile, New Horizons scientists are using enhanced color images (see below) to detect differences in the composition and texture of Pluto’s surface. When close-up images are combined with color data from the Ralph instrument, they paint a new and surprising portrait of Pluto in which a global pattern of zones vary by latitude. The darkest terrains appear at the equator, mid-tones are the norm at mid-latitudes, and a brighter icy expanse dominates the north polar region. The New Horizons science team is interpreting this pattern to be the result of seasonal transport of ices from equator to pole.

This pattern is dramatically interrupted by the bright “beating heart” of Pluto.





_Four images from New Horizons’ Long Range Reconnaissance Imager (LORRI) were combined with color data from the Ralph instrument to create this enhanced color global view of Pluto. (The lower right edge of Pluto in this view currently lacks high-resolution color coverage.) The images, taken when the spacecraft was 280,000 miles (450,000 kilometers) away, show features as small as 1.4 miles (2.2 kilometers), twice the resolution of the single-image view taken on July 13. Credits: NASA/JHUAPL/SwRI_
The “heart of the heart,” Sputnik Planum, is suggestive of a reservoir of ices. The two bluish-white “lobes” that extend to the southwest and northeast of the “heart” may represent exotic ices being transported away from Sputnik Planum. 

Additionally, new compositional data from New Horizons’ Ralph instrument indicate that the center of Sputnik Planum is rich in nitrogen, carbon monoxide, and methane ices. “At Pluto’s temperatures of minus-390 degrees Fahrenheit, these ices can flow like a glacier,” said Bill McKinnon, of Washington University in St. Louis, deputy leader of the New Horizons Geology, Geophysics and Imaging team. In the southernmost region of the heart, adjacent to the dark equatorial region, it appears that ancient, heavily-cratered terrain (informally named “Cthulhu Regio”) has been invaded by much newer icy deposits.





_This annotated image of the southern region of Sputnik Planum illustrates its complexity, including the polygonal shapes of Pluto’s icy plains, its two mountain ranges, and a region where it appears that ancient, heavily-cratered terrain has been invaded by much newer icy deposits. The large crater highlighted in the image is about 30 miles (50 kilometers) wide, approximately the size of the greater Washington, DC area.
Credits: NASA/JHUAPL/SwRI_

The newly-discovered range of mountains rises one mile (1.6 kilometers) above the surrounding plains, similar to the height of the Appalachian Mountains in the United States. These peaks have been informally named Hillary Montes (Hillary Mountains) for Sir Edmund Hillary, who first summited Mount Everest with Tenzing Norgay in 1953.

“For many years, we referred to Pluto as the Everest of planetary exploration,” said New Horizons Principal Investigator Alan Stern of the Southwest Research Institute, Boulder, Colorado. “It’s fitting that the two climbers who first summited Earth’s highest mountain, Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay, now have their names on this new Everest.”

View a simulated flyover using New Horizons’ close-approach images of Sputnik Planum and Pluto’s newly-discovered mountain range – Hillary Montes, in the video below.





_This simulated flyover of two regions on Pluto, northwestern Sputnik Planum (Sputnik Plain) and Hillary Montes (Hillary Mountains), was created from New Horizons close-approach images. Sputnik Planum has been informally named for Earth’s first artificial satellite, launched in 1957. Hillary Montes have been informally named for Sir Edmund Hillary, one of the first two humans to reach the summit of Mount Everest in 1953. The images were acquired by the Long Range Reconnaissance Imager (LORRI) on July 14 from a distance of 48,000 miles (77,000 kilometers). Features as small as one-half mile (1 kilometer) across are visible. Credits: NASA/JHUAPL/SwRI_


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## Fenrir

*NASA’s New Horizons Team Finds Haze, Flowing Ice on Pluto*

NASA’s New Horizons Team Finds Haze, Flowing Ice on Pluto | NASA
_





Backlit by the sun, Pluto’s atmosphere rings its silhouette like a luminous halo in this image taken by NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft around midnight EDT on July 15. This global portrait of the atmosphere was captured when the spacecraft was about 1.25 million miles (2 million kilometers) from Pluto and shows structures as small as 12 miles across. The image, delivered to Earth on July 23, is displayed with north at the top of the frame. Credits: NASA/JHUAPL/SwRI_

Flowing ice and a surprising extended haze are among the newest discoveries from NASA’s New Horizons mission, which reveal distant Pluto to be an icy world of wonders.

“We knew that a mission to Pluto would bring some surprises, and now -- 10 days after closest approach -- we can say that our expectation has been more than surpassed,” said John Grunsfeld, NASA’s associate administrator for the Science Mission Directorate. “With flowing ices, exotic surface chemistry, mountain ranges, and vast haze, Pluto is showing a diversity of planetary geology that is truly thrilling."

Just seven hours after closest approach, New Horizons aimed its Long Range Reconnaissance Imager (LORRI) back at Pluto, capturing sunlight streaming through the atmosphere and revealing hazes as high as 80 miles (130 kilometers) above Pluto’s surface. A preliminary analysis of the image shows two distinct layers of haze -- one about 50 miles (80 kilometers) above the surface and the other at an altitude of about 30 miles (50 kilometers).

“My jaw was on the ground when I saw this first image of an alien atmosphere in the Kuiper Belt,” said Alan Stern, principal investigator for New Horizons at the Southwest Research Institute (SwRI) in Boulder, Colorado. “It reminds us that exploration brings us more than just incredible discoveries -- it brings incredible beauty.”

Studying Pluto’s atmosphere provides clues as to what’s happening below.

“The hazes detected in this image are a key element in creating the complex hydrocarbon compounds that give Pluto’s surface its reddish hue,” said Michael Summers, New Horizons co-investigator at George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia. 

Models suggest the hazes form when ultraviolet sunlight breaks up methane gas particles -- a simple hydrocarbon in Pluto’s atmosphere. The breakdown of methane triggers the buildup of more complex hydrocarbon gases, such as ethylene and acetylene, which also were discovered in Pluto’s atmosphere by New Horizons. As these hydrocarbons fall to the lower, colder parts of the atmosphere, they condense into ice particles that create the hazes. Ultraviolent sunlight chemically converts hazes into tholins, the dark hydrocarbons that color Pluto’s surface.

Scientists previously had calculated temperatures would be too warm for hazes to form at altitudes higher than 20 miles (30 kilometers) above Pluto’s surface.

“We’re going to need some new ideas to figure out what’s going on,” said Summers.

The New Horizons mission also found in LORRI images evidence of exotic ices flowing across Pluto’s surface and revealing signs of recent geologic activity, something scientists hoped to find but didn’t expect. 

The new images show fascinating details within the Texas-sized plain, informally named Sputnik Planum, which lies within the western half of Pluto’s heart-shaped feature, known as Tombaugh Regio. There, a sheet of ice clearly appears to have flowed -- and may still be flowing -- in a manner similar to glaciers on Earth.

“We’ve only seen surfaces like this on active worlds like Earth and Mars,” said mission co-investigator John Spencer of SwRI. “I'm really smiling.”

Additionally, new compositional data from New Horizons’ Ralph instrument indicate the center of Sputnik Planum is rich in nitrogen, carbon monoxide, and methane ices.

“At Pluto’s temperatures of minus-390 degrees Fahrenheit, these ices can flow like a glacier,” said Bill McKinnon, deputy leader of the New Horizons Geology, Geophysics and Imaging team at Washington University in St. Louis. “In the southernmost region of the heart, adjacent to the dark equatorial region, it appears that ancient, heavily-cratered terrain has been invaded by much newer icy deposits.”

View a simulated flyover using New Horizons’ close-approach images of Sputnik Planum and Pluto’s newly-discovered mountain range, informally named Hillary Montes, in the video below:


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## Fenrir

*Air Force Weather Satellite’s Breakup Blamed on Wiring Harness Compression in Battery Charge Assembly*

Air Force Weather Satellite’s Breakup Blamed on Wiring Harness Compression in Battery Charge Assembly « AmericaSpace






_DMSP Air Force weather satellite is depicted in polar orbit near Alaska. Image Credit: Lockheed Martin_

A U.S. Air Force review into the Feb. 3 loss of Defense Meteorological Satellite Program (DMSP) Flight 13 determined a failure of the spacecraft’s battery charger as the likely cause of the satellite’s failure and structural breakup.

Analysis indicates one of the satellite’s wiring harnesses in the battery charge assembly lost functionality due to compression over a long period of time. Once the harness was compromised, exposed wires potentially caused a short in the battery power, leading to an overcharge situation with eventual rupture of the satellite’s two batteries.

The Air Force declined to reveal the breakup until amateur trackers discovered the debris cloud.

This is the second aging DMSP to breakup in orbit. In April 2004, the 13-year-old fully retired DMSP-11 broke into 56 pieces of debris. Investigators believe that breakup was also caused by a battery wiring failure.

The latest failure analysis was conducted by the 50th Space Wing at Schriever AFB, Colo. The 12-foot-long (3.7-m) spacecraft weighed 1,832 lbs (831 kg) and cost $500 million.





_DMSP Defense Meteorological Satellite undergoes inspection prior to launch. Photo Credit: Lockheed Martin_

The satellite was orbiting near Antarctica when a joint team of ground controllers with the Air Force and National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) in Suitland, Md., noted a sudden temperature spike in the satellite’s electrical subsystem, followed by an unrecoverable loss of attitude control.

Currently, the Joint Space Operations Center at Vandenberg Air Force Base, Calif., is tracking 147 pieces of debris from this incident, ranging from baseball- to basketball-sized objects. There are approximately 110 payloads in the same orbital regime as DMSP Flight 13 at 515 miles (830 km). The JSpOC has had no reportable conjunctions between the DMSP Flight 13 debris and any of these objects.

“In accordance with our ongoing efforts to protect the space domain, the JSpOC will continue to monitor this debris along with all of the items in the space catalog in order to enhance the long-term sustainability, safety and security of the space environment,” said Col. John Giles, JSpOC director.

The review determined there were no actions that could have been taken to prevent the incident. The mission is operated by NOAA on behalf of the Air Force.

More than two decades ago, the design of the battery charger made it very difficult to assemble, and the entire block of Lockheed Martin 5D-2 Battery Chargers are potentially susceptible to this short circuit failure over time, despite a functional history within the design life.

The assembly is common to nine DMSP satellites, Flight 6 through Flight 14. While only one of these satellites, DMSP Flight 14, remains operational, six remain in orbit and analysis has shown that the risk of potential short circuit remains even after a satellite is permanently shut down.

“While there are no indications of an issue with the battery charge assembly housing on DMSP Flight 14, the results of the DMSP Flight 13 review coupled with ongoing technical analysis will be included in our routine constellation sustainment planning process moving forward,” said Col. Dennis Bythewood, 50th Operations Group commander.

“Our team took quick action to identify the anomaly and to mitigate its impact,” said Bythewood. “Everyone worked well together to address this incident. We are grateful to all of our partners, to include active duty and Reserve Airmen, government civilians, NOAA operators and Lockheed Martin, Aerospace Corp, Harris Corp and Northrop Grumman contractors, in supporting the immediate actions as well as the review that followed this incident.”

The DMSPs are used to cue imaging reconnaissance spacecraft operators to cloud-free areas and to provide units like SEAL teams with critical weather information, even for small landing zones. Along with NOAA polar orbiters, the DMSPs also provide extremely detailed data on hurricane intensity and ground tracks.

DMSP Flight 13 was originally launched from Vandenberg AFB, Calif., into polar orbit on March 24, 1995. Despite its original four-year design life, Flight 13 provided service for almost two decades and on Aug. 6, 2014, became the first operational DMSP satellite to reach 100,000 revolutions around the Earth. The satellite was built by General Electric’s Astro Space Div., later acquired by Lockheed Martin.

“Due to an earlier loss of recording capability and the launch of more modern DMSP satellites, Flight 13 transitioned from a primary mission satellite to a residual satellite in 2006,” said the Air Force. It said that “DMSP Flight 13 provided critical atmospheric data for flight operations in OPERATION ALLIED FORCE, OPERATION ENDURING FREEDOM and OPERATION IRAQI FREEDOM. During its lifetime, DMSP Flight 13 also provided thousands of hours of weather imagery to the Air Force Weather Agency and the U.S. Navy’s Fleet Numerical Meteorology and Oceanography Center.”

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## Fenrir

*Here's a Rocket With Shark Teeth*






The latest ULA rocket has a very angry face. Full photo below.

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## Fenrir

*Bright Basin on Tethys*

Bright Basin on Tethys | NASA






With the expanded range of colors visible to Cassini's cameras, differences in materials and their textures become apparent that are subtle or unseen in natural color views. Here, the giant impact basin Odysseus on Saturn's moon Tethys stands out brightly from the rest of the illuminated icy crescent. This distinct coloration may result from differences in either the composition or structure of the terrain exposed by the giant impact. Odysseus (280 miles, or 450 kilometers, across) is one of the largest impact craters on Saturn's icy moons, and may have significantly altered the geologic history of Tethys.

Tethys' dark side (at right) is faintly illuminated by reflected light from Saturn.

Images taken using ultraviolet, green and infrared spectral filters were combined to create this color view. North on Tethys (660 miles or 1,062 kilometers across) is up in this view.

The view was acquired on May 9, 2015 at a distance of approximately 186,000 miles (300,000 kilometers) from Tethys. Image scale is 1.1 mile (1.8 kilometers) per pixel.

The Cassini mission is a cooperative project of NASA, ESA (the European Space Agency) and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington. The Cassini orbiter and its two onboard cameras were designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The imaging operations center is based at the Space Science Institute in Boulder, Colorado.

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## Fenrir

*Domes Arrive for CST-100 Test Article Assembly*

Domes Arrive for CST-100 Test Article Assembly | Commercial Crew Program





_Image Credit: Boeing_

The first two domes that will form the pressure shell of the Structural Test Article, or STA, for Boeing’s CST-100 spacecraft have arrived at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center. The STA Crew Module will be assembled inside the former space shuttle hangar, known as Orbiter Processing Facility-3, so the company can validate the manufacturing and processing methods it plans to use for flight-ready CST-100 vehicles. While the STA will not fly with people aboard, it will be used to determine the effectiveness of the design and prove its escape system during a pad abort test. The ability to abort from an emergency and safely carry crew members out of harm’s way is a critical element for NASA’s next generation of crew spacecraft.

The main structure of the STA was friction-stir welded into a single upper and lower hull in mid-2015 and then machined to its final thickness. Throughout the next few months, it will be outfitted with critical components and systems required for testing. Once completed at Kennedy, the test article will be taken to Boeing’s facility in Huntington Beach, California, for evaluations. The “structural test” is one of many that will verify the capabilities and worthiness of the spacecraft, which is being designed to carry astronauts to the International Space Station in the near future for NASA’s Commercial Crew Program.

Boeing plans to launch its spacecraft on United Launch Alliance Atlas V rockets from Space Launch Complex 41 at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, which is only a few miles away from the CST-100 processing facility at Kennedy. A human-rated crew access tower that will give astronauts and ground support crews access to the CST-100 standing at the pad is currently is under construction near the launch site.




*Round of Testing Completed on Webb Telescope Flight Mirrors*

Round of Testing Completed on Webb Telescope Flight Mirrors | NASA






This July 11, 2015 photograph captures one of the final, if not the final, James Webb Space Telescope flight primary mirror segments to be processed through NASA Goddard Space Flight Center's Calibration, Integration and Alignment Facility (CIAF).

The mirror is seen here on the Configuration Measurement Machine (CMM), which is used for precision measurements of the backs of the mirrors. These precision measurements must be accurate to 0.1 microns or 1/400th the thickness of a human hair.

The James Webb Space Telescope is the scientific successor to NASA's Hubble Space Telescope. It will be the most powerful space telescope ever built. Webb is an international project led by NASA with its partners, the European Space Agency and the Canadian Space Agency.

_Image Credit: NASA/Chris Gunn_

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## Fenrir

*NASA Mars Orbiter Preparing for Mars Lander's 2016 Arrival *

NASA Mars Orbiter Preparing for Mars Lander's 2016 Arrival | NASA






With its biggest orbit maneuver since 2006, NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) will prepare this week for the arrival of NASA's next Mars lander, InSight, next year.

A planned 77-second firing of six intermediate-size thrusters on July 29 will adjust the orbit timing of the veteran spacecraft so it will be in position to receive radio transmissions from InSight as the newcomer descends through the Martian atmosphere and touches down on Sept. 28, 2016. These six rocket engines, which were used for trajectory corrections during the spacecraft's flight from Earth to Mars, can each produce about 22 newtons, or five pounds, of thrust.

"Without making this orbit change maneuver, Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter would be unable to hear from InSight during the landing, but this will put us in the right place at the right time," said MRO Project Manager Dan Johnston of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, California.

The orbiter will record InSight's transmissions for later playback to Earth as a record of each event during the critical minutes of InSight's arrival at Mars, just as MRO did for the landings of NASA's Curiosity Mars rover three years ago, and NASA's Phoenix Mars lander in 2008.

InSight will examine the deep interior of Mars for clues about the formation and early evolution of all rocky planets, including Earth.

MRO will continue its studies of Mars while preparing for the InSight arrival. MRO collects high-resolution imaging and spectral data, as well as atmospheric and sub-surface profiles. It has returned several times more data about the Red Planet than all other deep-space missions combined. It will also continue providing communication relay support for Mars rovers and making observations for analysis of candidate landing sites for future missions.

After the InSight landing, plans call for MRO to perform a pair of even larger maneuvers in October 2016 and April 2017 -- each using the six intermediate-size thrusters longer than three minutes. These will return it to the orbit timing it has used since 2006, crossing the equator at about 3 a.m. and 3 p.m., local solar time, during each near-polar loop around the planet. To observe the InSight arrival, MRO will be in an orbit that crosses the equator at about 2:30 p.m. local solar mean time.

The last time the mission performed a maneuver larger than this week's was on November 15, 2006. That maneuver fired the intermediate-size thrusters for 76 seconds to establish the original 3 p.m. _Local Mean Solar Time (_LMST_)_ sun-synchronous condition after a six-month period of using dips into the upper atmosphere to alter the orbit's shape. The spacecraft has three sets of thrusters. It used its most powerful set -- six thrusters, each with 170 newtons, or 39 pounds of force -- for about 27 minutes to first enter orbit when it arrived at Mars on March 10, 2006. It uses eight smaller thrusters most frequently, for small adjustments to course or orientation.

Even after the planned 2017 maneuver, the spacecraft's remaining supply of hydrazine propellant is projected to be more than 413 pounds (about 187 kilograms), equivalent to about 19 years of consumption in normal operations.

JPL, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the MRO Project for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington. Lockheed Martin Space Systems in Denver built the orbiter and supports its operations. For more information about MRO, visit:

*http://www.nasa.gov/mro*

*http://mars.nasa.gov/mro*

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## Fenrir

This program is in its preliminary stages.

*Venus Landsailing Rover*

NASA - Venus Landsailing Rover






The surface of Venus is the most hostile environment in the solar system, with a surface temperature hotter than an oven, and a high-pressure, corrosive atmosphere. It is significant that, although humans have sent rovers to Mars with operating lifetimes of eight years and counting, the most capable mission to the surface of Venus has been a stationary lander that survived for only two hours. Exploring the surface of Venus with a rover would be a “stretch” goal, which will push the limits of technology in high-temperature electronics, robotics, and robust systems.

In work to develop sensors to work inside of jet engines, NASA Glenn has developed electronics that will continue to function even at the Venus temperature of 450°C. These electronic components represent a breakthrough in technological capability for high temperatures. We have also tested solar cells up to Venus surface temperatures; although the power density produced is low (because of the high cloud levels and thick atmosphere), we can produce electrical power on the surface. So the fundamental elements of a rover for Venus are not beyond the bounds of physics: we could survive the furnace of Venus-- if we can come up with an innovative concept for a rover that can move on extremely low power levels.

To do this, we need to take advantage of the in-situ resources of Venus for mobility. The atmospheric pressure at the surface is a hundred times greater than that of Earth. Even though the winds at the surface of Venus are low (under one meter per second), at Venus pressure even low wind speeds develop significant force. We thus propose an innovative concept for a planetary rover: a sail-propelled rover to explore the surface of Venus. Such a rover could open a new frontier: converting the surface of a new planet into a location that can be explored by robotic exploration.

Although landsailing vehicles can climb hills, they require an operating landscape that is not densely packed with obstacles on the scale of meters. In this respect the surface of Venus actually does us a favor: from the views of Venus taken by the Russian Venera probes, the surface of Venus can be seen to have landscapes of flat, even terrain stretching to the horizon, with rocks at only centimeter scale (at least in the locations that Venera probes landed). Venus is ideal terrain for landsailing! In this project, we will analyze the technologies needed for a robotic landsailing vehicle on Venus, and do a top-level analysis and trade study of the rover design. Once the top level trade has been done, we will utilize the NASA Glenn COMPASS spacecraft design team to do a detailed design study of the vehicle and mission. In the final report, we assess the design feasibility and benefits over competing technologies.

The project is:

Exciting: sailing on Venus! How cool is that? The project will have an exceptional public engagement factor.
Breakthrough: this is great leap in capabilities for planetary exploration beyond any current capability.
Unexplored: Venus is the epitome of an unexplored planet. We will go where no one has gone before.
Far-term: we’re not ready to launch, but in ten years, we could be.
Technically credible: The concept has a sound scientific and engineering basis, and a reasonable implementation path that will take us from technical dream to engineering reality.


*---*

Despite it being preliminary, that doesn't mean their isn't movement either. The program is progressing steadily.

*---*



*NASA Awards Grants to Ozark IC to Create Circuits for Proposed Venus Rover*

NASA Awards Grants to Ozark IC to Create Circuits for Proposed Venus Rover « AmericaSpace

In what may be a significant step toward the seemingly far-off goal of sending a rover to the surface of Venus, NASA has awarded two grants totalling $245,000 to a semiconductor technology firm to design complex integrated circuits which could withstand the extremely harsh environment on this neighboring world.

The firm, Ozark Integrated Circuits Inc., is a start-up technology company affiliated with the University of Arkansas. The company designs semiconductors at the Arkansas Research and Technology Park and will use the grants to design complex integrated circuits which can survive and operate on Venus’ surface, where the temperature can reach a hellish 932 degrees Fahrenheit (500 degrees Celsius)—or, as the old saying goes, hot enough to melt lead.

The circuits are being designed as components for a proposed Venus rover called the *Venus Landsailing Rover*. The silicon carbide-based circuits will be used in an ultraviolet imager and microcontroller for the rover.

“Silicon carbide is a semiconductor that is ideally suited for the extreme environments found on Venus,” said Matt Francis, Ozark IC’s president and chief executive officer. “We have many years of experience working with this semiconductor fabrication process, developing models and process-design kits specifically for this process.”

Ozark IC will utilize the integrated circuit packaging expertise and facilities at the U of A’s High Density Electronics Research Center at the research park. Circuit packaging is the final stage of semiconductor device fabrication.

Francis, along with Jim Holmes, chief technology officer, has been working at perfecting the design procedures, tools, characterization, and modeling approaches necessary to create the high-temperature, high-voltage electronics capable of operating at temperatures beyond 600 degrees Fahrenheit. By contrast, rovers on Mars have had to be built to survive temperatures ranging from just above freezing to extreme cold.

“We will demonstrate the feasibility of creating these needed integrated circuits,” Francis said. “We will also generate a commercial feasibility analysis based on projections of the manufacturing costs for each of these integrated circuits.”

In the *first grant award*, Ozark IC will develop an ultraviolet imager which is ideally suited for planetary composition experiments and observing Earth from space. On Venus, the imager will allow monitoring of ultraviolet signals which will help scientists to better understand the Venusian environment. It can also be used for ultraviolet astronomy by observing and analyzing ultraviolet signals from other planets and stars.

For the *second grant award*, the company will develop a microcontroller to provide real-time programmability for the proposed rover. Student research for this project will be led by Alan Mantooth, Distinguished Professor of electrical engineering at the U of A.

The *Venus Landsailing Rover* is a proposal for a mobile lander on Venus being developed by NASA Glenn which could withstand the searing temperatures and pressure, pushing the limits of technology in high-temperature electronics, robotics, and robust systems; the previous Soviet *Venera landers* on Venus in the 1980s were only able to survive up to two hours. According to the information page, the project is:


Exciting: sailing on Venus! How cool is that? The project will have an exceptional public engagement factor.
Breakthrough: this is great leap in capabilities for planetary exploration beyond any current capability.
Unexplored: Venus is the epitome of an unexplored planet. We will go where no one has gone before.
Far-term: we’re not ready to launch, but in ten years, we could be.
Technically credible: the concept has a sound scientific and engineering basis, and a reasonable implementation path that will take us from technical dream to engineering reality.
NASA Glenn is developing the electronics which can survive the environment on Venus for much longer than before, as well as solar cells. Even though the amount of solar power generated will be low due to clouds and thick atmosphere, it will still be enough for the rover. The rover will be ideally designed for operating on Venus’ surface, as it is sail-propelled (thus the name) to take advantage of winds. Surface winds on Venus are low—under one meter per second—but the strong atmospheric pressure (one hundred times more than on Earth) will create the force needed to move the rover. The landscape in many places, as seen by previous landers, is also ideal for landsailing, with fairly flat terrain and small rocks.





_Venera 13 landing site panorama on Venus. This kind of flat terrain would be ideal for a landsailing rover. Image Credit: National Space Science Data Center_

Later, the NASA Glenn COMPASS spacecraft design team will do a detailed design study of the vehicle and mission overall, and in the final report will assess the design feasibility and benefits over competing technologies.

The surface of Venus is not an easy place to visit by any means, but a landsailing rover like VLR might be just what is needed to continue studying this hostile but fascinating world up close.

A formal press release about these grants will be sent out next week from Ozark IC/U of A.

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## Fenrir

*Extreme Access Flyer to Take Planetary Exploration Airborne *

Extreme Access Flyer to Take Planetary Exploration Airborne | NASA






Swamp Works engineers at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida are inventing a flying robotic vehicle that can gather samples on other worlds in places inaccessible to rovers. The vehicles – similar to quad-copters but designed for the thin atmosphere of Mars and the airless voids of asteroids and the moon – would use a lander as a base to replenish batteries and propellants between flights.

"This is a prospecting robot," said Rob Mueller, senior technologist for advanced projects at Swamp Works. "The first step in being able to use resources on Mars or an asteroid is to find out where the resources are. They are most likely in hard-to-access areas where there is permanent shadow. Some of the crater walls are angled 30 degrees or more, and that's far too steep for a traditional rover to navigate and climb."

The machines being built fall under the name Extreme Access Flyers, and their designers intend to create vehicles that can travel into the shaded regions of a crater and pull out small amounts of soil to see whether it holds the water-ice promised by readings from orbiting spacecraft. Running on propellants made from resources on the distant worlds, the machines would be able to execute hundreds of explorative sorties during their mission. They also would be small enough for a lander to bring several of them to the surface at once, so if one fails, the mission isn't lost.

If that sounds a lot like a job for a quad-copter, it kind of is. On Earth, a quad-copter with its four rotors and outfitted with a digger or sampling device of some sort would be able to execute many missions with no problem. On other worlds, though, the machine would require very large rotors since the atmosphere on Mars is thin and there is no air on an asteroid or the moon. Also, the flyer would have to operate autonomously, figuring out on its own where it is and where it is going since there is no GPS to help it navigate and the communications delays are too large to control it directly from Earth.





_A prototype built to test Extreme Access Flyer systems in different environments.

Credits: NASA/Swamp Works_

Cold-gas jets using oxygen or steam water vapor will take on the lifting and maneuvering duties performed by the rotors on Earth. For navigation, the team is programming the flyer to recognize terrain and landmarks and guide itself to areas controllers on Earth send it to or even scout on its own the best places to take samples from.

"It would have enough propellant to fly for a number of minutes on Mars or on the moon, hours on an asteroid," said DuPuis.

For the sampling itself, designers currently envision a modular approach that would let the flyer take one tool at a time to a sample area to gather about seven grams of material at a time. That's enough for instruments to analyze and, throughout the course of many flights, is enough to gather samples that would show Earth-bound scientists a complete geological picture of an area.

It's work that would've been too complicated to research even five years ago, particularly with off-the-shelf components. Now though, the advent of autonomous flight controllers, laser-guidance and mapping systems combined with innovations in 3-D printing make the chances of developing a successful prototype flyer much more likely. Also, a partnership with Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University and Honeybee Robotic Spacecraft Mechanisms is providing more expertise.





_The Asteroid Prospector Flyer prototype in a testing gimbal._

_Credits: NASA/Swamp Works_

"The flight control systems of commercially available small, unmanned multi-rotor aerial vehicles are not too dissimilar to a spacecraft controller," Mike DuPuis, co-investigator of the Extreme Access Flyer project. "That was the starting point for developing a controller."

In the Swamp Works laboratory, the team has assembled several models designed to test aspects of the final machine. A large quad-copter about five feet across that uses ducted fans is about the size of the prototype the team has in mind for an operational mission in space. It's been tested at the planetary surface analogous test site built for the Morpheus lander project at the north end of the Shuttle Landing Facility's runway. 

A smaller ducted fan flyer, about the size of a person's palm is routinely flown inside a 10-by-10-foot cube to test software and control abilities. Another, primarily built with asteroid exploration in mind, is suspended inside a gimbal device that lets it maneuver much as it would in zero gravity, using nitrogen high pressure cold gas thrusters to tilt and spin while the team judges its behavior in a virtual simulated world on a computer that shows what its flight around an asteroid would look like.

The team started at a low level of technological readiness two years ago and is steadily pushing the mission and design closer to a state where it can be made into a flight-ready craft.

The uses for the sampling vehicle may not be solely extraterrestrial, Mueller said. On Earth, an aerial vehicle that can pull a few grams of dirt from an area potentially brimming with toxins would be very valuable for first responders or those researching a new area who do not want to risk humans. Mueller said the effects of a nuclear radiation leak on surrounding areas, for example, could be measured with soil gathered quickly by a vehicle like the Extreme Access Flyer. 

"We're an innovations lab, so in everything we do, we try to come up with new solutions," Mueller said.

In addition to scouting craters for water and other elements that can be processed into fuel for large spacecraft and air for humans, the flyer would be capable of exploring lava tubes that are known to exist on Mars and the moon and are found in many volcanic areas on Earth. Because some are thought to be 30 feet or bigger in diameter, an extreme access flyer could navigate autonomously during a robotic precursor mission and find a safe place for astronauts during their journey to Mars.

"You could put a whole habitat inside a lava tube to shelter astronauts from radiation, thermal extremes, weather and micrometeorites," Mueller said.

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## Fenrir

*Engineers Test Design Changes to Orion Fairing Panels*

Engineers Test Design Changes to Orion Fairing Panels | NASA





_This video shows the first test in a series of tests for the NASA Orion spacecraft's fairing separation system. Engineers made design changes to the system as a result of data collected during Orion's first test flight on Dec. 5, 2014._

NASA’s prime contractor for Orion, Lockheed Martin, successfully completed two ground-based tests to evaluate how Orion’s fairing panels will separate from the spacecraft on its way to space. The tests incorporated several changes designed to reduce spacecraft mass and help further prepare Orion for its first mission atop NASA’s Space Launch System (SLS) rocket to a distant lunar orbit. Lessons learned from last year’s flight test and building the initial spacecraft have provided valuable insight to inform these design improvements.

Orion includes three massive fairing panels that encase the service module, which houses power and propulsion, during the spacecraft’s climb to space. Like common rocket fairings, the panels support the spacecraft and help it endure the aerodynamic pressure, heat, wind and acoustics it encounters as it goes from sitting on the launch pad to traveling thousands of miles per hour in a matter of minutes. But unlike conventional fairings, Orion’s panels support about half of the weight of the spacecraft’s crew module and launch abort system, which improves performance, saves overall weight and maximizes Orion’s size and capability.





_An Orion fairing panel separates during a June test at Lockheed Martin's facility in Sunnyvale, California. Three fairing panels encase Orion's service model to protect it during ascent to space and are jettisoned once they are no longer needed. __Credits: Lockheed Martin_


Several minutes into flight, when the panels no longer are needed, they are jettisoned using a series of pyrotechnic devices that must fire in precise sequence to move the panels away from the spacecraft and allow it to continue its mission.

“Fairing panel separation is one of the first big milestones the Orion spacecraft has to achieve as we start a mission,” said Stu McClung, an Orion engineer who managers many of the spacecraft’s pyrotechnic mechanisms. “They’re a critical part of helping Orion get to space, but once they’ve done their job, it’s essential that we get rid of them so Orion can continue on and explore deep space destinations.”

To support deep space missions, the Orion program has reduced the spacecraft’s mass by more than 4,200 pounds through several manufacturing, design and architecture changes. These efforts change the loads, or forces, that are transmitted into the fairings. Engineers have changed some of the attachment schemes on the fairing panels, including where and how the hinges and springs used to jettison the fairing panels are located.





_This image shows the elements of the Orion spacecraft, including its fairing panels.__ Credits: NASA_


A test in June examined how a single fairing panel separated during a normal ascent scenario and how the separation moved energy to the rest of the structure. A second test completed July 29 evaluated the separation when a 10-millisecond lag was incorporated into the pyrotechnic firing sequence. Both tests were conducted at Lockheed Martin’s test facility in Sunnyvale, California. Initial data show the panels separated as planned in both tests.

“To the outside observer, the tests don’t look different than the ones we did ahead of Orion’s flight test last year, but we’ve making modifications as part of lessons learned during that flight that will give us a better approach in the long run,” said McClung.

The tests also mimicked higher forces on the panels than they experienced during Orion’s Exploration Flight Test-1 since the spacecraft will endure different pressure atop SLS than it did atop the Delta IV Heavy rocket that sent it on its maiden voyage to space. They also evaluated a new design of a cover for Orion’s star tracker, which is used for navigational purposes.

“We’ve got a lot of component-level tests happening across the country this year to help us refine Orion’s design,” said McClung. “It’s all helping us improve the spacecraft and get it ready for astronauts.”

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## Fenrir

*NEEMO Undersea Crew Tests Tools and Techniques For Future Spacewalks*

NEEMO Undersea Crew Tests Tools and Techniques For Future Spacewalks | NASA






This photograph of NASA astronaut Serena Aunon (@AstroSerena) moving tools and equipment underwater was taken during the NASA Extreme Environment Mission Operations (NEEMO) 20 mission, which began on July 20, 2015. NEEMO 20 is a 14-day mission by an international crew to the Aquarius Reef Base, located 62 feet (19 meters) below the surface of the Atlantic Ocean off the coast of Florida. NEEMO 20 is focusing on evaluating tools and techniques being tested for future spacewalks on a variety of surfaces and gravity levels ranging from asteroids to the moons of Mars and the Martian surface.

The mission tests time delays in communications due to the distance of potential mission destinations. The crew also will assess hardware sponsored by the European Space Agency (ESA) that allows crew members to read the next step in a procedure without taking their hands or eyes away from the task using a tablet, a smartphone and a head-mounted interface.

ESA astronaut Luca Parmitano is commanding the NEEMO 20 mission aboard the Aquarius laboratory. Parmitano flew in space during Expeditions 36 and 37 aboard the International Space Station in 2013, where he spent 166 days living and working in the extreme environment of microgravity. He conducted two spacewalks on his first spaceflight. Parmitano is joined by NASA astronaut Aunon, NASA EVA Management Office engineer David Coan and Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency astronaut Norishige Kanai.

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## Fenrir

*NASA Goddard Technology Helps Fight Forest Pests*

Goddard Technology Helps Fight Forest Pests

Northeastern forests in the United States cover more than 165 million acres, an area almost as big as Texas. Soon, millions of pine and ash trees in those forests could be wiped out, thanks in part to two types of voracious insects—each smaller than a penny.

A joint operation using technology developed at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, will help the U.S. Forest Service understand the impacts of these pests on northeastern trees. The collaboration flies a unique airborne instrument known as G-LiHT, or Goddard’s LiDAR, Hyperspectral and Thermal imager, on a Forest Service airplane. Using G-LiHT to measure signs and symptoms of forest health, scientists from both agencies flew over forests in Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New York, and Rhode Island this summer.

The southern pine beetle, a lethal predator of pine trees that cost the Southeast’s economy 1.5 billion in the early 2000s, already accounts for about 1,000 acres of infestation in New York and has recently been trapped in Connecticut and Massachusetts. The emerald ash borer, considered the worst tree-killer in the United States, has already killed tens of millions of northeastern trees and has been detected in 24 states and two Canadian provinces.

Goddard Earth scientist Bruce Cook said insects like the emerald ash borer will continue their feast for the foreseeable future. “We’re probably looking at the eradication of most of the ash trees in the United States and Canada,” he said.

Ryan Hanavan, the Forest Service entomologist working with G-LiHT, said these pests pose astronomical damages for the forestry industry in costs for post-infestation control, cleanup and replanting. “It’s 900 millions of potential damage for southern pine beetle and 10.5 billions projected for the emerald ash borer,” Hanavan said."





_G-LiHT sits inside the airplane’s cockpit, over an open camera port that allows it to look down from about 1000 feet high and at about 150 mph. Credits: NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center_

Technologies like G-LiHT help the Forest Service monitor insect damage and map areas at risk. G-LiHT uses LiDAR, an airborne device that sends millions of laser photons bouncing off the forest canopy and ground surface. With LiDAR data, Cook and colleagues create detailed 3-D images of each tree in a forest—trunk, branches and leaves included.

Equipped with a special gadget that can see reflected sunlight invisible to the naked eye, G-LiHT reveals information about the species and health of each tree. This gadget, known as an imaging spectrometer, helps scientists detect changes in leaf pigments plants use for photosynthesis. Cook said these pigments are important to measure, since declining photosynthesis indicates sick trees.

G-LiHT also packs a thermal infrared camera. Functioning like night-vision goggles to detect heat, this camera allows scientists to spot infested trees, which appear warmer when insects girdle their trunks and interrupt the natural flow and transpiration of water.

Cook said G-LiHT’s multi-sensor system works like a nervous system with different senses. “One sense cannot totally inform you,” he said. “A more complete picture of forest composition and health can be obtained with multi-sensor instrument packages.”

Hanavan has been on the forefront of the effort to track emerald ash borer and southern pine beetle in New England states. He and Cook teamed up to conduct aerial surveys with G-LiHT and ground observations in Northeastern forests during the summer of 2014 and 2015.

But even with G-LiHT, scientists can’t see everything from the air. Cook, Hanavan and their team need firsthand observations from the ground to describe the health of individual trees. Then they use these notes to interpret how G-LiHT sees infected trees from above.

While slow tree-killers like the emerald ash borer hurt economic stability over several years, southern pine beetle epidemics can abruptly end decades of productive forest growth. “We’re literally talking about millions to even billions of dollars in impact to the forestry industry,” Cook said. And preventing infestations could save millions of dollars to municipalities and landowners, who could be responsible for disposing of dead trees.

Unhealthy forests can also contribute to biodiversity loss and undermine important water cycle processes. Healthy forests also help offset increasing levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas that contributes to global warming.

NASA and the U.S. Forest Service began using G-LiHT in 2011. Flying more than 1,000 hours in forest health and inventory projects, Cook, Hanavan and colleagues have studied boreal, temperate and tropical forests from Alaska to the Yucatan Peninsula. G-LiHT also fueled collaborations to study croplands, as well as coastal and ocean ecosystems.

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## Fenrir

STS-35 and STS-41

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## Fenrir

STS-38 Atlantis and STS-35 Columbia











Magnetospheric Multiscale Observatories

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## Fenrir

*Buzz Aldrin Proves the Federal Government Has A Form for Everything*






This may be the only exciting piece of government paperwork you’ll ever read. Buzz Aldrin conquered Throwback Thursday forever last week when he shared his travel voucher from the Apollo 11 mission on Facebook and Twitter.






It’s an unassuming document: a travel voucher for Col. Edwin E. Aldrin for a round trip originating in Houston, Texas. But the whole story of the most historic space mission to date is right there, listed matter-of-factly as a series of destinations in the right-hand column of the first page: Cape Kennedy, Florida; Moon; Pacific Ocean (USN Hornet); and Hawaii.

On the next page, the voucher spells out the details of travel arrangements for a business trip to the Moon. Aldrin drove his own car from his residence to Ellington Air Force Base outside Houston, Texas. From there to Cape Kennedy, he flew on a government aircraft. Nothing unusual so far, but you’ve got to wonder what the typist thought while typing out the next two lines:


Cape Kennedy, Florida to Moon: Government Spacecraft
Moon to Cape Kennedy, Florida: Government Spacecraft
The form also notes that “Government meals and quarters [were] furnished for all of the above dates.” NASA really thought of everything.

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## Fenrir

*Lunar IceCube to Take on Big Mission From Small Package*

Lunar IceCube to Take on Big Mission From Small Package | NASA
*
Age of Deep-Space Exploration with CubeSats Heralded*

In what scientists say signals a paradigm shift in interplanetary science, NASA has selected a shoebox-size mission to search for water ice and other resources from above the surface of the moon.





_Morehead State University professor Ben Malphrus, who is leading the Lunar IceCube mission, stands in front of the university’s 21-meter ground station antenna that will be handling the mission’s communications needs.__ Credits: Randy Evans/Dataseam_


Called Lunar IceCube, the mission is one of several public-private partnerships chosen under NASA’s Next Space Technologies for Exploration Partnerships (NextSTEP) Broad Agency Announcement for the development of advanced exploration systems. Among the first small satellites to explore deep space, Lunar IceCube will help lay a foundation for future small-scale planetary missions, mission scientists said.

In addition to providing useful scientific data, Lunar IceCube will help inform NASA’s strategy for sending humans farther into the solar system.The ability to search for useful assets can potentially enable astronauts to manufacture fuel and other provisions needed to sustain a crew for a journey to Mars, reducing the amount of fuel and weight that NASA would need to transport from Earth.

Morehead State University in Kentucky is leading the six-unit (6-U) CubeSat mission, with significant involvement from scientists and engineers at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, and the Massachusetts-based Busek Company.





_The Busek Company is developing Lunar IceCube’s low-thrust electric propulsion system, the RF Ion BIT-3 thruster._
_Credits: Busek Company_

Under the university-led partnership, Morehead State’s Space Science Center will build the 6-U satellite and provide communications and tracking support via its 21-meter ground station antenna. Busek will provide the state-of-the-art electric propulsion system and Goddard will construct IceCube’s only miniaturized instrument, the Broadband InfraRed Compact High Resolution Explorer Spectrometer (BIRCHES). The instrument will prospect for water in ice, liquid, and vapor forms from a highly inclined elliptical lunar orbit. Goddard also will model a low-thrust trajectory taking the pint-size satellite to lunar orbit with very little propellant.

“Goddard scientists and engineers have deep experience in areas that are critical to interplanetary exploration,” said mission Morehead State University Principal Investigator Benjamin Malphrus, explaining why the university teamed with Goddard. “The significant expertise at Goddard, combined with Morehead State’s experience in smallsats and Busek’s in innovative electric-propulsion systems, create a strong team.”

*A Pathfinder for Deep-Space Exploration*

“Lunar IceCube is a key pathfinder experiment for future small-scale planetary missions,” said Goddard scientist Avi Mandell, who is assisting his colleague, Dennis Reuter, in the development of BIRCHES. “I believe the future looks bright for science on CubeSats, due to their fantastic versatility. Once we understand how to design these platforms, the possibilities are endless as to what we can do with them.”

Since their development more than a decade ago by Morehead State University Professor Bob Twiggs, then a professor at Stanford University, and Jordi Puig-Suari, an engineer at California Polytechnic State University, CubeSats have evolved principally from tools for instruction to full-fledged scientific platforms, which, given their relatively low cost and ease of integration, have become increasingly more appealing to professional scientists.





_Getting to the moon will require that the Lunar IceCube take a circuitous route that uses the gravity of the sun, Earth and moon. _
_Credits: NASA/Dave Folta_

In recent years, NASA and other government agencies have invested more research and development dollars into developing new miniaturization technologies that will support more robust scientific investigations from these platforms. “A lot of people are interested in answering scientific questions with these small devices,” explained Bob MacDowall, a Goddard scientist who is serving as a member of IceCube’s science team. “I’m betting that we already have about 100 deep-space CubeSat concepts floating around,” Clark added. “This is where things are headed.”

*Challenges and Innovative Technology*

IceCube will prospect for lunar volatiles and water during its six months in lunar orbit. While the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory's Lunar Flashlight will locate ice deposits in the moon’s permanently shadowed craters, IceCube’s BIRCHES will investigate the distribution of water and other volatiles as a function of time of day, latitude, and regolith age and composition. Its study is not confined to the shadowed areas.

Although other missions, such as the Lunar Prospector, Clementine, Chandrayaan-1, and Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, discovered various signatures of water and hydroxide, their instruments weren’t optimized for fully or systematically characterizing the elements in the infrared wavelength bands ideal for detecting water, MacDowall said. The high-resolution BIRCHES, on the other hand, was specifically designed to distinguish forms of water — ice, vapor, and liquid, he said.

Lunar IceCube, in short, could ultimately help scientists understand the role of external sources, internal sources, and micrometeorite bombardment in the formation, trapping, and release of water on the moon.

Although the instrument traces its heritage to instruments flying on NASA’s Origins Spectral Interpretation Resource Identification Security Regolith Explorer and New Horizons missions, the team said miniaturization challenges remain.





_Morehead State University and Goddard are partnering to create the Lunar IceCube mission shown in this artist’s rendition._

_Credits: Morehead State University_

For instance, BIRCHES will carry a 1,000,000-pixel detector that will sense infrared signals emanating from the lunar surface. To record those signals, instrument developers will have to design a read-out channel linking each pixel to an amplifier that then bolsters the signal. “All of that is a pretty chunky piece of hardware,” not particularly conducive to fitting inside a satellite no larger than a large cereal box, Mandell said.

The team also needs to ensure that sensitive electronics are protected against radiation — a significant concern in deep space. “I have no doubt that these challenges are solvable,” Clark said.

*Getting There*

But before the Lunar IceCube can begin its science operations, it will have to get to the moon first. The satellites selected for EM-1 will be installed inside the adapter, which connects Orion to the upper stage of NASA’s newest rocket — the SLS, a 32-story launch vehicle designed to ferry humans and gear around the moon and beyond. Once the rocket reaches a certain position on its way to the moon, ground controllers will send a command to release the payloads, which will follow their own trajectories to their final destinations in and around the moon.

Busek’s RF Ion BIT-3 thruster, along with a carefully designed trajectory modeled by Goddard’s state-of-the-art trajectory-design software, will get IceCube to its destination in about three months, said Dave Folta, the Goddard orbital engineer who has developed advanced tools for modeling lunar orbits for spacecraft equipped with both chemical and low-thrust propulsion systems.

“It doesn’t matter the size of the spacecraft, I still have to do the same functions when designing a trajectory,” Folta said. “It doesn’t matter how much this guy weighs, either. They want me to get to this to the moon.”

The journey will begin after deployment— and will be another challenge given the miniscule real estate set aside for propellant. Ground controllers will fire Busek’s miniaturized electric thrusters — the world’s only propulsion system powered with an iodine propellant — driving the spacecraft along a path that uses the gravity of the sun, Earth and moon, looping around Earth a couple times and then to its destination. Because the thrusters operate electrically using small amounts of propellant, an orbital path that takes advantage of gravitational acceleration from the Earth and moon is vital, he added.

“While low-thrust systems minimize fuel, they can’t accommodate a rapid change in the orbit’s velocity, making EM-1’s outbound path impossible for us,” Folta said, explaining the mission’s circuitous route. “Our propulsion system will allow us to naturally capture a lunar orbit. The force of our low-thrust system is analogous to an ant pushing on the spacecraft over many days. It’s an efficiency thing. That’s the whole point of this low-thrust trajectory,” Folta said.

If selected to hitch a ride on SLS, Lunar IceCube will be among the first fully operational small satellites to deploy and gather scientific information in deep space, said Pam Clark, the mission’s science principal investigator at Goddard. Although CubeSats are evolving rapidly, scientists so far have confined their use to investigations in low-Earth orbit. This event would also signal a paradigm shift in CubeSats and interplanetary science. 

While awaiting a final decision on what will fly on EM-1, much work remains. “The real breakthrough stuff in CubeSat technology will now happen,” Clark said. “That’s what I love about CubeSats. They will help us revolutionize the way we do deep-space science and I’m absolutely delighted that Goddard will play a role.”

The Advanced Exploration Systems Division at NASA Headquarters manages NextSTEP and is committed to pioneering new approaches for rapidly developing prototype systems, demonstrating key capabilities and validating operational concepts for future human missions beyond Earth orbit. The Marshall Space Flight Center manages the development of the SLS and performs the secondary payload integration activities for EM-1.


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## Fenrir

*This Robot Is a Loom For Weaving Carbon Fiber Into Rocket Parts*






When one robot leaves the world, another enters it.

There’s plenty of carbon fiber in space right now. It’s the best bet we have for making spacecraft lighter—and it’s going to be key on deep space missions where every gram of food, water, and fuel is carefully planned. But making these parts isn’t easy, or cheap. Prototyping and testing new carbon fiber designs is slow, expensive, and labor-intensive. And as NASA pushes towards putting humans into deep space, it will need to make huge leaps in manufacturing to develop the spacecraft capable of these long, distant journeys.

This summer, NASA got a tool that will make prototyping those parts way easier. It’s a 21-foot robotic arm whose head is made up of 16 rods that look like oversized sewing spools, attached to a long, 40-foot track that allows the robotic arm to slide around a model.






Wrapped around the spools are carbon fiber threads, which are unwound as the arm “sculpts” a composite part designed by NASA’s engineers. It’s one of the largest composite robots ever made, and can build objects as wide as 26 feet, which means they’re “some of the largest composite structures ever constructed for space vehicles,” according to Justin Jackson, an engineer on the project.






The printer was built by a company called Electroimpact, which is responsible for developing the technology that layers super-thin carbon fibers into permanent forms. Their machines are elaborate, very expensive affairs—with spool heads that almost recall the spinning rooms of 19th century textile mills.











The company calls this process automated fiber placement, and it’s a big step for carbon fiber composites because the arm can create complex shapes very quickly. This means NASA can “drastically reduce the cost and improve the quality of large space structures,” as project manager John Vickers puts it in a release today.






Electroimpact helped NASA customize its own arm, and now it’s poised to begin its life helping the agency develop craft at Marshall Space Flight Center in Alabama. The idea is “to build and test these structures to determine if they are a good fit for space vehicles that will carry humans on exploration missions to Mars and other places,” says the space center’s Preston Jones.

Of course, the robot will help build other stuff too—like pieces of clean rooms. Carbon fiber is getting cheaper and more high-quality by the day, and eventually, the design work being done here at Marshall could find its way into our every-day lives. For now, it’s cool to know that from this oversized printing bed, the next generation of spacecraft may slowly emerge.

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## Fenrir

*A Magical View of Saturn's Ring, Side-On*







This image shows two moons of Saturn, Mimas on the right and Dione om the left. And though you might find it hard to believe, that dark line running through the center is in fact Saturn’s ring.

The image was captured looking towards Saturn at a distance of 634,000 miles but from less than 1 degree above the plane of the ring. The side of the ring appears entirely unilluminated, while the moons, bathed in light, almost appear to be gazing up at the giant planet behind. You may hope a larger picture such as the one below would help provide a sense of scale—but actually Saturn is so vast that it doesn’t really help much.

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## Fenrir

*Testing Hardware for Growing Plants and Vegetables in Space*

Testing Hardware for Growing Plants and Vegetables in Space | NASA






Astronauts on the International Space Station continue testing the VEGGIE hardware for growing vegetables and plants in space. VEGGIE provides lighting and nutrient supply for plants in the form of a low-cost growth chamber and planting "pillows" -- helping provide nutrients for the root system. It supports a variety of plant species that can be cultivated for educational outreach, fresh food and even recreation for crew members on long-duration missions.

Further work on the VEGGIE hardware validation test (VEG-01) began on Monday, July 20, 2015 when NASA astronaut Scott Kelly photographed the progress of the plants thus far and watered them the next day. On Friday, July 24, new crew member and NASA astronaut Kjell Lindgren took over watering duties and photographic documentation of the plants. Knowledge from this investigation could benefit agricultural practices on Earth by designing systems that use valuable resources, such as water, more efficiently.

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## Fenrir

*Curiosity Marks 3rd Anniversary on Mars With Amazing Science Discoveries*

Curiosity Marks 3rd Anniversary on Mars With Amazing Science Discoveries « AmericaSpace






NASA’s Curiosity rover has just reached its third anniversary milestone on Mars, after landing in Gale crater on August 5, 2012, and since then has made some incredible science discoveries, with more to come in the months and years ahead. NASA is celebrating this achievement and you can take part too!


The Curiosity mission, like others before it, has helped to dramatically improve our understanding of Mars’ past – how it used to be much wetter than it is now, and how it changed over time to the cold, dry desert planet we see today. Curiosity landed in the huge Gale crater, which scientists thought was likely once a lake, with streams emptying into it, and Curiosity has confirmed that, in spades. This region on Mars used to be much more habitable by earthly standards than it is now. While Curiosity wasn’t designed to look for evidence of life itself, it could find out how potentially habitable this area was a long time ago, at least for microbes, and it has already done that, with much more exploring still to do.

The video below is an excellent overview of the mission so far:






So what are some of the major scientific discoveries so far? The most exciting and important findings so far include the following:


Not long after first landing, Curiosity found the first evidence for *ancient stream beds* in the Yellowknife Bay region of Gale crater, close to the landing site. The now long-dry stream beds had been previously identified from orbit, but now Curiosity’s laboratory instruments confirmed that water did indeed flow here a long time ago, in shallow but fast-moving streams. Curiosity found gravel deposits where the streams had once emptied into the crater, similar both in appearance and mineralogy to stream bed gravel on Earth. The smooth, rounded pebbles appeared to have rolled downstream for a few miles. The “bedrock” here was a sedimentary conglomerate, made of many smaller fragments of rock cemented together.

In relation to the evidence for flowing water, the SAM instrument suite on the rover found Mars’ present atmosphere to be enriched in the heavier forms (isotopes) of hydrogen, carbon, and argon, which indicated that Mars had *lost much of its original atmosphere and water*. The atmospheric gases and water escaped to space through the top of the atmosphere, a process which has also been observed directly by the MAVEN orbiter.






As well as water, Curiosity confirmed that this region of ancient Mars had the *chemistry necessary* to support microbial life. Curiosity found sulfur, nitrogen, oxygen, phosphorus and carbon – key ingredients necessary for life – in the sample of powder drilled from the Sheepbed mudstone rock in Yellowknife Bay. Clay minerals and low amounts of salt were also found, which suggested that the water there was fresh, not too acidic or salty, and perhaps even drinkable by human standards. Such an environment would have been ideal for any organisms, if they existed there.

*Organic molecules* were also discovered in the same Sheepbed mudstone, which are the building blocks of life. This alone doesn’t prove there was life there, but does show that the necessary carbon ingredients for life were present.

Another very interesting finding is that of *methane* in the Martian atmosphere by Curiosity, following previous observations of it by orbiters and Earth-based telescopes. The Tunable Laser Spectrometer within the SAM instrument detected the methane including a ten-fold increase over a couple of months. Methane can be produced either biologically or geologically on Earth, so confirming it on Mars would be evidence for either subsurface geological processes still occurring or biology, most likely underground as well.

While en route to Mars, Curiosity experienced *high levels of radiation* in space: galactic cosmic rays (GCRs), from supernova explosions and other high-energy events outside the Solar System and solar energetic particles (SEPs), associated with solar flares and coronal mass ejections from the sun. The levels are higher than NASA’s career limit for astronauts, but the data will help NASA design future spacecraft which would be safe enough for a human mission to Mars.
Meanwhile, Curiosity has recently been busy drilling again, this time into the rock target Buckskin, where other instruments have shown there to be *high levels of silica and hydrogen *in this and nearby rock outcrops. In Earth rocks, silica is very good at preserving organics, so mission scientists are interested in looking closer to see if more organic material can be found here. The grey color of the powder is similar to that seen in other drill holes, where the natural color of the subsurface rock isn’t obscured by reddish dust. Curiosity’s on-board laboratory will analyze the powdered drill samples to see what minerals or other material they contain.






Curiosity also recently found evidence for an ancient *continental crust* on Mars, which may have been the precursor to plate tectonics like those on Earth. The mineralogical and chemical makeup of the rocks studied are similar to granitic continental crust rocks on Earth. The discovery is another indication of how Mars’ early history was similar to Earth’s in many ways.

Next, the rover will continue its journey closer to the foothills of Mount Sharp, where it is already on the outskirts. The lower slopes of the mountain are a geological goldmine, with layered buttes, mesas and canyons reminiscent of the American southwest. Barring any accidents, the nuclear-powered rover should be able to keep exploring for at least several more years.






NASA has also unveiled *two new online tools* to help the public better explore Mars along with Curiosity.

*Experience Curiosity* allows viewers to journey along with the one-ton rover on its Martian expeditions. The program simulates Mars in 3-D based on actual data from Curiosity and NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO), giving users first-hand experience in a day in the life of a Mars rover.

*Mars Trek* is a free, web-based application that provides high-quality, detailed visualizations of the planet using real data from 50 years of NASA exploration and allowing astronomers, citizen scientists and students to study the Red Planet’s features.

Regarding Mars Trek, “This tool has opened my eyes as to how we should first approach roaming on another world, and now the public can join in on the fun,” said Jim Green, director of NASA’s Planetary Science Division in Washington. “Our robotic scientific explorers are paving the way, making great progress on the journey to Mars. Together, humans and robots will pioneer Mars and the solar system.”

“At three years old, Curiosity already has had a rich and fascinating life. This new program lets the public experience some of the rover’s adventures first-hand,” said Jim Erickson, the project manager for the mission at JPL.

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## Fenrir

*SpaceX Completes Road to Launch Pad*

SpaceX Completes Road to Launch Pad | Commercial Crew Program







Launch Pad 39A at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center, Florida, continues to take shape as SpaceX has completed the road from its processing hangar to the top of the launch stand.

A transporter-erector will move the Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy rockets to position them above the flame trench for liftoff on flights carrying astronauts to the International Space Station and other launches.

The rockets and Crew Dragon spacecraft will be processed in the hangar being built at the base of the pad. The company also continues upgrading the launch structure and pad area to modernize the facilities that supported historic launches of the Apollo-Saturn V missions and space shuttles.





*Watch the Dark Side of the Moon as It Passes in Front of Earth*







From a million miles away, a NASA satellite caught this unusual view of the moon and Earth moving through space together, but from a flipped perspective from the one we usually see.

NASA’s Deep Space Climate Observatory (DSCOVR) satellite grabbed these shots while taking footage designed to monitor earth’s atmosphere and it’s an unusual look at some familiar objects. You do, of course, occasionally see pictures and footage of the moon’s other face—but it’s unusual to see the dark side looking so, well, bright. That’s due, in large part, to the position of the satellite where the pictures were snapped from, right between the Earth and the Sun.

This is the first time the satellites camera has caught this particular view, but now that DSCOVR’s camera is up and sending back daily images of Earth’s atmosphere, we should see this vantage point again a couple times a year.

_Image: NASA/NOAA._

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## Fenrir

*Astronauts Will Eat Space Lettuce for the First Time Next Week*






In a rather science fictional moment, the Expedition 44 crew members on the International Space Station are about to eat the very first space crops. On Monday, a batch of red romaine lettuce will be harvested from the Veggie plant growth system on the ISS orbiting laboratory. Cosmically delicious.

It’ll probably be the most scientific harvest festival the human race has ever seen. The astronauts will carefully clean the greens with citric acid-based sanitizing wipes before dividing the spoils precisely in half. One half of the space bounty will be eaten fresh, while the other will be packaged, frozen, and shipped back to Earth for scientific analysis.

The lettuce seeds were planted on July 8th by astronaut Scott Kelly. By harvest, they’ll have spent 33 days growing inside Veg-01, a light bank that includes red, green and blue LEDs. Red and blue light are the two most important parts of the spectrum for photosynthesis. Green light is actually rather useless, but even in space, food aesthetics matter. To avoid producing crazy purple space plants, the engineers behind Veg-01 decided to add green to the mix.





_Astronauts on the International Space Station are ready to sample their harvest of “Outredgeous” red romaine lettuce from the Veggie plant growth system. Image via NASA_

“Blue and red wavelengths are the minimum needed to get good plant growth,” said Ray Wheeler, lead scientist for Advanced Life Support activities in the Exploration Research and Technology Programs Office at Kennedy Space Center. “They are probably the most efficient in terms of electrical power conversion. The green LEDs help to enhance the human visual perception of the plants, but they don’t put out as much light as the reds and blues.”

Next week’s lettuce harvest isn’t going to fill any bellies. But the significance of the event goes far beyond the extra dose of vitamin A. The success of Veg-01 is a step toward the renewable food systems we’ll need if and when we embark on manned deep space missions, or try to set up a permanent human base on Mars. Space gardens could eventually be integrated into a habitat’s environmental controls, soaking up CO2 and recycling oxygen and water.





_Artist’s concept of a future space garden on Mars. Image via NASA_

What’s more, behavioral psychology has shown time and again that green things make people happy. And we’re gonna need all the help we can get keeping people confined to a metal tube for life sane.

“The farther and longer humans go away from Earth, the greater the need to be able to grow plants for food, atmosphere recycling and psychological benefits,” NASA’s Gioia Massa said. “I think that plant systems will become important components of any long-duration exploration scenario.”

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## Fenrir

*Explore the Surface of Mars With NASA's Latest Web Tools*






Most of us will never set foot on Mars, but thanks to NASA’s unceasing public outreach campaign, now we can all imagine what that might be like. To commemorate the three year anniversary of the Curiosity rover’s Martian landing, NASA has unveiled two new web tools that allow you to explore the Red Planet’s surface and ride alongside the social media savvy rover.

First, there’s Mars Trek, which offers detailed visualizations of the Martian surface, drawing on decades of scientific exploration. This tool is pretty sophisticated: You can overlay a bunch of different datasets, identify past rover landing sites, and perform distance calculations and elevation plotting. Amateur geologists can ogle over Candor Chasma and Olympus Mons. Would-be colonists can hunt for the perfect craters to set up their space pods. 





_Screen capture from NASA’s new Experience Curiosity website. Image via NASA / JPL-Caltech_

For those who’d like a travel buddy, NASA built Experience Curiosity, which allows you to journey along with the rover as it bumbles across the rugged, ruddy terrain. This tool has more of a video game feel to it: Users can manipulate the rover’s tools and see Mars in first person mode through each of its cameras. NASA is not responsible for any giant space crabs that attack you while operating the rover.

Happy exploring!

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## Fenrir

*Potential Landing Sites for Mars 2020 Rover Narrowed Down to Eight Locations*

Potential Landing Sites for Mars 2020 Rover Narrowed Down to Eight Locations « AmericaSpace





_Map of the eight proposed landing sites for the Mars 2020 Rover. Image Credit: NASA/MOLA Science Team_

NASA’s next Mars rover is due to launch in July or August 2020, and the number of potential landing sites has now been narrowed down by scientists to *eight locations*. Out of an initial list of 21 targets, eight sites have been chosen as candidate landing sites for the Mars 2020 Rover. Due to land on Mars in February 2021, the rover will search for rocks which could hold possible evidence of past life on the planet.

The sites were chosen by a vote at the end of a three-day workshop in Monrovia, Calif. The top contenders are locations where there are ancient river deltas and hot springs—ideal places to search for evidence of past microbial life on Mars.

At the top of the list is Jezero crater, where one of the old river deltas is located. “The appeal is twofold,” sais Bethany Ehlmann, a planetary scientist at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) in Pasadena. “Not only is there a delta, but the rocks upstream are varied and diverse.” A river delta is a place where organic material could have been concentrated and preserved in the rocks, just like on Earth. Similarly, the Curiosity rover has found organics in sedimentary rocks in Gale crater, near where ancient streams once emptied into the crater. The Mars 2020 Rover, however, will be better equipped to determine if any organics found have a biological origin or not.





_Jezero crater, the leading candidate site for the Mars 2020 Rover. Image Credit: NASA/JPL/JHUAPL/MSSS/Brown University_

In second place is a location which has already been visited: Columbia Hills in Gusev crater. The Spirit rover previously explored here before it got stuck in a sand trap and died in 2010. Spirit found evidence for past water in the hills, in particular ancient hydrothermal springs, in the form of high amounts of silica. On Earth, at least, hot springs are teeming with microorganisms and other lifeforms. It would be interesting to return there; perhaps the new rover could pay a visit to Spirit as it climbs the hills.

Both river deltas and hydrothermal sites have their advantages but the way organics are preserved are different between the two, and hydrothermal are becoming increasingly important to scientists. According to Ehlmann, “You look in the precipitated veins [of rock], where organisms may have been entombed by mineral formations.”

Other possible sites are near the giant Valles Marineris canyon system (how cool would that be?) and around the edge of Isidis Basin, where there are significant carbonate deposits, which might also help explain how Mars lost its once-thicker atmosphere. According to Ehlmann, the atmosphere “was either lost to space, or it has to be sequestered down in the rock as carbonates. We can explore one of those paths.” And of course, carbonates are just the kind of thing the rover is designed to look for and study.

Design-wise, the Mars 2020 Rover is very similar to the Curiosity rover, but its mission and payload are different. The rover will drill rocks like Curiosity, but this time will collect 30 pencil-sized samples and cache them (after doing its own analysis) for a later mission to return them to Earth. The payload will also be slimmed down, but still have a robust suite of instruments for analyzing samples and studying the terrain. This time, though, the focus is looking for evidence of past biological activity, rather than just searching for organics in general.





_The Mars 2020 Rover will be similar in design to Curiosity, but with different science instruments. Image Credit: NASA_

The new rover will also land using the “*sky crane*” system, where it is suspended by cables blowing the descent vehicle and gently lowered to the ground. It was a new and risky procedure for Curiosity, but worked beautifully. For the new rover, engineers are working on improvements which would allow the oval landing ellipse area to shrink by more than 50 percent, to as small as 8 by 4 miles (13 by 7 kilometers). This would help to better target the rover to smaller, interesting areas.

The procedure for collecting the samples has also changed during the design process. Initially, the rock core samples would be placed into a single football-sized container, which would be later retrieved by another lander or rover. Now, however, the samples will be placed into individual sealed metal tubes. These will simply be left on the ground in a “depot.” That way, the rover can return to the depot multiple times to deposit more sample tubes.

“There was no success until we got that package off the rover,” said Ken Farley, the project scientist. “This provides an opportunity to get [the samples] off the rover in a way that’s staged through time. The metal tubes will have to be coated to protect the samples inside from heat for a decade or more.”




Norge can into space!




_The science instruments on the Mars 2020 Rover will be focused on searching for evidence of past life including specific organics and biosignatures. Image Credit: NASA_

The rover will be searching for two primary kinds of samples: rocks which would be suited for preserving organic material and possible biosignatures, and igneous rocks, which will provide more information about Mars’ geological history.

In January 2017, the number of favored sites will be reduced to four, although new sites could still be considered as well. The Mars 2020 Rover mission will be the first since the Viking 1 and 2 landers in the 1970s to specifically search for signs of life, albeit past life in this case. Unless, of course, it got lucky and found some still-living microorganisms, although it isn’t designed to look for those the way Viking was. But it is still a welcome change for those who want new Mars missions to focus more on biology rather than just geology as all of the landers and rovers have done since Viking.

Other photos of the various landing site contenders are *here,* and more information about the Mars 2020 Rover mission is available *here*.

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## Fenrir

*Venus, Unmasked: 25 Years Since the Arrival of Magellan at Earth's Evil Twin*

Venus, Unmasked: 25 Years Since the Arrival of Magellan at Earth’s Evil Twin « AmericaSpace

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_Radar image of the northern hemisphere of Venus, taken by the Magellan spacecraft. During its 50 months in orbit around Earth’s evil twin, which began 25 years ago today, Magellan radar-mapped 98 percent of the surface. Image Credit: NASA/JPL_

Twenty-five years ago, today, a spacecraft slipped silently into orbit around Venus to begin an unprecedented mission which would map in excess of 90 percent of the planet’s cloud-obscured surface, using powerful Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR). As described in a previous pair of AmericaSpace articles—available here and here—the $295 million Magellan mission underwent a lengthy and tortured development process, before it eventually rose from Earth aboard Space Shuttle Atlantis on 4 May 1989. Fifteen months later, on 10 August 1990, following a journey of 1.5 times around the Sun, it became the first U.S. spacecraft to reach another planet in more than a decade and would spend four years acquiring unprecedented radar data of craters, volcanoes, flat plains, hills, ridges, and other geological features on the planet long described as Earth’s “evil twin.” In fact, so impressively comprehensive were Magellan’s results that in those four short years it revealed more about Venus than had ever been attained in centuries of ground-based observations.

Yet Magellan had undergone a difficult metamorphosis from the drawing board to the launch pad to orbit around the planet which, in size and mass, so closely resembles our own world, yet which in so many other respects is a gross perversion of Earth. Since the 1960s, it had been recognized that radar imaging could yield crude maps of Venus’ surface—entirely cloaked from view by noxious clouds of sulphuric acid—and it was these which helped to peg the planet’s sidereal day at 243 Earth-days and ascertained its retrograde rotation. By the end of the following decade, plans to develop a Venus Orbiter Imaging Radar (VOIR) got underway. Had it reached fruition, the VOIR might have been launched by the shuttle as early as December 1984, reaching Venus in May 1985 and mapping up to 50 percent of the surface at resolutions as fine as 1.2 miles (2 km) through the following November. However, VOIR’s hefty price tag caused its launch to be initially postponed until no sooner than 1987 and precipitated its cancelation in 1982. A stripped-down reincarnation of VOIR returned to the fore about a year later, under the new name of Venus Radar Mapper (VRM). Finally, in 1985, the mission was dubbed “Magellan,” in honor of the 16th-century Portuguese explorer Ferdinand Magellan, who mapped and circumnavigated the globe, just as his mechanized namesake would do for Venus.

In the months before the January 1986 destruction of Challenger, Magellan was manifested for a shuttle launch atop General Dynamics’ Centaur-G Prime liquid-fueled booster on Mission 81I in April 1988. According to NASA’s November 1985 shuttle manifest, the mission would have featured a crew of four aboard Atlantis and lasted just two days, delivering Magellan into a low-Earth orbit (LEO) of about 184 miles (296 km). Following deployment and the ignition of its Centaur-G Prime, it would have entered a “Type I Heliocentric Orbit” and been delivered 180 degrees around the Sun to reach Venus about four months later. Insertion of the Martin Marietta-built spacecraft—which comprised a three-axis-stabilized “bus” with twin solar array “paddles,” dominated by a parabolic dish-shaped antenna for high-gain communications and radar-mapping—into Venusian orbit would have been completed by Magellan’s on-board Star-48 solid-fueled rocket motor. However, as outlined in a previous AmericaSpace article, the hazardous Centaur-G Prime was canceled after the loss of Challenger and Magellan found itself baselined instead to fly atop Boeing’s solid-fueled Inertial Upper Stage (IUS).





_Mounted atop Boeing’s Inertial Upper Stage (IUS), the Magellan spacecraft departs Atlantis’ payload bay on 4 May 1989. Photo Credit: NASA_

Far less powerful than the Centaur-G Prime, the use of the IUS required a significantly different trajectory design, and with the resumption of shuttle missions expected in the fall of 1988 the next available “launch window” to reach Venus under the most optimum conditions came in October 1989. That window soon proved untenable, for it was already earmarked for the Galileo mission, whose own trajectory to Jupiter involved a gravity-assisted boost from Venus. Consequently, the Magellan team settled on a four-week window of opportunity which extended from 28 April through 28 May 1989. The trajectory to be employed was known as a “Type IV Heliocentric Orbit,” which required the spacecraft to pass 1.5 times around the Sun and produced a longer journey time of 15 months. On the flip side, however, the Type IV design offered advantages of lower launch energy and Venus approach speeds, as well as permitting Magellan to reach its quarry over the north pole, thus performing mapping swathes in a north-south direction. This was the reverse of what had been planned for the Type I trajectory originally to be followed after a Centaur-G Prime launch.

Meanwhile, in March 1988, the crew of STS-30—Commander Dave Walker, Pilot Ron Grabe, and Mission Specialists Mark Lee, Norm Thagard, and Mary Cleave—were assigned to begin training for the Magellan deployment, to be flown by orbiter Atlantis. As these plans crystallized, the spacecraft which would soon open humanity’s eyes to Venus started to take shape. Following initial tests with a Structural Test Article (STA) in the spring and summer of 1987, Martin Marietta set to work building Magellan itself and successfully tested the interface between the spacecraft and its Hughes Aircraft-built SAR instrument. In April 1988, the SAR was delivered by truck from Los Angeles, Calif., to Martin Marietta’s facility in Denver, Colo., where it was installed aboard the spacecraft for thermal vacuum testing. Six months later, in October, Magellan was delivered to the Kennedy Space Center (KSC) in Florida and transferred to the Spacecraft Assembly and Encapsulation Facility (SAEF)-2 for integration of the high-gain antenna, radar module, and solar arrays. Finally, in February 1989, it was moved to the Vertical Processing Facility (VPF) for attachment to its IUS booster, after which integrated systems testing and a simulated deployment scenario were executed, involving STS-30 astronauts Cleave and Lee. In mid-March, the Magellan/IUS payload was delivered to Pad 39B and loaded aboard Atlantis.

“It was the first time we deployed a spacecraft that was going to another planet from the shuttle,” Cleave later reflected in her NASA oral history. On 28 April 1989, their first launch attempt was scrubbed when a hydrogen recirculation pump developed a short circuit and stalled. The countdown was recycled to track a second opportunity on 4 May, but it seemed that this date was also snakebitten, with dreary, overcast weather and strong winds blowing across the Shuttle Landing Facility (SLF). Finally, 59 minutes into the 64-minute window, the clouds parted, the winds dissipated, and mission controllers took advantage of the break in the weather to send Atlantis on her way.





_Magellan’s high-gain antenna, utilized for communications and radar-mapping, is clearly visible in this deployment view from STS-30. Photo Credit: NASA, via Joachim Becker/SpaceFacts.de_

Six hours later, under the watch of Cleave and Lee, Magellan and its attached IUS were successfully deployed from the shuttle’s payload bay to begin their voyage to Venus. In Cleave’s mind, responsibility passed the Johnson Space Center (JSC) in Houston, Texas, to the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, Calif., as soon as Magellan was out of Atlantis’ vicinity. The longer it remained aboard, the more chance existed for problems to evolve. “Get _rid_ of this thing,” she half-jokingly told the NASA oral historian. “First day, it’s _outta there_!” Ten minutes after departing the shuttle, Magellan’s twin solar array paddles were perfectly unfurled and a pair of IUS burns set the spacecraft on course for its eventual rendezvous with Venus. Over the next year, the spacecraft pulsed its own thrusters—which formed part of a 24-strong set of hydrazine engines for course correction maneuvers, as well as pitch and yaw controllability—to maintain its course for the optimum arrival time at the planet on 10 August 1990.

In general, the trans-Venus cruise ran exceptionally smoothly, although the spacecraft team was faced with a handful of unexpected obstacles. Magellan’s star scanner experienced strange glints of light, called “spurious interrupts,” during its daily calibrations, likely caused by proton bombardment during solar flares or the shedding of small particles from the spacecraft cover as the scanner moved from shade to sunlight. Software patches and spacecraft positioning helped to resolve these problems, but of greater concern were persistent temperature spikes in the Star-48 motor and Magellan’s equipment bays. Although these spikes never grew high enough to trigger “red” alarms, mission managers opted to employ the high-gain antenna to shade the components from the Sun and thereby keep temperatures within the acceptable range.

Late in May 1990, the spacecraft performed three days of radar-taking data, albeit directed into deep space, before turning its high-gain antenna back toward Earth, in order to simulate its forthcoming activities at Venus. Supporting these tests were Magellan’s radar processing and data-management teams, as well as Deep Space Network (DSN) personnel. A final trajectory correction maneuver in late July served to adjust the velocity by 2.3 feet per second (0.7 meters per second). Shortly after noon EDT on 10 August, the 15,000-pound-thrust (6,800-kg) Star-48 motor was fired for 83 seconds as Magellan flew “behind” Venus, as viewed from Earth, with contact lost at 12:41 p.m. EDT and regained at 1:06 p.m. This accomplished a successful insertion into orbit and kicked off a three-week In-Orbit Checkout (IOC) phase. “Real” data was acquired and processed during this phase, but the main purpose of the IOC was to assist the radar team in adjusting their instrument parameters, ahead of the first mapping cycle. The spacecraft’s initial orbit was an elliptical path, lasting 189 minutes, which brought Magellan to a closest point of 183 miles (295 km) and a farthest point of 4,823 miles (7,762 km) from Venus.

However, its first few months proved far from smooth. On 16 August, contact with Magellan was lost for almost 24 hours, and dropped out again a few days later, before the first active radar-mapping campaign—executed by means of an on-board, stored computer sequence—got underway on 15 September, focusing on Venus’ north polar region. “We’ve kicked off radar-mapping,” exulted Project Manager Tony Spear. “We’re acquiring data and everything looks good!” A month later, as Earth and Venus reached “superior conjunction” with the Sun, mapping operations were suspended for several days, after which Magellan suffered a third loss of contact on 15 November. “Occasional minor data losses are expected from time to time when the articulation and attitude-control system halts execution,” NASA reported, but stressed that “on-board systems and protective software have been improved to minimize any data losses.” Eight days later, ground computers were blamed when the spacecraft placed itself into safe mode and four mapping orbits were lost. By the tail end of November, though, Magellan appeared to be moving back onto track, with renewed commands from Earth to update its computer so that the radar-mapping would precisely match the most recent tracking data.

Despite these early difficulties, project managers remained confident that the spacecraft was on target to achieve its target of 70 percent coverage of Venus by the end of the first 243-day mapping cycle. Indeed, by the first week of December, approximately 32.9 percent of the planet’s surface had been imaged, including the large continental area of Ishtar Terra and its 7-mile-high (11.2-km) mountain, Maxwell Montes. The data had specifically identified mountainous slopes dusted with an unidentified metallic substance—hypothesized to be iron pyrite—as well as volcanic dome-like features and vast, horseshoe-shaped geological formations. Of the 473 mapping orbits completed through 3 December, 11.8 orbits of data had been lost, and one of Magellan’s two radar data tape recorders proved troublesome, displaying an increasingly high error rate.





_The volcanic peak Idunn Mons, within the Imdr Regio southern region of Venus, as viewed by Magellan. Image Credit: NASA_

This mixed bag of success and disappointment steadily improved as the spacecraft moved into 1991. Efforts to protect Magellan from the fierce solar heating, by shortening radar-mapping passes and periodically turning the mirror-like solar arrays by 90 degrees to reduce the amount of reflected sunlight onto the spacecraft surfaces, proved successful, and by April a “Two Hide” strategy had been adopted. Under this strategy, part of the spacecraft was kept in the shade of the high-gain antenna twice during each orbit to keep the electronics cool. In the meantime, despite occasional computer troubles, more than 65 percent of Venus had been mapped on at least one occasion and the data offered profound insights into the planet’s surface and atmosphere, with evidence of widespread—and ongoing—volcanism, together with possible tectonic activity. Magellan also confirmed that the number and relative size of impact craters was broadly in agreement with pre-flight predictions, suggesting that the planet’s dense atmosphere had served as a shield against significant micrometeoroid bombardment. Turbulent surface winds and an ancient atmosphere, perhaps 400-800 million years old, or even older, were also hinted at by spacecraft data.

As 1991 wore on, Magellan data hinted at the venting of interior heat, through giant oval hotspots, known as “coronae,” and vast circular structures, called “arachnoids,” together with unusual, petal-shaped lava flows, and its results were employed to examine dust movements to make inferences about wind speeds in the lower atmosphere. By 4 April, the spacecraft reached the end of its first 243-day mapping cycle, successfully hitting its target of imaging 70 percent of the surface and receiving authorization to commence a second cycle on 16 May. By this stage, a spectacular 84 percent of Venus had been mapped—with the remaining 16 percent, including the never-before-imaged south pole—taking priority for the second cycle. Periodic data dropouts and losses of contact continued to trouble the mission, but by late-July more than 90 percent of Venus had been imaged, revealing a vast 4,200-mile-long (6,800-km) channel, longer than the River Nile. Over the following months, global surveys, based upon the first two mapping cycles, revealed that around 85 percent of the planet was covered by volcanic rocks, mostly lava flows which formed Venus’ great plains.





_In its 50 months of operations at Venus, Magellan revealed more about Earth’s evil twin planet than had previously been attained in human history. Image Credit: NASA/JPL_

In September 1992, having by this point imaged around 99 percent of the surface, Magellan’s orbit was lowered from 186 miles (300 km) to 111 miles (180 km), in order to begin an entire 243-cycle devoted to global gravity mapping. Six months later, in March 1993, a final map of Venus’ topography was released and presented before the 24th Lunar and Planetary Science Conference in Houston, Texas, depicting the shapes of mountains, canyons and other features at far higher resolutions than had ever been attainable on a global scale. And from 25 May through 6 August 1993, Magellan pioneered a technique known as “aerobraking,” dipping into Venus’ upper atmosphere and employing the effects of drag to reduce its orbit from an elliptical to a circular path, in order to “enhance the scientific return” from what was already being described by Magellan Project Manager Douglas Griffith of JPL as “one of NASA’s most productive space science missions.” It was recognized that surface measurements from the elliptical orbit had been blurred at high altitude, which previously reached a peak of 1,700 miles (2,800 km) at the south pole and 1,300 miles (2,100 km) at the north pole.

The spectacular success of this 70-day-long aerobraking maneuver was detailed by NASA in August. Following its arrival at Venus in 1990, Magellan initially occupied an elliptical orbit with a period of more than three hours, but the aerobraking experiment allowed this to be refined to about 94 minutes, roughly equivalent to that of low-Earth-orbiting shuttle missions. It also enabled the spacecraft to effect a dramatic orbit change, without expending a significant amount of its dwindling attitude-control propellant supply.

However, the end of the mission drew inexorably closer. In early 1994, additional funding was received to complete the gravitational mapping, through September, and this continued period of operation revealed that Venus was still geologically active in places, despite little change on the surface in 500 million years. The data revealed at least two—and probably far more—hotspots, with the Atla Regio and Bell Regio exhibiting clear signatures of “top and bottom loading” elasticity of the surface. By 7 September, the Magellan team effected a week-long “windmill” experiment, turning the spacecraft’s solar array paddles in opposite directions to more carefully determine upper atmosphere molecular pressures.

At the start of October, a series of five Orbit-Trim Maneuvers (OTMs) began to lower the closest point of the orbit to about 86.6 miles (139.7 km), in order to gather aerodynamic data from the sparsely explored upper atmosphere. In so doing, Magellan’s solar array temperatures rose to 126 degrees Celsius (258.8 degrees Fahrenheit) and, remarkably, the spacecraft maintained attitude controllability until the very end. Eventually, the main spacecraft bus voltage reached 24.7 volts and, despite predictions that contact would be lost if it dipped below 24 volts, it was not until 20.4 volts that Magellan’s battery went off-line, due to power starvation. Contact was officially lost at 6:02 a.m. EDT on the 12th, bringing to an end one of the most successful missions ever undertaken in the annals of space science. A total of 98 percent of the surface was mapped at resolutions of better than 1,000 feet (300 meters) and Magellan’s gravity mapping campaign had covered 95 percent of Venus. “The data which streamed back from Magellan’s radar images, its atmospheric studies and its gravity data acquisition maneuvers,” explained Griffith, “have built a vast database of new knowledge about Venus and the formation of the Solar System that will be studied by scientists for decades to come.”

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## Fenrir

*Space Farming Yields a Crop of Benefits for Earth*

Space Farming Yields a Crop of Benefits for Earth | NASA

The six astronauts currently living on the International Space Station (ISS) have become the first people to eat food grown in space. The fresh red romaine lettuce that accompanied the crew’s usual freeze-dried fare, however, is far from the first crop grown on a space station. For decades, NASA and other agencies have experimented with plants in space, but the results were always sent to Earth for examination, rather than eaten.

A number of technologies NASA has explored for these space-farming experiments also have returned to Earth over the years and found their way onto the market.

Orbital Technologies (ORBITEC), for example, partnered with Kennedy Space Center to develop the plant growth system—known as Veggie—that produced this most recent crop of lettuce, as well as its predecessor, the Biomass Production System. Many features of the high-efficiency lighting system the company developed with Kennedy funding have been incorporated into ORBITEC’s commercial offerings.





_NASA air purification technology, originally designed for plant-growing experiments on the space station, has been licensed and turned into a consumer device that keeps household air cleaner and healthier.__ Credits: Akida Holdings Inc._


Not only does its greenhouse lighting technology take advantage of the efficiency of LEDs, which waste almost no energy on heat, but its variable light output allows it to be adapted to specific plant species at specific growth stages. It can also sense the presence of plant tissue and only power nearby LEDs. Overall, it uses about 60 percent less energy than traditional plant lighting systems.

While early LEDs came to NASA’s attention as a potential light source for plant growth, the National Space Biomedical Research Program (NSBRI), a NASA-funded group of institutions, took notice of the fact that the lamps could produce specific wavelengths of light. The team that was growing plants at Kennedy built LED prototypes for an NSBRI team that used it for a research project, discovering that different wavelengths of light helped test subjects stay awake or fall asleep.

So the Kennedy team partnered with a contractor to develop the ISS’s first LED lighting system. Soon after, several scientists involved in the project brought their expertise to the company Lighting Science, which developed a line of DefinityDigital light bulbs for home use. Different bulbs can suppress or increase melatonin production in the brain to induce wakefulness or sleepiness, respectively. Another is used to grow plants, and a fourth bulb is designed for outdoor lighting in coastal areas, where it won’t disorient sea turtles, as normal outdoor lighting tends to.

A problem faced by greenhouses both in space and on Earth is ethylene, a gas plants give off that hastens the ripening of fruits and vegetables. Accelerating ripening means speeding decay. Researchers at the Wisconsin Center for Space Automation and Robotics, a NASA research partnership center at the University of Wisconsin in Madison, figured out how to deal with this problem in the 1990s, ultimately leading to a highly successful line of products. The ethylene-scrubbing technology they devised first flew in 1995 on the space shuttle and was later licensed by KES Science & Technology, which partnered with Akida Holdings to launch the AiroCide product line.





_Orbital Technologies partnered with Kennedy Space Center to create a plant growth system known as Veggie, now used on the International Space Station. The system employs LEDs, which are highly efficient and long-lasting and radiate hardly any heat._
_Credits: Orbital Technologies/NASA_


The scrubbers turned out to destroy not only ethylene and other volatile organic compounds but also airborne bacteria, mold, fungi, mycotoxins, viruses, and odors. AiroCide scrubbers are now widely used for food preservation in supermarkets, produce distribution facilities, food processing plants, wineries, distilleries, restaurants, and large floral shops. They’ve been incorporated into a line of refrigerators. They’re also used in parts of the developing world such as India and the Persian Gulf area, where food storage and distribution is often complicated by harsh conditions and underdeveloped infrastructure.

AiroCide units are also commonly used to clean the air and prevent the spread of disease in hospitals, doctors’ offices, laboratories, schools, hospitals, and daycare centers. By 2013, a home version became available and immediately caught on.

Another product of NASA’s space-farming endeavors allows plants to text their caretakers when they’re thirsty. Astronauts aboard the ISS don’t have a lot of time for checking up on plants, so an employee of BioServe Space Technologies, a nonprofit, NASA-sponsored research partnership center, built a sensor that used electrical impulses to measure leaf thickness, which indicates water content. BioServe partnered with AgriHouse Brands Ltd. to test the sensor and found that it not only eliminated guesswork from watering plants but also reduced water use by 25 to 45 percent.

By 2012, AgriHouse offered sensors that attach to plants and transmit water-content data to a user’s computer, and the system can send text messages when certain crops need water.





_A leaf sensor developed to increase the efficiency of farming on long-duration space missions is now used by farmers to conserve on water use by only irrigating when crops need it. The sensor works by measuring leaf thickness and text messaging farmers when plants are “thirsty.”_

_Credits: AgriHouse Brands Ltd./NASA_

This wasn’t the first partnership between BioServe and AgriHouse to advance agriculture in space and on Earth. In the late 1980s, AgriHouse used BioServe research to develop a method for aeroponic crop production—that is, growing plants suspended in air without soil or media. Plants grown aeroponically require far less water and fertilizer, don’t need pesticide, are much less prone to disease, and grow up to three times faster than plants grown in soil.

For a 2007 aeroponic experiment aboard the ISS, BioServe consulted with AeroGrow International, which had been inspired by NASA’s aeroponic work, to develop its AeroGarden kitchen gardening appliances. The experiment using AeroGrow technology proved a success, as has the company’s line of indoor gardening systems, which easily grow food and other plants without dirt, weeds, or the need for a green thumb.

NASA’s push into the frontiers of space will undoubtedly continue to advance the state of the art of one of mankind’s oldest endeavors. As the agency eyes deep-space missions like a trip to an asteroid or Mars, space farming becomes less of a novelty and more of a necessity. Plants will be an integral part of any life-support system for extended missions, providing food and oxygen and processing waste. Significant further advances will be necessary, and each of them promises to bring new innovations to agriculture here on Earth.


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## Hamartia Antidote

Space salad: 1 small bite for man, 1 | The Press Democrat

* Space salad: 1 small bite for man, 1 giant leaf for mankind *

WASHINGTON — These are the salad days of scientific research on the International Space Station. On Monday, for the first time astronauts munched on red romaine lettuce that they grew in space.

After clicking their lettuce leaves like wine glasses, three astronauts tasted them with a bit of Italian balsamic vinegar and extra-virgin olive oil.

Astronaut Kjell Lindgren pronounced it awesome, while Scott Kelly compared the taste to arugula. They talked about how the veggies added color to life in space.

If astronauts are to go farther in space, they will need to grow their own food and this was an experiment to test that.

Astronauts grew space station lettuce last year but had to ship it back to Earth for testing and didn't get to taste it.


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## Fenrir

*NASA Announces Next Round of Launch Opportunities for CubeSat Launch Initiative*

NASA Announces Next Round of Launch Opportunities for CubeSat Launch Initiative « AmericaSpace

_



_
_NASA has recently opened the next round of launch opportunities for its CubeSat Launch Initiative, offering the opportunity to school and university students as well as all interested participants in industry and academia across the US, to have their payloads launched into space within the next couple of years. Image Credit: NASA_

Earlier this week NASA opened the latest round of its CubeSat Launch Initiative, which provides opportunities for tiny nanosatellites, called CubeSats, that are designed and built by students from universities and other research institutions in the US, to fly as auxiliary payloads on future rocket launches which are scheduled by the space agency in the next couple of years.

CubeSats have been all the rage in the space industry worldwide in recent years, with more than 350 such nanosatellites having been launched into space to date by dozens of private and government entities around the world, ever since the CubeSat design was first introduced back in 1999. As their name implies, CubeSats are cube-shaped nanosatellites which in their basic form factor have a standardized side length of 10 cm (also known as “one unit” CubeSats, or 1U) while weighting no more than 1.33 kg. The ability of the CubeSat design to be scalable to larger versions, like 2U, 3U or larger, has revolutionised the way with which small payloads can be launched into space for a host of scientific, defense, technology demonstration as well as commercial purposes, for only a tiny fraction of the cost associated with launching traditional, large satellites. Even though all CubeSats that have been launched to date have been placed in low-Earth orbits, their concept has greatly matured to the point that they are now considered as viable alternatives for deep-space applications as well. Such examples include the two small CubeSats that will get a ride to Mars alongside NASA’s InSight lander in 2016, as well as a total of 11 CubeSats that will ride onboard the Moon-bound maiden flight of the agency’s Space Launch System heavy-lift rocket later this decade.





_PhoneSat 2.5, developed at NASA’s Ames Research Center and launched in March 2014, uses commercially available smartphone technology to collect data on the long-term performance of consumer technologies used in spacecraft. Image Credit/Caption: NASA_

NASA has also been a leading player in the growing field of CubeSat applications, with the space agency actively engaging students and teachers from schools and universities throughout the U.S. in the design, development, and operation of nanosatellites for scientific research and technology demonstration purposes since 2010, with its CubeSat Launch Initiative. Through the latter, 37 such nanosatellites which have been designed and built by students across 30 different states have been launched into space to date, with a total of 105 CubeSats having already been selected for launch through 2019. As part of its 2014 Strategic Plan, NASA aims to engage the rest of the 20 US states in the CubeSat Launch Initiative as well, with the goal of having each state launch at least one CubeSat satellite within the next five years. To that end, the space agency opened the latest round of CubeSat launch opportunities earlier this week, inviting all interested participants to submit their proposals electronically until Nov. 24 of this year. The final proposals which will be selected on Feb. 19, 2016, will be given an opportunity to launch on the agency’s future scheduled launches, or be deployed from the International Space Station after being delivered to the orbiting outpost by commercial launch operators.

One aspect that currently governs the rate of CubeSat launches is the limited payload slot availability that exists either on NASA-sponsored or other commercial launches worldwide. For this reason, NASA has issued a Request for Proposal earlier this summer, calling for the creation of a new Venture Class Launch Services, or VCLS, that will be solely dedicated to the launch of nanosatellites. As part of its request, the space agency plans to award one or more fixed-price contracts to commercial companies for developing a series of small-class launch vehicles that would be capable to loft either 60 kg of CubeSats in one launch, or 30 kg in two launches. This way, it is hoped that the rate of CubeSat launches could be increased significantly, with NASA expecting the first such CubeSat-dedicated VCLS launch to occur no later than April 2018. “This will start to open up viable commercial opportunities,” says Mark Wiese, chief of the flight projects office for NASA’s Launch Services Program at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, which oversees the agency’s launch operations and overall manifest. “We hope to be one of the first customers for these companies, and once we get going, the regular launches will drive the costs down for everyone. As we drive costs down, that frees up more money for science. We see this emerging capability to launch CubeSats as something the world is going to need.”

With NASA having already 16 scheduled CubeSat launches in its manifest for the next 12 months, let alone the many dozens of such nanosatellites that are now being launched by universities, non-profits and other research institutions as well as private companies on a regular basis each year, the CubeSat industry is only poised to grow even further, heralding a bright future ahead. And as is most often the case in the space sector, NASA will have played a defining role in bringing that future to fruition.

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## Fenrir

*Gecko Grippers Moving On Up*

Gecko Grippers Moving On Up | NASA






A piece of tape can only be used a few times before the adhesion wears off and it can no longer hold two surfaces together. But researchers at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, are working on the ultimate system of stickiness, inspired by geckos.

Thanks to tiny hairs on the bottom of geckos' feet, these lizards can cling to walls with ease, and their stickiness doesn't wear off with repeated usage. JPL engineer Aaron Parness and colleagues used that concept to create a material with synthetic hairs that are much thinner than a human hair. When a force is applied to make the tiny hairs bend, that makes the material stick to a desired surface.

"This is how the gecko does it, by weighting its feet," Parness said.

Behind this phenomenon is a concept called van der Waals forces. A slight electrical field is created because electrons orbiting the nuclei of atoms are not evenly spaced, so there are positive and negative sides to a neutral molecule. The positively charged part of a molecule attracts the negatively charged part of its neighbor, resulting in "stickiness." Even in extreme temperature, pressure and radiation conditions, these forces persist.






"The grippers don't leave any residue and don't require a mating surface on the wall the way Velcro would," Parness said.

The newest generation of grippers can support more than 150 Newtons of force, the equivalent of 35 pounds (16 kilograms).

In a microgravity flight test last year through NASA's Space Technology Mission Directorate’s Flight Opportunities Program, the gecko-gripping technology was used to grapple a 20-pound (10 kilogram) cube and a 250-pound (100 kilogram) person. The gecko material was separately tested in more than 30,000 cycles of turning the stickiness "on" and "off" when Parness was in graduate school at Stanford University in Palo Alto, California. Despite the extreme conditions, the adhesive stayed strong.

Researchers have more recently made three sizes of hand-operated "astronaut anchors," which could one day be given to astronauts inside the International Space Station. The anchors are made currently in footprints of 1 by 4 inches (2.5 by 10 centimeters), 2 by 6 inches (5 by 15 centimeters) and 3 by 8 inches (7.6 by 20 centimeters). They would serve as an experiment to test the gecko adhesives in microgravity for long periods of time and as a practical way for astronauts to attach clipboards, pictures and other handheld items to the interior walls of the station. Astronauts would simply attach the object to the mounting post of the gripper by pushing together the two components of the gripper. Parness and colleagues are collaborating with NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston on this concept.






Parness and his team are also testing the Lemur 3 climbing robot, which has gecko-gripper feet, in simulated microgravity environments. The team thinks possible applications could be to have robots like this on the space station conducting inspections and making repairs on the exterior. For testing, the robot maneuvers across mock-up solar and radiator panels to emulate that environment.

There are numerous applications beyond the space station for this technology.

"We might eventually grab satellites to repair them, service them, and we also could grab space garbage and try to clear it out of the way," Parness said.

The California Institute of Technology in Pasadena manages JPL for NASA.

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## Fenrir

*RS-25 Engines: Meeting the Need for Speed*

RS-25 Engines: Meeting the Need for Speed | Rocketology: NASA’s Space Launch System






Rocket engines are among the most amazing machines ever invented. That’s mainly because they have to do one of the most extreme jobs ever conceived – spaceflight – starting with escaping Earth’s deep gravity well. Orbital velocity, just for starters, is over 17,000 mph, and that only gets you a couple hundred miles off the surface. Going farther requires going faster. Much faster.

The RS-25 makes a modern race car or jet engine look like a wind-up toy.

It has to handle temperatures as low as minus 400 degrees where the propellants enter the engine and as high as 6,000 degrees as the exhaust exits the combustion chamber where the propellants are burned.

It has to move a lot of propellants to generate a lot of energy. At the rate the four SLS core stage engines consume propellants, they could drain a family swimming pool in 1 minute.





_To be fair, the Indy car probably handles better in the turns._

The most complex part of the engine is its four turbopumps which are responsible for accelerating fuel and oxidizer to those insanely high flow rates. The high pressure fuel turbopump main shaft rotates at 37,000 rpms compared to about 3,000 rpm for a car engine at 60 mph.

The bottom line is that the RS-25 produces 512,000 pounds of thrust. That’s more than 12 million horsepower. That’s enough to push 10 giant aircraft carriers around the ocean at nearly 25 mph.

If the performance requirement to turn massive amounts of fuel into massive amounts of fire wasn’t enough, an engine can’t take up a lot of mass or area in a rocket. A car engine generates about half a single horsepower to each pound of engine weight. The RS-25 high pressure fuel turbopump generates 100 horsepower for each pound of its weight.

But forget mere car engines. The RS-25 is about the same weight and size as two F-15 jet fighter engines, yet it produces 8 times more thrust. A single turbine blade the size of a quarter – and the exact number and configuration inside the pump is now considered sensitive – produces more equivalent horsepower than a Corvette ZR1 engine.





_And this is still only the major components of an RS-25 engine._

On the other hand, when you chug fluids that fast, a hiccup is a bad thing. In the case of a rocket engine, that hiccup is called cavitation. At the least, it robs the engine of power. At worst, it can cause catastrophic overheating and overspeeding. So rocket engineers spend a lot of time making sure fluids flow straight and smooth.

That’s also why they test rocket engines on the ground under highly instrumented and controlled conditions. It’s a lot less costly to fail on the ground than in flight with a full rocket carrying people on board and/or a one-of-a-kind multi-million- or multi-billion-dollar payload.

As rocket engines go, the RS-25 may be the most advanced, operating at higher temperatures, pressures, and speeds than most any other engine. The advantage comes down to being able to launch more useful payload into space with less devoted to the rocket structure and its propellants.

In addition to its power, another key consideration for SLS was the availability of 16 flight engines and two ground test engines from the shuttle program. It’s much harder and more expensive to develop a new engine from scratch. Using a high-performance engine that already existed gave NASA a considerable boost in developing its next rocket for space exploration.





_The RS-25 handles a wide range of temperatures – super-cold on top, super-hot at the bottom._

The remaining shuttle engine inventory will be enough for the first four SLS flights. As for the maturity part, the RS-25 design dates to the 1970s and the start of the Space Shuttle Program. But it’s undergone five major upgrades since then to improve performance, reliability, and safety. If only we could all upgrade 5 times as we age. Further, much of the knowledge and infrastructure needed to use the available engines and restart production already existed. Another hidden savings in time and money.

In its next evolution, the RS-25 design will be changed to make it a more affordable engine designed for just one flight and certify it to even higher thrust – which it is very capable of – to make SLS an even more impressive launch vehicle.

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## Hamartia Antidote

Technogaianist said:


> *RS-25 Engines: Meeting the Need for Speed*



You aren't around...so I'll post it...

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## Fenrir

*SLS Development RS-25 Engine Ignites for Successful Full Duration Test Fire #6*

SLS Development RS-25 Engine Ignites for Successful Full Duration Test Fire #6 « AmericaSpace





_The world’s most efficient rocket engine came to life again today, unleashing 512,000 pounds of thrust and a thunderous roar across southern Mississippi and NASA’s Stennis Space Center during a 535-second full power test fire. The same engine that powered the space shuttle so reliably for years, the RS-25, will again be employed for NASA’s Space Launch System, upgraded to meet the new requirements for what will become the most powerful rocket in history. Photo Credit: Mike Killian / AmericaSpace_

The most efficient rocket engine in history came to life again this afternoon under clear blue skies, unleashing over a half-million pounds of thrust and sending a thunderous roar across southern Mississippi and NASA’s Stennis Space Center during a 535-second full duration test fire. The same engine that powered NASA’s now retired space shuttle fleet so reliably for three decades, Aerojet Rocketdyne’s RS-25, will again be employed for NASA’s enormous Space Launch System (SLS) rocket, upgraded to meet the new requirements for what will become the most powerful rocket in history, and today’s sixth test fire (in a seven-test series) helped advance the path to Mars further under highly instrumented and controlled conditions.

“It is great to see this revered engine back in action and progressing full steam ahead for launch aboard Exploration Mission-1 in 2018,” said Julie Van Kleeck, vice president of Aerojet Rocketdyne’s Advanced Space & Launch Programs business unit. “The RS-25 is the world’s most reliable and thoroughly tested large liquid-fueled rocket engine ever built.”

America’s next generation heavy-lift launch vehicle, the SLS, is quickly manifesting into reality. Its solid rocket booster was test fired earlier this year, NASA’s Pegasus transport barge has been made larger to support moving the colossal rocket, acoustic sound-suppression testing is occurring, F-18 Hornet fighter jets have carried out flight tests for SLS flight software development, test stands are being built or modified, KSC’s iconic Vehicle Assembly Building (VAB) is being upgraded to support SLS, launch pad 39B is being prepared, the rocket’s Mobile Launch Platform (MLP) and Crawler Transporter are being prepared, and both qualification and flight hardware for the first SLS vehicle itself are being constructed for an inaugural 2018 launch on the Exploration Mission-1 (EM-1) flight with NASA’s Orion deep-space multi-purpose crew capsule (which itself conducted its first flight test last December).





_The RS-25 comes to life for an Aug. 13 test fire at Stennis Space Center for NASA’s SLS program. Image Credit: NASA_

The 535-second test fire, carried out by development engine #0525 on the historic A-1 test stand, went off without issue—something that has come to be expected of the RS-25 engines. The RS-25 was the first reusable rocket engine in history, as well as being one of the most tested large rocket engines ever made, having conducted more than 3,000 starts and over one million seconds (nearly 280 hours) of total ground test and flight firing time over the course of NASA’s 135 space shuttle flights.

The engines proved their worth time and time again, but the RS-25 now requires several modifications to adapt to the new environment they will encounter with SLS and meet the giant 320-foot tall rocket’s enormous thrust requirements.

Today’s test fire will provide engineers with critical data on the engine’s new state-of-the-art controller unit—the “brain” of the engine, which allows communication between the vehicle and the engine itself, relaying commands to the engine and transmitting data back to the vehicle. The new controller also provides closed-loop management of the engine by regulating the thrust and fuel mixture ratio while monitoring the engine’s health and status, thanks to updated hardware and software configured to operate with the new SLS avionics architecture.





_Today’s RS-25 test fire, the sixth in a seven-test series focusing on upgrades made to the engine to support the new requirements of NASA’s massive SLS rocket. Photo Credit: Alan Walters / AmericaSpace_

“We’ve made modifications to the RS-25 to meet SLS specifications and will analyze and test a variety of conditions during the hot fire series,” said Steve Wofford after the first test fire earlier this year, manager of the SLS Liquid Engines Office at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala., where the SLS Program is managed. “The engines for SLS will encounter colder liquid oxygen temperatures than shuttle; greater inlet pressure due to the taller core stage liquid oxygen tank and higher vehicle acceleration; and more nozzle heating due to the four-engine configuration and their position in-plane with the SLS booster exhaust nozzles.”





_The RS-25 engine firing up on the A-1 test stand at Stennis Space Center Aug. 13. Photo Credit: Michael Galindo / AmericaSpace_

For shuttle flights the engines pushed 491,000 pounds of thrust during launch—each—and shuttle required three to fly, but for SLS the power level was increased to 512,000 pounds of thrust per engine (more than 12 million horsepower). The SLS will require four to help launch the massive rocket and its payloads with a 70-metric-ton (77-ton) lift capacity that the initial SLS configuration promises.

Aerojet Rocketdyne and NASA currently have 16 RS-25 engines in inventory at Stennis—14 of which are veterans of numerous space shuttle missions. Aerojet Rocketdyne just recently finished assembly of the 16th engine (engine 2063), one of the space agency’s two “rookie” RS-25s. It will be one of four RS-25 engines that will be employed to power the SLS Exploration Mission-2 (EM-2), the second SLS launch currently targeted for the year 2021. All of the engines have already been assigned to their SLS flights.






“The engine that was tested today continues demonstration of the new controller’s functionality and the engine’s ability to perform to SLS requirements,” added Jim Paulsen, vice president, Program Execution, Advanced Space & Launch Programs at Aerojet Rocketdyne. “The new controller provides modern electronics, architecture and software. It will improve reliability and safety for the SLS crew as well as the ability to readily procure electronics for decades to come. We are conducting engine testing to ensure all 16 flight engines in our inventory meet flightworthiness requirements for SLS.”

Engine 0525 will carry out a total of seven test fires in this first series of tests and will fire for a grand total of 3,500 seconds, followed by another 10 test fires with another development engine, which will be put through its paces for a grand total of 4,500 seconds.

Known as the “Ferrari of rocket engines”, the RS-25 can handle temperatures as low as minus 400 degrees (where the propellants enter the engine) and as high as 6,000 degrees as the exhaust exits the combustion chamber where the propellants are burned.

To put the power of the Aerojet Rocketdyne-built RS-25 engines into perspective, consider this:


The fuel turbine on the RS-25’s high-pressure fuel turbopump is so powerful that if it were spinning an electrical generator instead of a pump, it could power 11 locomotives; 1,315 Toyota Prius cars; 1,231,519 iPads; lighting for 430 Major League baseball stadiums; or 9,844 miles of residential street lights—all the street lights in Chicago, Los Angeles, or New York City.
Pressure within the RS-25 is equivalent to the pressure a submarine experiences three miles beneath the ocean.
The four RS-25 engines on the SLS launch vehicle gobble propellant at the rate of 1,500 gallons per second. That’s enough to drain an average family-sized swimming pool in 60 seconds.
If the RS-25 were generating electricity instead of propelling rockets, it could provide twice the power needed to move all 10 existing Nimitz-class aircraft carriers at 30 knots.
“There is nothing in the world that compares to this engine,” added Paulsen. “It is great that we are able to adapt this advanced engine for what will be the world’s most powerful rocket to usher in a new space age.”



Peter C said:


> You aren't around...so I'll post it...



Sorry, I got hit with a double-whammy of sleepiness and a 10 hour power outage. What's the status of the SLS? I've noticed it still have budget problems, but Congress seems more interested in funding it and the Dragon capsule:

Clarifying NASA’s Budget Regarding Orion, SLS, and SpaceX / Boeing Commercial Crew « AmericaSpace

However its first launch date keeps getting pushed back. Any updates or additional info about the program's status?

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## Hamartia Antidote

Technogaianist said:


> Any updates or additional info about the program's status?



No idea. Certainly private companies are catching the attention of lawmakers and I'm sure this will make funding more difficult.


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## Fenrir

*Nine Real NASA Technologies in 'The Martian'*

Nine Real NASA Technologies in 'The Martian' | NASA

Mars has held a central place in human imagination and culture for millennia. Ancients marveled at its red color and the brightness that waxed and waned in cycles over the years. Early observations through telescopes led some to speculate that the planet was covered with canals that its inhabitants used for transportation and commerce. In “The War of the Worlds”, the writer H.G. Wells posited a Martian culture that would attempt to conquer Earth. In 1938, Orson Welles panicked listeners who thought they were listening to a news broadcast rather than his radio adaptation of Wells’s novel.

The real story of humans and Mars is a little more prosaic but no less fascinating. Telescopes turned the bright red dot in the sky into a fuzzy, mottled disk that gave rise to those daydreams of canals. Just 50 years ago, the first photograph of Mars from a passing spacecraft appeared to show a hazy atmosphere. Now decades of exploration on the planet itself has shown it to be a world that once had open water, an essential ingredient for life.

The fascination hasn’t waned, even in the Internet Age. A former computer programmer named Andy Weir, who enjoyed writing for its own sake and posted fiction to his blog, started a serial about a NASA astronaut stranded on Mars. The popularity ultimately led him to turn it into a successful novel, “The Martian”, which has been made into a movie that will be released in October 2015.

“The Martian” merges the fictional and factual narratives about Mars, building upon the work NASA and others have done exploring Mars and moving it forward into the 2030s, when NASA astronauts are regularly traveling to Mars and living on the surface to explore. Although the action takes place 20 years in the future, NASA is already developing many of the technologies that appear in the film.

*Habitat*

On the surface of Mars, Watney spends a significant amount of time in the habitation module -- the Hab -- his home away from home. Future astronauts who land on Mars will need such a home to avoid spending their Martian sols lying on the dust in a spacesuit.

At NASA Johnson Space Center, crews train for long-duration deep space missions in the Human Exploration Research Analog (HERA).






_The Human Exploration Research Analog (HERA) at NASA's Johnson Space Center. _
_Credits: Fox/NASA_

HERA is a self-contained environment that simulates a deep-space habit. The two-story habitat is complete with living quarters, workspaces, a hygiene module and a simulated airlock. Within the module, test subjects conduct operational tasks, complete payload objectives and live together for 14 days (soon planned to increase to up to 60 days), simulating future missions in the isolated environment. Astronauts have recently used the facility to simulate ISS missions. These research analogs provide valuable data in human factors, behavioral health and countermeasures to help further NASA’s understanding on how to conduct deep space operations.

*Plant Farm*

Today, astronauts on the International Space Station have an abundance of food delivered to them by cargo resupply vehicles, including some from commercial industries. On Mars, humans would not be able to rely on resupply missions from Earth – even with express delivery they would take at least nine months. For humans to survive on Mars, they will need a continuous source of food. They will need to grow crops.





_Real-life NASA Astronaut Kjell Lindgren harvests lettuce grown from the Veggie experiment while on board the International Space Station. _
_Credits: Fox/NASA_

Watney turns the Hab into a self-sustaining farm in “The Martian,” making potatoes the first Martian staple. Today, in low-Earth orbit, lettuce is the most abundant crop in space. Aboard the International Space Station, Veggie is a deployable fresh-food production system. Using red, blue, and green lights, Veggie helps plants grow in pillows, small bags with a wicking surface containing media and fertilizer, to be harvested by astronauts. In 2014, astronauts used the system to grow “Outredgeous” red romaine lettuce and just recently sampled this space-grown crop for the first time. This is a huge step in space farming, and NASA is looking to expand the amount and type of crops to help meet the nutritional needs of future astronauts on Mars.

*Water Recovery*

There are no lakes, river or oceans on the surface of Mars, and sending water from Earth would take more than nine months. Astronauts on Mars must be able to create their own water supply. The Ares 3 crew does not waste a drop on Mars with their water reclaimer, and Watney needs to use his ingenuity to come up with some peculiar ways to stay hydrated and ensure his survival on the Red Planet.

On the International Space Station, no drop of sweat, tears, or even urine goes to waste. The Environmental Control and Life Support System recovers and recycles water from everywhere: urine, hand washing, oral hygiene, and other sources. Through the Water Recovery System (WRS), water is reclaimed and filtered, ready for consumption. One astronaut simply put it, “Yesterday’s coffee turns into tomorrow’s coffee.”

Liquid presents some tricky problems in space. The WRS and related systems have to account for the fact that liquids behave very differently in a microgravity environment. The part of the WRS that processes urine must use a centrifuge for distillation, since gases and liquids do not separate like they do on Earth.

NASA is continuing to develop new technologies for water recovery. Research is being conducted to advance the disposable multifiltration beds (the filters that remove inorganic and non-volatile organic contaminants) to be a more permanent component to the system. Brine water recovery would reclaim every drop of the water from the “bottoms product” leftover from urine distillation. For future human-exploration missions, crews would be less dependent on any resupply of spare parts or extra water from Earth

The technology behind this system has been brought down to Earth to provide clean drinking water to remote locations and places devastated with natural disasters. 

*Oxygen Generation*

Food, water, shelter: three essentials for survival on Earth. But there's a fourth we don't think about much, because it's freely available: oxygen. On Mars, Watney can’t just step outside for a breath of fresh air To survive, he has to carry his own supply of oxygen everywhere he goes. But first he has to make it. In his Hab he uses the “oxygenator,” a system that generates oxygen using the carbon dioxide from the MAV (Mars Ascent Vehicle) fuel generator.

On the International Space Station, the astronauts and cosmonauts have the Oxygen Generation System, which reprocesses the atmosphere of the spacecraft to continuously provide breathable air efficiently and sustainably. The system produces oxygen through a process called electrolysis, which splits water molecules into their component oxygen and hydrogen atoms. The oxygen is released into the atmosphere, while the hydrogen is either discarded into space or fed into the Sabatier System, which creates water from the remaining byproducts in the station's atmosphere.

Oxygen is produced at more substantial rate through a partially closed-loop system that improves the efficiency of how the water and oxygen are used. NASA is working to recover even more oxygen from byproducts in the atmosphere to prepare for the journey to Mars.

*Mars Spacesuit*

The Martian surface is not very welcoming for humans. The atmosphere is cold and there is barely any breathable air. An astronaut exploring the surface must wear a spacesuit to survive outside of a habitat while collecting samples and maintaining systems.





_NASA invited the public to vote on three cover layer designs for the Z-2 prototype suit, the next step in NASA's advanced suit development program. _
_Credits: Fox/NASA_

Mark Watney spends large portions of his Martian sols (a sol is a Martian day) working in a spacesuit. He ends up having to perform some long treks on the surface, so his suit has to be flexible, comfortable, and reliable.

NASA is currently developing the technologies to build a spacesuit that would be used on Mars. Engineers consider everything from traversing the Martian landscape to picking up rock samples.

The Z-2 and Prototype eXploration Suit, NASA’s new prototype spacesuits, help solve unique problems to advance new technologies that will one day be used in a suit worn by the first humans to set foot on Mars. Each suit is meant to identify different technology gaps – features a spacesuit may be missing – to complete a mission. Spacesuit engineers explore the tradeoff between hard composite materials and fabrics to find a nice balance between durability and flexibility.

One of the challenges of walking on Mars will be dealing with dust. The red soil on Mars could affect the astronauts and systems inside a spacecraft if tracked in after a spacewalk. To counter this, new spacesuit designs feature a suitport on the back, so astronauts can quickly hop in from inside a spacecraft while the suit stays outside, keeping it clean indoors.

*Rover*

Once humans land on the surface of Mars, they must stay there for more than a year, while the planets move into a position that will minimize the length of their trip home. This allows the astronauts plenty of time to conduct experiments and explore the surrounding area, but they won’t want to be limited to how far they can go on foot. Astronauts will have to use robust, reliable and versatile rovers to travel farther.





_NASA is currently working to on a vehicle that will be able to navigate tough terrain with the Multi-Mission Space Exploration Vehicle (MMSEV). _
_Credits: Fox/NASA_

In "The Martian," Watney takes his rover for quite a few spins, and he even has to outfit the vehicle with some unorthodox modifications to help him survive.

On Earth today, NASA is working to prepare for every encounter with the Multi-Mission Space Exploration Vehicle (MMSEV). The MMSEV has been used in NASA’s analog mission projects to help solve problems that the agency is aware of and to reveal some that may be hidden. The technologies are developed to be versatile enough to support missions to an asteroid, Mars, its moons and other missions in the future. NASA’s MMSEV has helped address issues like range, rapid entry/exit and radiation protection. Some versions of the vehicle have six pivoting wheels for maneuverability. In the instance of a flat tire, the vehicle simply lifts up the bad wheel and keeps on rolling.

*Ion Propulsion*
Slow and steady wins the race, and ion propulsion proves it.





_While the Dawn spacecraft is visiting the asteroids Vesta and Ceres, NASA Glenn has been developing the next generation of ion thrusters for future missions. NASA's Evolutionary Xenon Thruster (NEXT) Project has developed a 7-kilowatt ion thruster that can provide the capabilities needed in the future._

_Credits: NASA_

In “The Martian,” the Ares 3 crew lives aboard the Hermes spacecraft for months as they travel to and from the Red Planet, using ion propulsion as an efficient method of traversing through space for over 280 million miles. Ion propulsion works by electrically charging a gas such as argon or xenon and pushing out the ions at high speeds, about 200,000 mph. The spacecraft experiences a force similar to that of a gentle breeze, but by continuously accelerating for several years, celestial vessels can reach phenomenal speeds. Ion propulsion also allows the spacecraft to change its orbit multiple times, then break away and head for another distant world.

This technology allows modern day spacecraft like NASA’s Dawn Spacecraft to minimize fuel consumption and perform some crazy maneuvers. Dawn has completed more than five years of continuous acceleration for a total velocity change around 25,000 mph, more than any spacecraft has accomplished on its own propulsion system. Along the way, it has paid humanity's first visits to the dwarf planet Ceres and the asteroid Vesta.

*Solar Panels*





_Solar panels on the International Space Station._

_Credits: NASA_

There are no gas stations on Mars. No power plants. Virtually no wind. When it comes to human missions to the Red Planet, solar energy can get the astronauts far. The Hermes spacecraft in the book uses solar arrays for power, and Mark Watney has to use solar panels in some unconventional ways to survive on Mars.

On the International Space Station, four sets of solar arrays generate 84 to 120 kilowatts of electricity – enough to power more than 40 homes. The station doesn’t need all that power, but the redundancy helps mitigate risk in case of a failure. The solar power system aboard the space station is very reliable, and has been providing power safely to the station since its first crew in 2000.

Orion, NASA’s spacecraft that will take humans farther than they’ve ever gone before, will use solar arrays for power in future missions. The arrays can gather power while in sunlight to charge onboard lithium-ion batteries. In case no sunlight is available – for instance, if Orion were to go behind the Moon – there would still be plenty of power to allow it to operate.

*RTG*

For more than four decades, NASA has safely used Radioisotope Thermoelectric Generators (RTGs) to provide electrical power for two dozen space missions, including Apollo missions to the Moon. Spacecraft such as the Mars rover Curiosity and the upcoming Mars 2020 rover use an updated, next-generation model for electrical power. 

RTGs are “space batteries” that convert heat from the natural radioactive decay of plutonium-238 into reliable electrical power. The RTG on Curiosity generates about 110 Watts of power or less – slightly more than an average light bulb uses. 

In "The Martian," the crew buries the plutonium-based RTG power source for the Mars Ascent Vehicle far away from the Hab in case of radioactive leakage. To prevent any leak, as suggested in the movie, Plutonium-238 has several layers of strong, advanced materials that protect against release even in severe accidents. The RTG mostly emits alpha radiation, which can only travel a few inches in the air and does not penetrate clothing or human skin. It could only affect human health if it were broken into very fine particles or vaporized, and inhaled or ingested. The isotope is manufactured in a ceramic form, so accidentally inhaling or ingesting it is unlikely, particularly as it does not dissolve in liquids. 

In reality, the natural radiation environment on Mars is more extreme than the radiation produced from an RTG. Ionizing radiation raining down on Mars from space is far more hazardous to human health. Current Mars missions are analyzing the Martian radiation environment so that mission planners can design protection systems for future astronauts. 

Future explorers will need assured, reliable and durable power sources for survival in place before they arrive. Power system options might include a mix of more efficient radioisotope power systems, solar power, fuel cells, and nuclear fission.

*The Journey to Mars*

Human spaceflight is a dangerous business. NASA is working to send humans to Mars in the 2030s, but there are many milestones to accomplish to ensure that astronauts come back to Earth safely. Astronaut Scott Kelly, currently aboard the International Space Station for one year, put it perfectly: space is hard. The margin for error is virtually zero for every aspect of spaceflight. However, we learn so much along the journey to Mars that furthers our understanding of the universe, and everything we do and learn is brought right back to Earth to benefit humanity.

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## Fenrir

Inside the Launch Abort System Facility at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida, workers are preparing the Orion spacecraft that flew on Exploration Flight Test-1 in 2014 for transport to Orion prime contractor Lockheed Martin's facility in Denver, where it will undergo direct field acoustic testing. This is a technique used for acoustic testing of aerospace structures by subjecting them to sound waves created by an array of acoustic drivers. For the test, several electro-dynamic speakers will be arranged around Orion to provide a uniform, well-controlled, direct sound field test at the surface of the spacecraft. Orion will next launch atop NASA’s Space Launch System rocket on Exploration Mission-1.

_Photo credit: NASA/Kennedy_

Flown Orion Prepared for Move | NASA

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## Fenrir

*some non-space NASA stuff*http://gizmodo.com/i-flew-with-nasa-to-study-the-california-drought-from-t-1723143618*
*http://gizmodo.com/i-flew-with-nasa-to-study-the-california-drought-from-t-1723143618*
*I Flew With NASA To Study the California Drought From the Sky*






It didn’t look good. Dark sapphire pools dotted the bare gray peaks of the Sierras, ringed in too many concentric circles of sediment to count. As I flew above the mountains with NASA scientists on a tricked-out DC-8 plane, the effects of four years of drought were painfully evident to the naked eye. But it’s what we couldn’t see that we were here to study.

For a week this summer, NASA’s flying laboratory did loops over California as part of the Student Airborne Research Program, known as SARP. Students from all over the country work closely with the agency to collect data to study topics from industrial pollution to the health of local forests.

And for the past few years, the effects of California’s drought.






Of the six missions that flew this summer, most had some connection to the state’s increasingly arid climate, from the way agriculture affects air quality in the Central Valley, to the airborne pollution generated by the slow demise of the Salton Sea, the gigantic toxic lake east of Palm Springs.

One mission was of particular interest to me: The crew planned to fly over several agricultural sites in the Central Valley, then extremely close to the Sierra Nevada mountain range to examine the local impact of its nearly nonexistent snowpack. This was the flight I boarded on a blisteringly hot June afternoon.

*A Flying Lab*

About 60 miles north of LA, I pull up to a sand-colored corrugated metal complex fringed by Joshua trees. This is NASA’s Armstrong Flight Research Center, situated adjacent to Edwards Air Force Base at the edge of the Mojave Desert.





_The hangar at NASA Armstrong, filled with aircraft modified for science research_

I enter through a giant hangar filled with aircraft departing on other NASA missions—the suborbital Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy (SOFIA), which is a telescope mounted on a modified Boeing 747SP, is managed out of the Armstrong research center. Although Armstrong’s current focus is on atmospheric flight research and environmental science, there’s a wealth of NASA history here: It served as a test facility for several orbiters and as the alternate landing site for the Space Shuttle Program. I receive my flight training in a room flanked with spacesuits and crates labeled “cosmic dust project.”

After learning the major differences between an airborne science mission and a flight to Vegas—no beverage cart; deploying one’s oxygen mask involves putting a huge mylar bag over your head—I head to a conference room for the mission briefing.

Today’s flight path looked like someone threw a handful of cooked spaghetti against a map of California. What’s more, the plane would be making steep descents to gather air samples close to the ground—all over mountain passes with naturally turbulent air. We were in for a wild ride.

From the tarmac, NASA’s aircraft doesn’t look too different from your typical aging DC-8. But as you board, you start to see a few differences. Like the windows on one side of the plane, which have been popped out and replaced with a series of tubes spiking out the side.





_Various remote-sensing tools and air sample collection devices cluster around the center of the DC-8_

Inside, this is no cushy commercial airliner. The plane has been completely gutted, then loaded back up with a rotating lineup of scientific equipment that’s bolted to the aircraft’s shell. In the place of row 12, seats A, B and C are a wall of valves, flickering monitors, and nests of plastic tubes.

The vibe is somewhere between modern-day data center and 1980’s-era RV. A handful of old leather airline seats are sprinkled throughout, laced with the black cords of heavy-duty headsets with noise-canceling headphones. Without the insulating materials on a commercial aircraft, the noise is deafening; ear protection is a must.





_Students and NASA scientists work side by side in the flying lab_

Among the array of experiments strapped to the floor are tools like a LIDAR system to measure distance, devices that can gather air samples in mid-air, and remote-sensing instruments that can read the levels of particles like aerosol and methane. Other scientists work with NASA to get their experiments onboard the DC-8—the same plane flew to Kansas for a storm-chasing mission we covered here on Gizmodo.

Strapped in, headset on, the plane taxis to takeoff, sailing over the salt-crusted dry lakes of the high desert. After a few minutes we drop down into the green checkerboard of the Central Valley where we’re greeted by a thick layer of brown haze.

*Science at 13,000 Feet*

“Yesterday was rough, three people puked,” laughs Matthew Irish, a Climate Impact Engineering major at the University of Michigan. He’s crouched near the Whole Air Sampler (WAS), an instrument that slurps up tubes of air from outside the plane. The dozens of valves and canisters clustered around him make this part of the plane feel festive, like a high-tech microbrewery or helium tanks awaiting balloons.





_Matthew Irish and Marilyn Jones fill air samples from a tube mounted on the outside of the plane_

Irish’s role is to fill up an canister with air samples by slurping it up from the exterior and into the tubes, which they call snakes. “We actually have snakes on a plane,” he jokes. There’s really no other way to gather the samples—the plane must first be flying at a certain elevation and speed to take the air from the right place, and then he has to manually siphon the right amount of air into the canisters. He’s only got a very short window to take the sample.

His hand hovers over the valve, waiting for the OK from University of Missouri student Marilyn Jones. She sits on the floor next to him, holding an iPad with the same real-time navigational data from the cockpit. “Right now we’re at 13,000 which is pretty high, so we’re doing some low-frequency filling of the cans,” said Jones. “But down at 6,000 feet we’ll be doing it every minute.”

While the WAS canisters must be taken back to the lab for analysis, some of the instruments collect data in real-time, like the Ultra High Sensitivity Aerosol Spectrometer (UHSAS-a) which measures the small particulate matter. Other tools are able to detect gases like carbon monoxide, methane, and ozone levels. “There’s about 100 different trace gases we can look at,” says Irish. “I want to look at the greenhouse gases that are coming off the Bakersfield oil fields and over some dairy ranches.”

As Irish readies for his next pull, we make one of the hairpin turns I saw on the flight plan. I watch the horizon disappear as the plane lurches and dives ridiculously close to a granite-topped peak. I had forgotten all this time, but now I remember I’m on an airplane. My now-wobbly legs search for a seat. A few minutes later, I lost my lunch, too.

*Focusing on Drought*

Back at Armstrong’s flight center, I had noticed a calendar on the wall with a photo of California’s better days: a NASA satellite image from June 2011, the Sierras frosted with snow. Up here, sailing over 14,000 foot peaks only barely flecked white, it’s hard not to worry about water.

“It’s definitely in the back of our minds,” says John Murray, a student from Fordham University. “Anytime you get a meteorology report, there’s no precipitation, no humidity in the air. But it’s also because we’re doing a lot of climate-related research now that will be used to manage the drought or deal with climate change in the future.”





_One of the many shrunken California reservoirs seen from the sky_

Sometimes drought-related events even change the trajectory of the students’ research. Last year, the giant Rim Fire burning just outside Yosemite gave students the opportunity to fly through the smoke to take air quality readings. This year, they’re studying the debris from the fire-scarred area.

Another perennial drought-related topic is CO2 flux. Andreas Beyersdorf works on the Atmospheric Vertical Observations of CO2 in the Earth’s Troposphere (AVOCET) instrument installed on the DC-8. On this mission AVOCET was looking at the CO2 levels in agricultural vs. forested areas, and comparing that information to various imaging data.

While satellites are helpful for some tasks, AVOCET is able to track specific air masses. So they can take samplings in the LA Basin then see how those might change downwind in the Imperial Valley, for example, tracking the type and health of the vegetation below the entire way. “Here we can have a full sweep of all the chemistry and how it all interacts,” Beyersdorf says.





_Nailing the right flight lines to gather samples in a DC-8 is not easy but the pilots are pros_

As we fly, the scientists provide real-time commentary on that chemistry. Every few minutes someone would report spikes in ozone, carbon dioxide, or methane, geotagging the data to look at correlations on the ground later. There’s lots of methane wafting up from below. In fact, it’s lack of water—or rather, the lack of water decimating plant life—that’s likely to blame for the vat of pollution that’s parked on the eastern flank of the Central Valley today.

As we land, I start to realize that the drought is not just about depleted reservoirs. It’s also affecting air quality in ways that we probably don’t even understand yet.

*Cannibalistic Trees*

For the last few years SARP has collected extensive CO2 flux data in local forests, giving NASA fairly complete pictures of tree life before and after the drought. The health of the water-starved Sierra forest was top of mind for Jessica Mazzi, a biology major at Portland State University. Her SARP study looked at CO2 flux changes over time in plants due to insufficient water.

She could see what appeared to be dead or dying trees from the plane so she began by using remote-sensing towers and air samples to look at CO2 uptake around trees that visually looked dead to see if they were indeed photosynthesizing. “I started comparing different years and it looked like there was an overall decrease in photosynthesis,” she says. In some cases she was seeing as much as a 50% decrease in photosynthesis over three years.





_A slide from Mazzi’s study showing the decrease in CO2 uptake from the same flight lines year after year_

It was not only the overall decrease that concerned her; it was _when_ the trees were photosynthesizing—all the activity was happening far earlier than solar noon. After this point they’d switch to respiration, which means they’d take in oxygen instead of producing it, and give off tons of carbon dioxide and water. The drought-stressed trees were essentially devouring the food they made. “This is so gory,” she says, “But the trees are dying off from eating themselves alive.”

Reports earlier this year estimated that the drought had already killed 12 million trees, and Mazzi believed it—she saw it the evidence for herself. “These are giant trees, 20, 30 years old, and they’re totally dead. It was crazy to see.”

Like snowpack stores our future water, trees “store” our future oxygen. They also act as a carbon sink. Forests weakened by drought are actually pumping CO2 back in to the atmosphere. But dead trees pose an even greater danger. As Mazzi concluded her study, two big climate-related events occurred: Very confident forecasts were released for a giant El Niño and a record-breaking wildfire season ignited the western third of the continent. “There are two extremes we have to consider now,” says Mazzi. “It’s been dry for so long, so when rain does come, how is it going to drain properly? But fire is the bigger risk.”

You can see all the studies which came out of SARP this year, some of which explain the potential devastation of these wildfire vs. El Niño drought finales. In the bigger picture, it may not only be the lack of water that will have the biggest impact on our environment. The long-term effects to our health and well-being are likely still to be discovered.

_Satellite images NASA; footage courtesy NSERC ARC-CREST; photos by Jane Peterson, National Suborbital Education and Research Center and Alissa Walker_


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## Fenrir

*Cassini's Final Breathtaking Close Views of Dione*

Cassini's Final Breathtaking Close Views of Dione | NASA

_



_
_This view from NASA's Cassini spacecraft looks toward Saturn's icy moon Dione, with giant Saturn and its rings in the background, just prior to the mission's final close approach to the moon on August 17, 2015._

A pockmarked, icy landscape looms beneath NASA's Cassini spacecraft in new images of Saturn's moon Dione taken during the mission's last close approach to the small, icy world. Two of the new images show the surface of Dione at the best resolution ever.

Cassini passed 295 miles (474 kilometers) above Dione's surface at 11:33 a.m. PDT (2:33 p.m. EDT) on Aug. 17. This was the fifth close encounter with Dione during Cassini's long tour at Saturn. The mission's closest-ever flyby of Dione was in Dec. 2011, at a distance of 60 miles (100 kilometers).

The full set of images released today is available at: Images taken by the flyby Collection Type

"I am moved, as I know everyone else is, looking at these exquisite images of Dione's surface and crescent, and knowing that they are the last we will see of this far-off world for a very long time to come," said Carolyn Porco, Cassini imaging team lead at the Space Science Institute, Boulder, Colorado. "Right down to the last, Cassini has faithfully delivered another extraordinary set of riches. How lucky we have been."





_Dione hangs in front of Saturn and its icy rings in this view, captured during Cassini's final close flyby of the icy moon.__ Credits: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Space Science Institute_

Raw, unprocessed images from the flyby are available at:

*http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/mission/flybys/dione20150817/*

The main scientific focus of this flyby was gravity science, not imaging. This made capturing the images tricky, as Cassini's camera was not controlling where the spacecraft pointed.

"We had just enough time to snap a few images, giving us nice, high resolution looks at the surface," said Tilmann Denk, a Cassini participating scientist at Freie University in Berlin. "We were able to make use of reflected sunlight from Saturn as an additional light source, which revealed details in the shadows of some of the images."





_NASA's Cassini spacecraft captured this parting view showing the rough and icy crescent of Saturn's moon Dione following the spacecraft's last close flyby of the moon on Aug. 17, 2015. Credits: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Space Science Institute_

Cassini scientists will study data from the gravity science experiment and magnetosphere and plasma science instruments over the next few months as they look for clues about Dione's interior structure and processes affecting its surface.

Only a handful of close flybys of Saturn's large, icy moons remain for Cassini. The spacecraft is scheduled to make three approaches to the geologically active moon Enceladus on Oct. 14 and 28, and Dec. 19. During the Oct. 28 flyby, the spacecraft will come dizzyingly close to Enceladus, passing a mere 30 miles (49 kilometers) from the surface. Cassini will make its deepest-ever dive through the moon's plume of icy spray at this time, collecting valuable data about what's going on beneath the surface. The December Enceladus encounter will be Cassini's final close pass by that moon, at an altitude of 3,106 miles (4,999 kilometers).

After December, and through the mission's conclusion in late 2017, there are a handful of distant flybys planned for Saturn's large, icy moons at ranges of less than about 30,000 miles (50,000 kilometers). Cassini will, however, make nearly two dozen passes by a menagerie of Saturn's small, irregularly shaped moons -- including Daphnis, Telesto, Epimetheus and Aegaeon -- at similar distances during this time. These passes will provide some of Cassini's best-ever views of the little moons.





_Saturn's moon Dione hangs in front of Saturn's rings in this view taken by NASA's Cassini spacecraft during the inbound leg of its last close flyby of the icy moon. Credits: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Space Science Institute_

During the mission's final year -- called its Grand Finale -- Cassini will repeatedly dive through the space between Saturn and its rings.

The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, ESA (European Space Agency) and the Italian Space Agency. NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, manages the mission for the agency's Science Mission Directorate in Washington. JPL is a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena. The Cassini imaging operations center is based at the Space Science Institute in Boulder, Colo.





_As Cassini soared above high northern latitudes on Saturn's moon Dione, the spacecraft looked down at a region near the day-night boundary. This view shows the region as a contrast-enhanced image in which features in shadow are illuminated by reflected light from Saturn. Credits: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Space Science Institute_

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## Fenrir

*Curiosity Low-Angle Self-Portrait at 'Buckskin' Drilling Site on Mount Sharp*

Curiosity Low-Angle Self-Portrait at 'Buckskin' Site on Mount Sharp | NASA





_This low-angle self-portrait of NASA's Curiosity Mars rover shows the vehicle above the "Buckskin" rock target, where the mission collected its seventh drilled sample. The site is in the "Marias Pass" area of lower Mount Sharp._

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## Fenrir

*Dammit, Congress: Just Buy NASA its Own Space Taxi, Already*






Ever since the shuttle program ended, NASA has been paying Russia to ferry U.S. astronauts to the International Space Station. But the price-per-seat aboard Russia’s spacecraft has gotten ridiculous. The solution is clear and cost-effective: The US needs its own space taxis. So why won’t Congress pay for it?

When the Space Shuttles retired, NASA planned on replacing their functionality by subsidizing the development of private spacecraft, by companies like SpaceX and Boeing, with its Commercial Crew Program and Commercial Resupply Services contracts. These programs would help pay for spacecraft that would carry crew and cargo to the International Space Station, respectively.

So far, The Commercial Resupply Service has worked out great. Yes, occasionally an explosion destroys a payload, but that’s to be expected; spaceflight is hard and everyone’s rocket veers off-course sometimes. But for the most part, the astronauts have been kept well-supplied with coffee and experiments.

But NASA is having a much harder time getting the Commercial Crew Program off the ground. The Commercial Crew Program is an incremental development program where private companies compete to meet specific development milestones in constructing spacecraft to fulfill NASA’s human spaceflight needs. The program is down to just two vehicles—both the Boeing Corporation’s CST-100 and the SpaceX Crew Dragon are contracted to finish certification and start carrying astronauts to the International Space Station. Both vehicles are performing well, and each has passed qualification tests. Meanwhile, the International Space Station is being modified so that the space taxis will be able to dock in low-Earth orbit. Conceptually, the Commercial Crew Program looks a lot like the Commercial Resupply program. So what’s the holdup?

Money.





_Engine testing for the CST-100. Image credit: Boeing Corporation_

When the Commercial Crew Program first showed up as a line item in the 2011 budget, NASA planned on spending $6-billion over five years to develop a pair of space taxis and send their first crew to the ISS in 2015. The private companies are doing great hitting every milestone on their timelines. But the the slated date for a crewed voyage—currently scheduled for no earlier than November 2017—keeps getting delayed.

Not-so-coincidentally, every year NASA’s budget for the Commercial Crew Program has been smaller than the requested levels. The 2012 request of $850-million was funded to just $397-million; the 2013 budget request of $830-million was funded to only $520 million. The pattern follows year after year, delaying the commercial crew program and requiring yet more rented seats on the Roscosmos Soyuz spacecraft. In a 2013 audit of the Commercial Crew Program, the Office of the Inspector General wrote:

_The combination of a future flat-funding profile and lower-than-expected levels of funding over the past 3 years may delay the first crewed launch beyond 2017 and closer to 2020, the current expected end of the operational life of the ISS._





_Pad abort test for the Crew Dragon. Image credit: SpaceX_

NASA’s budget for the Commercial Crew Program keeps getting raided to pay for rental seats on the Russian Soyuz spacecraft, the only current option for sending astronauts into space. We’re shelling out so much in renting Soyuz seats that we’re delaying development of Boeing’s CST-100 and SpaceX’s crew Dragon spacecraft. In doing so, we maintain an American presence on the space station while denying building capacity to maintain that presence in the future. It’s a classic case of short-term penny-pinching resulting in long-term cost.

NASA is unamused by this state of affairs. NASA Administrator Charles Bolden wrote an open letter to Congress on August 5, 2015, scolding them over how their lack of vision is crippling the future of human spaceflight in America. The letter starts:

_Across the United States, aerospace engineers are building a new generation of spacecraft and rockets that will define modern American spaceflight. The safe, reliable, and cost-effective solutions being developed here at home will allow for more astronauts to conduct research aboard the space station, enable new jobs, and ensure U.S. leadership in spaceflight this century. The fastest path to bringing these new systems online, launching from America, and ending our sole reliance on Russia is fully funding NASA’s Commercial Crew Program in [fiscal year] 2016. _

The funding request of $1,243.8 million ($1.2 billion) is required to keep up with the contract terms, yet the Senate is currently proposing just $900-million ($0.9 billion), and the House of Representatives isn’t feeling that much more generous. Boeing and SpaceX are both racing along hitting their certification goals, but will run up short if NASA doesn’t have the money to keep paying out at the development milestones. If NASA can’t pay up, they’ll need to renegotiate the contracts and likely end up spending more money in the long run than it would cost to meet the budget request now.





_Hitching a ride on the Russian Soyuz is getting ever more expensive. Image credit: NASA_

Meanwhile, demand for seats on Russia’s Soyuz spacecraft—the only human transport currently making trips to the International Space Station—has driven price of admittance to astronomical levels. In 2010, the price was $25-million per seat. The price jumped to $43-million in the last half of 2011, $60-million in 2016, and was a staggering $76.3-million per seat for the contract just signed to carry astronauts into orbit through 2017. Between 2012 and 2017, NASA will pay Roscosmos $2.1-billion to ferry astronauts to the space station on Soyuz. The latest contract will cost $458-million for six seats in 2017—more than enough to cover the gap between NASA’s budget request and Congress’s counter-proposal.

In sharp contrast to that $76-million-per-seat pricetag for Soyuz, NASA will only need to pay $58-million per seat to ship astronauts off-planet with the Crew Dragon or the CST-100. At seven astronauts per vehicle, that’s a savings of $126-million for every fully-loaded flight, with up to six flights per carrier before the fixed-price contract expires. If NASA receives its full request and can hold up their end of the contract without getting stuck in an unfavorable renegotiation, switching from Soyuz to the Commercial Crew Program taxis will immediately and dramatically increase the number of astronauts we can send to space within the limited space station crew transportation budget. And if we don’t, a righteously angry Bolden points out we’re going to keep throwing money away:

_By gutting this program and turning our backs on U.S. industry, NASA will be forced to continue to rely on Russia to get its astronauts to space – and continue to invest hundreds of millions of dollars into the Russian economy rather than our own._





_Interior of the Crew Dragon. Image credit: SpaceX_

It’s ridiculous. The Commercial Cargo program is working great, and the industry partners for the Commercial Crew program are ready and roaring to go if we just keep funding them. The cost-saving of functional space taxis is nearly immediate: just three fully-loaded flights would save more than Congress is currently quibbling at allocating for the upcoming budget year. With the constant short-changing of the Commercial Crew Program, the only logical conclusion is that Congress doesn’t really want an American-developed, -constructed, and -operated space taxi, but a second-hand Russian Soyuz.

If we just fully fund the Commercial Crew Program for one year, we’ll be done and have a pair of space taxis to transport astronauts to the International Space Station. Suck it up and pay out, Congress: we’ve waited for the CST-100 and the Crew Dragon for too long already.

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## Hamartia Antidote

NASA Spacecraft Confirms Long-Held Suspicion Of Neon In The Moon's Atmosphere : SCIENCE : Tech Times

Neon lights on the moon? Not quite, but NASA scientists say data from a lunar orbiter has confirmed the presence of neon in our cosmic companion's atmosphere.

NASA's Lunar Atmosphere and Dust Environment Explorer spacecraft, or Ladee, which spent seven months in orbit around the moon in late 2013, made the first-ever detection of neon in the thin lunar atmosphere.

Thin is the operative word when it comes to the lunar atmosphere, properly an "exosphere" because it's so tenuous — around 100 trillion times less dense than our planet's atmosphere at sea level, space agency scientists point out.

The detection confirmed for the first time what researchers have suspected since the 1970s and the Apollo missions, that noble gases like helium and argon — and neon — are present above the surface of the moon.

Those three elements make up most of the lunar atmosphere, likely coming to the moon in the solar wind of particles that bathe both the moon and the Earth.

"We were very pleased to not only finally confirm [neon's] presence, but to show that it is relatively abundant," says Mehdi Benna of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md.

Measurements by the Neutral Mass Spectrometer instrument aboard the Ladee spacecraft showed the relative abundance of the three noble gases in the moon's exosphere changed at different times during the lunar day, the researchers said.

Argon peaked at the lunar sunrise, they explained, while neon was most abundant around 4 a.m. and helium at 1 a.m.

Not all of the gases are from the solar wind, they noted; some are likely coming from lunar rocks.

Argon results from the decay of naturally occurring radioactive potassium-40, found in rocks on the lunar surface.

Around 20 percent of the helium detected by Ladee "is coming from the moon itself, most likely as the result from the decay of radioactive thorium and uranium, also found in lunar rocks," says Benna.

Since most atmospheres around planets and moons in our solar systems are exospheres — the Earth being the notable exception — scientists are glad of any chance to learn more about them.

That chance may be a fleeting one when it comes to the moon, says Benna, as future human missions there, whether by robotic spacecraft like Ladee or perhaps permanent human settlement, could disturb the exosphere through rocket exhaust or emissions from a permanent base.

"It's critical to learn about the lunar exosphere before sustained human exploration substantially alters it," he says.

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## Fenrir

*NASA-Funded MOSES-2 Sounding Rocket to Investigate Coronal Heating*

MOSES-2 Sounding Rocket to Investigate Coronal Heating | NASA





_Engineers work on the final steps of integrating the MOSES-2 sounding rocket payload. The rocket, which will launch from White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico August 25, is carrying an instrument called the Multi-Order Solar EUV Spectrograph, or MOSES-2. This instrument will be used to take images of the sun in extreme ultraviolet light on its 15-minute flight into space. Taking these kinds of images is impossible from the ground, since Earth’s atmosphere blocks all extreme ultraviolet light .Credits: NASA_

A NASA-funded sounding rocket is getting ready to launch to give insight into one of the biggest mysteries in solar physics—the fact the sun's atmosphere is some 1,000 times hotter than its surface. The mission, developed by scientists and students at Montana State University in Bozeman, Montana, will make a 15-minute journey into space on a Black Brant IX suborbital sounding rocket. During its trip, it will take images of the sun in the extreme ultraviolet, or EUV, which can't be seen from the ground due to Earth’s EUV-blocking atmosphere.

The Multi-Order Solar EUV Spectrograph, or MOSES-2, launch will be investigating the transition region of the sun, the layer of material where the photosphere—the layer of the sun we see—becomes the corona.

“The transition region is a pretty interesting place,” said Charles Kankelborg, principal investigator for MOSES-2 at Montana State University, Bozeman, Montana.

The so-called coronal heating problem is based in the fact that the sun produces energy by fusing hydrogen at its center -- so material generally gets cooler as you move outward from that incredibly hot core. The one exception is the sun’s atmosphere, the corona. Though the corona is farther from the core than any other part of the sun, it is unexpectedly hotter than many of the layers below. Scientists have proposed several theories to explain this mystery heating, ranging from the possibility of thousands of mini solar flares to complicated magnetic wave processes.





_This graphic shows a model of the layers of the Sun, with approximate mileage ranges for each layer: for the inner layers, the mileage is from the sun's core; for the outer layers, the mileage is from the sun's surface. Credits: National Solar Observatory_

Kankelborg and his team are hoping to catch images of an explosive event in the transition region, one possible cause of coronal heating. Similar to a solar flare, such explosive events are thought to be caused by magnetic reconnection, a sometimes violent process in which magnetic field lines disconnect and reconfigure, releasing energy and heat. The MOSES team says that watching magnetic reconnection may well be easier in the transition region that it is in the larger solar flares.

“It’s very difficult to see the actual magnetic reconnection in a solar flare,” said Kankelborg. “Solar flares happen in the sun's upper atmosphere, the corona, where material is relatively sparse, so there’s not much stuff there to let off light and show us what’s happening.”

On the other hand, the transition region is relatively dense, meaning that researchers have a chance to observe magnetic reconnection more directly if they catch an explosive event.

The MOSES-2 instrument is finely tuned to see material in this region. Because different elements emit light at different temperatures and wavelengths, scientists can focus on a particular temperature—and therefore a particular layer of material—by taking images in a corresponding wavelength. MOSES-2 is configured to take pictures at 465 Angstroms, which represents material at a temperature of about 900,000 degrees Fahrenheit.

MOSES-2 will begin taking data when the rocket reaches a height of around 100 miles, 107 seconds after launch. Even 100 miles above the surface, there is still enough atmosphere that only about half of the sun’s EUV light is visible. However, at the peak of the rocket’s flight, nearly 187 miles in altitude, there is so little atmospheric material that any EUV light blocking is negligible. The total flight time is around 15 minutes, with about five minutes of data collection.

Though the period of data collection is short, sounding rockets are a valuable way to access space for a low cost.

“For about one percent of the cost of a satellite mission, you can spend five minutes taking data in space,” said Kankelborg. “It’s a great way to demonstrate cutting-edge instruments and new ways of doing science.”

The lower budget and shorter timeline of sounding rocket missions also make them ideal for university and student involvement.





_The MOSES-2 sounding rocket payload undergoes final testing in preparation for its August 25 launch from White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico. The sounding rocket will fly for 15 minutes, carrying the Multi-Order Soalr EUV Spectrograph, or MOSES-2, instrument. MOSES-2 will take images of the sun in extreme ultraviolet light from outside Earth’s atmosphere. It is impossible to take these kinds of images from Earth, since Earth’s atmosphere blocks all extreme ultraviolet light. Credits: NASA_

“In a university setting, it’s easier to run a research program based on sounding rocket missions than satellite missions,” said Kankelborg. “You can get students involved in building instruments hands-on.” Three students from the Montana State University MOSES-2 team will attend the launch at White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico.

The launch window for MOSES-2 opens on Aug. 25, and the team will wait for favorable weather conditions before launching. This is the second flight for the MOSES instrument. In 2006, MOSES flew on a sounding rocket to make similar observations of the sun, but in a different wavelength. The team plans to fly MOSES a third time in 2018 along with a new spectrograph to make more observations of the transition region.

The MOSES-2 launch is supported through NASA’s Sounding Rocket Program at the Goddard Space Flight Center’s Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia. NASA’s Heliophysics Division manages the sounding rocket program.

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## Fenrir

*On Course to the Stars: James Webb Space Telescope Shaping Up for 2018 Launch*

On Course to the Stars: James Webb Space Telescope Shaping Up for 2018 Launch « AmericaSpace





_From ESA: “This image shows two polished test mirror segments being inspected by an optical engineer: one segment with the gold coating already applied, the other without. In the meantime, the coating of all 18 mirrors has been completed.” Photo Credit: NASA/C. Gunn_

While the Hubble Space Telescope (HST) recently celebrated 25 years in orbit and keeps returning astounding images of our universe, another space telescope continues to undergo rounds of testing and design throughout this year. The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), a collaboration between NASA, the European Space Agency (ESA), and the Canadian Space Agency (CSA), recently completed its first round of “pathfinder” tests. In addition, a NASA publication announced that the telescope’s Integrated Science Instrument Module (ISIM) has entered its final sequence of pre-delivery environmental tests, while Northrop Grumman has made further progress on designing the primary mirror’s backplane support structure.

ESA also showcased a photo of the telescope’s test mirror segments. Because the telescope would be too heavy to launch if its mirror was conventionally fabricated in one single piece, the mirror will consist of 18 relatively lightweight, gold-coated, hexagonal-shaped segments. A special telescope requires a special design, and the James Webb Space Telescope underscores that sentiment.

While Hubble operates at near-infrared, visible light, and ultraviolet wavelengths in low-Earth orbit, JWST will operate near the second Lagrangian point (L2) in a “halo” orbit (approximately 930,000 miles from Earth), and mainly in near- to mid-infrared wavelengths. Some of the telescope’s components will require extreme cooling to function properly, and it will employ an innovative layered sunshield described as being able to “[attenuate] heat from the Sun more than a million times.” Because of the extreme environment the telescope will be exposed to, its components must undergo extensive testing prior to its launch, scheduled to take place in October 2018 aboard an Ariane 5 launch vehicle from Europe’s Spaceport in Kourou, French Guiana. When deployed and operational, it will be the largest space telescope (approximately the size of a Boeing 737, with its large sunshield deployed), and undoubtedly the most complex of its kind.

Here is a summary of the progress recently made on JWST.

*First pathfinder test completed:* NASA announced that the first of three pathfinder tests is completed. According to the space agency, the tests “ … are designed to verify the operation of the support and test equipment as well as check critical alignment and test procedures, train personnel, and improve test efficiency in preparation for the final, full scale flight testing of JWST scheduled for Winter, 2016-2017.”





_From NASA: “The sunshield on NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope is the largest part of the observatory—five layers of thin, silvery membrane that must unfurl reliably in space. The precision in which the tennis-court sized sunshield has to open must be no more than a few centimeters different from its planned position. In this photo, engineers and scientists examine the sunshield layers on this full-sized test unit.” Photo Credit: Alex Evers/Northrop Grumman Corporation_

The first test, designated Optical Ground Support Equipment Test 1 (OGSE1), was conducted in a large vacuum chamber at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas. NASA reported that during this time, engineers operated test equipment essential to JWST with success, including the Center of Curvature Optical Assembly (COCOA) interferometer system, a photogrammetry system, and over 500 thermal sensors and cryogenic accelerometers. The COCOA system is especially important in that it helps the telescope produce properly aligned single images.

These tests were conducted at similar conditions to what the telescope will actually experience at L2. NASA stated, “JWST will operate under high vacuum and at a nominal temperature of about 40K (-387F) as the observatory is shadowed from the Sun’s heat by its large sunshield.” Analyses of these test results are currently underway.

More rounds of tests will be ordered well before the telescope is launched into space. OGSE2 is scheduled for fall this year and, according to NASA, “will add the flight Aft-Optics-System (AOS) incorporating the flight tertiary and fine steering mirrors as well as a set of precisely located sources (AOS Source Plate Assembly, or ASPA) which will be imaged through the telescope system.” OGSE2 is scheduled for spring 2016.

*ISIM enters final round of environmental tests:* JWST’s Integrated Science Instrument Module (ISIM) has reached a major milestone: Its final pre-delivery environmental tests. According to NASA these tests will verify how well the ISIM, which carries JWST’s scientific instruments, will stand up to stressors including but not limited to launch, electromagnetic compatibility with launch and in-flight equipment, and extreme conditions at L2.





_NASA photo, 2014: “The James Webb Space Telescope’s ISIM structure recently endured a ‘gravity sag test’ as it was rotated in what looked like giant cube in a NASA clean room.” The ISIM is entering its final round of environmental tests. Photo Credit: NASA/C. Gunn_

In June, the ISIM completed the first round of the final tests, which included vibration tests of the “ISIM prime” module. The ISIM will soon undergo Electromagnetic Interference/Electromagnetic Compatibility (EMI/EMC) tests, and an extensive cryo-vacuum test to duplicate the conditions the component will experience in space. These tests are scheduled to be complete in early 2016; after completion, the ISIM will be delivered to NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center to be integrated with JWST’s Optical Telescope Element.

NASA stated that following two successful cryo-vacuum campaigns, the ISIM underwent upgrades bringing it to full flight readiness (a full list of these upgrades is included in this NASA publication). At present time, NASA reports that the ISIM is in is “full final state” before the telescope’s launch.





_From NASA on Flickr: “This rendering of the James Webb Space Telescope is current to 2015.” Image Credit: Northrop Grumman Corporation_

*JWST’s backplane support structure takes shape:* JWST’s primary mirror backplane support structure (PMBSS) has been referred to as its all-important “skeleton.” Because the telescope would be too heavy to launch if its mirror was fabricated in one piece, its mirrors must be folded and stowed on launch in order to fit into an Ariane 5’s fairing (the Ariane 5 ECA has a diameter of five meters). Northrop Grumman has been making progress on assembly of this structure, which has a center that supports 12 mirror segments, with two “wings” that support three mirrors each. The PMBSS will also house the ISIM, and too will be exposed to extreme low-temperature conditions in deep space.

At present time, NASA has divulged that “assembly and alignment of the telescope structure had been completed,” and is undergoing performance testing. The structure will be shipped to Goddard, where it will have its 18 mirror segments installed in a painstaking process employing robotic arms. In early 2016, it will receive the ISIM component. NASA announced they will broadcast the placement of the mirror segments live from Goddard’s cleanroom; those interested can check out the “WebbCam” at JWST’s website (jwst.nasa.gov).

*ESA showcases photo of test mirror segments:* JWST will capture light using a mirror assembly with a diameter of 6.5 meters. ESA, who will be operating JWST with NASA and CSA, emphasized why this large mirror and the low operating temperatures are crucial: “The telescope and the instruments will be kept permanently in the shadow of an enormous sunshield and maintained at temperatures around or lower than –233 °C [-387 °F] . These combined attributes of a very large mirror and very low operating temperatures are crucial for these infrared measurements of very distant stars and galaxies.”

ESA stated that the 18 mirrors will be constructed from beryllium, which was described as being “lightweight yet strong.” The mirrors will then be coated with a thin, reflective gold layer, and will be protected by glass. When completed, mirrors will be mounted on the PMBSS; its two wings will be folded to fit inside the Ariane 5’s fairing. Following launch the telescope will “spread its wings,” and unfold to its full diameter.

A full list of design milestones completed, and ones in the pipeline waiting to be completed, can be found on NASA’s JWST website.

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## Fenrir

*Watching NASA Crash a Bunch of Stuff Is the Best Use of Tax Dollars*






Real-life crashes are terrifying, but simulated crashes are not only important for safety research, they’re also really, really fun to watch. So NASA’s Langley Research Center posted this montage of crash tests that’s as good a way as any to start a Tuesday morning.






Originally built way back in 1965 to test the lunar landing module and touchdown procedures for the Apollo moon missions, the 240-foot high, 400-foot long Landing Impact and Research Facility at NASA’s Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia, is now used for crashing everything from rover landers, to planes, to helicopters.

It almost looks like the ultimate toy for anyone who deliberately put their Hot Wheels cars or toy trains on a crash course as a kid. But there’s some legitimate science being done at this facility. Which means that, yes, people actually get paid to crash stuff here—best job in the world

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## Fenrir

*Back to the Ice Giants: Proposed New Mission Would Re-Visit Uranus or Neptune (or Both!)*

Back to the Ice Giants: Proposed New Mission Would Re-Visit Uranus or Neptune (or Both!) « AmericaSpace





_Uranus (left) and Neptune (right). These two ice giants and their many moons are awaiting further exploration. Image Credit: NASA_

The outer Solar System has been a busy place lately, with the ongoing Cassini mission at Saturn and New Horizons’ recent spectacular flyby of Pluto. Literally in-between those two worlds, however, it has been quiet for a long time now – the last time the ice giants Uranus and Neptune were visited was 26 years ago yesterday, when the Voyager 2 spacecraft flew past Neptune. There have been no new missions to these worlds since then, but if a *new proposed mission* gets the green light, that may change in the not-too-distant future.

Jim Green, head of NASA’s planetary sciences, announced that NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) will now be studying a possible flagship mission to return to Uranus and/or Neptune. The news was announced at the *Outer Planets Assessment Group meeting* in Laurel, Maryland.





_The rings of Uranus. Like Saturn, Uranus and Neptune (as well as Jupiter) are known to have ring systems, but they are much fainter and less prominent. Image Credit: Lawrence Sromovsky (Univ. Wisconsin-Madison)/Keck Observatory_

“I’ve asked [the Jet Propulsion Laboratory] to initiate an ice giant study,” Green said.

NASA’s director of planetary science, – See more at: NASA To Study Uranus, Neptune Orbiters - SpaceNews.com it goes forward, this would be the next major Solar System mission since the *Mars 2020 Rover* and the *Europa Multiple Flyby Mission* (formerly called Europa Clipper). There is also the Juno mission currently en route to Jupiter, but it is scheduled to end by 2018. Flagship missions are larger and more complex than smaller-scale missions, designed for in-depth, ongoing study of planets and moons. Previous ones have included Cassini, Galileo and Voyager. The Cassini mission will also end in 2017, when the fuel finally runs out and the spacecraft plunges into the gas giant’s atmosphere, as planned. This new mission, if approved, should cost less than $2 billion, according to Green.

The as-yet unnamed mission could use the massive Space Launch System (SLS) rocket, now being built and tested, to get to Uranus or Neptune faster than was previously possible, although would probably still be later in the 2020s. Even, it would be unlikely to close the so-called “50-year gap,” the time between the last visit to the ice giants and the predicted return to them.

There was one previous mission proposal to return to Neptune, called Argo, but it never got off the ground due to a limited supply of plutonium, which missions to the outer Solar System use since there is not enough solar energy available at such great distances from the Sun. Argo could have launched in a timeframe of 2015 to 2020, but it is now too late for that. Argo would have required gravity assists from Jupiter and Saturn to speed up the spacecraft, but that is no longer an option at this late stage. There is now, however, funding again for plutonium, making such long journey possible again. Of course, all of this is dependant on funding, as well.





_Neptune’s largest moon Triton has unusual “cantaloupe” terrain and geysers of nitrogen. Photo Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech_

Just like the Jupiter and Saturn systems, Uranus and Neptune are of great interest to planetary scientists as they are also like miniature solar systems, with many moons of wide geological variety. They are similar in composition, with atmospheres composed primarily of hydrogen and helium, along with traces of hydrocarbons and possibly nitrogen, as well as water, methane and ammonia ices. The interiors are mostly ice and rock. Altogether, Neptune has at least 14 known moons and Uranus has 27.

Triton, Neptune’s largest moon, has active plumes or “geysers” of nitrogen erupting from ice volcanoes (cryovolcanoes). Something like the geysers on Saturn’s moon Enceladus, except those one are spewing water vapor and ice particles instead of nitrogen. So far, Triton has only been visited by one spacecraft, Voyager, and only one side was imaged in high-resolution. Even so, scientists have already seen tantalizing glimpses of this fascinating world, with weird “cantaloupe” terrain and the geysers as well as a possible subsurface ocean. The major science objectives of studying Triton closer include the interior structure, surface geology, surface composition and atmosphere, the plumes and Triton’s interaction with Neptune’s magnetosphere. Due to the scarcity of craters, Triton’s surface is thought to be quite young, only about 10-100 million years, meaning that the moon is still geologically active. Triton is also thought to possible be a dwarf planet captured by Neptune’s gravity, rather than forming in place, due to its unusual retrograde orbit.

The five main moons of Uranus are Miranda, Ariel, Umbriel, Titania, and Oberon. They’re combined mass would be less than half that of Triton. The largest, Titania, has a radius less than half that of our own Moon. They don’t appear to be geologically active now, but Miranda has obvious signs of past activity, with deep canyons, terraced layers and a chaotic variation in surface ages and features. It looks like bits of different moons all randomly mashed together. The moon also has the tallest known cliff in the Solar System, Verona Rupes, which is 3-6 miles (5-10 kilometers) in height.





_Uranus’ moon Miranda shows signs of past geological activity, with deep canyons and other chaotic terrain. Photo Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech_

There is an *extensive overview* of the scientific goals of OPAG, including the continued study of Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune and geologically active moons such as Europa, Enceladus, Titan, Io, Ganymede and Triton. Many of these moons are known or suspected to have subsurface oceans of water, making them potentially habitable and prime targets for astrobiology and the search for evidence of life elsewhere in the Solar System, even if just microscopic. Some of the primary goals include:


Study origin and evolution of our Solar System – giant planet migration, with major complementarity with exoplanets
Investigate habitability of icy worlds – to gain insight into the origin of life on earth
Understand the dynamic nature of processes in our Solar System – importance of time domain
Explore giant planet processes and properties
Use giant planets to further our understanding of other planets and extrasolar planetary systems
Determine giant planets’ influences on habitability
Before moving forward, the proposed mission will need to be endorsed by planetary scientists in the 2022 decadal.

“I’m sure they will,” Green said. “They’re very worthy.”

Uranus and Neptune are both jewels in the outer Solar System, just waiting for further exploration; if the new proposal becomes reality, we may get a chance to do just that after all. It was once thought that the outer Solar System was a relatively dead place geologically speaking, too far from the Sun for much if any activity to be going on. But as the in-depth studies of Jupiter and Saturn have shown, that is not the case at all, with a wide variety of worlds including ones with oceans under their surfaces. Very likely, and has been hinted at so far, the same can be said about the Uranus and Neptune systems as well.

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## Hamartia Antidote

Dawn spacecraft sends sharpest images of Ceres yet | ExtremeTech






NASA’s Dawn spacecraft has been sending back images of the dwarf planet Ceres for several months now, but the latest are the clearest ones to date. Dawn entered close orbit of Ceres back on March 6th. The planet is now believed to be 584 miles in diameter (down from a pre-mission estimate of 590). It’s located in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter, which makes it the only dwarf planet inside the orbit of Pluto. This new set of photos, taken from an orbital altitude of 915 miles, show off Ceres’ tall, conical mountain, as well as some braided fractures and the appearance of crater formation.

“Dawn is performing flawlessly in this new orbit as it conducts its ambitious exploration. The spacecraft’s view is now three times as sharp as in its previous mapping orbit, revealing exciting new details of this intriguing dwarf planet,” said Marc Rayman, Dawn’s chief engineer and mission director at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, California, in a statement.






Currently, Dawn can record and send back images in 11-day cycles, each of which consists of 14 orbits. NASA said the spacecraft is using its framing camera to map the surface of Ceres for 3D modeling, and that each image has a resolution of 450 feet per pixel and represents less than one percent of the surface. The spacecraft is also using its visible and infrared spectrometer to collect mineral data.

This video, released a few weeks ago, lets you tour the surface of Ceres and get a closer look at the mysterious bright spots in the Occator crater and the aforementioned cone-shaped mountain:

That mountain should have roughly the same four-mile elevation as the highest mountain in the US: Mount McKinley in Denali National Park, Alaska.

“This mountain is among the tallest features we’ve seen on Ceres to date,” said Dawn science team member Paul Schenk, a geologist at the Lunar and Planetary Institute, Houston, in a statement from JPL. “It’s unusual that it’s not associated with a crater. Why is it sitting in the middle of nowhere? We don’t know yet, but we may find out with closer observations.”

As for the bright spots, the jury is still out; so far the craft has not found evidence consistent with ice. “The science team is continuing to evaluate the data and discuss theories about these bright spots at Occator,” said Chris Russell, Dawn’s principal investigator at the University of California, Los Angeles. “We are now comparing the spots with the reflective properties of salt, but we are still puzzled by their source. We look forward to new, higher-resolution data from the mission’s next orbital phase.”

Beginning in late October, the craft will begin spiraling down to an even lower orbit of just 230 miles. Maybe by then we’ll finally get some answers about those bright spots. Ceres has some other mysteries as well; for example, it’s the only asteroid known to have been rounded by its own gravity, thanks to its extreme mass.

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## Fenrir

*New Horizons Locks Onto Next Target: Let's Explore the Kuiper Belt!*






We don’t have the funding but we have the target: the New Horizons spacecraft will adjust its course to make a flyby of Kuiper Belt Object MU69 in January 2019. This will be the most distant world ever explored.

The New Horizons spacecraft completed its primary mission by making a flyby of the dwarf planet Pluto and taking extensive photographs and measurements about the little system and its collection of moons. It collected so much data, we’ll be downlinking the data into the Fall of 2016! But like every NASA mission, the space agency likes to squeeze as much science as possible out of every gram of robot and drop of propellent.

The extended mission has not yet been funded, but to be fuel-efficient the team needs to pick a target and adjust New Horizons’ trajectory now. 2014 MU69, nicknamed PT1 for “Potential Target 1,” is a tiny, dim world (magnitude 26.8) of an estimated 30 to 45 kilometers (19 to 28 miles) diameter, which is roughly the size of Pluto’s mid-sized moons Hydra and Nix and ten times larger than most comets. By mass it’s 1,000 times larger than Rosetta’s Comet 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko and 1/10,000th the mass of Pluto. MU69 is easier to get to than the other lead contender, 2014 PN70, which means the team will have more flexibility to tweak the trajectory when closer to the object. But most importantly, it’s a totally different type of Kuiper Belt Object than Pluto is, giving us our first up-close look at a different type of object. New Horizons Principal Investigator Alan Stern gushes over the selection:

_“2014 MU69 is a great choice because it is just the kind of ancient KBO, formed where it orbits now, that the Decadal Survey desired us to fly by. Moreover, this KBO costs less fuel to reach [than other candidate targets], leaving more fuel for the flyby, for ancillary science, and greater fuel reserves to protect against the unforeseen.

New Horizons was originally designed to fly beyond the Pluto system and explore additional Kuiper Belt objects. The spacecraft carries extra hydrazine fuel for a KBO flyby; its communications system is designed to work from far beyond Pluto; its power system is designed to operate for many more years; and its scientific instruments were designed to operate in light levels much lower than it will experience during the 2014 MU69 flyby.”_

Because we think that Kuiper Belt Objects haven’t been heated or changed much in the 4.6 billion year history of our Solar System, we’re optimistic that this little world will be a timecapsule into what the outer edges looked light while planets were busy colliding and accreting in the inner solar system. New Horizons science team member John Spencer explains:

_“There’s so much that we can learn from close-up spacecraft observations that we’ll never learn from Earth, as the Pluto flyby demonstrated so spectacularly. The detailed images and other data that New Horizons could obtain from a KBO flyby will revolutionize our understanding of the Kuiper Belt and KBOs.”_

The New Horizons spacecraft will be making a series of burns in late October and early November to set it on a trajectory to encounter MU69. The closest approach is anticipated for January 1, 2019, although that may shift with later corrections.The closest approach of the flyby will when the object is nearly 6.5 billion kilometers (43.4 AU) from the Sun; we’re expecting that New Horizons will skim by the world even closer than it did to Pluto this summer.

We only discovered the world on June 26, 2014 as part of an intensive search for candidates for a New Horizons flyby. It’s so new to us that we aren’t even sure how long a year is for MU69! (We think it takes 293 Earth-years for it to make a single trip, but with a healthy margin of ±24 Earth-years error.) It also marks the shortest time between the discovery of a world and its exploration. Planetary astronomer Jason Cook teases that it’s downright rare for a discoverer to get to see their new worlds. More pragmatically, it’ll be interesting to see if the International Astronomical Union hustles to name it faster than its usual plodding process.





_2014 MU69 will be 6.5 billion kilometers from the sun when New Horizons flies past it in 2019. Image credit: NASA/JHUAPL/SwRI/Alex Parker_

Along the way, New Horizons will be making opportunistic observations of any other Kuiper Belt Objects we can. Stern anticipates we might be able to see up to fifty other Kuiper Belt Objects. The observations will be simple — basic population characteristics, searching for binary objects, estimated sizes, and if we’re very lucky a few occultations of stars.






The extended mission to actually keep New Horizons operating with a human support team and time to send back data on the Deep Space Network isn’t actually approved yet. The science team will be writing and submitting a research proposal in 2016 for external review. John Grunsfeld, astronaut and chief of the NASA Science Mission Directorate, cautions:

_“Even as the New Horizon’s spacecraft speeds away from Pluto out into the Kuiper Belt, and the data from the exciting encounter with this new world is being streamed back to Earth, we are looking outward to the next destination for this intrepid explorer. While discussions whether to approve this extended mission will take place in the larger context of the planetary science portfolio, we expect it to be much less expensive than the prime mission while still providing new and exciting science.”_

Many space exploration missions do get extended missions — the Mars Opportunity rover’s primary mission ended after 90 days, and Cassini’s primary mission finished after four years back in 2008. However, if you want to help NASA get the political power of clear and loud public support, here’s how you can write to your Congressional representatives about approving the New Horizons extended mission.

After the flyby, the team hopes to keep New Horizons operating as it continues beyond the Kuiper Belt, following in the spirit of Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 as it discovers what lays beyond the edges of our Solar System.

The New Horizons spacecraft is in excellent condition with all systems behaving normally. Data downlinks resume on September 5, 2015, with new image releases anticipated every Friday into next year.

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## Fenrir

*NASA Just Sealed Six People In a Dome For a Year to Practice Mars*






Life on Mars may sound glamorous, but in reality it’s going to mean a lot of time crammed in a small bubble with a few other humans. This could end very badly. So to practice, NASA has taken to sticking people in domes and keeping them isolated for months on end.

The latest isolation experiment started yesterday. Six willing humans — an astrobiologist, a physicist, a pilot, an architect, a journalist and a soil scientist — entered this lovely 36 by 20 foot dome, located near a barren volcano in Hawaii, at 3pm local time on Friday. They’ll remain in the dome for a year, eating powdered cheese, smelling each others’ BO, and slowly abandoning any sense of personal space. If we’re lucky, they’ll all emerge unscathed, perhaps even friends.





_Not too shabby on the inside! Image via Getty_





_The happy crew. Image via Getty_

There’s good reason to be optimistic. The last time NASA tried this experiment, everyone seemed to get on just fine, with no attempted space-murders or breakouts. And let’s not forget the Mars 500 project, in which six-person crews were locked inside terrifying steel tubes for 18 months. Confinement may be uncomfortable, but when the ultimate goal is intergalactic domination, humans seem willing to endure a lot.

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## Fenrir

*Astronaut Kjell Lindgren Corrals the Supply of Fresh Fruit*
NASA astronaut Kjell Lindgren corrals the supply of fresh fruit that arrived on the Kounotori 5 H-II Transfer Vehicle (HTV-5.)


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## Fenrir

*New, Ultrathin Optical Devices Shape Light in Exotic Ways*

New, Ultrathin Optical Devices Shape Light in Exotic Ways | NASA





_This schematic drawing shows how a "metasurface" can generate and focus radially polarized light.
Credits: Amir Arbabi/Faraon Lab/Caltech_

Researchers have developed innovative flat, optical lenses as part of a collaboration between NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory and the California Institute of Technology, both in Pasadena, California. These optical components are capable of manipulating light in ways that are difficult or impossible to achieve with conventional optical devices.

The new lenses are not made of glass. Instead, silicon nanopillars are precisely arranged into a honeycomb pattern to create a "metasurface" that can control the paths and properties of passing light waves.

Applications of these devices include advanced microscopes, displays, sensors, and cameras that can be mass-produced using the same techniques used to manufacture computer microchips.

"These flat lenses will help us to make more compact and robust imaging assemblies," said Mahmood Bagheri, a microdevices engineer at JPL and co-author of a new Nature Nanotechnology study describing the devices.

"Currently, optical systems are made one component at a time, and the components are often manually assembled," said Andrei Faraon, an assistant professor of applied physics and materials science at Caltech, and the study's principal investigator. "But this new technology is very similar to the one used to print semiconductor chips onto silicon wafers, so you could conceivably manufacture millions of systems such as microscopes or cameras at a time."

Seen under a scanning electron microscope, the new metasurfaces that the researchers created resemble a cut forest where only the stumps remain. Each silicon stump, or pillar, has an elliptical cross section, and by carefully varying the diameters of each pillar and rotating them around their axes, the scientists were able to simultaneously manipulate the phase and polarization of passing light.

Phase has to do with the separation between peaks of light waves; light waves in phase with each other combine to produce a single, more powerful wave. Manipulating its phase influences the degree to which a light ray bends, which in turn influences whether an image is in or out of focus. Polarization refers to the way some light waves vibrate only in a particular direction, whereas waves in natural sunlight vibrate in all directions. Manipulating the polarization of light is essential for the operation of advanced microscopes, cameras and displays; the control of polarization also enables simple gadgets such as 3-D glasses and polarized sunglasses.

"If you think of a modern microscope, it has multiple components that have to be carefully assembled inside," Faraon says. "But with our platform, we can actually make each of these optical components and stack them atop one another very easily using an automated process. Each component is just a millionth of a meter thick, or less than a hundredth of the thickness of a human hair. "

Additionally, the new, flat lenses can be used to modify the shape of light beams at will. Semiconductor lasers typically emit into elliptical beams that are really hard to work with, and the new metasurface optical components could replace expensive optical systems used to circularize the beams. The small size of these devices would also allow for more compact systems.

The team is currently working with industrial partners to create metasurfaces for use in commercial devices such as miniature cameras and spectrometers, but a limited number have already been produced for use in optical experiments by collaborating scientists in other disciplines.

The current work was supported by the Caltech/JPL President's and Director's Fund and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). Yu Horie was supported by the Department of Energy's Energy Frontier Research Center program and a Japan Student Services Organization fellowship. The device nanofabrication was performed in the Kavli Nanoscience Institute at Caltech. JPL is a division of Caltech.




*This is Exactly What New Horizons saw Zipping by Pluto*






When the New Horizons spacecraft raced past Pluto this summer, it constantly snapped photographs both coming and going. This is exactly what it saw while zooming past the frozen dwarf planet. Whoa.

We’ve seen fan-art of what the probe might have seen in a simulation interpolated from public image releases. But now NASA is providing their version of what it would be like to hitch a ride on the spacecraft as it skedaddled through the system. New Horizons skimmed just 12,500 kilometers (7,800 miles) over Pluto at roughly 14.5 kilometers per second (32,435 miles per hour), a multi-year journey culminating in just a few days of data. From Charon tugging Pluto around its orbit, soaring over the frozen plains of Tombaugh Regio, to the glow of the nightsidebefore finally fading into a crescent, the spacecraft’s journey is summed up in just one word: gorgeous.






The New Horizons probe is alive and well, scooting out to keep exploring the Kuiper Belt. Image releases will resume this September, with new data downlinking throughout 2016 for even morediscoveries. The spacecraft will be making orbital corrections this fall to redirect to its next target, the tiny 2014 Mu69.

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## Armstrong

Technogaianist said:


> *New, Ultrathin Optical Devices Shape Light in Exotic Ways*
> 
> New, Ultrathin Optical Devices Shape Light in Exotic Ways | NASA
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> _This schematic drawing shows how a "metasurface" can generate and focus radially polarized light.
> Credits: Amir Arbabi/Faraon Lab/Caltech_
> 
> Researchers have developed innovative flat, optical lenses as part of a collaboration between NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory and the California Institute of Technology, both in Pasadena, California. These optical components are capable of manipulating light in ways that are difficult or impossible to achieve with conventional optical devices.
> 
> The new lenses are not made of glass. Instead, silicon nanopillars are precisely arranged into a honeycomb pattern to create a "metasurface" that can control the paths and properties of passing light waves.
> 
> Applications of these devices include advanced microscopes, displays, sensors, and cameras that can be mass-produced using the same techniques used to manufacture computer microchips.
> 
> "These flat lenses will help us to make more compact and robust imaging assemblies," said Mahmood Bagheri, a microdevices engineer at JPL and co-author of a new Nature Nanotechnology study describing the devices.
> 
> "Currently, optical systems are made one component at a time, and the components are often manually assembled," said Andrei Faraon, an assistant professor of applied physics and materials science at Caltech, and the study's principal investigator. "But this new technology is very similar to the one used to print semiconductor chips onto silicon wafers, so you could conceivably manufacture millions of systems such as microscopes or cameras at a time."
> 
> Seen under a scanning electron microscope, the new metasurfaces that the researchers created resemble a cut forest where only the stumps remain. Each silicon stump, or pillar, has an elliptical cross section, and by carefully varying the diameters of each pillar and rotating them around their axes, the scientists were able to simultaneously manipulate the phase and polarization of passing light.
> 
> Phase has to do with the separation between peaks of light waves; light waves in phase with each other combine to produce a single, more powerful wave. Manipulating its phase influences the degree to which a light ray bends, which in turn influences whether an image is in or out of focus. Polarization refers to the way some light waves vibrate only in a particular direction, whereas waves in natural sunlight vibrate in all directions. Manipulating the polarization of light is essential for the operation of advanced microscopes, cameras and displays; the control of polarization also enables simple gadgets such as 3-D glasses and polarized sunglasses.
> 
> "If you think of a modern microscope, it has multiple components that have to be carefully assembled inside," Faraon says. "But with our platform, we can actually make each of these optical components and stack them atop one another very easily using an automated process. Each component is just a millionth of a meter thick, or less than a hundredth of the thickness of a human hair. "
> 
> Additionally, the new, flat lenses can be used to modify the shape of light beams at will. Semiconductor lasers typically emit into elliptical beams that are really hard to work with, and the new metasurface optical components could replace expensive optical systems used to circularize the beams. The small size of these devices would also allow for more compact systems.
> 
> The team is currently working with industrial partners to create metasurfaces for use in commercial devices such as miniature cameras and spectrometers, but a limited number have already been produced for use in optical experiments by collaborating scientists in other disciplines.
> 
> The current work was supported by the Caltech/JPL President's and Director's Fund and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). Yu Horie was supported by the Department of Energy's Energy Frontier Research Center program and a Japan Student Services Organization fellowship. The device nanofabrication was performed in the Kavli Nanoscience Institute at Caltech. JPL is a division of Caltech.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> *This is Exactly What New Horizons saw Zipping by Pluto*
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> When the New Horizons spacecraft raced past Pluto this summer, it constantly snapped photographs both coming and going. This is exactly what it saw while zooming past the frozen dwarf planet. Whoa.
> 
> We’ve seen fan-art of what the probe might have seen in a simulation interpolated from public image releases. But now NASA is providing their version of what it would be like to hitch a ride on the spacecraft as it skedaddled through the system. New Horizons skimmed just 12,500 kilometers (7,800 miles) over Pluto at roughly 14.5 kilometers per second (32,435 miles per hour), a multi-year journey culminating in just a few days of data. From Charon tugging Pluto around its orbit, soaring over the frozen plains of Tombaugh Regio, to the glow of the nightsidebefore finally fading into a crescent, the spacecraft’s journey is summed up in just one word: gorgeous.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> The New Horizons probe is alive and well, scooting out to keep exploring the Kuiper Belt. Image releases will resume this September, with new data downlinking throughout 2016 for even morediscoveries. The spacecraft will be making orbital corrections this fall to redirect to its next target, the tiny 2014 Mu69.



We're searching for alien life forms on other planets when we've got a certain Nordic nymph from heaven right here in our midst !  

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I was talking about Sven !

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## Fenrir

Armstrong said:


> I was talking about Sven !

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## Fenrir

*Space Station Bio Includes a Bonanza of Biological Research*

Space Station Bio Includes a Bonanza of Biological Research | NASA





_The medaka fish is studied on the International Space Station to examine the impact of microgravity on its bones. Impacts to the medaka’s bones in microgravity may help scientists determine the reasoning for a decrease in astronaut bone density during spaceflight
Credits: Philipp Keller, Stelzer Group, EMBL_

Flutter, slither, swim or crawl your way over to this month’s International Space Station look at biological research. We’ll be highlighting the study of life and the technology that supports this science throughout September. Researchers examine biological systems in space to understand the basic and complex mechanisms of life on Earth and to determine the best methods for keeping astronauts healthy during spaceflight.

Fruit flies, roundworms, medaka fish and rodents are a few examples of animals studied aboard the station. Scientists investigate model organisms like these because they are easy to reproduce and study in a laboratory, and can provide insight into the basic cellular and molecular mechanisms of the human body. 





_A fruit fly infected with fungus. Fruit flies that developed aboard the International Space Station showed weakened immunity to fungal infections post-spaceflight. Credits: Deborah Kimbrell_

Biological studies aboard the space station also include research of cells, plants, genetics, biochemistry and human physiology, to name a few. This month, we’ll note the study of microbes, which can threaten crew health and jeopardize equipment aboard the space station. If scientists can understand how microbes behave in microgravity, the same techniques can be used to identify microbes in hospitals, pharmaceutical laboratories and other environments on Earth where microbe identification is crucial.

We’ll learn more about research on cells of the immune system in microgravity, something scientists are studying to better understand how human immune systems change as they age. Also in September, you can cheers the space station as we unveil how the study of plants in space can lead to air purification technology that keeps the air clean in wine cellars, and is also used in homes and medical facilities to help prevent mold.





_NASA plans to grow food on future spacecraft and on other planets as a food supplement for astronauts. Fresh food, such as vegetables, provide essential vitamins and nutrients that will help enable sustainable deep space pioneering.
Credits: NASA_

There are a plethora of plants in space, meaning there are a plethora of plant studies aboard the station at any given time. Last month, NASA astronauts sampled fresh romaine lettuce aboard the space station for the first time. BRIC hardware has supported a variety of plant growth investigations aboard the space station, including the BRIC-19 investigation, which looks at the growth and development of _Arabidopsis thaliana_ seedlings in microgravity. There are many other plant growth studies that examine _A. thaliana_ in space, observing its reactions to light and the cellular processes that activate in the absence of gravity.

And finally, human physiology studies aboard the space station are paramount to enabling future exploration missions to an asteroid, Mars and beyond. NASA Astronaut Scott Kelly and Roscosmos Cosmonaut Mikhail Kornienko will reach the midpoint of their One-Year Mission in September and help researchers gain valuable data about human health and the effects of microgravity on the body over a period twice as long as a typical U.S. mission. In addition, the Twins Study includes ten separate investigations of identical twin astronauts Scott and Mark Kelly that will provide insight into the subtle changes that may occur in spaceflight as compared to Earth by studying two individuals who have the same genetics, but are in different environments for one year.

Formulate the ‘logical’ conclusion and follow the ‘bio’ happening on the space station throughout September. We will keep you informed of how the study of life in space improves life on Earth and will one day sustain life during deep space missions and on Mars or other planets.

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## Fenrir

*NASA Teams Up With Hoverboard Company to Build a Magnetic "Tractor Beam"*






When Arx Pax unveiled its “hoverboard” last year, we had a hunch that this was but the first demonstration of the company’s new magnetic field technology. Why was Arx Pax _really_messing around with magnets? For one, to build a tractor beam.

That’s right: Today, Arx Pax is announcing a new partnership with NASA, which wants to use hover engine technology to capture and manipulate micro-satellites. In other words, NASA and Arx Pax are going to try to create a magnetic tractor beam. A small one.

“NASA realized that this is a fundamental tool,” Arx Pax founder and CFO Greg Henderson told _Gizmodo_ over the phone. “What we’re providing NASA is a way of manipulating objects in space without touching them.”

But let’s back up a quick sec. For those who don’t remember, Arx Pax made its debut with the unveiling of the Hendo Hoverboard in 2014. That device—yes, it can indeed hover off the ground—was the first application of the company’s patent-pending Magnetic Field Architecture (MFA) technology.

The principle behind the board is simple: A ‘hover engine’ generates swirls of electricity in a conductive surface to produce a concentrated magnetic field. That magnetic field induces an opposing field in a conductive material below—and _voila_, liftoff. (It’s really not that easy, companies have been trying and failing to do this for years.)

The Hendo Hoverboard was on some levels a success, but it was no _Back to the Future_. The thing only worked on a special metallic surface, it made loud, screechy noises, and its battery life was pretty bad. But it was clear that the device was really just a proof-of-concept, and that Arx Pax had bigger plans in mind for MFA—for instance, levitating houses to protect them from earthquake damage, or using magnetic fields to attract satellites to one another.





_A CubeSat built at NASA’s Ames Research Center. Image Credit: NASA Ames_

In a statement issued today, Arx Pax says it’ll be working with NASA “to design a device with the ability to attract one object to another from a distance.” At this stage, the focus will be on linking up CubeSats — those lightweight, 10 by 10 cm satellites that NASA and other researchers are using to monitor the Earth, and that we may eventually deploy to explore distant worlds.

“CubeSats are in close proximity already,” Henderson says. “We’re trying to figure out how do you link them together, connect them, and move them around relative to one another.”

Whether we’re studying our planet’s climate or exploring the surface of an asteroid, there are obvious benefits to a coordinated team of satellites. But we shouldn’t get too excited just yet, because details of the project are very sparse—we don’t, for instance, know how Arx Pax and NASA are hoping to power said “tractor beam,” or what sorts of ranges we might be able to achieve. Still, it seems like a worthy project, and hey, if we ever hope to build epic, tractor-beam wielding, galaxy-trotting spaceships, we’ve gotta start somewhere.

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## Fenrir

*This Morning's AtlasV Launch Was Nothing Short of Stellar*






Special atmospheric conditions created amazing views for today’s United Launch Alliance launch as an Atlas V rocket carrying MUOS-4, the fourth Mobile User Objective System satellite for the U.S. Navy was successfully launched from Cape Canaveral at 6:18 a.m. EDT, just before sunrise.

What you can see above is the atmospheric smoke trail the rocket left behind as usual, but for now it became visible from the ground too because the sun lit it at a special angle, from under the horizon, creating a multicolored glowing plume.

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## Fenrir

*James Webb Space Telescope's ISIM Passes Severe-Sound Test*

JWST's ISIM Passes Severe-Sound Test

A critical part of NASA's James Webb Space Telescope successfully completed acoustic testing during the week of Aug. 3. The Integrated Science Instrument Module, or ISIM, passed all of the "severe sound" tests that engineers put it through.

The Integrated Science Instrument Module (ISIM) is one of three major elements that comprise the Webb Observatory flight system. The others are the Optical Telescope Element (OTE) and the Spacecraft Element (Spacecraft Bus and Sunshield).

The ISIM was subjected to the acoustic test at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. The ISIM was tested at five different sound levels to demonstrate it could survive the noise and vibrations it will experience when the Webb telescope is launched in 2018 aboard an Ariane 5 rocket. The sound experienced during launch comes primarily from the solid rocket motors of the launch vehicle.





_The ISIM structure wrapped up and waiting for sound testing in the acoustics chamber at NASA Goddard.
Credits: NASA/Desiree Stover
_
At Goddard, the engineers use the Acoustic Test Chamber, a 42-foot-tall chamber, with 6-foot-diameter speaker horns to replicate the launch environment. The horns use an altering flow of gaseous nitrogen to produce a sound level as high as 150 decibels for two-minute tests. That’s about the level of sound heard standing next to a jet engine during takeoff.





_The 6-foot-wide horns in this 42-foot-tall chamber can produce noise at levels as high as 150 dB.
Credits: NASA/Chris Gunn_

During the acoustics test, the speakers can still be heard outside of its insulated massive metal doors.

Following the acoustics test, the ISIM was pushed back into the Spacecraft Systems Development and Integration Facility (SSDIF) clean room so it could be un-bagged, and inspected. Once engineers made sure the ISIM passed the acoustics test, it was re-bagged and moved to the Electromagnetic Interference or EMI facility for electromagnetic interference testing.





_The wrapped up ISIM structure pushed back to the clean room post acoustics-test, to prepare for the EMI test.
Credits: NASA/Desiree Stover_
The ISIM is just one of the many Webb telescope components that continue to be tested as the observatory begins to come together this year.

The James Webb Space Telescope is the scientific successor to NASA's Hubble Space Telescope. It will be the most powerful space telescope ever built. Webb is an international project led by NASA with its partners, the European Space Agency and the Canadian Space Agency

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## Fenrir

*The Heat Goes On as Engineers Start Analysis on SLS Base Heating Test Data*

The Heat Goes On as Engineers Start Analysis on SLS Base Heating Test | NASA






Engineers at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, have successfully completed base heating testing on 2-percent scale models of the Space Launch System (SLS) propulsion system. SLS will be the most powerful rocket ever built for deep space missions, including to an asteroid placed in lunar orbit and ultimately to Mars. The SLS propulsion system uses two five-segment solid rocket boosters and four core stage RS-25 engines that burn liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen. Sixty-five hot-fire tests using the mini models provided data on the convective heating environments that the base of the rocket will experience during ascent. Engineers have many months ahead analyzing that data, which will be used to verify flight hardware design environments and set specifications for the design of the rocket's base thermal protection system. The thermal protection system at the base of the vehicle keeps major hardware, wiring and the crew safe from the extreme heat the boosters and engines create while burning on ascent. The models were designed, built and tested by Marshall engineers, in close collaboration with CUBRC Inc. of Buffalo, New York. Watch one of the tests.

_Image Credit: NASA/MSFC_

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## Fenrir

*NASA Soil Moisture Radar Ends Operations, Mission Science Continues*

NASA Soil Moisture Radar Ends Operations, Mission Science Continues | NASA





_NASA’s SMAP mission, launched in January to map global soil moisture and detect whether soils are frozen or thawed, continues to produce high-quality science measurements with one of its two instruments. Credits: NASA_

Mission managers for NASA's Soil Moisture Active Passive (SMAP) observatory have determined that its radar, one of the satellite’s two science instruments, can no longer return data. However, the mission, which was launched in January to map global soil moisture and detect whether soils are frozen or thawed, continues to produce high-quality science measurements supporting SMAP’s objectives with its radiometer instrument.

The SMAP mission is designed to help scientists understand the links between Earth's water, energy and carbon cycles and enhance our ability to monitor and predict natural hazards like floods and droughts. SMAP remains an important data source to aid Earth system modeling and studies. SMAP data have additional practical applications, including improved weather forecasting and crop yield predictions.

The SMAP spacecraft continues normal operations and the first data release of soil moisture products is expected in late September.

"Although some of the planned applications of SMAP data will be impacted by the loss of the radar, the SMAP mission will continue to produce valuable science for important Earth system studies," said Dara Entekhabi, SMAP Science Team lead at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge.

On July 7, SMAP’s radar stopped transmitting due to an anomaly involving the radar's high-power amplifier (HPA). The HPA is designed to boost the power level of the radar's pulse to more than 500 watts, ensuring the energy scattered from Earth's surface can be accurately measured.





_A three-day composite global map of surface soil moisture as retrieved from SMAP's radiometer instrument between Aug. 25-27, 2015.
Credits: NASA_

The SMAP project at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, California, formed an anomaly team to investigate the HPA issue and determine whether normal operation could be recovered. A series of diagnostic tests and procedures was performed on both the spacecraft and on the ground using flight spare parts.

Following an unsuccessful attempt on Aug. 24 to power up the radar unit, the project had exhausted all identified possible options for recovering nominal operation of the HPA and concluded the radar is likely not recoverable.

NASA has appointed a mishap investigation board to conduct a comprehensive review of the circumstances that led to the HPA anomaly in order to determine how the anomaly occurred and how such events can be prevented on future missions. JPL also will convene a separate failure review board that will work with the NASA investigation.

SMAP was launched Jan. 31 and began its science mission in April, releasing its first global maps of soil moisture on April 21. To date, the mission has collected more than four months of science data, almost three months with the radar operating. SMAP scientists plan to release beta-quality soil moisture data products at the end of September, with validated data planned for release in April 2016.

SMAP's radar allowed the mission's soil moisture and freeze-thaw measurements to be resolved to smaller regions of Earth – about 5.6 miles (9 kilometers) for soil moisture and 1.9 miles (3 kilometers) for freeze-thaw. Without the radar, the mission's resolving power will be limited to regions of almost 25 miles (40 kilometers) for soil moisture and freeze-thaw. The mission will continue to meet its requirements for soil moisture accuracy and will produce global soil moisture maps every two to three days.

SMAP’s active radar and passive radiometer instruments are designed to complement each other and mitigate the limitations of each measurement alone. The radar enabled high-resolution measurements of up to 1.9 miles, but with lower accuracy for sensing surface soil moisture. In contrast, the microwave radiometer is more accurate in its measurements but has lower resolution of about 25 miles. By combining the active and passive measurements, SMAP was designed to estimate soil moisture at a resolution of 5.6 miles.





_Credits: NASA_

The nearly three months of coincident measurements by the two instruments are a first of their kind. The combined data set allows scientists to assess the benefit of this type of combined measurement approach for future missions. Scientists now are developing algorithms to produce a freeze-thaw data product at 25-mile resolution from the radiometer data. They also are evaluating whether the 25-mile radiometer soil moisture resolution can be improved.

Based on the available SMAP mission data, scientists have identified other useful science measurements that can be derived from the radiometer data, such as sea surface salinity and high winds over the ocean surface. Over the next several months, the SMAP project and NASA will work to determine how to implement these new measurements into the project's data products.

SMAP is managed for NASA's Science Mission Directorate in Washington by JPL, with instrument hardware and science contributions made by NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. JPL built the spacecraft and is responsible for project management, system engineering, radar instrumentation, mission operations and the ground data system. Goddard is responsible for the radiometer instrument and science data products.


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## Fenrir

*'Hedgehog' Robots Hop, Tumble in Microgravity*

'Hedgehog' Robots Hop, Tumble in Microgravity | NASA





_A robot concept called Hedgehog could explore the microgravity environment of comets and asteroids by hopping and rolling around on them. See Hedgehog in action in the microgravity environment of a "vomit comet" parabolic flight._

Hopping, tumbling and flipping over are not typical maneuvers you would expect from a spacecraft exploring other worlds. Traditional Mars rovers, for example, roll around on wheels, and they can't operate upside-down. But on a small body, such as an asteroid or a comet, the low-gravity conditions and rough surfaces make traditional driving all the more hazardous.





_While a Mars rover can't operate upside down, the Hedgehog robot can function regardless of which side lands up.
Credits: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Stanford_

Enter Hedgehog: a new concept for a robot that is specifically designed to overcome the challenges of traversing small bodies. The project is being jointly developed by researchers at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California; Stanford University in Stanford, California; and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge.

"Hedgehog is a different kind of robot that would hop and tumble on the surface instead of rolling on wheels. It is shaped like a cube and can operate no matter which side it lands on," said Issa Nesnas, leader of the JPL team.

The basic concept is a cube with spikes that moves by spinning and braking internal flywheels. The spikes protect the robot's body from the terrain and act as feet while hopping and tumbling. 

"The spikes could also house instruments such as thermal probes to take the temperature of the surface as the robot tumbles," Nesnas said.

Two Hedgehog prototypes -- one from Stanford and one from JPL -- were tested aboard NASA's C-9 aircraft for microgravity research in June 2015. During 180 parabolas, over the course of four flights, these robots demonstrated several types of maneuvers that would be useful for getting around on small bodies with reduced gravity. Researchers tested these maneuvers on different materials that mimic a wide range of surfaces: sandy, rough and rocky, slippery and icy, and soft and crumbly.

"We demonstrated for the first time our Hedgehog prototypes performing controlled hopping and tumbling in comet-like environments," said Robert Reid, lead engineer on the project at JPL.

Hedgehog's simplest maneuver is a "yaw," or a turn in place. After pointing itself in the right direction, Hedgehog can either hop long distances using one or two spikes or tumble short distances by rotating from one face to another. Hedgehog typically takes large hops toward a target of interest, followed by smaller tumbles as it gets closer.

During one of the experiments on the parabolic flights, the researchers confirmed that Hedgehog can also perform a "tornado" maneuver, in which the robot aggressively spins to launch itself from the surface. This maneuver could be used to escape from a sandy sinkhole or other situations in which the robot would otherwise be stuck.

The JPL Hedgehog prototype has eight spikes and three flywheels. It weighs about 11 pounds (5 kilograms) by itself, but the researchers envision that it could weigh more than 20 pounds (9 kilograms) with instruments such as cameras and spectrometers. The Stanford prototype is slightly smaller and lighter, and it has shorter spikes.





_The Hedgehog robot, designed to explore the surfaces of comets and asteroids, can perform a "tornado" maneuver to spin and launch itself from the surface.
Credits: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Stanford_

Both prototypes maneuver by spinning and stopping three internal flywheels using motors and brakes. The braking mechanisms differ between the two prototypes. JPL's version uses disc brakes, and Stanford's prototype uses friction belts to stop the flywheels abruptly.

"By controlling how you brake the flywheels, you can adjust Hedgehog's hopping angle. The idea was to test the two braking systems and understand their advantages and disadvantages," said Marco Pavone, leader of the Stanford team, who originally proposed Hedgehog with Nesnas in 2011.

"The geometry of the Hedgehog spikes has a great influence on its hopping trajectory. We have experimented with several spike configurations and found that a cube shape provides the best hopping performance. The cube structure is also easier to manufacture and package within a spacecraft," said Benjamin Hockman, lead engineer on the project at Stanford.

The researchers are currently working on Hedgehog's autonomy, trying to increase how much the robots can do by themselves without instructions from Earth. Their idea is that an orbiting mothership would relay signals to and from the robot, similar to how NASA's Mars rovers Curiosity and Opportunity communicate via satellites orbiting Mars. The mothership would also help the robots navigate and determine their positions. 

The construction of a Hedgehog robot is relatively low-cost compared to a traditional rover, and several could be packaged together for flight, the researchers say. The mothership could release many robots at once or in stages, letting them spread out to make discoveries on a world never traversed before.





_NASA's C-9 aircraft for microgravity research gave two Hedgehog prototypes a ride in June 2015 to test their maneuvers.
Credits: NASA_

Hedgehog is currently in Phase II development through the NASA Innovative Advanced Concepts (NIAC) Program, and is led by Pavone. The flight development and testing were supported by NASA's Center Innovation Fund (CIF) and NASA's Flight Opportunities Program (FOP), which were led by Nesnas. NIAC, CIF and FOP are programs in NASA's Space Technology Mission Directorate, located at the agency's headquarters in Washington. JPL is managed by the California Institute of Technology for NASA. Stanford University, MIT and JPL collaborate on the project.

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## Fenrir

*Boeing Revamps Production Facility for Starliner Flights*

Boeing Revamps Production Facility for Starliner Flights | NASA

_By Steven Siceloff,
NASA's Kennedy Space Center, Fla._






Meet the CST-100 Starliner, the newly unveiled name of Boeing’s commercial crew transportation spacecraft. It's been designed with a focus on automated flight, reliable operation and frequent flights carrying NASA astronauts to the space station. It also may take paying customers to the awe-inspiring heights of low-Earth orbit and the unique sensation of sustained weightlessness.

NASA last year awarded contracts to Boeing and SpaceX to each develop systems that will safely and cost effectively transport astronauts to the International Space Station from the United States.

The CST-100 will be assembled and processed for launch at the revitalized Commercial Crew and Cargo Processing Facility, or C3PF, at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida. NASA had used the facility for 20 years as a shuttle processing hangar and for the extensive preps and testing of the space shuttle main engines in the engine shop.

"One hundred years ago we were on the dawn of the commercial aviation era and today, with the help of NASA, we're on the dawn of a new commercial space era," said Boeing's John Elbon, vice president and general manager of Space Exploration. "It's been such a pleasure to work hand-in-hand with NASA on this commercial crew development, and when we look back 100 years from this point, I’m really excited about what we will have discovered."

With the high bay of the C3PF expected to be complete in December 2015, engineers are building the structural test article for the Starliner in the remodeled engine shop. Though not scheduled to ever make it into space, the test version of the spacecraft will be put through a continuum of tests culminating with a pad abort test in 2017. It will be used as a pathfinder to prove the design Boeing and NASA's Commercial Crew Program worked together to develop is sound and can accomplish its missions.

For NASA, the main mission for Boeing's Starliner and the SpaceX Crew Dragon spacecraft is to re-establish an American launch capability for astronauts to use to reach the space station and make more use of its unique research environment. Experiments are conducted every day in orbit that will improve life on Earth and find answers to the challenges of deep space exploration so astronauts can undertake a successful journey to Mars in the future.





_Parts of the Boeing CST-100 Structural Test Article rest on test stands inside the Commercial Crew and Cargo Processing Facility, or C3PF, at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The test article will serve as a pathfinder for assembling and processing operational CST-100 spacecraft inside the revitalized facility, which for 20 years served as a shuttle processing hangar. Photo credit: NASA/Kim Shiflett_

"Commercial crew is an essential component of our journey to Mars, and in 35 states, 350 American companies are working to make it possible for the greatest country on Earth to once again launch our own astronauts into space,” said NASA Administrator Charles Bolden. “That’s some impressive investment.”

NASA expects to use the Starliner and Crew Dragon to take four crew members to the space station at a time, increasing the resident crew on the orbiting laboratory to seven at a time instead of the current six. By adding the workweek of a single new crew member to the capabilities of the space station, the amount of research time available to astronauts in orbit will double to about 80 hours a week.

Kennedy will be the home of Boeing’s Commercial Crew Program, with other buildings at the center to be used as Boeing's Launch Control Center and for mission support.

“Kennedy Space Center has transitioned more than 50 facilities for commercial use. We have made improvements and upgrades to well-known Kennedy workhorses such as the Vehicle Assembly Building, mobile launcher, crawler–transporter and Launch Pad 39B in support of Orion, the SLS and Advanced Exploration Systems,” said Robert Cabana, Kennedy’s center director. “I am proud of our success in transforming Kennedy Space Center to a 21st century, multi-user spaceport that is now capable of supporting the launch of all sizes and classes of vehicles, including horizontal launches from the Shuttle Landing Facility, and spacecraft processing and landing.”

Boeing officials say Kennedy was a natural choice given its expertise along the full range of spacecraft and rocket processing to launch and operations.






"When Boeing was looking for the prime location for its program headquarters, we knew Florida had a lot to offer from the infrastructure to the supplier base to the skilled work force," said Chris Ferguson, a former shuttle commander who now is deputy manager of operations for Boeing’s Commercial Crew Program.

The Starliner will launch from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station’s Space Launch Complex-41 on a United Launch Alliance (ULA) Atlas V rocket. The crew access tower that will support astronauts and ground support teams before launch is being built a couple of miles away from the launch pad now and will be assembled adjacent to the current structures already at the pad. ULA will continue to operate the pad for Atlas V processing and launches during construction of the tower.

Although the infrastructure is coming together quickly, the first flight of the Starliner and Crew Dragon depends on a number of design and testing milestones for the entire space system before either one will be in a position to take its first flight test.

Working under contracts awarded last year, both Boeing and SpaceX agreed to conduct an orbital mission without a crew aboard for their respective spacecraft. Then each will launch a test flight, which includes astronauts, to demonstrate the spacecraft's ability to meet the demands of human-rated spaceflight. Following that mission, the spacecraft will be certified for operational missions carrying a full complement of crew to support the research work on the space station. And astronauts will once again will be taking regular flights from Florida’s Space Coast.

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## Fenrir

*Boeing’s New CST-100 “Starliner” Processing Facility Taking Shape at KSC*

Boeing’s New CST-100 “Starliner” Processing Facility Taking Shape at KSC « AmericaSpace
_




Boeing’s CST-100 “Starliner” spacecraft is depicted here climbing to orbit. The company will begin flying astronauts to and from the International Space Station for NASA as soon as 2017. Image Credit: Boeing_

NASA and Boeing unveiled the company’s new spacecraft processing facility at a grand opening event at Kennedy Space Center in Florida this afternoon, revealing the new name of their CST-100 crew capsule; Starliner. The old space shuttle orbiter processing hangar has been transformed to support the next generation of low-Earth orbit human spaceflight, and work is well underway building a Starliner pathfinder test article to certify the vehicle’s design before putting astronauts onboard for flights to and from the International Space Station (ISS) in the next couple years.

“One hundred years ago we were on the dawn of the commercial aviation era and today, with the help of NASA, we’re on the dawn of a new commercial space era,” said Boeing’s John Elbon, vice president and general manager of Space Exploration. “It’s been such a pleasure to work hand-in-hand with NASA on this commercial crew development, and when we look back 100 years from this point, I’m really excited about what we will have discovered.”





_A mural depicting on The Boeing Company’s newly named CST-100 Starliner commercial crew transportation spacecraft is installed on the company’s Commercial Crew and Cargo Processing Facility, or C3PF, at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. Photo Credit: NASA/Kim Shiflett_

Starliner, which Boeing is developing in partnership with NASA’s Commercial Crew Program, will be capable of ferrying a crew of up to seven astronauts to and from the ISS and other low-Earth orbit destinations. NASA only requires seating for four, but in a previous interview with AmericaSpace Chris Ferguson, a veteran astronaut and Director of Crew and Mission Operations for Boeing, said he expects crews of five to fly.

The vehicle will launch from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station atop a United Launch Alliance (ULA) Atlas-V rocket, just a few miles from Boeing’s Starliner Commercial Crew and Cargo Processing Facility (C3PF), and will cruise autonomously on a six to eight hour trip to the $100 billion orbiting ISS. The astronauts will not need to fly the vehicle themselves at all, and will literally be along for the ride in all aspects of the flight. They will, however, be able to take manual control of the CST-100 at any time, just in case.

“We [Boeing] have a basic level of training we provide that will give the operator, a pilot, the knowledge that they need to operate the spaceship, which is mostly autonomous,” said Ferguson. “They will have the ability to get to the ISS and back, as well as the ability to deal with failures and the ability to take manual control if necessary. NASA wants a single piloted vehicle, so we will train the pilot to whatever level of proficiency they need, and if NASA wants us to train someone else to a pilot level of proficiency then we will be happy to do that. That being said we have factored into our design the ability for a copilot, and train them perhaps to the same level of proficiency as the pilot. They would sit beside the pilot and do all of those types of crew resource management (CRM) types of things that NASA instilled in us shuttle astronauts over the years.”

Boeing, in partnership with Space Florida, has had a lease on the former OPF-3 shuttle hangar for some time now, modernizing the facility to provide an environment for efficient production, testing, and operations for the Starliner similar to Boeing’s satellite, space launch vehicle, and commercial airplane production programs.

“We’re transitioning this facility into a world class manufacturing facility,” said Boeing’s CST-100 Program Manager John Mulholland. “With a 50,000 square foot processing facility it’s going to allow us to process up to six CST-100’s at a time.”

The hangar facility has more than enough room to support processing of multiple CST-100’s simultaneously, and the adjoining sections of the building are well-suited to process other systems such as engines and thrusters before they are integrated into the main spacecraft.





*VIDEO:* _Boeing Unveils Starliner Processing Facility_

Boeing’s Starliner work is expected to bring 300-500 full time jobs to Florida’s “Space Coast”, which suffered a big economic blow from the retirement of NASA’s 30-year space shuttle program in 2011.

“This facility will become point and center, we’ll be developing the test articles here and then starting the manufacturing for full services in 2017,” said Boeing engineer Tony Castilleja in a previous AmericaSpace interview. “This is where all the pieces and parts will come in, and we’ll then build everything right here. One side of the building is for processing the service modules, and the other side of the facility is for processing the crew modules. We’ll then ship out to the Atlas launch pad integration facility and off we go.”

At ULA’s nearby Atlas Launch Complex-41 work is visibly underway with the crew access tower astronauts will need to board Starliner for their flights to space. Rising like an erector set, it’s the first of its kind intended for a vehicle that will carry humans into space from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station since the one built at Launch Complex 34 for the Apollo missions in the 1960s.

The tower will be comprised of seven major tier segments, or levels, and each will measure about 20 foot square and 28 feet tall. When finished, the tower will stand over 200 feet tall.

Boeing intends to utilize other facilities at KSC to supper their Commercial Crew Program as well, in addition to the C3PF, including a Launch Control Center.

SpaceX and Boeing both received NASA contracts to fly astronauts to and from the ISS with their Dragon and Starliner crew capsules. Boeing, however, received a much larger piece of the multi-billion-dollar pie, with $4.2 billion for Boeing and $2.6 billion for SpaceX. Boeing also received the first of up to six orders from NASA to execute a crew-rotation mission of Starliner to the ISS earlier this year, although NASA emphasized that the order does not necessarily imply that Starliner will fly ahead of the SpaceX Crew Dragon, and that “determination of which company will fly its mission to the station first will be made at a later time”.

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## Fenrir

*New Horizons Restarts Sending Pretty, Pretty Data Home Today!*






It’s coming, it’s coming! The New Horizons space probe starts its intensive data downlink phase today! You know what that means? New, never-seen photos of the dwarf planet are coming right at us! Squee!!

New Horizons has tens of gigabits of data from the Pluto flyby which will bedownlinked via the Deep Space Network of antennas. The spacecraft is so far away, it takes the radio signals carrying the data 4.5 hours to make the trip from probe to Earth. The spacecraft can only collect data or downlink it, so during the flyby it was busy measuring as much as it could about Pluto and its moons to tell us about later. In the month after the initial flurry, the team purposely scheduled the massive, slow-to-downlink datasets on energetic particles, solar wind, and space dust to give themselves a bit of a breather. But today marks a change when that 1 to 4 kilobits per second is switched over images, spectra, and other data. While it’s impossible to predict what secrets the dwarf planet has in store for us, we know the New Horizons science team will release their raw, unprocessed image sets each Friday until all the data is down in Fall 2016.

Want to watch the data come down? Check out the real-time Deep Space now website!

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## Fenrir

*World’s Most Powerful Digital Camera Sees Construction Green Light*

*The Large Synoptic Survey Telescope’s ‘Eye’ Will be Built at SLAC*

World’s Most Powerful Digital Camera Sees Construction Green Light | SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory
_
Menlo Park, Calif. —_The Department of Energy has approved the start of construction for a 3.2-gigapixel digital camera – the world’s largest – at the heart of the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope (LSST). Assembled at the DOE's SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory, the camera will be the eye of LSST, revealing unprecedented details of the universe and helping unravel some of its greatest mysteries.

The construction milestone, known as Critical Decision 3, is the last major approval decision before the acceptance of the finished camera, said LSST Director Steven Kahn: “Now we can go ahead and procure components and start building it.”

Starting in 2022, LSST will take digital images of the entire visible southern sky every few nights from atop a mountain called Cerro Pachón in Chile. It will produce a wide, deep and fast survey of the night sky, cataloguing by far the largest number of stars and galaxies ever observed. During a 10-year time frame, LSST will detect tens of billions of objects—the first time a telescope will observe more galaxies than there are people on Earth – and will create movies of the sky with unprecedented details. Funding for the camera comes from the DOE, while financial support for the telescope and site facilities, the data management system, and the education and public outreach infrastructure of LSST comes primarily from the National Science Foundation (NSF).

The telescope’s camera – the size of a small car and weighing more than three tons – will capture full-sky images at such high resolution that it would take 1,500 high-definition television screens to display just one of them.





_The LSST’s camera will include a filter-changing mechanism and shutter. This animation shows that mechanism at work, which allows the camera to view different wavelengths; the camera is capable of viewing light from near-ultraviolet to near-infrared (0.3-1 μm) wavelengths._ _(SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory)_

This has already been a busy year for the LSST Project. Its dual-surface primary/tertiary mirror – the first of its kind for a major telescope – was completed; a traditional stone-laying ceremony in northern Chile marked the beginning of on-site construction of the facility; and a nearly 2,000-square-foot, 2-story-tall clean room was completed at SLAC to accommodate fabrication of the camera.

“We are very gratified to see everyone’s hard work appreciated and acknowledged by this DOE approval,” said SLAC Director Chi-Chang Kao. “SLAC is honored to be partnering with the National Science Foundation and other DOE labs on this groundbreaking endeavor. We’re also excited about the wide range of scientific opportunities offered by LSST, in particular increasing our understanding of dark energy.”

Components of the camera are being built by an international collaboration of universities and labs, including DOE’s Brookhaven National Laboratory, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and SLAC. SLAC is responsible for overall project management and systems engineering, camera body design and fabrication, data acquisition and camera control software, cryostat design and fabrication, and integration and testing of the entire camera. Building and testing the camera will take approximately five years.

SLAC is also designing and constructing the NSF-funded database for the telescope’s data management system. LSST will generate a vast public archive of data—approximately 6 million gigabytes per year, or the equivalent of shooting roughly 800,000 images with a regular 8-megapixel digital camera every night, albeit of much higher quality and scientific value. This data will help researchers study the formation of galaxies, track potentially hazardous asteroids, observe exploding stars and better understand dark matter and dark energy, which together make up 95 percent of the universe but whose natures remain unknown.

“We have a busy agenda for the rest of 2015 and 2016,” said Kahn. “Construction of the telescope on the mountain is well underway. The contracts for fabrication of the telescope mount and the dome enclosure have been awarded and the vendors are at full steam.”

Nadine Kurita, camera project manager at SLAC, said fabrication of the state-of-the-art sensors for the camera has already begun, and contracts are being awarded for optical elements and other major components. “After several years of focusing on designs and prototypes, we are excited to start construction of key parts of the camera. The coming year will be crucial as we assemble and test the sensors for the focal plane.”

The National Research Council’s Astronomy and Astrophysics decadal survey, Astro2010, ranked the LSST as the top ground-based priority for the field for the current decade. The recent report of the Particle Physics Project Prioritization Panel of the federal High Energy Physics Advisory Panel, setting forth the strategic plan for U.S. particle physics, also recommended completion of the LSST.

“We’ve been working hard for years to get to this point,” said Kurita. “Everyone is very excited to start building the camera and take a big step toward conducting a deep survey of the Southern night sky.”

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## Fenrir

*OSIRIS-REx Taking Shape, Engineers Explain Innovative Asteroid Sample Return Mechanism*

OSIRIS-REx Taking Shape, Engineers Explain Innovative Asteroid Sample Return Mechanism « AmericaSpace






_Artist concept of OSIRIS-REx in the environs of Asteroid Bennu, sometime after 2018. Image Credit: NASA/Goddard/University of Arizona_

While avid space watchers may thrill to missions such as Stardust (which returned a sample from a comet), Dawn (which visited an asteroid and dwarf planet), and Rosetta (which placed a lander upon a comet’s surface), sometimes the significance of smaller solar system body missions is lost on the general public, as planetary missions seem more “glamorous.” Enter OSIRIS-REx (short for Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification, Security, Regolith Explorer), which is on track for a September 2016 launch from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station’s (CCAFS) Space Launch Complex 41. This mission has been described as a “game changer” in small Solar System body exploration.

Why? This $800 million-plus mission is slated to send a spacecraft to the asteroid 101955 Bennu, eventually returning a sample to Earth in 2023. While it sounds “cool,” this NASA New Frontiers mission, selected by NASA in 2011, is more than just flashiness: It hopes to discover how the Solar System came to be and how life originated on our own planet, as asteroids are believed to be relics of the early Solar System. As the project’s website asks: “OSIRIS-REx seeks answers to the questions that are central to the human experience: Where did we come from? What is our destiny?” OSIRIS-REx exists to unveil the answers to these age-old questions.

The mission will start in Florida at CCAFS, launched aboard an Atlas V 441. After a two-year cruise, OSIRIS-REx is expected to arrive at 101955 Bennu in August 2018 to begin its scientific observations, which will include (but is not limited to) extensive mapping, checking for other satellites, and finding an optimal sample site. In 2023, the mission is expected to return a capsule back to Earth containing a sample of the carbonaceous asteroid (notably, carbon is the basis for life on our world).





_OSIRIS-REx mission insignia with partners. Image Credit: OSIRIS-REx website_

Earlier this year, construction commenced on the spacecraft; a previous AmericaSpace report from March stated: “The System Integration Review—where the plan for integrating the scientific instrumentation, electrical and communication systems, and navigation systems are all looked over—was completed at Lockheed Martin’s Littleton, Colo., facility last month. Launch and test operations officially began March 27, marking a critical stage of the program know as ATLO, or _assembly, test and launch operations_. Over the next six months technicians with Lockheed will install the subsystems on the main spacecraft structure, comprising avionics, power, telecomm, thermal systems, and guidance, navigation, and control.” According to the article, the assembly is taking place after nearly four years of what was described as “intense design efforts.”

In July, NASA announced that the spacecraft had completed a critical Mission Operations Review (MOR), administered at the Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., and is on track for a September 2016 launch.

While the spacecraft continues to take shape, a challenge posed to engineers designing OSIRIS-REx’s hardware included how to fabricate an appropriate sampling device. A “scoop” sampling device, used in previous planetary missions as far back as the Viking landers in the 1970s, may not prove to be most effective in a low-gravity environment such as an asteroid. Lockheed Martin’s Jim Harris answered the call to this issue, inventing TAGSAM (Touch and Go Sample Acquisition Mechanism).

Harris described the mechanism that makes this particular instrument work on such a mission: “Imagine a cup with air injected on one side, then holes on the other side and a filter outside of the holes. We used a compressor to blow air against the ground. As the air went out through the holes and through the filter, we collected particles.” He and his son tested TAGSAM prototypes at their home in Denver, Colo., on materials as diverse as popcorn, dirt, and rock. “It’s a very simple design, and we’ve done an extensive amount of testing. When you consider the full range of what the surface can be—from a rubble pile to a big rock with loose gravel on top, we’re ready,” he underscored confidently.






The mission, which was synthesized by the University of Arizona with partners, has a better chance of returning rich samples utilizing this innovative method. Ed Beshore of the university enthused: “Rather than trying to land on the surface of Bennu and anchor ourselves in the asteroid’s microgravity environment—which is very difficult to do—we can just touch the surface using an elegant mechanism that has few moving parts and then quickly move away. This gives us a high degree of confidence that we are going to be able to pull this off.”

Technologies such as TAGSAM will undoubtedly aid NASA in its near-future human-helmed mission objectives, as the space agency has been developing an Asteroid Redirect Mission (ARM) for several years. NASA announced in March it will move forward with the Robotic Boulder Capture Option, bringing a near-Earth Asteroid (NEA) into the Moon’s orbit for eventual human exploration during the mid-2020s. OSIRIS-REx’s collection technologies and scientific findings will aid scientists and engineers immensely, making that “next giant leap for mankind” (or womankind) possible within the next decade.

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## Fenrir

*NASA’s Space Cubes: Small Satellites Provide Big Payoffs*

NASA’s Space Cubes: Small Satellites Provide Big Payoffs | NASA






Good things really do come in small packages.

When we think of space satellites that assist with communications, weather monitoring and GPS here on Earth, we likely picture them as being quite large—many are as big as a school bus and weigh several tons. Yet there’s a class of smaller satellites that’s growing in popularity. These miniaturized satellites, known as nanosatellites or CubeSats, can fit in the palm of your hand and are providing new opportunities for space science. 

“CubeSats are part of a growing technology that’s transforming space exploration,” said David Pierce, senior program executive for suborbital research at NASA Headquarters in Washington. “CubeSats are small platforms that enable the next generation of scientists and engineers to complete all phases of a complete space mission during their school career. While CubeSats have historically been used as teaching tools and technology demonstrations, today’s CubeSats have the potential to conduct important space science investigations as well.”

CubeSats are built to standard specifications of 1 unit (U), which is equal to 10x10x10 centimeters (about 4x4x4 inches). CubeSats can be 1U, 2U, 3U or 6U in size, weighing about 3 pounds per U. They often are launched into orbit as auxiliary payloads aboard rockets, significantly reducing costs.

Because of the smaller payload and lower price tag, CubeSat technology allows for experimentation. “There’s an opportunity to embrace some risk,” said Janice Buckner, program executive of NASA’s Small Innovative Missions for Planetary Exploration (SIMPLEx) program. “These mini experiments complement NASA’s larger assets.”

Another advantage of the “smaller is bigger” concept is it’s more inclusive. The low cost and relatively short delivery time from concept to launch – typically 2-3 years – allows students and a growing community of citizen scientists and engineers to contribute to NASA’s space exploration goals, part of the White House’s Maker Initiative. By providing hands-on opportunities for students and teachers, NASA helps attract and retain students in science, technology, engineering and math disciplines, strengthening NASA’s and the nation’s future workforce.

This inclusiveness also applies to geography. In 2014 NASA announced the expansion of its CubeSat Launch Initiative, with the goal of launching 50 small satellites from 50 states within five years. To date NASA has selected CubeSats from 30 states, 17 of which have already been launched. Two more -- Alaska and Maryland -- are slated to go to space later this year, including the first ever CubeSat launched by an elementary school.

In April 2015 the SIMPLEx program requested proposals for interplanetary CubeSat investigations, with a panel of NASA and other scientists and engineers reviewing 22 submissions. Two were chosen—one led by a postdoctoral research scientist and the other a university professor. NASA Headquarters, Planetary Science Division, also selected three technology developments for possible future planetary missions: one to expand NASA’s ability to analyze Mars’ atmosphere, one to investigate the hydrogen cycle at the moon and one to view a small near-Earth asteroid. Each selected team will receive one year of funding to bring their respective technologies to a higher level of readiness. To be considered for flight, teams must demonstrate progress in a future mission proposal competition.

The CubeSat investigations selected for a planetary science mission opportunity are:


 Lunar Polar Hydrogen Mapper (LunaH-Map), a 6U-class CubeSat that will enter a polar orbit around the moon with a low altitude (3-7 miles) centered on the lunar south pole. LunaH-Map carries two neutron spectrometers that will produce maps of near-surface hydrogen. LunaH-Map will map hydrogen within craters and other permanently shadowed regions throughout the south pole. Postdoc Craig Hardgrove from Arizona State University (ASU), Tempe, Arizona, is the principal investigator. ASU will manage the project.
 CubeSat Particle Aggregation and Collision Experiment (Q-PACE) is a 2U-class, thermos-sized, CubeSat that will explore the fundamental properties of low-velocity particle collision in a microgravity environment, in an effort to better understand the mechanics of early planet development. Josh Colwell from the University of Central Florida (UCF), Orlando, Florida, is the principal investigator, and UCF will manage the project.
The proposals selected for further technology development are:


The Mars Micro Orbiter (MMO) mission, which uses a 6U-class Cubesat to measure the Martian atmosphere in visible and infrared wavelengths from Mars orbit. Michael Malin of Malin Space Science Systems, San Diego, California, is the principal investigator.
Hydrogen Albedo Lunar Orbiter (HALO) is a propulsion-driven 6U-class CubeSat that will answer critical questions about the lunar hydrogen cycle and the origin of water on the lunar surface by examining the reflected hydrogen in the moon’s solar wind. The principal investigator is Michael Collier of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Maryland.
Diminutive Asteroid Visitor using Ion Drive (DAVID) is a 6U-class CubeSat mission that will investigate an asteroid much smaller than any studied by previous spacecraft missions and will be the first NASA mission to investigate an Earth-crossing asteroid. Geoffrey Landis of NASA’s Glenn Research Center, Cleveland, Ohio, is the principal investigator.
“These selections will enable the next generation of planetary scientists and engineers to use revolutionary new mission concepts that have the potential to return extraordinary science,” said Buckner. “CubeSats are going to impact the future of planetary exploration.”


...

Guess @Armstrong was right. Good things do come in small packages.

...


*First Pieces of NASA’s Orion for Next Mission Come Together at Michoud*

First Pieces of NASA’s Orion for Next Mission Come Together at Michoud | NASA





_At NASA’s Michoud Assembly Facility in New Orleans, engineers welded together on Sept. 5, two sections of the Orion spacecraft’s primary structure that will fly on Exploration Mission-1, the first flight of Orion atop the agency’s Space Launch System rocket. Credits: NASA_

NASA is another small step closer to sending astronauts on a journey to Mars. On Saturday, engineers at the agency’s Michoud Assembly Facility in New Orleans welded together the first two segments of the Orion crew module that will fly atop NASA’s Space Launch System (SLS) rocket on a mission beyond the far side of the moon.

“Every day, teams around the country are moving at full speed to get ready for Exploration Mission-1 (EM-1), when we’ll flight test Orion and SLS together in the proving ground of space, far away from the safety of Earth,” said Bill Hill, deputy associate administrator for Exploration Systems Development at NASA Headquarters in Washington. “We’re progressing toward eventually sending astronauts deep into space.”

The primary structure of Orion’s crew module is made of seven large aluminum pieces that must be welded together in detailed fashion. The first weld connects the tunnel to the forward bulkhead, which is at the top of the spacecraft and houses many of Orion’s critical systems, such as the parachutes that deploy during reentry. Orion’s tunnel, with a docking hatch, will allow crews to move between the crew module and other spacecraft.





_This diagram shows the seven pieces of Orion’s primary structure and the order in which they are welded together.
Credits: NASA_

“Each of Orion’s systems and subsystems is assembled or integrated onto the primary structure, so starting to weld the underlying elements together is a critical first manufacturing step,” said Mark Geyer, Orion Program manager. “The team has done tremendous work to get to this point and to ensure we have a sound building block for the rest of Orion’s systems.”

Engineers have undertaken a meticulous process to prepare for welding. They have cleaned the segments, coated them with a protective chemical and primed them. They then outfitted each element with strain gauges and wiring to monitor the metal during the fabrication process. Prior to beginning work on the pieces destined for space, technicians practiced their process, refined their techniques and ensured proper tooling configurations by welding together a pathfinder, a full-scale version of the current spacecraft design.

NASA’s prime contractor for the spacecraft, Lockheed Martin, is doing the production of the crew module at Michoud.

Through collaborations across design and manufacturing, teams have been able to reduce the number of welds for the crew module by more than half since the first test version of Orion’s primary structure was constructed and flown on the Exploration Flight Test-1 last December. The Exploration Mission-1 structure will include just seven main welds, plus several smaller welds for start and stop holes left by welding tools. Fewer welds will result in a lighter spacecraft.

During the coming months as other pieces of Orion’s primary structure arrive at Michoud from machine houses across the country, engineers will inspect and evaluate them to ensure they meet precise design requirements before welding. Once complete, the structure will be shipped to NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida where it will be assembled with the other elements of the spacecraft, integrated with SLS and processed before launch.

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## Hamartia Antidote

After delays, SpaceX's massive Falcon Heavy rocket set to launch in spring 2016 | The Verge

SpaceX's super sized Falcon Heavy rocket has a new launch date: spring 2016. That's according to remarks given by Lee Rosen, SpaceX's vice president of mission and launch operations, at a conference in Pasadena this week. _Space News_ reports the executive as saying, "It’s going to be a great day when we launch [the Falcon Heavy], some time in the late April – early May timeframe."

We've been hearing about the Falcon Heavy for some time, but it has seen its share of delays. It will be the world's most powerful operational rocket, capable of launching 115,000 pounds (53,000 kg) into low-Earth orbit. In history, it only comes short of the Saturn V rocket (which powered Apollo missions to the moon) and the Soviet Energia rocket, both of which were significantly more powerful. SpaceX originally promised to launch the rocket for the first time in 2013. It was then pushed back to this year, but the project was put on ice following the failure of a Falcon 9 rocket on June 28th.

The Falcon Heavy is essentially comprised of three Falcon 9 rockets strapped together. SpaceX plans to recover the stage one rocket boosters by landing them back on Earth after launch — the process was spectacularly demonstrated in a video rendering earlier this year. The first launch in spring, if it actually happens on schedule, will merely be a demonstration. A second planned launch in September for the Air Force would bring some 37 satellites to space.

_Correction:_ _SpaceX and Elon Musk state that the Falcon Heavy is the most powerful rocket since Saturn V, but, based on potential payload delivered to orbit, the Soviet Energia was also more powerful. We've updated the article accordingly. _


_



_

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## Fenrir

*This is how Boeing is building the first commercial Starliner spacecraft ever*






NASA and Boeing have released a little teaser on their newest spacecraft, the CST-100 Starliner, which will be built and tested at Kennedy Space Center and hopefully, eventually taxi people to space.

Imagine touring space inside one of these awesome pods in the future. The video below highlights some features of the Starliner.

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## Fenrir

*The Secrets of NASA's Webb Telescope’s "Deployable Tower Assembly"*

The Secrets of NASA's Webb Telescope’s "Deployable Tower Assembly" | NASA





_Recently, engineers at Northrop Grumman Corporation in Redondo Beach, California were testing the DTA to ensure it worked properly.
Credits: Northrop Grumman Corp._
Building a space telescope to see the light from the earliest stars of our universe is a pretty complex task. Although much of the attention goes to instruments and the giant mirrors on NASA's James Webb Space Telescope, there are other components that have big jobs to do and that required imagination, engineering, and innovation to become a reality.

For example, engineers working on the Webb telescope have to think of everything from keeping instruments from overheating or freezing, to packing up the Webb, which is as big as a tennis court, to fit inside the rocket that will take it to space. Those are two areas where the "DTA" or Deployable Tower Assembly (DTA) plays a major role.

The DTA looks like a big black pipe and is made out of graphite-epoxy composite material to ensure stability and strength with extreme changes in temperature like those encountered in space. When fully deployed, the DTA reaches ten feet in length.





_Artist's impression of NASA's James Webb Space Telescope. Credits: NASA_

The DTA interfaces and supports the spacecraft and the telescope structures. It features two large nested telescoping tubes, connected by a mechanized lead screw. It is a deployable structure that is both very light and extremely strong and stable.

The Webb telescope’s secondary mirror support structure and DTA contribute to how the telescope and instruments fit into the rocket fairing in preparation for launch. The DTA allows the Webb to be short enough when stowed to fit in the rocket fairing with an acceptably low center of gravity for launch. 

Several days after the Webb telescope is launched, the DTA will deploy, or separate, the telescope mirrors and instruments from the spacecraft bus and sunshield. This separation allows the sunshield to unfurl and shade the telescope and instruments from radiant heat and stray light from the sun and Earth.

The DTA was designed, built and tested by Astro Aerospace - a Northrop Grumman Company, in Carpinteria, California.

The James Webb Space Telescope is the scientific successor to NASA's Hubble Space Telescope. It will be the most powerful space telescope ever built. The Webb telescope is an international project led by NASA with its partners, the European Space Agency and the Canadian Space Agency.

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## Fenrir

*NASA Just Released This Amazing New Set of Up-Close Pluto Pictures*






NASA released a new (and gorgeous) set of Pluto pictures from its recent New Horizons fly-by—and they’re our best look yet at some of the strange terrain of the erstwhile planet.

_Top image: Pluto overlook / NASA_

Here’s the full set of Pluto pictures—plus one bonus planetary portrait of Charon, included at the very bottom. The set of high-relief photos focuses on surface details, including a close-up look at some Pluto chaos terrain, Pluto during twilight, and the haze around Pluto in profile.






_Pluto chaos terrain (above) / NASA_






_Haze around Pluto (above) / NASA_






_(Pluto dark areas) / NASA_






_Pluto surface photo / NASA_






_Charon / NASA_

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## Hamartia Antidote

We Can Now See Ceres' Mysterious Bright Spots In a Lot More Detail






NASA’s Dawn spacecraft has just sent home a new photo, a much closer look at the famous bright spots on the dwarf planet Ceres. Compared to the previous images taken from higher orbits, significantly more details can be seen in this new photo of the Occator crater.

The composite photo below was created using two images: one short exposure photo that captures the details in the bright spots, and one captured at normal exposure, where the background surface is not underexposed. Dawn took these images during the mission’s High Altitude Mapping Orbit (HAMO) phase, from an altitude of 915 miles (1,470 kilometers). The resolution of this photo is about 450 feet (140 meters) per pixel:






It’s still unclear what those bright areas in the crater are; we are waiting for scientists to come up with some explanation. As Marc Rayman, Dawn’s chief engineer and mission director says:

Dawn has transformed what was so recently a few bright dots into a complex and beautiful, gleaming landscape. Soon, the scientific analysis will reveal the geological and chemical nature of this mysterious and mesmerizing extraterrestrial scenery.

This new view is likely going to help identify those spots, as it’s roughly three times better than the latest images. e:


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## Fenrir

*SpaceX's Crew Dragon Capsule Looks Like a Luxury Sports Car*






Well, it’s official: The days of blasting into space in a rattly aluminum can are over. SpaceX has just unveiled the very first images of the interior of its Crew Dragon capsule. As you might expect, it looks a lot like a luxury sports car.

The capsules, which SpaceX is developing for NASA to ferry astronauts to and from the ISS, include seven seats for its crew (made of the finest carbon fiber and Alcantara cloth money can buy). Video displays light up with information about the vehicle’s position and on-board environment. The astronauts will even be able to _adjust the temperature inside_ the capsule — anywhere from 65 to 80 degrees Fahrenheit! This thing kicks the crap out of my apartment building. Most importantly, the capsules have a handful of windows that’ll offer a sweeping view of the stars.

I don’t see any big red buttons, which is a bit of a bummer, but it’s probably for the best — those have a tendency to backfire. There is, however, a large ‘execute command’ button in one of these renderings, which I can only assume is to be used for hyperspace jumps or switching on Elon’s global space Internet.





















If that wasn’t enough to make you want to kiss planet Earth goodbye, check out this hype as f*ck promo video! Now if only Elon could actually warm up Mars, I’d be sold.

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## Hamartia Antidote

Technogaianist said:


> I don’t see any big red buttons, which is a bit of a bummer, but it’s probably for the best — those have a tendency to backfire. There is, however, a large ‘execute command’ button in one of these renderings, which I can only assume is to be used for hyperspace jumps or switching on Elon’s global space Internet.



"It's the weird color-scheme that freaks me. Every time you try to operate one of these weird black controls, which are labeled in black on a black background, a small black light lights up in black to let you know you've done it!" -Zaphod

"I wonder what will happen if I press this button." -Arthur
"Don't." -Ford
[Presses it] "Oh." --Arthur
"What happened?" --Ford
"A sign lit up saying "Please do not press this button again." -Arthur

"Hey Ford, how many escape capsules are there?" -Zaphod
"None," -Ford
"You counted them?" -Zaphod
"Twice," -Ford

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## Fenrir

This is likely my last post on PDF. I don't know what purpose I have here, I don't like the attitudes that propagate and I'm no glutton for negativity and jingoism. Were once I tried to discuss with others, tried to learn, tried to engage, now I dread conversations. I try to avoid conversing with others.

It's troublesome, but I feel happier when I'm not participating. 

Don't expect Sven back either. He isn't coming back, I can confirm this. He's just as bothered by the rampant moronic behaviors as I am. He has other motivations though.

...

*SALVO Cubesat Rocket Debuts Stealth Launch Vehicle Era*

SALVO Cubesat Rocket Debuts Stealth Launch Vehicle Era « AmericaSpace





_Artist concept depicts SALVO Cubesat launcher on belly of F-15. The liquid oxygen/kerosene powered rocket may already have begun secret launches off Cape Canaveral. Image Credit: DARPA_

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) and the U.S. Air Force are poised to begin the Cape Canaveral launch of Cubesats on a new advanced technology rocket called SALVO, for Small Air Launch Vehicle to Orbit. SALVO launchers will be carried aloft for release from an Air Force F-15E fighter jet flying over the U.S Eastern Test Range.

It is possible that the actual launch to orbit of Cubesat spacecraft on SALVO rockets has already begun in secret to counter electronic and infrared intelligence gathering by Russia and China. The flight of a SALVO test article on a F-15 fighter actually began months ago, and likely involved earlier flights over the Eastern Range to checkout telemetry links.

The future air launch of increasingly capable small spacecraft and Cubesats will be especially important as the USAF moves to smaller, more survivable satellites instead of more vulnerable multi-ton spacecraft. The U.S. decades ago developed the F-117 Stealth fighter and the B-2 Stealth bomber, and now programs like SALVO and its ALASA follow on could also give the U.S. a “Stealth Launch Vehicle” capability.





_Ventions has launched sounding rockets to test SALVO electronics inexpensively. Image Credit Ventions LLC_

The Orbital ATK Pegasus air launched rocket could be especially important in this Defense Dept. shift, but it is a large and easily detected rocket system requiring significant infrastructure, compared with future smaller air launched systems.

Neither DARPA, the Air Force, nor the project’s prime contractor, Ventions LLC of San Francisco, will discuss SALVO at this time—although in the past they have described it as a two-stage system using liquid oxygen and kerosene propellants driven by cutting-edge miniature electric turbo pumps.

Each SALVO rocket will be loaded onboard its twin seat F-15 at Eglin AFB, located on Florida’s panhandle. Once fueled, it will be flown within a safety corridor across the state directly out over the Atlantic for launch down the highly instrumented Eastern Range.

SALVO can only launch a single 11-pound, three unit (3U) Cubesat at a time, and is designed initially to be only a three-flight operational pathfinder for the larger DARPA/Boeing Airborne Launch Assist Space Access rocket called ALASA.

ALASA is planned to launch 12 times also from an F-15 flying over the Eastern Range. The Boeing system is planned to carry a 100-lb load of Cubesats or small satellites for just $1 million per flight.

ALASA is to be first launched in late-2015 without a payload, then launched on Cubesat missions starting by mid-2016. It will be powered by high energy monopropellant made up of nitrous oxide (aka laughing gas) and acetylene mixed together in the same tank, a key design aspect.

The two DARPA air launched programs could help spawn new commercial air launch ventures like one being developed by Generation Orbit with its GOLauncher 1 & 2 programs, which are set for first launch in 2017 from a Gulfstream business jet.

These will be able to compete in future NASA programs like the just-issued NASA’s Launch Services Program Request for Proposals (RFP) for new commercial Venture Class Launch Services (VCLS) for small satellites. The deadline for a response to the RFP is July 13, 2015.

NASA plans to award one or more firm fixed-price VCLS contracts to accommodate 132 pounds (60 kilograms) of CubeSats in a single launch or two launches carrying 66 pounds (30 kilograms) each. The launch provider will determine the launch location and date, but the launch must occur by April 15, 2018.

“This solicitation, and resulting contract or contracts, is intended to demonstrate a dedicated launch capability for smaller payloads that NASA anticipates it will require on a recurring basis for future science and CubeSat missions,” the agency said.

“This will start to open up viable commercial opportunities,” said Mark Wiese, chief of the flight projects office for the NASA Launch Services Program. “We [NASA KSC] hope to be one of the first customers for these companies, and once we get going, the regular launches will drive the costs down for everyone.”





_SALVO can launch 3U Cubesats like the Radio Aurora Explorer developed earlier by the University of Michigan and Southwest Research Institute. Photo Credit SRI_

It is most likely this initial Cubesat launcher contract will be won by one of several traditional ground launch systems like those under development by the Texas-based Firefly Space Systems rocket, the New Zealand based Rocket Lab Electron launch vehicle, or other U.S. competitors.

Air launched systems, although initially carrying a smaller payload mass, would be especially important to the U.S. Defense Dept. because they can be launched from literally anywhere on Earth with minimal detection aloft or by ground infrastructure.

This is especially important now that China’s ASAT anti satellite programs threaten large U.S. satellites. Launching the same type capabilities on multiple distributed satellites makes them harder to destroy and easier to reconstitute, according to USAF Gen. John E. Hyten, who leads Air Force Space Command.

Although prime contractor personnel at Ventions declined to discuss the SALVO rocket, the company’s limited website does cite milestones toward its first SALVO flight, baselined for the current spring 2015 timeframe. The milestones are:

*June 2015 *–Completed acceptance testing of SALVO 1st stage engines.

*April 2015 *–Ventions begins cold-flow fill / drain and pressurization tests of SALVO 1st stage.

*October 2014 – *Ventions ships SALVO test article to Eglin AFB for integration and flight testing with F-15.

*July 2014 *–Completes aircraft form and fit checks of F-15 aircraft at Eglin AFB.

*June 2014 *–Completes initial qualification testing of flight-ready injectors for SALVO’s upper stage engine and tests
SALVO first stage engine in pump-fed configuration at Merced, Calif., test site.

*April 2014 *–Ventions tests thrust vector control gimbal for SALVO first stage engines at Merced test site. The company also tests 2nd generation of 1,000lbf regeneratively-cooled, LOX-RP1 engines for SALVO flight vehicle at Merced test site.

*February 2014 – *Ventions completes 1,000lbf injector screening tests for SALVO flight vehicle at Merced test site.

*August 2013 – *Ventions initiates hot-fire testing of SALVO injectors and engines using new test cell at Castle Airport in Merced County, Calif.

*March 2013 – *Ventions hot-fire tests regeneratively-cooled engines in the 75lbf and 800lbf thrust-classes for launch vehicle applications under SALVO program.

*February 2013 – *Ventions hot-fire tests 75lbf and 800lbf LOX / RP-1 engine injectors for SALVO launch vehicle applications.

While DARPA is entering the SALVO flight test phase, Boeing is completing design details on the 24-ft-long ALASA air launched rocket toward an initial flight late this year.

It uses a unique design, placing its four main engines at the front end of its first stage propellant tank.

That will enable the same engines used in the first stage to also power the second stage, after the first stage propellant tank is depleted and separated. A third stage with four smaller engines would complete the injection into low-Earth orbit.

SALVO is similar to the ASAT program of the 1980s in that it was a rocket on the belly of an F-15, but that is where the similarities end. The 1985 program was not capable of going into orbit, but rather function like an air-to-air missile—more specifically like a sounding rocket with a payload.





_The ALASA air launched rocket follow on to SALVO is depicted under F-15. Note four rocket engine nozzles that power both the first and then second stage after first stage propellant tank separates. Photo Credit DARPA._

The warhead was an ingenious, highly maneuverable IR seeker that would collide to score a kill. It was designed to be launched in front of an approaching satellite given real time NORAD targeting data. SALVO and ALASA as an ASAT are no more similar than an AMRAM or Sidewinder rocket on the belly of a F-15.

The first air launched ASAT tests took place 55 years ago, in 1958-59, with a B-47 bomber during 12 firing tests. The missile was called Bold Orion and in 1959 was fired against the Explorer 6 satellite. It passed within four miles of the satellite, an effective kill range since operationally it would have used a nuke warhead.

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## mike2000 is back

Technogaianist said:


> *This is how Boeing is building the first commercial Starliner spacecraft ever*
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> NASA and Boeing have released a little teaser on their newest spacecraft, the CST-100 Starliner, which will be built and tested at Kennedy Space Center and hopefully, eventually taxi people to space.
> 
> Imagine touring space inside one of these awesome pods in the future. The video below highlights some features of the Starliner.



Impressive. I wish governments all over the world could come together nd pool their resources so we can invest more in space, since there is so much we can learn/discover giving the fact that we don't know/haven't even explored 1/billionth of space. lol Good initiative by Nasa and Boeing. Always good to see groundbreaking/new experiments/projects than repeating the same thing over and over again.



Technogaianist said:


> This is likely my last post on PDF. I don't know what purpose I have here, I don't like the attitudes that propagate and I'm no glutton for negativity and jingoism. Were once I tried to discuss with others, tried to learn, tried to engage, now I dread conversations. I try to avoid conversing with others.
> 
> It's troublesome, but I feel happier when I'm not participating.
> 
> Don't expect Sven back either. He isn't coming back, I can confirm this. He's just as bothered by the rampant moronic behaviors as I am. He has other motivations though.
> 
> ...
> 
> *SALVO Cubesat Rocket Debuts Stealth Launch Vehicle Era*
> 
> SALVO Cubesat Rocket Debuts Stealth Launch Vehicle Era « AmericaSpace
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> _Artist concept depicts SALVO Cubesat launcher on belly of F-15. The liquid oxygen/kerosene powered rocket may already have begun secret launches off Cape Canaveral. Image Credit: DARPA_
> 
> The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) and the U.S. Air Force are poised to begin the Cape Canaveral launch of Cubesats on a new advanced technology rocket called SALVO, for Small Air Launch Vehicle to Orbit. SALVO launchers will be carried aloft for release from an Air Force F-15E fighter jet flying over the U.S Eastern Test Range.
> 
> It is possible that the actual launch to orbit of Cubesat spacecraft on SALVO rockets has already begun in secret to counter electronic and infrared intelligence gathering by Russia and China. The flight of a SALVO test article on a F-15 fighter actually began months ago, and likely involved earlier flights over the Eastern Range to checkout telemetry links.
> 
> The future air launch of increasingly capable small spacecraft and Cubesats will be especially important as the USAF moves to smaller, more survivable satellites instead of more vulnerable multi-ton spacecraft. The U.S. decades ago developed the F-117 Stealth fighter and the B-2 Stealth bomber, and now programs like SALVO and its ALASA follow on could also give the U.S. a “Stealth Launch Vehicle” capability.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> _Ventions has launched sounding rockets to test SALVO electronics inexpensively. Image Credit Ventions LLC_
> 
> The Orbital ATK Pegasus air launched rocket could be especially important in this Defense Dept. shift, but it is a large and easily detected rocket system requiring significant infrastructure, compared with future smaller air launched systems.
> 
> Neither DARPA, the Air Force, nor the project’s prime contractor, Ventions LLC of San Francisco, will discuss SALVO at this time—although in the past they have described it as a two-stage system using liquid oxygen and kerosene propellants driven by cutting-edge miniature electric turbo pumps.
> 
> Each SALVO rocket will be loaded onboard its twin seat F-15 at Eglin AFB, located on Florida’s panhandle. Once fueled, it will be flown within a safety corridor across the state directly out over the Atlantic for launch down the highly instrumented Eastern Range.
> 
> SALVO can only launch a single 11-pound, three unit (3U) Cubesat at a time, and is designed initially to be only a three-flight operational pathfinder for the larger DARPA/Boeing Airborne Launch Assist Space Access rocket called ALASA.
> 
> ALASA is planned to launch 12 times also from an F-15 flying over the Eastern Range. The Boeing system is planned to carry a 100-lb load of Cubesats or small satellites for just $1 million per flight.
> 
> ALASA is to be first launched in late-2015 without a payload, then launched on Cubesat missions starting by mid-2016. It will be powered by high energy monopropellant made up of nitrous oxide (aka laughing gas) and acetylene mixed together in the same tank, a key design aspect.
> 
> The two DARPA air launched programs could help spawn new commercial air launch ventures like one being developed by Generation Orbit with its GOLauncher 1 & 2 programs, which are set for first launch in 2017 from a Gulfstream business jet.
> 
> These will be able to compete in future NASA programs like the just-issued NASA’s Launch Services Program Request for Proposals (RFP) for new commercial Venture Class Launch Services (VCLS) for small satellites. The deadline for a response to the RFP is July 13, 2015.
> 
> NASA plans to award one or more firm fixed-price VCLS contracts to accommodate 132 pounds (60 kilograms) of CubeSats in a single launch or two launches carrying 66 pounds (30 kilograms) each. The launch provider will determine the launch location and date, but the launch must occur by April 15, 2018.
> 
> “This solicitation, and resulting contract or contracts, is intended to demonstrate a dedicated launch capability for smaller payloads that NASA anticipates it will require on a recurring basis for future science and CubeSat missions,” the agency said.
> 
> “This will start to open up viable commercial opportunities,” said Mark Wiese, chief of the flight projects office for the NASA Launch Services Program. “We [NASA KSC] hope to be one of the first customers for these companies, and once we get going, the regular launches will drive the costs down for everyone.”
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> _SALVO can launch 3U Cubesats like the Radio Aurora Explorer developed earlier by the University of Michigan and Southwest Research Institute. Photo Credit SRI_
> 
> It is most likely this initial Cubesat launcher contract will be won by one of several traditional ground launch systems like those under development by the Texas-based Firefly Space Systems rocket, the New Zealand based Rocket Lab Electron launch vehicle, or other U.S. competitors.
> 
> Air launched systems, although initially carrying a smaller payload mass, would be especially important to the U.S. Defense Dept. because they can be launched from literally anywhere on Earth with minimal detection aloft or by ground infrastructure.
> 
> This is especially important now that China’s ASAT anti satellite programs threaten large U.S. satellites. Launching the same type capabilities on multiple distributed satellites makes them harder to destroy and easier to reconstitute, according to USAF Gen. John E. Hyten, who leads Air Force Space Command.
> 
> Although prime contractor personnel at Ventions declined to discuss the SALVO rocket, the company’s limited website does cite milestones toward its first SALVO flight, baselined for the current spring 2015 timeframe. The milestones are:
> 
> *June 2015 *–Completed acceptance testing of SALVO 1st stage engines.
> 
> *April 2015 *–Ventions begins cold-flow fill / drain and pressurization tests of SALVO 1st stage.
> 
> *October 2014 – *Ventions ships SALVO test article to Eglin AFB for integration and flight testing with F-15.
> 
> *July 2014 *–Completes aircraft form and fit checks of F-15 aircraft at Eglin AFB.
> 
> *June 2014 *–Completes initial qualification testing of flight-ready injectors for SALVO’s upper stage engine and tests
> SALVO first stage engine in pump-fed configuration at Merced, Calif., test site.
> 
> *April 2014 *–Ventions tests thrust vector control gimbal for SALVO first stage engines at Merced test site. The company also tests 2nd generation of 1,000lbf regeneratively-cooled, LOX-RP1 engines for SALVO flight vehicle at Merced test site.
> 
> *February 2014 – *Ventions completes 1,000lbf injector screening tests for SALVO flight vehicle at Merced test site.
> 
> *August 2013 – *Ventions initiates hot-fire testing of SALVO injectors and engines using new test cell at Castle Airport in Merced County, Calif.
> 
> *March 2013 – *Ventions hot-fire tests regeneratively-cooled engines in the 75lbf and 800lbf thrust-classes for launch vehicle applications under SALVO program.
> 
> *February 2013 – *Ventions hot-fire tests 75lbf and 800lbf LOX / RP-1 engine injectors for SALVO launch vehicle applications.
> 
> While DARPA is entering the SALVO flight test phase, Boeing is completing design details on the 24-ft-long ALASA air launched rocket toward an initial flight late this year.
> 
> It uses a unique design, placing its four main engines at the front end of its first stage propellant tank.
> 
> That will enable the same engines used in the first stage to also power the second stage, after the first stage propellant tank is depleted and separated. A third stage with four smaller engines would complete the injection into low-Earth orbit.
> 
> SALVO is similar to the ASAT program of the 1980s in that it was a rocket on the belly of an F-15, but that is where the similarities end. The 1985 program was not capable of going into orbit, but rather function like an air-to-air missile—more specifically like a sounding rocket with a payload.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> _The ALASA air launched rocket follow on to SALVO is depicted under F-15. Note four rocket engine nozzles that power both the first and then second stage after first stage propellant tank separates. Photo Credit DARPA._
> 
> The warhead was an ingenious, highly maneuverable IR seeker that would collide to score a kill. It was designed to be launched in front of an approaching satellite given real time NORAD targeting data. SALVO and ALASA as an ASAT are no more similar than an AMRAM or Sidewinder rocket on the belly of a F-15.
> 
> The first air launched ASAT tests took place 55 years ago, in 1958-59, with a B-47 bomber during 12 firing tests. The missile was called Bold Orion and in 1959 was fired against the Explorer 6 satellite. It passed within four miles of the satellite, an effective kill range since operationally it would have used a nuke warhead.



Awwww.....why are you leaving us sister?? How come the only few decent members here are the ones who either go away or stay silent?? Not cool, since i really enjoy your posts/comments, one of the few members from whom i do learn alot of things i didn't know. Please don't go.

*Nasa Assembles First Pieces for Orion Deep Space Mission*
Indo-Asian News Service , 9 September 2015
Share on FacebookTweetShareShareEmailReddit





In a small yet significant to send astronauts to Mars, Nasa engineers have welded together the first two segments of the Orion crew module that will fly atop Nasa's Space Launch System (SLS) rocket on a mission beyond the far side of the moon.

The primary structure of Orion's crew module is made of seven large aluminium pieces that must be welded together in detailed fashion at Nasa's Michoud Assembly Facility in New Orleans.

"Every day, teams around the country are moving at full speed to get ready for Exploration Mission-1 (EM-1) when we'll flight test Orion and SLS together in the proving ground of space, far away from the safety of Earth," said Bill Hill, deputy associate administrator for Exploration Systems Development at Nasa Headquarters in Washington, DC.

"We are progressing toward eventually sending astronauts deep into space," he said in a statement.

The first weld connects the tunnel to the forward bulkhead, which is at the top of the spacecraft and houses many of Orion's critical systems, such as the parachutes that deploy during re-entry.

Orion's tunnel, with a docking hatch, will allow crews to move between the crew module and other spacecraft.

"Each of Orion's systems and subsystems is assembled or integrated onto the primary structure, so starting to weld the underlying elements together is a critical first manufacturing step," added Mark Geyer, Orion programme manager.

During the coming months, engineers will inspect and evaluate them to ensure they meet precise design requirements before welding.

Once complete, the structure will be shipped to Nasa's Kennedy Space Center in Florida where it will be assembled with the other elements of the spacecraft, integrated with SLS and processed before launch.

SLS is one of the most experienced large rocket engines in the world, with more than a million seconds of ground test and flight operations time.

When completed, SLS will enable astronauts to begin their journey to explore destinations far into the solar system.

Nasa Assembles First Pieces for Orion Deep Space Mission | NDTV Gadgets

This one will be interesting, would love to see humans land on Mars.


----------



## Hamartia Antidote

Technogaianist said:


> This is likely my last post on PDF. I don't know what purpose I have here, I don't like the attitudes that propagate and I'm no glutton for negativity and jingoism. Were once I tried to discuss with others, tried to learn, tried to engage, now I dread conversations. I try to avoid conversing with others..



Sorry to see you go. We'll miss you.


----------



## Hamartia Antidote

SpaceX Dragon capsule could be used to return Mars samples to Earth | ExtremeTech






NASA’s Ames Research Center has developed a draft proposal for a mission that would retrieve soil samples from Mars and deliver them back to Earth. It’s ambitious to be sure, but NASA scientists are optimistic about the so-called “Red Dragon” proposal, so named because it would rely on a modified version of SpaceX’s Dragon capsule. According to the team, this mission could be feasible in the early 2020s, just in time for NASA’s next Mars rover mission.

Repurposing near-Earth spacecraft for longer voyages is usually a bad idea that never gets past the initial design stages. However, SpaceX designed the Dragon capsule to be highly adaptable. After all, the manned Dragon is essentially the same vessel that’s already in operation as an automated cargo transport.

CEO Elon Musk says the Falcon 9 Heavy is powerful enough to take the fully loaded Dragon to Mars, provided it is not needed for the return trip. A lighter payload could make it all the way to Jupiter. He and SpaceX were not involved in the design of the Red Dragon mission, but Musk has since come out in favor of the basic idea, noting that the Dragon vehicle is designed to land on any surface in the solar system.






Landing on the surface of Mars becomes an increasingly tricky problem as you increase in mass. The atmosphere is too thin for parachutes to do all the work, and delicate components don’t take kindly to hard impacts. The 1-ton Curiosity rover was landed with the aid of a rocket sled, but the Red Dragon would have a 2-ton payload at least. Ames scientists think the Red Dragon can set down without any parachutes, using only the Super Draco engines that are being developed for the emergency abort system on manned Dragon capsules. This would allow Red Dragon to rendezvous with the planned 2020 NASA Mars rover, which will have already collected soil samples for the return mission.

It would be inefficient to try and lift the whole dragon capsule back off the Martian surface, so instead it would carry a small Mars ascent vehicle that would launch into orbit. The lower gravity and thinner atmosphere on Mars make it easier to reach orbit. This craft would line up for an Earth encounter, then release a smaller Earth return vehicle with the samples on board. Once it’s in low-Earth orbit, a second Dragon capsule will be sent up to retrieve it.

Getting samples of Martian soil back to Earth would be the best way to learn about the history and composition of Mars. There’s only so much a rover can do from millions of miles away, and if scientists come up with a new idea for a test, they have to wait for the next mission. Having fresh samples would accelerate things greatly. Maybe we’d finally be able to figure out if Mars has ever supported life.

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DARPA Wants To Build An Automated Spaceport Run By Robots | Techaeris






Space is awesome. Most of us get excited to watch rocket launches, satellite imagery, and even the thought of manned missions to places like Mars get people’s hearts racing. As we become a space-faring civilization, there will be challenges in getting off of the only planet we’ve ever known. Namely getting off of the only planet we’ve ever known. Launching ships into orbit is still prohibitively expensive, and finding ways to avoid or at the very least improve that situation remains high on the list of priorities. We’ve seen designs for space elevators that would at least reduce the cost of getting cargo into orbit, but there would still be the issue of moving that cargo elsewhere via some type of spacecraft. That spacecraft would likely need to be both reusable, and be able to stay in orbit for extended periods of time. What happens when those ships need to be refueled, or repaired? Scientists at DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency) have thought that through and feel that an automated spaceport run by robots is the solution.

To that end, DARPA is developing a highly sophisticated robot arm that they see as part of a future transportation hub in space. This automated station could be used to repair, refuel, and even in some cases rebuild spacecraft, reducing the need to launch quite as much mass into orbit, since as _The Martian_‘s Mark Watney says, “NASA isn’t in the habit of putting unnecessary mass into orbit.” This also allows for some larger ships to stay in orbit, similar to the Hermes spacecraft from _The Martian_ (yeah, I just recently finished reading _The Martian_, great book, btw), where they will not so frequently incur the cost of launching to escape Earth’s gravitational pull. These theoretical ships will still need to be maintained though, and that’s where DARPA’s spaceport comes in.

At DARPA’s “Wait, What? A Future Technology Forum” in St. Louis on September 10th, former NASA Astronaut and current DARPA Deputy Director of Tactical Technology Pam Melroy likened the proposed space station to the seaports of the world:

Look at the great seafaring port cities in the world for inspiration, and imagine a port of call at 36,000 kilometers

A station at that height would place it in geosynchronous orbit (GEO), providing a much more stable location to keep the station in orbit. For reference, the International Space Station is in Low Earth Orbit (LEO) at a range of 300-600 kilometers. Any station in Low Earth Orbit – including the ISS – will have that orbit decay and get pulled back towards the Earth after around 25 years if course correcting adjustments aren’t made. Objects in geosynchronous orbit can stay in one spot for significantly longer – up to around one million years according to Melroy.

The issue with geosynchronous orbit is that the radiation that far out would be too high for a human crew to handle for any extended period of time. Plus, launching a crew out to the station when repairs are needed would again require a costly space launch each time. Robots wouldn’t have that issue since they can be built to withstand radiation and can stay on any proposed space station without having to come back to Earth. I’d imagine any station built would have redundancies in place or even abilities for the robots to repair themselves in case of a malfunction. Sending a crew out for repairs would have to be a last resort, though an undesirable one due to the necessary space launch.

The perfect station in this instance would obviously have a tremendously expensive cost up front, but by being able to stay in orbit and service spacecraft without requiring a space launch, it would ultimately drive down costs significantly. Robots really are the answer in this instance, and DARPA is working on the robotic arm that they believe will get us there.

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‘Super-antenna’ could let Mars rover talk directly with Earth | ExtremeTech

Right now, Mars rovers like Curiosity get roughly 15 minutes to talk to scientists back on Earth, twice per day. If a scientist wants to issue a complex set of orders, or download a whole bunch of new information, it has to all fit into these 15-minute windows. For scientists on the ground, the necessity of bouncing signals through multiple orbiting satellites means that rover missions progress as a series of quick snapshots, with tense waits in between. Now, they have a prototype for a new and improved type of rover antenna, one that could turn those minutes into hours, and those orbiters into space junk.






The idea comes from a group working on advanced antenna technology at UCLA, in combination with NASA’s Jet Propulsion laboratory. The idea is basically to use an array of 256 antenna elements (a 16 x 16 square) all working together to make a “super-antenna” capable of directly communicating with Earth. Having fewer moving bodies to worry about keeping in alignment, this system could give a rover up to several hours of communication time with operators back on Earth, every day.

The reason it works is not just that the array of mini-antennas creates a more powerful signal, but that the signal is _circularly polarized_. This has the effect of keeping the signal coherent as it travels through the Martian atmosphere — once a signal gets into the vacuum of space with good signal strength intact, getting the rest of the way to an orbiter around the Earth isn’t hard at all.






Amazingly, this huge increase in signal strength will still run within the power limitations of NASA’s upcoming Mars 2020 rover: it has only about 100 watts to allot to communications, or about enough to keep an incandescent lightbulb shining. For that power commitment, it will purportedly be able to maintain a signal with a satellite around Earth, 225 million kilometers away. The 2020 mission may well be NASA’s major precursor to the start of a manned mission, so it will important to see if it can serve as a proof of concept for direct communications between the Earth and Mars.


The additive characteristics of its compound antenna actually work in both directions; not only will it be able to create more powerful signals to transmit back to Earth, but it will be able to _pick up_ more powerful signals as well. This will give it a better ability to download information from the Earth, widening the lines of communication for both scientists and their rover.

The Mars 2020 rover won’t have the luxury of twisting around to make sure it’s pointing at the Earth at every moment, and so the antenna is planned to be mounted on a gimbal arm that can lift the antenna and orient it in any direction. This unrestrained antenna mount, combined with the circular polarization of the signal itself, should also allow the rover to transmit and receive while on the move, meaning that those hours of phone time don’t need to be wasted.

Right now, the UCLA team has only made a four-element-by-four-element prototype. But this prototype behaved just the way their simulations expected, and as it had to if their 16-by-16 version was going to work. A full-scale prototype is in the works.


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## Chanakya's_Chant

@Hamartia Antidote @AMDR Hi, can you please shed some light on US's semi-cryogenic / LOX-Kerosene rocket engine developments? Why does US prefer to source Russian RD-180 semi-cryogenic engines for Atlas instead of developing and manufacturing one locally?


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## Hamartia Antidote

Chanakya's_Chant said:


> @Hamartia Antidote @AMDR Why does US prefer to source Russian RD-180 semi-cryogenic engines for Atlas instead of developing and manufacturing one locally?



My observations:
1) During the break up of the Soviet Union NASA was worried that the civilian rocket engineers/scientists employed by the Soviet space program would jump ship to other countries and help build things such as ICBMs. Keeping them happy was a priority. So there were joint ventures such as the International Space Station and leveraging rocket engines to keep them busy.
.2) RD-180 engine is a very very nice engine. Very efficient and not many parts. Has a great track record. Would rather it not fall into the wrong hands.

The US has a handful of companies using rocket engines. United Launch Alliance is the one which uses the Russian engines.

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## Chanakya's_Chant

Hamartia Antidote said:


> 1) During the break up of the Soviet Union NASA was worried that the civilian rocket engineers/scientists employed by the Soviet space program would jump ship to other countries and help build things such as ICBMs. Keeping them happy was a priority. So there were joint ventures such as the International Space Station and leveraging rocket engines to keep them busy.



Not sure about aerospace sector but as far as aeronautical sector is concerned - the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 proved to be a boon to China and the PLAAF. Apart from a formidable enemy being neutralised, many displaced scientists, engineers and technicians from the erstwhile Soviet Union found employment in the Chinese military industrial complex. The Russian aircraft industry struggling to survive, was more than willing to sell modern aeroplanes and technology to China. And the booming Chinese economy could afford to import the best that was on offer.


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## SvenSvensonov

*NASA's Zero Gravity Facility Looks too Space-Aged for Reality

September 12, 1966*: Zero Gravity Facility is so tall, objects dropped from the top experience a full 5.18 seconds of zero-gravity free-fall.

The Zero Gravity Research Facility is a pair of towers built during the 1960s space race to study microgravity. Researchers poke at how combustion and fluid physics reach in microgravity, setting up the initial tests for further investigation aboard the vomit comet or the International Space Station.







Objects are positioned with an overhead crane at the top of the vacuum chamber, connected to the control room with an umbilical cable. Over the next hour, a vacuum pump drops the chamber to 0.006% of atmospheric pressure (just 0.05 torr compared to the 760 torr of standard atmospheric pressure), reducing atmospheric drag to just 0.00001 g. The controllers remotely fracture a specially-designed bolt, sending the experiment into a 132-meter (432-foot) free-fall for 5.18 seconds. It then gets caught by a decelerator cart filled with polystyrene beads, hitting a peak deceleration of 65 g, or 65 times normal Earth gravity.






The 142 meter (467 foot) long steel vacuum chamber extends 155 meters (510 feet) below ground level, with a 132 meter (432 foot) free-fall distance. The 6.1 meter (20 foot) diameter tube is embedded within a 8.7 meter (28.5 foot) concrete-lined shaft. Objects are caught by a 3.3 meter (11 foot) diameter, 6.1 meter (20 foot) deep decelerator cart filled with 3 millimetre (1/8 inch) diameter polystyrene beads. The cart can dissipate the kinetic energy of a 1,134 kilogram (2,500 pound) experimental vehicle travelling at 50.5 meters per second (113 miles per hour).

The Lewis Research Center has since been renamed to the John H. Glenn Research Center at Lewis Field in Cleveland, Ohio.

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## SvenSvensonov

*Try Landing the SpaceX Falcon 9 Yourself With This Flash Game (It's Hard)*






Vertically landing a rocket ship the same way it takes off is one heck of a challenge. That’s why SpaceX hasn’t quite pulled it off just yet, and why this Falcon 9 lander flash game will frustrate you to no end.

_SpaceX Falcon 9 Lander_ is a fun twist on the classic _Lunar Lander_ game that has you trying to perfectly balance thrust, rotation, descent, and your remaining fuel to safely land a rocket ship back on a floating platform.

Playing it is slightly less stressful than trying to land the real Falcon 9 since you’re not out millions of dollars every time you crash–but only just. If you’re looking for a way to relax and kill some time this afternoon, this isn’t it. But if you want to feel as frustrated as Elon Musk does, definitely give it a shot.



Chanakya's_Chant said:


> LOX-Kerosene rocket engine developments?



There's a push to domesticate production of LOX rockets (or alternatives like the Raptor, which is methane powered), but ULA has a contract to fulfill with Russia. It's worth noting that RD-180 isn't the only rocket engine being used by the US for launch purposes. RS-68 is another option. It's used on Delta:






Currently, and due to geopolitical sensitivities and US jobs, work is underway on an RD-180 replacement. Some proposed engines included:

BE-4 - in development for use on Vulcan











BE-4 is in an early developmental stage.






AR-1 - in development






Components are currently undergoing testing, such as this pre-burner:






SpaceX's Merlin series, used on the Falcon rocket, is another alternative:











The RD-180 is on its way out. ULA's Vulcan will kill Atlas and with it RD-180. Blue Origins' BE-4 and SpaceX's Merlin are all part of a US push to replace Russian LOX rockets with domestic ones. They will ensure the US use of RD-180 is never realized again.

The first flight of each of these engines is planned for 2019 at the latest.

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## SvenSvensonov

Speaking of Blue Origins:

*Jeff Bezos' Space Company Now Has a Launchpad*

 that rocket!





Space is about to get crowded with the ventures of billionaire tech entrepreneurs. Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos has just announced that his private space company Blue Origin will be taking over a launch pad in Cape Canaveral, Florida that hasn’t been used in a decade.

Launch Complex 36, a facility once patronized by NASA’s Atlas rockets and Martian Mariner probes, is about to become commercial space company Blue Origin’s new digs. With a $200 million dollar capital investment, the complex is getting a makeover and a flashy new name, “Exploration Park.”

Blue Origins is hoping to blast people to the edge of space later this decade using its New Shepard suborbital launch system. New Shepard, which consists of a booster rocket and a three person crew capsule, is designed to ferry people into low Earth orbit for several minutes and then (gently!) fall back to Earth will the aid of parachutes. The vehicle had its first uncrewed test launch in April and Bezos says he plans additional details public sometime next year.

“Residents of the Space Coast have enjoyed front-row seats to the future for nearly 60 years,” Bezos wrote in a statement on Blue Origin’s website. “Our team’s passion for pioneering is the perfect fit for a community dedicated to forging new frontiers. Please keep watching.”

...

LC36 needs some work though, especially Atlas-Centaur umbilical towers were leveled in 2006:











There are dozens of LC's though, like LC-40 during a 2015 Falcon 9 launch:






And LC-17 launching a Delta II in 2007:

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## SQ8

SvenSvensonov said:


> Speaking of Blue Origins:
> 
> *Jeff Bezos' Space Company Now Has a Launchpad*
> 
> that rocket!

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## SvenSvensonov

*Boeing's Starliner Crew Access Tower Taking Shape at ULA's Atlas Launch Complex 41*

PHOTOS: Boeing’s Starliner Crew Access Tower Taking Shape at ULA’s Atlas Launch Complex 41 « AmericaSpace





_The first tier of the Crew Access Tower is moved from its construction yard to Space Launch Complex-41 at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida. It will take seven tiers, as each segment is called, to form the 200-foot-tall tower that will be mounted beside the Atlas V launch pad already in place at SLC-41. The tower is being assembled at the pad so astronauts and ground support teams can have access to the Boeing CST-100 Starliner as it stands poised for liftoff. Photo Credit: NASA/Dmitrios Gerondidakis_

In 2017 the United States will finally see the return of American human spaceflight to our own shores, courtesy of SpaceX and Boeing and their Dragon and Starliner crew capsules. With two years left before an expected inaugural launch there is still a lot of work to be done, but one of the most visible signs of progress at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida is the new Boeing/ULA (United Launch Alliance) crew access tower being constructed just a few miles down the road from ULA’s Atlas Space Launch Complex-41 (SLC-41), which is where Boeing’s CST-100 Starliner flights will take place from atop ULA’s workhorse Atlas-V rocket.

The entire tower will be erected at SLC-41 over the next several weeks, rising like an erector set, and it’s the first of its kind intended for a vehicle that will carry humans into space from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station since the one built at Launch Complex 34 for the Apollo missions in the 1960s. The fixed service structures used for crew access for NASA’s 30 years of space shuttle launches from Launch Complex 39A and 39B were built in the late-1970s at Kennedy Space Center (KSC), which neighbors the Cape at the north side of Merritt Island.

The first tier segments of the new SLC-41 Atlas-V commercial crew tower have been rising above the Cape’s flat landscape all summer, and, when finished, the completed crew access tower will stand over 200 feet tall.

“Safety of our NASA astronauts and ground crews is at the forefront as we construct the crew access tower,” said Mike Burghardt, the launch segment director for Boeing’s Commercial Crew Program. “This is an exciting time in space. The crew tower embodies the fact that very soon we’ll be launching crew missions again from the Space Coast.”

The tower will be comprised of seven major tier segments, or levels, and each will measure about 20 foot square and 28 feet tall. Building them away from the pad allows ULA to maintain their busy Atlas launch manifest, which will launch again as soon as October 2, and also allows for foundation work for the tower at SLC-41 to move forward at the same time the tower itself is being built. Cranes move the largest pieces into place, while welders and riveters connect the thick steel beams together to form the central spars of the tower.

Once the seven tiers are built and outfitted with everything (except wire harnesses and elevator rails) they will be trucked over to SLC-41, one by one, and stacked between launches. The first two tiers arrived at the launch pad earlier this month.

The tower will then be outfitted with all the wiring, lines, support facilities, stairs, and elevators the astronaut crew and ground support staff will require. A set of slidewire baskets will be ready to help anyone on the tower to evacuate in a hurry in the unlikely event of an emergency as well.

“After the tower buildup comes the extensive work to outfit the tower with over 400 pieces of outboard steel that have to be installed,” said Howard Biegler, ULA’s man in charge of the company’s Human Launch Services division. “That takes much longer, and will be done in parallel with the arm buildup. The completely integrated and tested crew access arm and walkway should be brought out to the launch site around May 2016, with all the site construction, testing and certifications done by September 2016.”

Although there won’t be any crewed flights in 2016 anymore, ULA designed their game plan from day one to support a December 2016 launch (as was NASA’s intention a couple years ago). They have never slipped off of their September 2016 completion date.

“This is an extremely exciting time,” said Rick Marlette, deputy project manager for ULA’s launch pad construction. “It’s great to be doing the construction after so many years and we’re bringing Atlas back to its heritage from the Mercury Program of flying astronauts into space.”

In the meantime, at ULA’s 1.6-million-square-foot Decatur, Ala., facility, the company has already started work building the two Atlas-V rockets that will launch Boeing’s CST-100 Starliner space capsule on its first uncrewed and crewed test flights, both scheduled for 2017. Both rockets, each designated as AV-073 and AV-080, will be the first to be certified by both NASA and ULA to fly people to and from the International Space Station.

Boeing also recently held a grand opening event to officially mark the beginning of CST-100 Starliner operations at the company’s new 50,000 square foot Commercial Crew and Cargo Processing Facility (C3PF) at Kennedy Space Center in Florida, where work is well underway building a Starliner pathfinder test article to certify the vehicle’s design before putting astronauts onboard for flights to and from the ISS.

SpaceX and Boeing both received NASA contracts to fly astronauts to and from the ISS with their Dragon and Starliner crew capsules. Boeing, however, received a much larger piece of the multi-billion-dollar pie, with $4.2 billion for Boeing and $2.6 billion for SpaceX. Boeing also received the first of up to six orders from NASA to execute a crew-rotation mission of Starliner to the ISS earlier this year, although NASA emphasized that the order does not necessarily imply that Starliner will fly ahead of the SpaceX Crew Dragon, and that “determination of which company will fly its mission to the station first will be made at a later time.”

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## SvenSvensonov

*New Green Propellants Complete Milestones*

New Green Propellants Complete Milestones | NASA

To stay in the proper orbit, many satellites have thrusters--small rocket engines--that fire to change altitude or orientation in space. On Earth where gravity dominates, 5 pounds of thrust, equivalent to 22 Newtons of force, may seem small, but in space, it doesn’t take much thrust to move a large spacecraft.





_This image reveals a temperature profile of a 22 Newton thruster using the green propellant LMP-103S during a 10-second pulsing test that ratchets the temperature upward. Using this data, engineers can determine how chemical reactions cause heat to flow around to the thruster over time. Credits: NASA/MSFC/Christopher Burnside_

Currently, most satellite thrusters are powered by hydrazine, a toxic and corrosive fuel that is dangerous to handle and store. In a quest to replace hydrazine with a more environmentally friendly fuel, NASA is testing thrusters propelled by green propellants that can provide better performance than hydrazine without the toxicity. These propellants could help lower costs by eliminating infrastructure needed for handling toxic fuels and reducing processing time--making it less expensive and safer and easier to launch both commercial and NASA spacecraft.

“When you consider all of the satellites in orbit today that do everything from observing Earth and monitoring weather to peering deep into our universe to answer questions about its origins, it's easy to see that using green propellants will make a big difference in increased mission performance at a reduced cost while keeping both the environment and our workforce safe from contamination,” said Steve Jurczyk, NASA’s associate administrator for the Space Technology Mission Directorate (STMD) at NASA Headquarters in Washington. "NASA has a rich history of ensuring our technology and scientific prowess has a benefit to life on Earth, and green propellant will help ensure that NASA continues to be a steward of this planet."

NASA recently completed several hot-fire tests with thrusters powered by two different green propellants with the potential to replace hydrazine. Both are ionic liquid-based blends that are less toxic and less flammable than hydrazine, which makes them easier and less costly to store, to handle and to fuel up spacecraft before launch. Additionally, the new propellants offer higher performance, delivering more thrust for a given quantity of propellant than hydrazine.





_NASA engineers monitor temperature data on the left computer screen as a thruster fueled with the green propellant LMP-103S viewed on the right computer screen is fired at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama. Credits: NASA/MSFC/Fred Deaton_

One of the green propellants is a hydroxylammonium nitrate-based propellant known as AF-M315E. It was developed by the Air Force Research Laboratory at Edwards Air Force Base in California. This propellant will be demonstrated on a small satellite on NASA’s Green Propellant Infusion Mission (GPIM). During the GPIM flight, the smallsat will fire thrusters powered by AF-M315E to conduct maneuvers to change the satellite’s altitude and orientation. GPIM recently passed a major milestone with the delivery of the propellant's propulsion subsystem built by Aerojet Rocketdyne in Redmond, Washington, to the mission’s prime contractor, Ball Aerospace & Technologies Corp. in Boulder, Colorado, for integration into the spacecraft. For this project, the GPIM team tested two different sized thrusters (1 and 22 Newton) with AF-M315E. Five of the 1-Newton thrusters will fly on GPIM.

“With GPIM's flight scheduled to launch next year, NASA and the aerospace industry have taken positive steps to demonstrate use of a propellant that will reduce satellite fueling hazards and save time and money during launch campaigns,” said Tim Smith, GPIM mission manager for NASA’s Technology Demonstration Missions at Marshall. GPIM is managed by STMD's Technology Demonstration Missions Program Office at Marshall.

The other green propellant is a fuel called LMP-103S, which is based on the oxidizer ammonium dinitramide produced by Eurenco Bofors in Karlskoga, Sweden. A team at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, recently completed tests with both 5 Newton and 22 Newton thruster built by ECAPS and powered by LMP-103S. Engineers fired the 22 Newton thruster 35 times under varying conditions and monitored results with infrared cameras. Orbital ATK, Inc. assisted NASA with these tests.

“We conducted the first NASA tests with 22 Newton thrusters with this propellant in the United States,” said Christopher Burnside, lead engineer for testing the LMP-103S propellant. “They performed quite well, providing performance at comparable levels to today’s hydrazine thrusters. It’s always great to put thrusters through the paces in an environment that simulates operational conditions.”

To guide future investments, NASA is leading the development of a green propellant roadmap along with other government agencies, industry and academic leaders who recently shared their collective experiences during a technical interchange meeting at Marshall.

“I like the analogy of relating thrusters and propellant systems to aircraft,” said Charles Pierce, manager of Marshall’s Spacecraft Propulsion Systems Branch, which recently completed the tests with LMP-103S. “One aircraft doesn’t meet every need. Some high performance aircraft need to fly fast while other larger aircraft need to conserve fuel and fly slowly. Some carry passengers while others carry only cargo. Likewise, NASA needs to have flexibility in the types of thrusters and propellant systems it has to meet a variety of mission needs. One type of propellant might work best for one type of mission while another is better suited for a different mission. It’s important that we have choices as we go green.”


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## SvenSvensonov

*NASA's RaD-X Will Measure Radiation Levels Where Aircraft Fly*

NASA's RaD-X Will Measure Radiation Levels Where Aircraft Fly | NASA






Earth’s atmosphere and magnetic field provide protection from harmful space radiation caused by flares from the sun and cosmic rays from outside our solar system. Space radiation is different from most kinds of radiation we experience here on Earth, such as UV rays, but is still a concern at higher altitudes and near Earth’s poles. Particles that make up space radiation can cause adverse effects to the human body, such as DNA damage inside the cells that can possibly lead to genetic disorders, cancer, heart and gastrointestinal problems, cataracts and brain and nerve dysfunction.

NASA’s high-altitude balloon project, known as NASA’s Radiation Dosimetry Experiment, or RaD-X, will provide first-time indications of how cosmic rays deposit energy in the upper atmosphere. RaD-X is a microsatellite structure that will launch from New Mexico during a launch window that opens Sept. 10 (visit this site for updates on the launch time) and fly on a scientific research balloon for 24 hours to measure cosmic ray energy at two separate altitude regions in the stratosphere — above 110,000 feet and between 69,000 to 88,500 feet. The flight will validate low-cost sensors for future missions and will provide data that may improve the health and safety of future commercial and military aircrews and space crews.





_NASA's RaD-X team poses for a photo. Credits: NASA_

Pilots and crews working in the aviation industry are classified as radiation workers by the International Commission on Radiological Protection due to the amount of time spent in Earth’s upper atmosphere where there is less protection from space radiation. Exposure to space radiation is even higher for astronauts living and working aboard the International Space Station, 250 miles above Earth, and a journey to Mars will require crews to remain beyond the protection of Earth’s atmosphere for approximately two and a half to three years. Learning how to protect humans from the effect of radiation exposure could help engineers develop new ways to minimize radiation exposure for aircraft crews and will also be a critical step for the future of space exploration.

*Low-cost, Low-risk, Big-return*

Small satellite missions, like RaD-X, provide NASA with valuable opportunities to test emerging technologies and economical commercial off-the-shelf components, which may be useful in future space missions.

These ground- and balloon-based measurements complement NASA’s fleet of space satellites, and place useful tools, like NASA’s Nowcast of Atmospheric Ionizing Radiation for Aviation Safety (NAIRAS) model, at our fingertips. RaD-X will improve NAIRAS, a NASA-funded Applied Sciences Program to develop an operational prototype for a global, real-time, data-driven predictive system needed to assess biologically harmful radiation exposure levels for aviation. NAIRAS could be used by public and private entities for informed decision-making about radiation exposure safety for flight crews, the general public, and commercial space operations.

“Before NAIRAS can transition to operations, it must be verified and validated,” said Chris Mertens, RaD-X principal investigator. “RaD-X is an important next step in the verification and validation process, collecting and processing data from the top of the atmosphere that will constrain the model.”





_The RaD-X microsatellite structure was developed at NASA’s Langley Research Center. Credits: NASA_

RaD-X will also host the first Cubes in Space (CiS) flight opportunity. CiS is a global STEAM-based education program for students (ages 11-18) that provides a no-cost opportunity to design and compete to launch an experiment into space. The small cubes are placed on sounding rockets and scientific balloons in cooperation with NASA’s Wallops Flight Facility and the Earth Systems Science Pathfinder Program Office. RaD-X, one of two CiS opportunities, will carry more than 100 small cubes filled with experiments created by students around the U.S.

In 2013, RaD-X was chosen as a part of NASA’s Hands-On Project Experience (HOPE) project, a cooperative workforce development program sponsored by the Science Mission Directorate and the Office of the Chief Engineer’s Academy of Program/Project and Leadership (APPEL). The HOPE Training Program provides an opportunity for a team of early-career and career transitional NASA employees to propose, design, develop, build, and launch a suborbital flight project over the course of 18 months. The purpose of the program is to enable practitioners in the early years of their careers to gain the knowledge and skills necessary to manage NASA’s future flight projects.

“The RaD-X team carefully evaluated each phase of the operation from integration and launch, to recovery and data processing,” said Kevin Daugherty, RaD-X project manager. “It was great to receive this type of experience through the HOPE project, and we have all grown from the opportunity.”

RaD-X contributes to NASA’s Heliophysics Division Living With A Star (LWS) Program’s goal to understand those aspects of the connected sun-Earth system that affect life and society by improving prediction of biologically harmful radiation exposure to air travelers and by enhancing the understanding of cosmic ray transport processes and interactions with the atmosphere.

The RaD-X microsatellite structure was developed at NASA’s Langley Research Center, where the project is managed. RaD-X has partnered with NASA’s Ames Research Center for expertise on radiation detectors, and NASA’s Wallops Flight Facility for expertise with high-altitude balloons.

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## SvenSvensonov

*NASA | Getting the Big Picture*

_A brief animated look at the different types of remote sensing techniques that NASA uses to study the Earth._

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## SvenSvensonov

*NASA's MAVEN Mission Celebrates One Year in Martian Orbit, Delivers Fascinating Science About Red Planet's Atmosphere*

NASA’s MAVEN Mission Celebrates One Year in Martian Orbit, Delivers Fascinating Science About Red Planet’s Atmosphere « AmericaSpace
_




Artist’s concept of the MAVEN spacecraft in orbit around Mars. The mission recently completed one year of successful science operations around the Red planet and is already primed for a year-long extended mission until at least September 2016. Image Credit: NASA/GSFC_

One of the humorous remarks that have been circulating the Internet in recent years regarding the exploration of Mars, is that the Red Planet is the only one to this date to be solely inhabited by robots. With no less than five active spacecraft from the US, Europe and India currently in orbit around our planetary neighbor and two operating US rovers on its surface, Mars can be justifiably considered as a crowded and busy place. Throughout this time, most of the attention by the media has been focused on such milestone, high-profile missions like NASA’s Curiosity rover, whose daredevil-type landing in August 2012 and subsequent incredible imagery of the Martian landscape has wowed scientists and the public alike, as well as India’s first foray into planetary exploration with its highly successful Mars Orbiter Mission, or MOM. Yet, another latecomer in the Mars exploration arena has just passed a major milestone of its own, while quietly conducting important science along the way. Having successfully entered orbit around Mars on September 22, 2014, NASA’s relatively neglected Mars Atmosphere and Volatile EvolutioN Mission, or MAVEN, celebrates exactly one year of studying the Red planet’s atmospheric dynamics in great detail for the first time ever by any robotic spacecraft.

The road to space for every planetary exploration mission is a decades-long process of conceptual studies, careful analysis, planning and implementation and MAVEN could not have been an exception. Even though it was first proposed as a concept to NASA in the early 2000’s, MAVEN actually traces its roots back to the Pioneer-Venus mission which had studied the upper atmosphere of Venus and its interaction with the solar wind in great length back in the late 1970’s and early ’80’s. The need for a similar mission around the Red planet soon arose within the planetary science community, yet several propositions for such a mission that were studied by NASA during the 1980’s, like the Mars Aeronomy Observer and the Earth/Mars Aeronomy Orbiter, ultimately failed to advance beyond the conceptual phase. NASA finally revisited the concept for a dedicated aeronomy mission around the Red planet in 2006, when it issued a request for proposals for its now-discontinued Mars Scout program. As part of that process MAVEN was ultimately downselected in 2008 from a list of 26 competing mission concepts for a launch opportunity in late 2011 that was pushed back to 2013 due to organisational concerns within the agency. Despite these setbacks and having succeeded in staying on track and on budget throughout its entire development phase, the $671-million MAVEN spacecraft was eventually launched on top an Atlas V rocket on November 18, 2013 for a 10-month journey towards the Red planet, with the specific goal of tracing the 4.5 billion-year history and evolution of the tenuous Martian atmosphere.

Following in the footsteps of the successful US missions that preceded during the past decade, MAVEN finally entered orbit around Mars on September 22, 2014, after a journey of more than 700 million km across interplanetary space. The timing couldn’t have been better, for the spacecraft’s arrival in the vicinity of Mars coincided with the passage of comet C/2013 A1 Siding Spring, that came as close as 139,500 kilometers of the planet exactly a month later, on October 19. Even though MAVEN was still in the middle of its 6-week commissioning phase during the event and was positioned at the other side of the planet as a precaution, it nevertheless provided scientists with their first-ever views of the effects of a cometary passage and subsequent meteor shower on a planetary atmosphere other than Earth’s. More specifically, the spacecraft’s onboard Imaging Ultraviolet Spectrograph observed an intense ultraviolet emission as comet dust containing ionised iron particles slammed into the upper martian atmosphere, producing what would undoubtedly be a spectacular shooting star show as it would appear from the planet’s surface. In addition, MAVEN’s onboard Neutral Gas and Ion Mass Spectrometer was able to detect eight other different types of metal ions, including sodium and magnesium, providing planetary scientists with their first-ever direct measurements of dust from a comet that had originated from the Oort cloud at the outskirts of the Solar System. “This historic event allowed us to observe the details of this fast-moving Oort Cloud comet in a way never before possible using our existing Mars missions,” says Dr. Jim Green, director of NASA’s Planetary Science Division at the agency’s headquarters in Washington,DC. “Observing the effects on Mars of the comet’s dust slamming into the upper atmosphere makes me very happy that we decided to put our spacecraft on the other side of Mars at the peak of the dust tail passage and out of harm’s way.”

As impressive as the data from the close passage of comet C/2013 A1 Siding Spring were, MAVEN didn’t fail to deliver on its primary mission goals as well during its first year of operations around Mars. Right from the start and within just a few hours after achieving Mars orbital insertion, the spacecraft focused its 8 onboard science instruments on studying the properties of the Martian ionosphere and rarefied upper atmosphere and its interaction with the solar wind. As Mars lacks the type of global magnetic field that protects Earth from the harmful effects of the ultraviolet radiation and coronal mass ejections that are coming from the Sun, the latter hit and ionise the Martian upper atmosphere unimpeded, causing lighter elements like hydrogen, to freely escape into space. It is this process which is believed to be the main cause behind Mars’ atmospheric loss, turning the planet from what it is thought to have been a warm, wet and habitable planet early in its history to the dry and frozen world that is today. The physics of this transition from a potentially habitable Mars to a dead one is one of the biggest mysteries in planetary science today, the answer to which could also help shed light to the question of whether the planet had indeed harbored any kind of life in the past and whether it still does so today.

To that end, MAVEN was designed to study Mars from a highly elliptical polar orbit with an apogee of 6,200 km and a perigee of 150 km, thus ensuring a global coverage of the entire Martian atmosphere at many different altitudes. As part of its mission, the spacecraft was also tasked with executing five ‘deep-dip’ week-long dives throughout its primary mission that would bring it as close as 125 km above the martian surface, the four of which were successfully completed in February, April, July and September of this year.

Overall, the mission’s orbital profile and specialised science payload have helped planetary scientists so far to begin drawing the picture of the mechanics behind Mars’ atmospheric loss and have allowed them to make the first detailed compositional and structural measurements of the planet’s entire atmosphere for the first time. Some of the highlight science results so far, include the detection that solar particles penetrate deeper into the atmosphere of Mars than what was previously thought, all the way down to the lower atmospheric layers. As the atoms in the martian atmosphere are ionised by ultraviolet radiation from the Sun, they begin to ‘feel’ the magnetic field of the solar wind, causing them to slowly follow a trajectory along the solar magnetic field lines away from Mars through a narrow route along the planet’s poles, which makes the atmosphere thinner with time. “MAVEN is observing a polar plume of escaping atmospheric particles,” says Bruce Jakosky, principal investigator for the MAVEN mission, at the University of Colorado. “The amount of material escaping by this route could make it a major player in the loss of gas to space.”





_Layout of the MAVEN spacecraft with its suite of science instruments. Image Credit: NASA_

One other important result to have come from the mission this far, has been the discovery that Mars’ auroras are much more widespread in the planet’s atmosphere than what was thought possible. Even though the Mars doesn’t have a global magnetic field, it nevertheless harbors many localised, umbrella-like magnetic field patches, which are though to be the remnants of the global magnetic field that should have encircled the planet early on its history before it turned off. Scientists had previously theorised that auroras on Mars should be localised around these magnetic patches as well. Yet, what MAVEN’s Imaging Ultraviolet Spectrograph found, was that martian auroras were far more widespread, circling the entire planet, while the charged solar particles that caused them were found much deeper in the atmosphere than expected, at an altitude of approximately 100 km above the ground. “The canopies of the patchwork umbrellas are where we expect to find Martian auroras,” says Nick Schneider, member of the MAVEN science team at the University of Colorado and lead of the Imaging Ultraviolet Spectrograph instrument. “But MAVEN is seeing them outside these umbrellas, so this is something new. It really is amazing. Auroras on Mars appear to be more wide-ranging than we ever imagined.”

As an acknowledgment of MAVEN’s excellent performance and return of science results to date, NASA has already decided to extend the mission beyond its primary phase which ends on November, until at least September 2016 when the agency’s next planetary science mission review will take place. This extension will also give scientists the opportunity to further study Mars’ atmosphere in length for the full duration of one Martian year, which is 687 Earth days. “The success of the mission so far is a direct result of the incredibly hard work of everybody who works (and has worked) on ‪MAVEN‬”, said Jakosky, while commenting on the celebration of the mission’s first year around the Red planet. “This one year at ‪Mars‬ reflects the tremendous efforts over the preceding dozen years. And the mission continues—we still have two months to go in our primary mission, and then we begin our extended mission. We’re obtaining an incredibly rich data set that is on track to answer the questions we originally posed for MAVEN and that will serve the community for a long time to come. I hope everybody is as proud of what we’ve accomplished as I am! And here’s to the next year of exciting observations, analyses, and results!”

One factor that helps to ensure the mission’s longevity, is MAVEN’s secondary role as a communications and relay orbiter for the US rovers Opportunity and Curiosity that are currently active on the surface of Mars, a well as the landers and rovers that are scheduled to arrive on the Red planet within the next few years, like InSight and the Mars 2020 rover. At present, Curiosity and Opportunity use the Mars Odyssey and the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, as well as ESA’s Mars Express for communicating with Earth, but these spacecraft are long past beyond their primary missions, having lodged more than a decade in orbit around Mars. Should one or more of them eventually fail, NASA will need to have a functioning replacement in orbit so that communication with present and future missions on the surface stay uninterrupted.

Besides its excellent return on investment as a science mission, it is expected that MAVEN’s productive lifetime around the Red planet in similar vein to its predecessors could well span for more than a decade, further adding to our knowledge of our mystifying and enchanting planetary neighbor.






*Below are more images of some of the most important science results to have come from the MAVEN mission so far:*
*



*
_An ultraviolet image of comet Siding Spring on Friday taken by MAVEN on October 17 2014, two days before the comet’s closest approach to Mars. The image shows sunlight that has been scattered by atomic hydrogen coming off the comet and is shown as blue in this false-color representation. Image Credit/Caption: Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics /University of Colorado; NASA_
*



*
_False-color images of Mars, taken with MAVEN’s Imaging Ultraviolet Spectrograph, just eight hours after orbit insertion, on September 2014. The image shows the planet from an altitude of 36,500 km in three ultraviolet wavelength bands. Blue shows the ultraviolet light from the sun scattered from atomic hydrogen gas in an extended cloud that goes to thousands of kilometers above the planet’s surface. Green shows a different wavelength of ultraviolet light that is primarily sunlight reflected off of atomic oxygen, showing the smaller oxygen cloud. Red shows ultraviolet sunlight reflected from the planet’s surface; the bright spot in the lower right is light reflected either from polar ice or clouds. Image Credit/Caption: Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics /University of Colorado and NASA_
_




Three views of an escaping atmosphere, obtained by MAVEN’s Imaging Ultraviolet Spectrograph. By observing all of the products of water and carbon dioxide breakdown, MAVEN’s science team can better characterize the processes that have driven atmospheric loss on Mars. Image Credit/Caption: University of Colorado; NASA)




_
_A map of the Martian auroral detections that were taken by MAVEN’s Imaging Ultraviolet Spectrograph in December 2014 and shown here overlaid on a Mars topographic map. Image Credit/Caption: Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics /University of Colorado_

_



_
_Computer simulation of the interaction of the solar wind with electrically charged particles (ions) in Mars’ upper atmosphere. The lines represent the paths of individual ions and the colors represent their energy, and show that the polar plume (red) contains the most-energetic ions. (Image Credit/Caption: X. Fang, University of Colorado, and the MAVEN science team)_

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## SvenSvensonov

*Real Martians Moment: Low Density Supersonic Decelerator*
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NASA’s Ian Clark is the Principal Investigator for the Low Density Supersonic Decelerator (LDSD) Project; it’s basically an inflatable airbrake designed to help spacecraft descending through a planet’s atmosphere to slow from breakneck speeds to a safe landing speed. The technology behind LDSD will allow NASA to safely land spacecraft with larger payloads on the surface of Mars, more accurately and at elevations we’ve never before had access to._

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## SvenSvensonov

*Perplexing Pluto: New ‘Snakeskin’ Image and More from New Horizons*

Perplexing Pluto: New ‘Snakeskin’ Image and More from New Horizons | NASA

The newest high-resolution images of Pluto from NASA’s New Horizons are both dazzling and mystifying, revealing a multitude of previously unseen topographic and compositional details. The image below -- showing an area near the line that separates day from night -- captures a vast rippling landscape of strange, aligned linear ridges that has astonished New Horizons team members.

“It’s a unique and perplexing landscape stretching over hundreds of miles,” said William McKinnon, New Horizons Geology, Geophysics and Imaging (GGI) team deputy lead from Washington University in St. Louis. “It looks more like tree bark or dragon scales than geology. This’ll really take time to figure out; maybe it’s some combination of internal tectonic forces and ice sublimation driven by Pluto’s faint sunlight.”

The “snakeskin” image of Pluto’s surface is just one tantalizing piece of data New Horizons sent back in recent days. The spacecraft also captured the highest-resolution color view yet of Pluto, as well as detailed spectral maps and other high-resolution images.








_In this extended color image of Pluto taken by NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft, rounded and bizarrely textured mountains, informally named the Tartarus Dorsa, rise up along Pluto’s day-night terminator and show intricate but puzzling patterns of blue-gray ridges and reddish material in between. This view, roughly 330 miles (530 kilometers) across, combines blue, red and infrared images taken by the Ralph/Multispectral Visual Imaging Camera (MVIC) on July 14, 2015, and resolves details and colors on scales as small as 0.8 miles (1.3 kilometers).
Credits: NASA/JHUAPL/SWRI_
The new “extended color” view of Pluto – taken by New Horizons’ wide-angle Ralph/Multispectral Visual Imaging Camera (MVIC) on July 14 and downlinked to Earth on Sept. 19 – shows the extraordinarily rich color palette of Pluto.

“We used MVIC’s infrared channel to extend our spectral view of Pluto,” said John Spencer, a GGI deputy lead from Southwest Research Institute (SwRI) in Boulder, Colorado. “Pluto’s surface colors were enhanced in this view to reveal subtle details in a rainbow of pale blues, yellows, oranges, and deep reds. Many landforms have their own distinct colors, telling a wonderfully complex geological and climatological story that we have only just begun to decode."





_This cylindrical projection map of Pluto, in enhanced, extended color, is the most detailed color map of Pluto ever made. It uses recently returned color imagery from the New Horizons Ralph camera, which is draped onto a base map of images from the NASA’s spacecraft’s Long Range Reconnaissance Imager (LORRI). The map can be zoomed in to reveal exquisite detail with high scientific value. Color variations have been enhanced to bring out subtle differences. Colors used in this map are the blue, red, and near-infrared filter channels of the Ralph instrument.
Credits: NASA/JHUAPL/SWRI_
Additionally, a high-resolution swath across Pluto taken by New Horizons’ narrow-angle Long Range Reconnaissance Imager (LORRI) on July 14, and downlinked on Sept. 20, homes in on details of Pluto’s geology. These images -- the highest-resolution yet available of Pluto -- reveal features that resemble dunes, the older shoreline of a shrinking glacial ice lake, and fractured, angular water ice mountains with sheer cliffs. Color details have been added using MVIC’s global map shown above.





_High-resolution images of Pluto taken by NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft just before closest approach on July 14, 2015, reveal features as small as 270 yards (250 meters) across, from craters to faulted mountain blocks, to the textured surface of the vast basin informally called Sputnik Planum. Enhanced color has been added from the global color image. This image is about 330 miles (530 kilometers) across. For optimal viewing, zoom in on the image on a larger screen.
Credits: NASA/JHUAPL/SWRI_

This closer look at the smooth, bright surface of the informally named Sputnik Planum shows that it is actually pockmarked by dense patterns of pits, low ridges and scalloped terrain. Dunes of bright volatile ice particles are a possible explanation, mission scientists say, but the ices of Sputnik may be especially susceptible to sublimation and formation of such corrugated ground.





_High-resolution images of Pluto taken by NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft just before closest approach on July 14, 2015, are the sharpest images to date of Pluto’s varied terrain—revealing details down to scales of 270 meters. In this 75-mile (120-kilometer) section of the taken from the larger, high-resolution mosaic above, the textured surface of the plain surrounds two isolated ice mountains.
Credits: NASA/JHUAPL/SWRI_
Beyond the new images, new compositional information comes from a just-obtained map of methane ice across part of Pluto's surface that reveals striking contrasts: Sputnik Planum has abundant methane, while the region informally named Cthulhu Regio shows none, aside from a few isolated ridges and crater rims. Mountains along the west flank of Sputnik lack methane as well. 

The distribution of methane across the surface is anything but simple, with higher concentrations on bright plains and crater rims, but usually none in the centers of craters or darker regions. Outside of Sputnik Planum, methane ice appears to favor brighter areas, but scientists aren’t sure if that’s because methane is more likely to condense there or that its condensation brightens those regions.

“It's like the classic chicken-or-egg problem,” said Will Grundy, New Horizons surface composition team lead from Lowell Observatory in Flagstaff, Arizona. “We’re unsure why this is so, but the cool thing is that New Horizons has the ability to make exquisite compositional maps across the surface of Pluto, and that’ll be crucial to resolving how enigmatic Pluto works.”

“With these just-downlinked images and maps, we’ve turned a new page in the study of Pluto beginning to reveal the planet at high resolution in both color and composition,” added New Horizons Principal Investigator Alan Stern, of SwRI. “I wish Pluto’s discoverer Clyde Tombaugh had lived to see this day.”





_The Ralph/LEISA infrared spectrometer on NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft mapped compositions across Pluto’s surface as it flew by on July 14. On the left, a map of methane ice abundance shows striking regional differences, with stronger methane absorption indicated by the brighter purple colors here, and lower abundances shown in black. Data have only been received so far for the left half of Pluto’s disk. At right, the methane map is merged with higher-resolution images from the spacecraft’s Long Range Reconnaissance Imager (LORRI).
Credits: NASA/JHUAPL/SWRI_

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## SvenSvensonov

*Bask in the Beautiful Destruction of This Space Junk Collision Test

January 1, 1963*: This is what happens when a piece of space junk hits a spacecraft in orbit. While gorgeous, the energy flash of a hypervelocity impact packs a serious punch.






A projectile launched at 7,600 meters per second (17,000 mph) at a solid surface produced this beautiful starburst energy flash in an effort to simulate collisions between spacecraft and orbital debris. The potential for these hypervelocity collisions make even tiny grains a major hazard for spacecraft.

The test was conducted at the Hypervelocity Ballistic Range at NASA’s Ames Research Center in Mountain View, California.

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## SvenSvensonov

*NASA Is Sending Bacteria to the Edge of Space to See if They Can Hitchhike to Mars*






Discovering life on another planet, only to contaminate that world with our own pesky microbes, is one of NASA’s nightmare scenarios. To find out whether single-celled Earthlings can hitchhike to Mars and survive on the Red Planet’s surface, NASA is going to see how they like it 120,000 feet up.

Today, weather permitting, a helium balloon carrying a very special scientific experiment will launch to the edge of space from NASA’s Columbia Scientific Balloon Facility in Fort Sumner, New Mexico. Its passengers — a collection of bacteria — are loaded into containers that’ll shield them from the elements during their ascent into Earth’s stratosphere. Once the balloon reaches its target altitude, the sample chambers will pop open, exposing their hapless test subjects for a pre-determined period of time: 6, 12, 18, or 24 hours. At the end of the experiment, the balloon will explode and its microbial payload will parachute back to Earth.





_A 2014 test of the E-MIST system at NASA’s Columbia Scientific Balloon Facility in Fort Sumner, New Mexico, via NASA / David J. Smith_

Earth’s upper stratosphere is a pretty hellish environment: It’s well below freezing, bone dry, practically a vacuum, and awash in ultraviolet radiation. Sorta like the surface of Mars. It’s hard to imagine anything surviving up there, and yet, previous studies have shown that some fearless bugs do make a living in the stratosphere after being blown skyward by dust storms or hurricanes. Even more impressive, recent work on the ISS shows that dormant bacteria, fungal spores, and even plant seeds can survive strapped to the outside of a spacecraft — if they’re shielded from the intense UV radiation.

Given life’s tenacity, the possibility of contaminating an alien environment is one that deserves to be studied and understood. Beyond Mars, there’s NASA’s recently announced Europa mission, and further down the line, we might even send a space probe to Saturn’s ice moon Enceladus. Both of these missions, if and when they happen, will be on the hunt for alien life. It sure would be a bummer to mistake a stowaway for the biggest scientific discovery of all time.

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## Hamartia Antidote

Pluto's Moon Charon Seen in Beautiful New Images






*A series of canyons near its equator is four times the length of the Grand Canyon *
New images of Pluto’s largest moon, Charon, reveal details of markedly violent past.

NASA published striking photos taken by the New Horizons spacecraft at the culmination of its 9-year mission to Pluto, which show an array of mountains, valleys, and canyons on the dwarf planet’s moon.

According to NASA, a system of canyons located just north of the moon’s equator is quadruple the length of the the Grand Canyon, and twice as deep in some areas indicating a “titanic geological upheaval in Charon’s past.”

The images were captured by New Horizons when the spacecraft traveled past the dwarf planet and its moon on July 14 and they were transmitted to Earth on Sept. 21.


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## Hamartia Antidote

Salt may be the answer to Ceres mysterious spots, NASA says - Pulse Headlines







After months analyzing high resolution *images* of the topography of the surface of the *asteroid* *Ceres*, *NASA* scientists are closer to unveil its nature. The images were sent from the *Dawn spacecraft*, which has been orbiting the cratered minor planet at an altitude of 915 miles.

At first, NASA believed that the spots reflected on the images of the surface of an object on the asteroid were ice formations, given that scientists belief that Ceres has a subsurface ocean that is being exposed by asteroid impacts. Nevertheless, this hypothesis was trashed and scientists are going in a different way.

“We believe this is a huge salt deposit […] We know it’s not ice and we’re pretty sure it’s salt, but we don’t know exactly what salt at the present time.” Dawn’s principal investigator Chris Russell told a crowd of scientists Monday at the European Planetary Science Congress in Nantes, France.

Russell explained that salt may come from the interior, although they can’t explain it yet, but they discarded the possibility of it coming from other asteroids. Another fact that NASA provided is that the salt is completely dry.

The spots are found in Occator – a 56-mile-wide crater on the highland area of Ceres – but they can also be found on other lower areas.

Another interesting area that scientists are studying, according to Russell, is a tall mountain that also presents the salt spots. He also pointed out that the unnamed mountain may have a twin, although the Dawn spacecraft haven’t had a good look at it yet.






They still don’t have an explanation of how the mountain was formed, but an hypothesis could be that of tectonic forces similar to Earth, but with differences on gravity. Russell concluded with the remaining possibility of finding liquid water on Ceres, needing more research with different equipment.

For the moments, the Dawn spacecraft will continue providing images helping researchers analyzing more data to keep taking a deep look on the planet’s mysteries.

“Ceres continues to amaze, yet puzzle us, as we examine our multitude of images, spectra and now energetic particle bursts,” said Chris Russell on his talk.

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## Transhumanist

*SpaceX Will Return Falcon-9 to Flight with Orbcomm-2 Mission to Test Rocket's Upper Stage*

SpaceX Will Return Falcon-9 to Flight with Orbcomm-2 Mission to Test Rocket’s Upper Stage « AmericaSpace





_The first Orbcomm launch with SpaceX on 14 July, with six Orbcomm Generation-2 (OG-2) satellites onboard. SpaceX is primed to return their Falcon-9 rocket to flight with the next set of Orbcomm satellites in 6-8 weeks. Photo Credit: Alan Walters/AmericaSpace_

Its been over three months since the loss of the SpaceX Commercial Resupply Services (CRS)-7 Dragon cargo mission to the International Space Station (ISS) for NASA, which appeared to have fallen victim to a failed helium tank strut, provided by an external supplier. Now the Hawthorne, CA-based company stands ready to resume launches of its workhorse Falcon-9 rocket, in a heavily modified form, in as soon as “6-8 weeks”, and will do so on the Orbcomm OG-2 Mission-2 to deliver 11 satellites to orbit for Orbcomm.

“As we prepare for return to flight, SpaceX together with its customers SES and Orbcomm have evaluated opportunities to optimize the readiness of the upcoming Falcon 9 return-to-flight mission,” says SpaceX in a statement released this afternoon. “All parties have mutually agreed that SpaceX will now fly the Orbcomm-2 mission on the return-to-flight Falcon 9.”





_SpaceX’s Falcon-9 booster launching Dragon on the CRS-5 mission to the ISS. Photo Credit: Mike Killian / AmericaSpace_

Launch of the SES-9 communications satellite into Geostationary Transfer Orbit (GTO) on behalf of the Luxembourg-headquartered SES had been speculated for some time as SpaceX’s Return to Flight mission, but the company decided to “switch” missions in order to conduct on-orbit testing of their now modified Falcon-9 upper stage.

“The Orbcomm-2 mission does not require a relight of the second stage engine following orbital insertion. Flying the Orbcomm-2 mission first will therefore allow SpaceX to conduct an on-orbit test of the second stage relight system after the Orbcomm-2 satellites have been safely deployed. This on-orbit test, combined with the current qualification program to be completed prior to launch, will further validate the second stage relight system and allow for optimization of the upcoming SES-9 mission and following missions to geosynchronous transfer orbit.”

Built by Sierra Nevada Corp., the original plan was to launch 18 OG-2 satellites, the first of which flew ‘piggyback’ on SpaceX’s first dedicated Dragon mission in October 2012. However, an upper-stage engine shortfall of the Falcon-9 v1.0 rocket caused the satellite to be injected into a low orbit of just 125 x 200 miles (200 x 320 km), instead of the intended 220 x 470 miles (350 x 750 km). As a result, the satellite re-entered Earth’s atmosphere and was destroyed.

SpaceX’s third Falcon-9 launch of 2014 flew the first six Orbcomm OG-2 satellites (OG-2 Mission-1), successfully delivering the 380 pound satellites into a circular 460 x 460 mile high orbit. Each satellite measures 42.7 feet (13 meters) x 3.3 feet (1 meter) x 1.6 feet (0.5 meters) when fully deployed, and each can generate about 400 watts of electrical power. Designed with Automatic Identification System (AIS), it is expected that the OG-2 network will be marketed by Orbcomm to U.S. and international coast guards and government agencies, as well as private security and logistics companies.

The rocket itself has been upgraded in many ways. SpaceX refers to it as the “Falcon 9 v1.1 Full Thrust”, which is an internal code name for calculating the Merlin 1D engine output at 100 percent, and many of the modifications are outlined in a recent Falcon-9 update by AmericaSpace Senior Writer Ben Evans. Upgraded Merlin 1D+ engines, increased thrust performance, structural enhancements to the vehicle’s airframe, increases in propellant tank volumes, a lengthened second stage, upgraded landing legs and grid fins and an improved “Octaweb” support structure for the first-stage engine suite all compliment the “new” Falcon-9.

The Orbcomm OG Mission-2 flight will also give SpaceX another try at landing their rocket’s first stage on an offshore barge known as the Autonomous Spaceport Drone Ship (ASDS), part of the company’s efforts to turn the Falcon-9 into a truly reusable launch system. A series of “controlled oceanic touchdowns” in April, July, and September 2014 were followed with mixed fortune earlier this year, when two attempts were made to land on the ASDS. The first reached the deck, but impacted hard at a 45-degree angle and exploded, whilst the second landed with excessive lateral velocity and toppled over upon impact.

Stabilizing the 150-foot-tall rocket stage in flight, traveling at a velocity of 2,900 mph at separation, has been likened to someone balancing a rubber broomstick on their hand in the middle of a fierce wind storm.

SpaceX CEO Elon Musk expects that the new improvements will allow SpaceX to soft-land the Falcon-9 even during high-energy launches to the 22,300-mile (35,900-km) altitude of GTO, where SES-9 will launch to. Previously, only comparatively low-energy launches to Low-Earth Orbit (LEO) had seen soft-landing attempts, although SpaceX originally intended to bring the first stage from NASA’s L1-bound Deep Space Climate Observatory (DSCOVR) back to the ASDS in February 2015, but was ultimately thwarted by rough seas.

When they do finally land a rocket successfully, it will be a history-making feat, a game-changer that many expect the company to accomplish sooner rather than later, including their main competitor United Launch Alliance (ULA). Never has a rocket made a controlled landing after a launch, and the expectation is that once the Falcon-9 is truly reusable it will drive down dramatically both the costs of access to space and turnaround time between launches.

In the meantime, SpaceX is building the actual landing site for their rockets, at the old Launch Complex-13 on Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, under a five-year lease agreement with the U.S. Air Force. Although instead of being called “Launch Complex-13,” it is now designated as “Landing Complex-1.” A primary concrete landing pad will be developed, surrounded by four smaller contingency landing pads for use in case a landing rocket is not quite on the bull’s eye.

The company is also planning similar operations at their west coast launch site at Vandenberg AFB, Calif. Another ASDS will serve as the company’s Vandenberg barge while SpaceX continues on the reusability development path to landing their rockets back on solid ground.

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## Transhumanist

*If You Send a Sloth to Space, You Better Expect it to Nap*

 so cute






Would a sloth make a good astronaut? Probably not, but it’s damn cute to watch one try.

This little creature headed to NASA’s Human Exploration Research Analog(HERA) for International Sloth Day, raising awareness for our tiny friends while investigating what it would be like to go on a deep space mission.





_Sloth prepares space food._

Most food is dehydrated to reduce weight and irradiated for safety; the arrival of fresh fruit is a welcome treat. The low-energy-density diet of tough leaves favoured by most sloths is not very space-friendly, at least until space-gardening is more reliable.





_Sloth climbing into the upper levels of the habitat._

Sloths are strong climbers: their 8 to 10 centimeter (3 to 4 inch) claws make hanging from the ladders easier than walking on flat ground.





_Sloth reading NASA procedures on Google Glass._

Sloths have poor vision, so reading procedures on Google Glass might actually be more feasible than reading a screen, aside from their lack of literacy and language skills.





_Sloth clambering around the exercise equipment._

Exercise is incredibly important in space, not only for maintaining muscle tone in reduced gravity, but also for reducing other health risks from prolonged time off-planet. Although our little sloth is game to clamber and climb, alas, the poor creature lacks appropriate proportions to use standard equipment either in the habitat or on the space station.





_Sloth checking on HERA systems._

Space habitats are kept at controlled environmental conditions. Humans would need to get used to warmer, more humid conditions if the tropical species joined in on space missions.





_Sloth providing saliva for science experiments._

An important aspect of sending creatures to space is to run biological experiments on how that environment impacts them. We have plenty of data on humans and limited data on other species, but the only way sloths have gone to space is in meme-format.





_Sloth resting after an abnormally long day._

Sloths usually sleep for 15 to 20 hours a day, leaving very little time for mission research, station upkeep, or recreational activities. Any sloth heading to NASA’s HERA facility is going to spend a lot of time in the crew quarters relaxing.

While slothtronauts may not be the most practical crewmates to bring along on deep space expeditions, their cute-factor alone must be good for decreasing stress levels of crews kept in confined isolation for far too long.


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## Hamartia Antidote

NASA just announced an unexpected asteroid flyby this Halloween - ScienceAlert

It’s time to get to know a new friend: asteroid 2015 TB145, a sizeable chunk of rock that’s hurtling through space at speeds of over 126,000 km/h (78,293 mph) right now. Discovered just 10 days ago, the asteroid has caught the attention of scientists at NASA because on October 31, it’s expected to draw closer to Earth than anything this size has since July 2006.

But before you reach for the keys to your apocalypse bunker, relax. When we say "close", we’re talking relatively, which in this case means 1.3 lunar distances, or about 499,000 km (310,000 miles) from Earth.

"This is the closest approach by a known object this large until 1999 AN10 approaches within 1 lunar distance in August 2027," a NASA report states. "The last approach closer than this ... was by 2004 XP14 in July 2006 at 1.1 lunar distances."

Detected on October 10 by the Pan-STARRS I survey in Hawaii, which employs several astronomical cameras and telescopes from around the world to identify potentially threatening near-Earth objects, asteroid 2015 TB145 is estimated to be between 280 to 620 metres (918 to 2,034 ft) in diameter.






We’ve had closer encounters recently, but not by something on this scale. In 2013, Russian motorists filmed a 17-metre meteorite burn up in Earth’s atmosphere at a top speed of 19 km/s, and back in 1908, a 40-metre meteorite crashed into a Russian forest.

NASA says asteroid 2015 TB145 has an extremely eccentric and high-inclination orbit, which Colin Jeffrey at Gizmag suggests could be the reason it was only just recently discovered (which is admittedly a bit disconcerting). He adds that while it won’t be visible to the naked eye during its closest moments on Halloween, it should be observable to those lucky enough to have a good-quality amateur telescope.

For those playing at home, it’s expected to pass through the constellation of Orion at about 17:18 UT on Saturday 31 October. That’s 5:18pm EDT and 3:18am AEST.

According to NASA's Near-Earth Object Observations Program, as of 16 October 2015, 13,251 near-Earth objects have been discovered, 877 of which are asteroids with a diameter of approximately 1 kilometre or larger. Some 1,635 of these have been classified as Potentially Hazardous Asteroids (PHAs).

If all that makes you slightly nervous, don't worry. NASA says none of the asteroids or comets it's identified will come close enough to impact Earth anytime in the foreseeable future. "All known Potentially Hazardous Asteroids have less than a 0.01 percent chance of impacting Earth in the next 100 years," they reported back in August. Sure, they didn't spot 2015 TB145 till less than two weeks ago, so what can you do about it?

Lots, as it turns out. You can get involved in the search for near-Earth objects by downloading NASA's free app, called Asteroid Data Hunter. All you need to start helping out is an Internet connection and a telescope. Or you could just sit back and freak yourself out by watching the video below, which visualises space if all the near-Earth Objects we know about were visible. I know which option I'm taking...

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## Hamartia Antidote

NASA orders first crewed mission to ISS from SpaceX - SpaceFlight Insider

NASA placed its first mission order to _*SpaceX*_ for the NewSpace firm to ferry crews to the International Space Station. This is the second in a series of four guaranteed orders the _*Space Agency*_ plans on making under the Commercial Crew Transportation Capability (CCtCap) contract. 

“It’s really exciting to see SpaceX and *Boeing* with hardware in flow for their first crew rotation missions,” said Kathy Lueders, manager of NASA’s Commercial Crew Program. “It is important to have at least two healthy and robust capabilities from U.S. companies to deliver crew and critical scientific experiments from American soil to the space station throughout its lifespan.”

Orders have to be placed prior to certification, so as to allow for the lead time needed for these missions to take place. If things continue apace and SpaceX meets readiness conditions, the flight could take place in late 2017.





SpaceX conducted a Pad Abort Test of its Crew Dragon spacecraft in May 2015. Photo Credit: Michael Howard / SpaceFlight Insider

“Commercial crew launches are really important for helping us meet the demand for research on the space station because it allows us to increase the crew to seven,” said Julie Robinson, International Space Station chief scientist. “Over the long term, it also sets the foundation for scientific access to future commercial research platforms in low-Earth orbit.”

The two companies involved with NASA’s _*Commercial Crew Program*_ have each taken similar but different paths in terms of accomplishing the program’s directives. SpaceX has opted to field not only the crewed version of their spacecraft but also to send it to orbit via the firm’s Falcon 9 booster. Boeing, on the other hand, will use United Launch Alliance’s Atlas V 401 booster and potentially the yet-to-be-launched Vulcan Next-Generation Launch System.

According to NASA, both the Crew Dragon and the Falcon 9 have successfully passed through both development and certification phases. Moreover, a Critical Design Review or “CDR” has recently been successfully completed. This particular CDR verified that the system was “mature” enough to proceed to fabrication, assembly, integration, and testing.

CCtCap orders are placed approximately two or three years before the actual mission is scheduled to take to the skies. NASA closely monitors and validates that each system is ready before providing final approval.

Each contract includes a minimum of two and a maximum potential of six missions.

If things go as advertised, a “normal” CCP mission could see around four NASA or NASA-sponsored crew members and about 220 lbs (100 kg) of pressurized cargo to the orbiting laboratory.

NASA has been dependent on Russia since the close of the Space Shuttle Program in July of 2011 for crew access to and from the ISS. Also, whereas Russian Soyuz spacecraft have remained at the ISS as a lifeboat, both Crew Dragon and Starliner will be capable of staying docked to the ISS for 210 days allowing the U.S. to have its own ability to carry out this important service.

Boeing received the company’s first mission order in May 2015. The final determination of whether Boeing or SpaceX will conduct the first commercial flight to the station has yet to be made. SpaceX has already claimed the historical prize of sending the first commercial spacecraft to the ISS via the COTS-2 mission in May of 2012.

“The authority to proceed with Dragon’s first operational crew mission is a significant milestone in the Commercial Crew Program and a great source of pride for the entire SpaceX team,” said SpaceX’s President and Chief Operating Officer, Gwynne Shotwell. “When Crew Dragon takes NASA astronauts to the space station in 2017, they will be riding in one of the safest, most reliable spacecraft ever flown. We’re honored to be developing this capability for NASA and our country.”

NASA has been working for some time to cede control of ferrying cargo and crew to the sole destination in low-Earth orbit to private firms, Boeing, *Orbital ATK*, and SpaceX. Meanwhile, the agency wants to return to the business of sending humans to destinations further than low-Earth orbit such as the Moon, an asteroid, and eventually Mars. No person has been further than some 350 miles (560 kilometers) from Earth since 1972 when Apollo 17 returned home from the Moon.





SpaceX’s Crew Dragon will launch from launch pad 39A at the Kennedy Space Center. The firm received a 20-year lease on the former Space Shuttle launch pad in 2014 and has since built a horizontal integration facility and made modifications to the pad to support the Transporter Erector. The company is planning for the first launch on this pad – a Falcon Heavy – to occur sometime in 2016. Photo Credit: SpaceX

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## Hamartia Antidote

NASA places order for second Starliner from Boeing - SpaceFlight Insider







Last week, *NASA ordered* the second crewed mission from Boeing, bringing the space agency one step closer to returning regular crewed missions to the International Space Station (ISS) to U.S. launch facilities.

In addition getting a second order from NASA, *Boeing* successfully completed several interim developmental milestones for the Starliner spacecraft, the United Launch Alliance (ULA) Atlas V and the ground support system.

“Once certified by NASA, the Boeing CST-100 Starliner and *SpaceX* Crew Dragon each will be capable of two crew launches to the station per year,” said Kathy Lueders, manager of NASA’s Commercial Crew Program (*CCP*). “Placing orders for those missions now really sets us up for a sustainable future aboard the International Space Station.”

....

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## Hamartia Antidote

Old solid rocket booster separation footage.

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## jhungary

US Air Force's X-37B Space Plane Wings Past 200 Days in Orbit - Yahoo News

*US Air Force's X-37B Space Plane Wings Past 200 Days in Orbit

Mum's the word: The U.S. Air Force's secretive X-37B space plane has winged its way past the 200 day mark, carrying out a classified agenda for the American military.

The unmanned X-37B space plane rocketed into orbit on May 20 on a United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket launching from Florida's Cape Canaveral Air Force Station back. The reusable robotic space plane mission, also dubbed OTV-4 (short for Orbital Test Vehicle-4), is the fourth spacecraft of its kind for the U.S. Air Force. 

OTV-4 also marks the second flight of the second X-37B vehicle built for the Air Force by Boeing Space & Intelligence Systems. Only two reusable X-37B vehicles have been confirmed as constituting the fleet. [See photos from the X-37B space plane's OTV-4 mission] 


 Mini-shuttle
The X-37B space plane looks like a miniature version of NASA's now-retired space shuttle orbiter. The military space plane is 29 feet (8.8 meters) long and 9.5 feet (2.9 m) tall, and has a wingspan of nearly 15 feet (4.6 m). The spacecraft sports a payload bay about the size of a pickup truck bed.

The Air Force Rapid Capabilities Office (AFRCO) runs the X-37B program.

While the overall duties of the space plane remain secretive, it was previously announced that this craft carries a NASA advanced materials experiment and an experimental propulsion system developed by the Air Force.

 Track record

The first OTV mission began April 22, 2010 and concluded on Dec. 3, 2010, after 224 days in orbit.
The second OTV mission began March 5, 2011, and concluded on June 16, 2012, chalking up a mission of 469 days.
The X-37B program completed its third mission on Oct. 17, 2014 following 674 days in orbit after its Dec. 3, 2012 launch. This last flight extended the total number of days spent on-orbit for X-37B craft to 1,367.
 Florida landing?
To date, all flights of the X-37B touched down at Vandenberg Air Force Base in California. When and where OTV-4 will return to Earth is not known.

In 2014, it was announced that Boeing Space & Intelligence Systems had consolidated its space plane operations by making use of NASA's Kennedy Space Center (KSC) in Florida as a landing site for the X-37B.

According to Boeing, a former KSC space-shuttle facility known as Orbiter Processing Facility (OPF-1) has being converted into a structure that will enable the Air Force "to efficiently land, recover, refurbish and relaunch the X-37B Orbital Test Vehicle (OTV)."

Leonard David has been reporting on the space industry for more than five decades. He is former director of research for the National Commission on Space and is co-author of Buzz Aldrin's 2013 book "Mission to Mars – My Vision for Space Exploration" published by National Geographic with a new updated paperback version released in May 2015. Follow us @Spacedotcom, Facebook or Google+. Published on Space.com.


What Is X-37B Orbital Test Vehicle? Air Force TV Speculates | Video
X-37B: The Air Force's Mysterious Space Plane
US Air Force's Secretive X-37B Space Plane (Infographic)
Copyright 2015 SPACE.com, a Purch company. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Science
Space & Astronomy
Air Force
space plane
*

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## Slave_to_the_waffle

I posted this on AMF too, thought I do so here as well:

*Next Gen Space Suit - NDX-1 being tested:*

_University of North Dakota graduate researcher Travis Nelson, wearing an NDX-1 spacesuit, practices scooping up objects and placing them into containers inside the SwampWorks regolith bin at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The university team is analyzing the prototype suit’s ability to protect astronauts while allowing them the flexibility to dig samples and perform other tasks in regolith, a fine, powdery soil similar to that found on Mars._






NDX-1 led to the development of *NDX-2*:

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## Hamartia Antidote

This New 'Earthrise' Photo from NASA Is Simply Breathtaking







A spectacular new photo of Earth from space recalls the two most famous images of our planet ever taken.

The photo, which was captured by NASA's robotic Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO), shows a sunlit Earth looming above a rumpled moonscape banded with shadow.

"The image is simply stunning," Noah Petro, deputy project scientist for LRO at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, said in a statement. "The image of the Earth evokes the famous 'Blue Marble' image taken by astronaut Harrison Schmitt during Apollo 17, 43 years ago, which also showed Africa prominently in the picture."



The shot is a sort of combination of the Blue Marble photo and an earlier "Earthrise" image, which was taken by the Apollo 8 crew — the first people ever to leave Earth orbit — as they entered orbit around the moon on Dec. 24, 1968.

"It was credited with awakening the modern version of the environmental movement," former United States Vice President Al Gore said of the 1968 photo at the annual fall meeting of the American Geophysical Union in San Francisco on Dec. 16.


"Within 18 months of this image being seen here on Earth, the first Earth Day was organized," Gore added. "The Clean Air Act, the Clean Water Act, the National Environmental Policy Act and its counterparts in many other countries came in the immediate aftermath of the consciousness-raising that accompanied this picture."

The 1968 photo was not actually the first Earthrise image; that distinction goes to a picture taken by NASA's robotic Lunar Orbiter 1 spacecraft in 1966. But the black-and-white 1966 picture did not have the same dramatic and lasting impact on society, Gore said.

The new photo, which NASA released Friday (Dec. 18), was created from a series of pictures that LRO took on Oct.12, when the car-size probe was about 83 miles (134 kilometers) above the lunar far side's Compton Crater. (The moon is tidally locked to Earth, meaning observers on the planet only ever one face of the satellite — the near side.)

The $504 million LRO mission launched in June 2009 and initially worked primarily as a scout, gathering data that could be useful for future crewed journeys to the moon. The spacecraft transitioned to more of a pure science mode in September 2010.

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## Fenrir

_The Martin Marietta X-24A and then the later X-24B were an experimental US aircrafts developed from a joint USAF-NASA program named PILOT (1963–1975). They were designed and built to test lifting body concepts, experimenting with the concept of unpowered re-entry and landing, later used by the Space Shuttle._

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## Hamartia Antidote

Technogaianist said:


> _The Martin Marietta X-24A and then the later X-24B were an experimental US aircrafts developed from a joint USAF-NASA program named PILOT (1963–1975). They were designed and built to test lifting body concepts, experimenting with the concept of unpowered re-entry and landing, later used by the Space Shuttle._

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## Fenrir

*SpaceX's Crew Dragon Rocks Latest Hover Tests*






Go go Dragon! SpaceX just posted video of its Dragon 2 spacecraft testing its ability to hover. Once certified, this spacecraft will carry astronauts to the space station as part of NASA’s commercial crew program. Crewed test flights are tentatively planned to start in 2017.

The Dragon 2 (or Crew Dragon) is the spacecraft that will sit atop the Falcon 9 rockets. Although it’ll be launched into orbit by the rocket, the eight SuperDraco engines will be used to bring the craft down for acontrolled landing when it brings crews safely home.






The hover test was the latest in a long line of tests for certifying the Dragon 2 to transport humans. The craft performed beautifully during two tethered tests in November 2015 at SpaceX’s test facility in McGregor, Texas. A NASA statement describing the eight thrusters as landing the full-sized spacecraft mockup with the “accuracy of a helicopter.”

Despite the flawless performance, the thrusters won’t be used the first few times humans ride in the Dragon. Initially, the spacecraft will use parachutes to slow its descent through the atmosphere, and splash down in the ocean in a manner familiar to fans of the Apollo missions.

Check out the full video of the descent landing tether test:

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## Aepsilons

@SvenSvensonov, if you don't log bag in to say hi, I will officially declare war on you !

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## Fenrir

Blue Origin launches and lands sub-orbital rocket for second time | Science | The Guardian
_
Blue Origin, the space transport venture set up by Amazon’s founder, Jeff Bezos, has launched and landed a sub-orbital rocket for the second time, an achievement hailed as a significant development in the company’s drive to develop reusable rockets.

The spacecraft, which is designed to carry six passengers, reached a height of 333,582 ft (63 miles) before coming back to earth and landing itself a few minutes later. It was the same vehicle that made a successful test launch and landing two months ago, Bezos said._

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## Audio

> During a _*press conference*_ held on Thursday, Jan. 14, 2016, at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas, NASA announced the winners of the second phase of contracts for its Commercial Resupply Services (CRS) program. Those announced included names established under CRS, as well as one new one – Sierra Nevada Corporation’s Dream Chaser space plane.



Catching a dream: SNC's tenacious spacecraft selected for NASA's CRS-2 contract - SpaceFlight Insider

This could be described as my favourite design reentering the field with a nurtured to life by government contract akin to SpaceX and Orbital.

Also, this:



> PARIS — Sierra Nevada Corp.’s win of a NASA contract to ferry cargo to the International Space Station will trigger a $36 million investment by the 22-nation European Space Agency following a cooperation agreement to be signed in the coming weeks, ESA said



Europe to invest in Sierra Nevada's Dream Chaser cargo vehicle - SpaceNews.com

Also, little bit of background, when Sierra Nevada was not chosen at a tender of this kind a few years back, it went on to sign cooperation deals with German DLR, whose then president is now Director General at ESA.
If it all works out in regards to technical issues and alike, i give this option a slightly larger chance of success than above mentioned companies in scoring government contracts in the future. If only for political reasons....

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## Hamartia Antidote

Audio said:


> Catching a dream: SNC's tenacious spacecraft selected for NASA's CRS-2 contract - SpaceFlight Insider
> 
> This could be described as my favourite design reentering the field with a nurtured to life by government contract akin to SpaceX and Orbital.
> 
> Also, this:
> 
> 
> 
> Europe to invest in Sierra Nevada's Dream Chaser cargo vehicle - SpaceNews.com
> 
> Also, little bit of background, when Sierra Nevada was not chosen at a tender of this kind a few years back, it went on to sign cooperation deals with German DLR, whose then president is now Director General at ESA.
> If it all works out in regards to technical issues and alike, i give this option a slightly larger chance of success than above mentioned companies in scoring government contracts in the future. If only for political reasons....


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## Hamartia Antidote

http://www.theverge.com/2016/1/27/10853426/spacex-dragon-spacecraft-parachute-test-successful


*SpaceX successfully tests parachutes that will help bring astronauts back to Earth*

SpaceX has successfully tested four large parachutes that will eventually be used to help lower its crewed Dragon spacecraft back to Earth. NASA published a videoof the drop test today, which shows the four large parachutes deploying and slowing a mock spacecraft beneath them.

NASA has been paying SpaceX to make cargo runs to and from the International Space Station since 2012. Despite one big loss, the contract has gone so well that NASA is going to use SpaceX (and Boeing) to shuttle astronauts to and from the space station in the coming years. SpaceX is building a crew-rated version of its Dragon spacecraft for this express purpose.

But before that can happen, the company has a long series of milestone tests it needs to pass, and the parachute test was the most recent. Using a giant weight in place of an actual spacecraft, the company dropped the test rig from a C-130 aircraft thousands of feet in the air over Coolidge, Arizona. All four parachutes properly deployed.

Though the test rig settled down somewhere in the desert, the current plan is to have the Dragon crew capsule splash down in the ocean. It will be the first time that astronauts have landed in water since the late 1970s. Those first missions are slated for late 2017 or early 2018.

At the same time that SpaceX is testing for a parachute-assisted landing in the water, it's also testing propulsive landings. Just last week, the company published a video of the Dragon crew spacecraft successfully hovering in place using the eight built-in SuperDraco rocket engines. Despite what NASA wants, SpaceX's goal is to use these engines to safely lower returning crews onto landing pads, and save the parachutes for emergencies only.

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## Fenrir

Hamartia Antidote said:


> http://www.theverge.com/2016/1/27/10853426/spacex-dragon-spacecraft-parachute-test-successful
> 
> 
> *SpaceX successfully tests parachutes that will help bring astronauts back to Earth*













http://blogs.nasa.gov/commercialcrew/2016/01/27/spacex-tests-crew-dragon-parachutes/

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## Hamartia Antidote

*Opportunity Mars Rover Marks 12 Years on Red Planet*

http://www.space.com/31735-opportunity-rover-12-years-mars.html

NASA's Opportunity Mars rover just keeps rolling along, a dozen years after touching down on the Red Planet.

Opportunity landed on Mars 12 years ago Sunday (Jan. 24), a few weeks after its twin, Spirit, hit the red dirt. (Opportunity's landing occurred on Jan. 25, 2004, in the GMT time zone, but it was still Jan. 24 in the PST time zone, where the rover's home base, NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California, is located.) The two robots were tasked with finding signs of past water activity on Mars, and both of them quickly turned up plenty of evidence near their disparate landing sites.

Spirit and Opportunity were originally supposed to explore for just 90 days, but both rovers far outlasted their warranties. Spirit stopped communicating with Earth in 2010 and was declared dead a year later, and Opportunity is still going strong today. [See Mars photos by Spirit and Opportunity]

While Opportunity has suffered some memory problems in the past year, its solar panels are working well, rover team members said. The robot has been able to keep working through the minimum-power months of the southern Martian winter instead of staying still to conserve energy. (The southern winter solstice occurred Jan. 2.)

"Opportunity has stayed very active this winter, in part because the solar arrays have been much cleaner than in the past few winters," Mars exploration rover project manager John Callas, of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, said in a statement.

This month, Opportunity's rock abrasion tool carved the crust of a rock target nicknamed "Private John Potts" after a member of Lewis and Clark's expedition. Opportunity is working on the south side of a feature called Marathon Valley, to take advantage of the sun crossing the northern sky.

Over the years, Opportunity's controllers have developed new techniques to keep the rover going even in minimum-power situations. They take advantage of sun-soaked areas of the Martian terrain and try to pick spots that are a little breezy, to clear dust off the panels. This prevents lengthy work outages, such as a four-month stay on the sidelines that Opportunity experienced during its first Mars winter.

The golf-cart-size rover has been exploring the rim of Endeavour crater, which is 14 miles (22 kilometers) wide, since August 2011. Its work in Endeavour's Marathon Valley should conclude this year, NASA officials said.

Opportunity has traveled 26.5 miles (42.65 km) on Mars to date — more than a marathon, and farther than any other robot has ever traveled on the surface of a world beyond Earth.

Opportunity is one of two active NASA rovers on the Red Planet; the car-size Curiosity rover touched down in August 2012, and is currently exploring the foothills of the 3-mile-high (5 km) Mount Sharp, far from Opportunity's location.

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## Hamartia Antidote

*Pluto’s Bedrock Is Made Of Frozen Water: There’s More H2O On The Dwarf Planet Than We Thought*


http://www.techtimes.com/articles/1...e-h2o-on-the-dwarf-planet-than-we-thought.htm






New maps released by NASA show that the dwarf planet has more water ice than previously thought. The data taken by the New Horizons spacecraft captures more prevalent frozen water on Pluto's surface, an "important discovery," according to researchers.

A false-colored map taken by the Ralph/Linear Etalon Imaging Spectral Array (LEISA) instrument shows the areas on Pluto's surface are concentrated with frozen water. The images were taken on July 14, 2015 during New Horizons' flyby from a range of about 67,000 miles.

NASA has stitched together two images taken about 15 minutes apart. Instead of having a flat image, scientists combined the images to have a multispectral "data cube" of Pluto covering the full hemisphere visible to the spacecraft as it flew past the dwarf planet.

LEISA shows mapped concentrations of water ice, but the scientists have found that the spectral readings could be thrown off if water ice is combined with frozen methane. They have also modeled the contributions, and in effect, the map now shows wider concentrations and stretches where water ice should be present.

"The much more sensitive method used on the right involves modeling the contributions of Pluto's various ices all together. This method, too, has limitations in that it can only map ices included in the model, but the team is continually adding more data and improving the model," NASA said.

Though the map shows widespread frozen water concentrations on the surface of the planet, there is little or no water ice on the western region of Pluto's "heart", dubbed Sputnik Planum, and the far north on the encounter hemisphere, Lowell Regio.

Where's the water ice on Pluto? False-color pic from @NASANewHorizons shows us: https://t.co/6ffUfOrE0w pic.twitter.com/yjUm4rThbL

— NASA (@nasa) January 29, 2016

According to prevailing hypothesis, Sputnik Planum is a gigantic glacier made of methane ice, nitrogen ice and carbon monoxide, which makes it free from water ice. In these areas, frozen ice might be hidden under a thick blanket of the giant glacier.

The New Horizons spacecraft has sent photos that revealed bright methane ices located on various rims of the planet's craters. The photos show a collection of little, red soot-like particles called tholins created by reactions between methane and nitrogen.

*Take a flight over dwarf planet Ceres with a new colorful animation from NASA*

http://www.theverge.com/2016/1/29/10868264/nasa-ceres-video-tour-dwarf-planet





It's unlikely that we'll ever get to personally visit all the fascinating locations in our Solar System, but NASA is great at bringing the joys of space to us. Today, the space agency's Jet Propulsion Laboratory released an incredibly detailed color animation depicting what it would look like to fly over the dwarf planet Ceres. The video was made using images taken from NASA's Dawn spacecraft, which is currently in orbit around Ceres in the asteroid belt.

NASA is great at bringing the joys of space to us

The video is extra vibrant because Ceres is depicted in false color; that means the colors have been exaggerated to highlight the subtle differences in the materials on the dwarf planet's surface. The areas that shine blue are thought to be made of materials much younger than the rest of the surface. The video tour also takes viewers to Ceres' most famous attractions of craters and mountains, including the ultimate headliner: the huge bright crater named Occator. The origins of these bright spots are still a bit of a mystery, but scientists think that Occator and the other shiny areas are likely made out of some kind of salt.

The images used for this video were taken when Dawn was at an altitude of about 900 miles above Ceres. In late October, Dawn descended into its final orbit around the dwarf planet, just a mere 240 miles from the surface. That's where Dawn will remain for the rest of its mission life. In fact, the spacecraft is in such a stable orbit that it is expected to become a new permanent satellite of Ceres, circling the small world for many years to come.


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ceres_(dwarf_planet)

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## Hamartia Antidote

*Orion Crew module for Exploration Mission-1 Arrives at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center*

https://blogs.nasa.gov/kennedy/2016...sion-1-arrives-at-nasas-kennedy-space-center/






NASA’s Super Guppy aircraft, carrying the Orion crew module pressure vessel for NASA’s Exploration Mission-1, arrived at the Shuttle Landing Facility operated by Space Florida at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. Photo credit: NASA/Brittney Mostert

The Orion crew module pressure vessel for NASA’s Exploration Mission-1 (EM-1) arrived today at the Shuttle Landing Facility operated by Space Florida at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. Arrival of the module marks an important milestone toward the agency’s journey to Mars.

The crew module arrived aboard the agency’s Super Guppy aircraft from NASA’s Michoud Assembly Facility in New Orleans. Welding work on the pressure vessel, which is the underlying structure of the crew module, was completed at Michoud.

The crew module was offloaded from the Super Guppy and readied for transport to the Neil Armstrong Operations and Checkout Building high bay for processing. In the high bay, NASA and Orion manufacturer Lockheed Martin will outfit the crew module with its systems and subsystems necessary for flight, including its heat-shielding thermal protection system.

NASA’s *Space Launch System rocket will be the largest rocket ever built.* It will carry the Orion spacecraft on EM-1, a test *flight scheduled for 2018*. During EM-1, Orion will travel thousands of miles beyond the moon over the course of a three-week mission.

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## Fenrir

*NASA Space Launch System’s First Flight to Send Small Sci-Tech Satellites Into Space*

*



*

The first flight of NASA’s new rocket, the Space Launch System (SLS), will carry 13 CubeSats to test innovative ideas along with an uncrewed Orion spacecraft in 2018.

These small satellite secondary payloads will carry science and technology investigations to help pave the way for future human exploration in deep space, including the journey to Mars. SLS’ first flight, referred to as Exploration Mission-1 (EM-1), provides the rare opportunity for these small experiments to reach deep space destinations, as most launch opportunities for CubeSats are limited to low-Earth orbit.

“The 13 CubeSats that will fly to deep space as secondary payloads aboard SLS on EM-1 showcase the intersection of science and technology, and advance our journey to Mars,” said NASA Deputy Administrator Dava Newman. 

The secondary payloads were selected through a series of announcements of flight opportunities, a NASA challenge and negotiations with NASA’s international partners.

“The SLS is providing an incredible opportunity to conduct science missions and test key technologies beyond low-Earth orbit," said Bill Hill, deputy associate administrator for Exploration Systems Development at NASA Headquarters in Washington. “This rocket has the unprecedented power to send Orion to deep space plus room to carry 13 small satellites – payloads that will advance our knowledge about deep space with minimal cost.”





_The Lunar Flashlight, flying as secondary payload on the first flight of NASA’s Space Launch System, will examine the moon’s surface for ice deposits and identify locations where resources may be extracted.
Credits: NASA_

NASA selected two payloads through the Next Space Technologies for Exploration Partnerships (NextSTEP) Broad Agency Announcement:


Skyfire - Lockheed Martin Space Systems Company, Denver, Colorado, will develop a CubeSat to perform a lunar flyby of the moon, taking sensor data during the flyby to enhance our knowledge of the lunar surface
Lunar IceCube - Morehead State University, Kentucky, will build a CubeSat to search for water ice and other resources at a low orbit of only 62 miles above the surface of the moon
Three payloads were selected by NASA’s Human Exploration and Operations Mission Directorate:


Near-Earth Asteroid Scout, or NEA Scout will perform reconnaissance of an asteroid, take pictures and observe its position in space
BioSentinel will use yeast to detect, measure and compare the impact of deep space radiation on living organisms over long durations in deep space
Lunar Flashlight will look for ice deposits and identify locations where resources may be extracted from the lunar surface
Two payloads were selected by NASA’s Science Mission Directorate:


CuSP – a “space weather station” to measure particles and magnetic fields in space, testing practicality for a network of stations to monitor space weather
LunaH-Map will map hydrogen within craters and other permanently shadowed regions throughout the moon’s south pole
Three additional payloads will be determined through NASA’s Cube Quest Challenge – sponsored by NASA’s Space Technology Mission Directorate and designed to foster innovations in small spacecraft propulsion and communications techniques. CubeSat builders will vie for a launch opportunity on SLS’ first flight through a competition that has four rounds, referred to as ground tournaments, leading to the selection in 2017 of the payloads to fly on the mission.

NASA has also reserved three slots for payloads from international partners. Discussions to fly those three payloads are ongoing, and they will be announced at a later time.

On this first flight, SLS will launch the Orion spacecraft to a stable orbit beyond the moon to demonstrate the integrated system performance of Orion and the SLS rocket prior to the first crewed flight. The first configuration of SLS that will fly on EM-1 is referred to as Block I and will have a minimum 70-metric-ton (77-ton) lift capability and be powered by twin boosters and four RS-25 engines. The CubeSats will be deployed following Orion separation from the upper stage and once Orion is a safe distance away. Each payload will be ejected with a spring mechanism from dispensers on the Orion stage adapter. Following deployment, the transmitters on the CubeSats will turn on, and ground stations will listen for their beacons to determine the functionality of these small satellites.

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## Fenrir

Nihonjin1051 said:


> @SvenSvensonov, if you don't log bag in to say hi, I will officially declare war on you !





Sooooo, war yet?


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## Fenrir

SpaceX Is Gearing Up To Build Lots and Lots of New Rockets






It’s been a few really good months for SpaceX, and now, the commercial spaceflight company is kicking rocket production into high gear in anticipation of a packed launch schedule.

Speaking on Thursday at the Federal Aviation Administration’s Commercial Space Transportation Conference, SpaceX COO Gwynne Shotwell explained that the company was transitioning from testing and development of its Falcon 9 rocket cores to mass production.

“Now we’re in this factory transformation to go from building six or eight a year to about 18 cores a year. By the end of this year we should be at over 30 cores per year,” Shotwell said. “So you see the factory start to morph.”

SpaceX has not yet announced a date for its next launch, which will carry the SES-9 communications satellite into orbit, but Shotwell indicated that the launch would be taking place within the next several weeks. After that, the company could be flying missions “every two to three weeks”.

Meanwhile, crewed Falcon 9 flights are still on track to begin next year, with an in-flight test of the Crew Dragon spacecraft’s launch escape system set to take place before the end of 2016. This first-of-its-kind failsafe system will allow the crew capsule to separate during ascent in event of a booster failure on the way to orbit.

Development of the Falcon Heavy rocket is still underway. When the first Falcon Heavy launches later this year, it’ll be the most powerful rocket on Earth by a factor of two, capable of lifting over 53 metric tons of mass into orbit.

Exciting times we live in.

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## Hamartia Antidote

NASA's Curiosity Mars Rover at Namib Dune (360 Video)






Go full screen and love your mouse around the pic

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## Fenrir

Hamartia Antidote said:


> NASA's Curiosity Mars Rover at Namib Dune (360 Video)



I don't know if you're interested or not, but I've moved the bulk of my contributions here:

US Space Program Thread | Page 2 | The American Military Forum

We're always welcoming new additions. People on this site have been(and are) getting on my nerves a bit too much.


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## Hamartia Antidote

Technogaianist said:


> I don't know if you're interested or not, but I've moved the bulk of my contributions here:
> 
> US Space Program Thread | Page 2 | The American Military Forum
> 
> We're always welcoming new additions. People on this site have been(and are) getting on my nerves a bit too much.



Doh! I didn't know that


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## Hamartia Antidote

Mysterious Martian "Cauliflower" May Be the Latest Hint of Alien Life | Science | Smithsonian

*Unusual silica formations spotted by a NASA rover look a lot like structures formed by microbes around geysers on Earth*

The hunt for signs of life on Mars has been on for decades, and so far scientists have found only barren dirt and rocks. Now a pair of astronomers thinks that strangely shaped minerals inside a Martian crater could be the clue everyone has been waiting for.


In 2008, scientists announced that NASA’s Spirit rover had discovered deposits of a mineral called opaline silica inside Mars's Gusev crater. That on its own is not as noteworthy as the silica’s shape: Its outer layers are covered in tiny nodules that look like heads of cauliflower sprouting from the red dirt.

No one knows for sure how those shapes—affectionately called “micro-digitate silica protrusions”—formed. But based on recent discoveries in a Chilean desert, Steven Ruff and Jack Farmer, both of Arizona State University in Tempe, think the silica might have been sculpted by microbes. At a meeting of the American Geophysical Union in December, they made the case that these weird minerals might be our best targets for identifying evidence of past life on Mars.

If the logic holds, the silica cauliflower could go down in history as arguably the biggest discovery ever in astronomy. But biology is hard to prove, especially from millions of miles away, and Ruff and Farmer aren’t claiming victory yet. All they’re saying is that maybe these enigmatic growths are mineral greetings from ancient aliens, and someone should investigate.


Spirit found the silica protrusions near the “Home Plate” region of Gusev crater, where geologists think hot springs or geysers once scorched the red planet's surface. To understand what that long-dormant landscape used to be like, we have to look closer to home: hydrothermal regions of modern Earth that resemble Mars in its ancient past.

To that end, Ruff has twice in the past year trekked to Chile’s Atacama Desert, a high plateau west of the Andes cited as the driest non-polar place on Earth. Scientists often compare this desert to Mars, and not just poetically. It’s actually _like_ Mars. The soil is similar, as is the extreme desert climate.

In this part of the Atacama, it rains less than 100 millimeters per year, and temperatures swing from -13°F to 113°F. With an average elevation of 13,000 feet above sea level, lots of ultraviolet radiation makes it through the thin atmosphere to the ground, akin to the punishing radiation that reaches the surface of Mars.

Just as we interpret others’ behavior and emotions by peering into our own psychology, scientists look around our planet to help them interpret Mars, find its most habitable spots and look for signs of life. While the Atacama does have breathable oxygen and evolutionarily clever foxes (which Mars does not), its environment mimics Mars’s pretty well and makes a good standin for what the red planet may have been like when it was warmer and wetter.

So when geologists see something in the Atacama or another Mars analog that matches a feature on the red planet, they reasonably conclude that the two could have formed the same way. It’s not a perfect method, but it’s the best we’ve got.

“I don't think there is any way around using modern Earth analogs to test where Martian microbes may be found,” says Kurt Konhauser of the University of Alberta, who is the editor-in-chief of the journal _Geobiology_.

To understand Home Plate, it makes sense that Ruff turned to El Tatio, a region in the Atacama that is home to more than 80 geysers. While most other earthly animals wouldn’t last long here, many microbes do just fine, and fossil evidence suggests they also thrived in the distant past. By inference, Mars’s Home Plate might have once made a nice microbial home.

But the comparison goes further: When Ruff peered closely at El Tatio’s silica formations, he saw shapes remarkably similar to those that Spirit had seen on Mars. Fraternal cauliflower twins also exist in Yellowstone National Park in Wyoming and the Taupo Volcanic Zone in New Zealand. In both of those places, the silica bears the fossilized fingerprints of microbial life.

Since microbes sculpted the silica features in Wyoming and New Zealand, it's possible they also helped make the formations at El Tatio. And if microbes were involved with the cauliflower at El Tatio, maybe they made it grow on Mars, too.

But making a logical leap from one region on Earth to another—from New Zealand to Chile, for example—isn’t trivial or always correct. And it’s even more tenuous to then hop to a whole other planet where, so far, scientists have seen _no_ signs of life. After all, history doesn’t favor life-friendly interpretations of data from Mars.

The Viking 1 lander, which set foot on the red planet in 1976, performed the first life-seeking experiments there. Three of them came up empty. One, called the Labeled Release experiment, found that something in the soil absorbed the nutrient solution that scientists fed it and then released an excretory plume of carbon dioxide, as if it were metabolizing the nutrients. But the team couldn’t replicate those results, and after much excitement, the researchers had to declare the experiment inconclusive.

Twenty years later, a Mars meteorite found in Antarctica in 1984 caused a similar kerfuffle. NASA scientist David McKay published a paper in 1996 suggesting that the space rock might hold the fossils of once-living things, creating a media uproar. But other scientists soon demonstrated that the “bacteria-shaped objects” and biology-friendly molecules could have formed abiotically, or without the help of life.

Similarly, the carbon dioxide that Viking detected could have been a geochemical, not a biological, reaction. According to Konhauser, most potential biosignatures could also come about non-biologically. Scientists would have to rule out all those non-living possibilities before they could say for sure that we’re not alone.

That lesson definitely applies to the Martian cauliflower.

“Having worked on modern hot springs, I have seen all forms of structures that look biological but are not,” Konhauser says. Silica can come from non-biological processes and water, geography, wind or other environmental factors can then shape it into complex structures. “Because it looks biological doesn’t mean it is,” he says.

For the moment, Ruff and Farmer are calling attention to the Martian cauliflower because they believe it's worth further study. For instance, research teams can take hard looks at the various processes that could have spawned the formations on Mars and help to rule out non-biological alternatives.

“Only when something that we have identified as a potential biosignature is proven to have been produced only by life, and not by any abiotic means, can we make the claim that definitive evidence for life has been found,” says Sherry Cady of the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory in Richland, who is a member of the NASA Astrobiology Institute.

She agrees that the silica growths at Home Plate look like those near hot springs on Earth. But she would like to examine the evidence up close—and not just in portraits. “I would certainly like to see some of those samples brought back,” she says.

While Spirit stopped its scientific roving in 2010, NASA’s Mars 2020 rover, due to launch in a few years, is supposed to collect samples for eventual return to Earth. And the most recent meeting to narrow down landing-site choices for the rover kept Gusev crater on the list of candidates. Maybe the rover should pick some of that cauliflower and potentially turn Home Plate into a home run.

While they wait for additional data from Mars, Ruff and Farmer will do more digging on Earth. They plan to investigate El Tatio to see if its silica does, in fact, show the handiwork of living beings. If they find positive results, they will have made their chain of logic one loop smaller, perhaps bringing us closer to finding out whether any single-celled cousins once squirmed around on the red planet.


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## Hamartia Antidote




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## Hamartia Antidote

I expect some updates @Sven


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## Sven

Dragon's back!

_A SpaceX Dragon capsule splashed down in the Pacific Ocean on Wednesday carrying about 3,700 pounds (1,680 kg) of experiment results and cargo from the International Space Station, NASA said._

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## Hamartia Antidote

The 3 SpaceX rockets that landed in a hangar

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## Hamartia Antidote

*NASA releases first global topographic model of Mercury*

https://cosmosmagazine.com/space/nasa-releases-first-global-topographic-model-mercury

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## indiatester

Hamartia Antidote said:


> *NASA releases first global topographic model of Mercury*
> 
> https://cosmosmagazine.com/space/nasa-releases-first-global-topographic-model-mercury


Wow... is that its true colour?


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## Hamartia Antidote

indiatester said:


> Wow... is that its true colour?



No, the colors represent surface heights.

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## Skaði

May 27, 2016 SpaceX landing.






Full launch and recovery:





Three in a row!

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## SvenSvensonov

*Orbital ATK Conducts Test of Antares First Stage*






Orbital ATK conducted a full-power test of the upgraded first stage propulsion system of its Antares medium-class rocket using new RD-181 main engines. The 30-second test took place at 5:30 p.m. (EDT) on May 31, 2016 at Virginia Space’s Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport (MARS) Pad 0A.

Initial indications suggest that the test was fully successful, and the Antares engineering team will review test data over the next two weeks to confirm that all test parameters were met. The confirmation of a successful test will clear the way for Orbital ATK to resume cargo resupply services to the International Space Station from NASA’s Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia, currently scheduled for July. 

“Early indications show the upgraded propulsion system, core stage and launch complex all worked together as planned,” said Mike Pinkston, Orbital ATK General Manager and Vice President, Antares Program. “Congratulations to the combined NASA, Orbital ATK and Virginia Space team on a successful test.”

The primary goal of the test was to verify the functionality of the integrated first stage, including new engines, modified Stage 1 core, avionics, thrust vector control and pad fueling systems in an operational environment.

The test also met a number of operational milestones including full propellant loading sequence, launch countdown and engine ignition and shut down commands, as well as multiple throttle settings including full engine power. Additionally, the test validated the launch pad’s operation, including propellant tanking and the use of the water deluge system to protect the pad from damage and suppress noise.

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## indiatester

^^^
@SvenSvensonov 
The vibrations seen on the first camera was unexpected. Shows how powerful the engines are. Don't you think there was too much smoke as if the fuel did not burn completely?

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## SvenSvensonov

indiatester said:


> The vibrations seen on the first camera was unexpected. Shows how powerful the engines are. Don't you think there was too much smoke as if the fuel did not burn completely?



It's definitely a powerful engine, but I think the amount of smoke was nominal for the type of engine, the RD-181 and for the launch range, which is designed to promote smoke, but limit flame.

The MARS Pad0A is configured to limit flames and safely expel smoke over water, so it's set up also contributes to the large smoke volume.





Previous launches also produce a lot of lingering smoke:





Here we can see the raised launch platform, and exhaust port pointed towards the water. This photo was in the aftermath of a rocket explosion:





Compared to Atlas launched from a similar platform:





The RD-180/1 is just a powerful, but smoky engine, so I think that the video is nominal, at least when compared to past launches:





We don't see a lot of flame in the video because its directed down into a covered pit and suppressed. In the process of suppressing the flames, smoke is generated in larger volumes.

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## C130

I just find it amazing Falcon 9 v1.1 &FT already has 20 successful launches and the pace and number of launchers is increasing every year.

Ariane 5- 81 launches
Atlas V- 61 launches

assuming Falcon 9 get's minimum 18 successful launches every year from now on... in 5 years 2021/22 Falcon 9 will have more launches than Ariane 5

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## SvenSvensonov

Astronaut’s First Steps into BEAM Will Expand the Frontiers of Habitats for Space
_




BEAM expansion sped up time lapse animated gif. Credits: NASA_

On Monday, June 6, astronaut Jeff Williams will enter the first human-rated expandable module deployed in space, a technology demonstration to investigate the potential challenges and benefits of expandable habitats for deep space exploration and commercial low-Earth orbit applications.

Williams and the NASA and Bigelow Aerospace teams working at Mission Control Center at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston expanded the Bigelow Expandable Activity Module (BEAM) by filling it with air during more than seven hours of operations Saturday, May 28. The BEAM launched April 8 aboard a SpaceX Dragon cargo spacecraft from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida, and was attached to the International Space Station’s Tranquility module about a week later.

Williams’ entry will mark the beginning of a two-year data collection process. He will take an air sample, place caps on the now closed ascent vent valves, install ducting to assist in BEAM’s air circulation, retrieve deployment data sensors and manually open the tanks used for pressurization to ensure all of the air has been released. He will then install sensors over the following two days that will be used for the project’s primary task of gathering data on how an expandable habitat performs in the thermal environment of space, and how it reacts to radiation, micrometeoroids, and orbital debris.

During BEAM's test period, the module typically will be closed off to the rest of the space station. Astronauts will enter the module three to four times each year to collect temperature, pressure and radiation data, and to assess its structural condition. After two years of monitoring, the current plan is to jettison the BEAM from the space station to burn up on re-entry into Earth’s atmosphere.

Expandable habitats are designed to take up less room when being launched but provide greater volume for living and working in space once expanded. This first test of an expandable module will allow investigators to gauge how well the habitat performs and specifically, how well it protects against solar radiation, space debris and the temperature extremes of space.

The BEAM is an example of NASA’s increased commitment to partnering with industry to enable the growth of the commercial use of space. The BEAM, which Bigelow Aerospace developed and built, is co-sponsored by Bigelow and NASA's Advanced Exploration Systems Division.

The expansion process already has provided numerous lessons learned on how soft goods interact during the dynamic event of expansion.

The module measured just over 7 feet long and just under 7.75 feet in diameter in its packed configuration. BEAM now measures more than 13 feet long and about 10.5 feet in diameter to create 565 cubic feet of habitable volume. It weighs approximately 3,000 pounds.






Just make sure to watch for annelids!!

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## Anubis

Anybody here use SETI@Home??


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## SvenSvensonov

BEAM Open for the First Time
_





NASA astronaut Jeff Williams floats in front of the entrance to the Bigelow Expandable Activity Module (BEAM)_

NASA astronaut Jeff Williams opened the hatch to the Bigelow Expandable Activity Module (BEAM) at 4:47 a.m. EDT Monday, June 6. Along with Russian cosmonaut Oleg Skripochka, Williams entered BEAM for the first time to collect an air sample and begin downloading data from sensors on the dynamics of BEAM’s expansion. Williams told flight controllers at Mission Control, Houston that BEAM looked “pristine” and said it was cold inside, but that there was no evidence of any condensation on its inner surfaces.

Additional ingress opportunities to deploy other sensors and equipment in BEAM are scheduled for Tuesday and Wednesday. The hatch to BEAM will be closed after each entry.

Williams and the NASA and Bigelow Aerospace teams working at Mission Control Center at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston expanded the Bigelow Expandable Activity Module (BEAM) by filling it with air during more than seven hours of operations Saturday, May 28. The BEAM launched April 8 aboard a SpaceX Dragon cargo spacecraft from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida, and was attached to the International Space Station’s Tranquility module about a week later.

The BEAM is an example of NASA’s increased commitment to partnering with industry to enable the growth of the commercial use of space. The BEAM, which Bigelow Aerospace developed and built, is co-sponsored by Bigelow and NASA’s Advanced Exploration Systems Division.


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## SvenSvensonov

BEAM Opens Up For Checks






The Bigelow Expandable Activity Module’s (BEAM) hatch was opened up for the first time today. Astronaut Jeff Williams entered BEAM and checked sensors, installed air ducts and reported back to Earth that it was in pristine condition. After Williams completed the BEAM checks he exited and closed the hatch for the day.

The crew will enter BEAM a couple of more times through Wednesday to check sensors and gear. BEAM will stay attached to the International Space Station for two years of tests of its durability.

The rest of the Expedition 47 crew moved right along with human research studies benefiting astronauts in space and people on Earth. British astronaut Tim Peake explored how astronauts adapt to tasks requiring high concentration and detailed procedures. Williams later collected biological samples for stowage and analysis for the Multi-Omics experiment that is studying the immune system.

Commander Tim Peake and Flight Engineer Yuri Malenchenko are packing their Soyuz TMA-19M spacecraft and getting ready for a June 18 departure. Peake will join the duo for the ride home after living in space for six months.





_Astronaut Jeff Williams works inside the Bigelow Expandable Activity Module. Credit: __NASA TV_


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## SvenSvensonov

New Mission Studying Neutron Stars On Track for Launch







A view of the Neutron star Interior Composition Explorer (NICER) X-ray Timing Instrument without its protective blanketing shows a collection of 56 close-packed sunshades—the white and black cylinders in the foreground—that protect the X-ray optics, as well as some of the 56 X-ray detector enclosures, on the gold-colored plate, onto which X-rays from the sky are focused.

NICER, an upcoming NASA astrophysics mission, will uncover the physics governing the ultra-dense interiors of neutron stars. Using the same platform, the mission will demonstrate trailblazing space navigation technology.

The NICER mission arrived at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida, on June 8, 2016. Currently scheduled for launch to the International Space Station in February 2017 aboard a SpaceX Dragon cargo spacecraft, NICER will deploy as an external attached payload on the ISS ExPRESS Logistics Carrier 2. Its 56 X-ray optics and silicon detectors will observe and gather data about the interior composition of neutron stars and their pulsating cohort, pulsars.

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## SvenSvensonov

Elon Musk Just Had a Hush-Hush Meeting at the Pentagon






Elon Musk, the billionaire businessman who wants to literally die on Mars after he puts an electric car in every American’s garage, just had a meeting at the Pentagon with the US Secretary of Defense. But neither Musk nor Secretary Ash Carter will disclose what they talked about.

“Elon Musk is one of the most innovative minds in this country and the secretary, as you know, has been reaching out to a number of members of the technology community to get their ideas, their feedback, find out what’s going on in the world of innovation,” Peter Cook, the Pentagon’s press secretary, said on Monday.

Today’s meeting was focused on “innovation” according to a Defense Department spokesperson who spoke to CNN, but no further details were given. Musk has a financial interest in solar power and electric cars, but if I had to take a wild guess, Carter and Musk probably talked a fair bit about SpaceX, the entrepreneur’s private space company. SpaceX already has an $82 million contract with the US Air Force.

The Pentagon has been actively courting private business in Silicon Valley over the past year to establish more ties with the defense industry, even opening up an office on the West Coast under the Defense Innovation Unit Experimental (DIUx) program. But the initiative has been off to a stumbling start. They’re already trying to overhaul the office in an attempt to cut through red tape and streamline contracts.

“We’re taking a page straight from the Silicon Valley playbook,” Carter said at Moffett Federal Airfield in Mountain View, according to a new report in Bloomberg. “We’re launching DIUx 2.0.”

In the past, Carter has talked about a “funding pipeline,” which is really nothing new when it comes to the business of technology transfer. But it’s clearly an area where the military is currently bogged down.

We often forget that Silicon Valley was built on the backs of US military budgets cranking out weapons of war and the microchips that would guide them to their destinations. But the military has arguably been worse at helping to fund dual use technology than it was during the 1990s, when we saw the US government help start the process to commercialize things like the internet and GPS.

...

SpaceX Set to Reuse Rocket For the First Time






Elon Musk is ready to prove that landing the rocket on a barge in April wasn’t just a fluke. Yesterday, the SpaceX co-founder tweeted that he hoped to relaunch its four landed rockets this fall for the first time.


__ https://twitter.com/i/web/status/740296489532948480
The relaunch is a little behind schedule, since Musk said after the barge landing that he hoped that the rockets could fly again by June. Though a seven-month turnaround isn’t bad, the company eventually hopes that it can cut down the time to a matter of weeks.

Though this fall’s flight would be the first time one of SpaceX’s rockets is reused, Luxembourg-based satellite launcher SES has already expressed strong interest in championing the reusable rockets and bringing them to market. If the relaunch is successful and SpaceX continues to land even more rockets, Musk may need to get serious about needing more space for its rocket storage hangar.

...

Landing on a barge is great and all, but this is the real measure of their worth.

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## SvenSvensonov

*The Space Launch System is coming together, slowly, but surely.

A second booster test is scheduled for June 28th.



*

*Here's the first test of the SLS' boosters.*




*
First the segments had to arrive, though.





Then be assembled.





The SLS's liquid Oxygen tank, which will feed the main engines, has had its final welding completed. It's 200 feet tall and 27.6 feet in diameter.



*






*Segments of the Launch Vehicle Stage Adapter, like this aft cone, are also nearing or have been completed.*




*
One unsung part of the SLS is its insulation foam. This protects the core stages during launch. Nearly 180 panels have been used for various testing.*





*As noted above, a second test of the SLS boosters is scheduled for June 28th, but the SLS also has four RS-25 engines - the same used on the Space Shuttle - they too have been undergoing testing.*

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## SvenSvensonov

NASA TV to Broadcast U.S. Cargo Ship Departure from Space Station
_




The Orbital ATK Cygnus cargo ship is seen after final approach to the International Space Station. The vehicle was captured at 6:51 a.m. EDT March 26 using the space station's Canadarm2 robotic arm by Expedition 47 Commander Tim Kopra. The unmanned cargo craft was then bolted to the Earth-facing port on the Unity module at 10:52 a.m. Orbital ATK’s fifth cargo delivery flight under its Commercial Resupply Services contract delivered over 7,700 pounds of cargo and included equipment to support some 250 experiments during Expeditions 47 and 48.b 
Credits: NASA
_
After delivering almost 7,500 pounds of cargo to support dozens of science experiments from around the world, the Orbital ATK Cygnus cargo spacecraft is set to leave the International Space Station Tuesday, June 14. NASA Television will provide live coverage of Cygnus' departure beginning at 9 a.m. EDT.

Ground controllers will detach the Cygnus spacecraft, which arrived at the station March 26, from the Earth-facing side of the station's Unity module using the Canadarm2 robotic arm. Robotics controllers will maneuver Cygnus into place and Expedition 47 robotic arm operators Tim Kopra of NASA and Tim Peake of ESA (European Space Agency) will give the command for its 9:30 a.m. release.

Five hours after departure, the Saffire-I experiment will take place onboard the uncrewed cargo craft. Saffire-I provides a new way to study a realistic fire on a spacecraft. This hasn’t been possible in the past because the risks for performing such studies on crewed spacecraft are too high. Instruments on the returning Cygnus will measure flame growth, oxygen use and more. Results could determine microgravity flammability limits for several spacecraft materials, help to validate NASA’s material selection criteria, and help scientists understand how microgravity and limited oxygen affect flame size. The investigation is crucial for the safety of current and future space missions.

Cygnus also will release five LEMUR CubeSats from an external deployer June 15, part of a remote sensing satellite constellation that provides global ship tracking and weather monitoring. The vehicle will remain in orbit until Wednesday, June 22, when its engines will fire twice, pushing it into Earth's atmosphere where it will burn up over the Pacific Ocean. NASA TV will not provide a live broadcast of the Cygnus deorbit burn and re-entry.

Experiments delivered on Cygnus supported NASA and other research investigations during Expeditions 47 and 48, including studies in biology, biotechnology, physical science and Earth science -- research that impacts life on Earth, and also will help us on the journey to Mars. Investigations studied realistic fire scenarios on a space vehicle, enabled the first space-based observations of meteors entering Earth’s atmosphere from space, explored how regolith behaves and moves in microgravity, tested a gecko-inspired adhesive gripping device that can stick on command in the harsh environment of space, and added a new 3-D printer in microgravity.

The Cygnus resupply craft launched March 22 on a United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, Florida, for the company’s fifth NASA-contracted commercial resupply mission.

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## SvenSvensonov

*SLS Booster 'Chills Out' Ahead of Super-Hot Ground Test*





_An Orbital ATK technician inspects hardware and instrumentation on a full-scale, test version booster for NASA's new rocket, the Space Launch System. The booster is being cooled to approximately 40 degrees Fahrenheit ahead of its second qualification ground test June 28 at Orbital ATK's test facilities in Promontory, Utah. Testing at the thermal extremes experienced by the booster on the launch pad is important to understanding the effects of temperature on the performance of how the propellant burns.
Credits: Orbital ATK_

The Old Farmer's Almanac is predicting a hotter-than-normal summer for Utah, but at Orbital ATK's test facility in Promontory, crews are bundling up to chill down the booster for the world's most powerful rocket, *NASA's Space Launch System*.

The booster is being cooled to approximately 40 degrees Fahrenheit ahead of its second qualification ground test June 28. Testing at the thermal extremes experienced by the booster on the launch pad is important to understanding the effects of temperature on the performance of how the propellant burns. Data and analysis from past human-rated space programs have set the temperature limits for boosters between 40 and 90 degrees Fahrenheit. The booster was heated to 90 degrees Fahrenheit for the* first successful booster qualification test* in March 2015.

"In the winter or summer, you expect your car to start – regardless of what the temperature is outside," said Mat Bevill, deputy chief engineer in the SLS Boosters Office at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, where the SLS program is managed for the agency. "That car had to be tested to ensure it performed as it was designed to do, even in wide temperature ranges. That's pretty much what we're doing -- except with a huge rocket booster."

The massive size of the booster means it will take more than a month to reach the cold temperature target for the booster inside the test stand. Three large air-conditioning units – similar to those used for outdoor ice skating rinks – have been placed around the test facility, and are continually pumping air at 25 degrees Fahrenheit into the test stand house surrounding the booster. Sensors inside and outside the booster measure the propellant temperature, and analytical models predict the time it takes for the booster to be conditioned to 40 degrees.

"Propellant temperature shouldn't be mistaken for the temperature of the booster when it's fired," Bevill added. "It may be conditioned to 40 degrees Fahrenheit, but once it fires, it is extremely hot – about 6,000 degrees Fahrenheit. That's hot enough to boil steel."

The day of the static fire, the test stand house will be rolled out of the way. "Cold conditioning in the summer isn't exactly optimal, but that's just one of the challenges with staying on schedule. We have to keep marching forward to be ready for flight," Bevill said. "But just like it takes a long time to cool the booster, it also takes a long time for it to warm back up. Testing early in the morning before it gets too hot helps, and we chill to a few degrees cooler than the target of 40 degrees to account for the summer heat on test day."

The two-minute, full-duration firing of the 177-foot booster will be the last full-scale test to support qualification of the hardware for the first two flights of SLS. Some 82 design objectives will be measured through more than 530 instrumentation channels on the booster. Along with measuring the ballistic performance at the lower end of the booster’s accepted propellant temperature range, the test also integrates SLS flight-like command and control for motor ignition and nozzle steering. 

After this test, the next time a SLS booster will be fired up will be on the launch pad at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. Two five-segment solid rocket boosters, along with four RS-25 engines, will propel SLS with the Orion spacecraft on its first mission in 2018.

"We’re working with Orbital ATK as they get ready to fire this booster in June," said Bruce Tiller, deputy manager of the SLS Boosters Office at Marshall. "In conjunction with testing, booster flight hardware is currently in production. NASA is preparing for the first flight of SLS, and each of these programmatic milestones provide crucial data to enable human missions to deep-space destinations, including Mars."

While the boosters for the space shuttle had four booster segments, the SLS boosters will have five segments. The added booster segment for SLS contains more solid propellant that allows SLS to lift more weight and reach a higher altitude before the boosters separate from the core stage within the first two minutes of flight. The core stage, towering more than 200 feet tall with a diameter of 27.6 feet, will store cryogenic liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen that will feed the vehicle’s RS-25 engines.

The initial SLS configuration will have a minimum 70-metric-ton (77-ton) lift capability. The next planned upgrade of SLS will use a powerful exploration upper stage for more ambitious missions with a 105-metric-ton (115-ton) lift capacity. A later configuration will replace the five-segment solid rocket boosters with a pair of advanced solid or liquid propellant boosters to provide a 130-metric-ton (143-ton) lift capacity. In each configuration, SLS will continue to use the same core stage and four RS-25 engines.

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## SvenSvensonov

11 June, 2016 NROL-37 Mission Launch






Damn the Delta IV Heavy is awesome!!

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## Hamartia Antidote

http://www.floridatoday.com/story/t...x-targets-wednesday-falcon-9-launch/85709496/

*SpaceX targets Wednesday [June 15th] Falcon 9 launch*

A busy stretch on the Eastern Range continues with SpaceX’s planned Wednesday morning launch of a Falcon 9 carrying a pair of commercial communications satellites.






There’s an 80 percent chance of favorable weather for the targeted 10:29 a.m. liftoff, at the opening of a 44-minute window at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station’s Launch Complex 40.

The mission is one of three in quick succession this month, along with two by United Launch Alliance.

ULA’s Delta IV Heavy rocket on Saturday blasted off with a U.S. intelligence satellite on the mission's second attempt in three days, while an Atlas V is being prepared for a June 24 liftoff with a Navy communications satellite.

SpaceX’s mission is the second of two for Paris-based Eutelsat and Bermuda-based ABS, following the first in March 2015. After liftoff, SpaceX will attempt to land the Falcon 9's first stage on a ship down range in the Atlantic Ocean, hoping to stick the landing on a fourth consecutive flight.

*Falcon re-flight*

SpaceX hopes to re-fly a rocket for the first time this fall.





SpaceX's four recovered Falcon 9 rocket boosters in storage in a hangar at Kennedy Space Center's pad 39A. (Photo: Elon Musk via Twitter (@elonmusk))

“Aiming for first reflight in Sept/Oct,” CEO Elon Musk said last week on Twitter.

SpaceX has successfully recovered four boosters since December. The first will go on display at company headquarters in Hawthorne, California, and of the rest, the one landed on a ship in April is believed to be in the best condition so far.

Musk said immediately after that launch that he believed he could line up a customer for the launch, which he though was possible as soon as June.

The date has slipped a bit, and SpaceX hasn’t yet revealed what will fly on the used Falcon 9.

Making rockets reusable is key to SpaceX’s goal to lower launch costs and make human missions to Mars more feasible, possibly as soon as the mid-2020s.

......


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## indiatester

SvenSvensonov said:


> 11 June, 2016 NROL-37 Mission Launch
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Damn the Delta IV Heavy is awesome!!


Did you see how during the ignition, the paint on the rocket and boosters got darkened.
This is an monster of a rocket.

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## Hamartia Antidote

indiatester said:


> Did you see how during the ignition, the paint on the rocket and boosters got darkened.
> This is an monster of a rocket.



I noticed this

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## SvenSvensonov

indiatester said:


> Did you see how during the ignition, the paint on the rocket and boosters got darkened.
> This is an monster of a rocket.



Is the orange paint or insulation foam?






The crazy thing is the Falcon Heavy is supposed to be even more powerful!

And the SLS is will eclipse both.

*...*

NASA Completes Test Version of SLS Launch Vehicle Stage Adapter






A crane lifts the structural test article of the *launch vehicle stage adapter* (LVSA) after final manufacturing on a 30-foot welding tool at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama. The LVSA will connect two major sections of the upper part of NASA's Space Launch System -- the *core stage* and the *interim cryogenic propulsion stage* (ICPS) -- for the first flight of the rocket and the Orion spacecraft. SLS will be the world's most powerful rocket and carry astronauts in NASA's Orion spacecraft on deep-space missions, including the *journey to Mars*.

Later this year at Marshall, the test version of the LVSA will be stacked with *other structural test articles* of the upper part of SLS. Engineers will examine test data and compare it to computer models to verify the integrity of the hardware and ensure it can withstand the forces it will experience during flight. The hardware's cone shape is due to the ICPS having a smaller diameter than the rocket's core stage. Teledyne Brown Engineering of Huntsville is the prime contractor for the LVSA.

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## Hamartia Antidote

http://www.extremetech.com/extreme/229937-nasa-testing-helicopter-drone-to-accompany-next-mars-rover

*NASA testing helicopter drone to accompany next Mars rover*






NASA is still in the process of planning the 2020 Mars rover mission to follow up on the massive success of the Curiosity rover. While the design of the 2020 mission will be very similar to Curiosity, NASA is looking to improve the suite of instruments and it might even give the rover a little aerial companion in the form of a helicopter. Engineers at NASA JPL are still testing the Mars copter design to see if it will head to the Red Planet with the rover.

Flying lets you cover much more ground, but rovers have been our only way of getting around on Mars thus far. That’s partially because of the possibility of damage to a flying drone that you can’t repair or even flip over from millions of miles away. The main reason this hasn’t been attempted yet is that Mars has a very thin atmosphere. That’s the same reason Curiosity needed a crazy rocket sled to land — there’s not enough atmosphere for parachutes to do the job. A fixed-wing craft would be more power efficient, but it would have to be huge to get enough lift to fly. A helicopter, on the other hand, can have smaller propellers that it spins faster to generate sufficient lift.

The helicopter design isn’t a magic bullet, though. The Mars copter design being tested does still have very large rotor blades relative to its size. The heart of the robot is a 2.2 pound cube roughly the size of a tissue box. The blades are 3.6 feet from tip to tip. The solar powered robot is designed to fly for two or three minutes at a time and cover about a third of a mile (half a kilometer). It will be outfitted with wide-angle cameras like a GoPro, allowing NASA to find optimal routes for the rover to take across the Martian landscape. This could allow the rover to cover three times more territory each day and scope out the best places to do science.





Simply engineering a solar-powered helicopter is already challenging, but NASA also needs to design an automated system that can land the copter reliably. Due to the distance, there’s no way for the drone to be controlled by humans. It needs to be able to find a landing zone and set down without damaging itself.

There’s no guarantee this will work. The design needs to pass plenty of tests before it will be added to the mission. If it does, I bet it’ll have an awesome Twitter account, and the rover will have its own official photographer. It won’t be restricted to lonely selfies.


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## SvenSvensonov

SpaceX Just Crashed a Rocket Right Into Its Drone Ship

Just as the Falcon 9 was touching down on the _Of Course I Still Love You_drone ship, SpaceX’s feed cut out, leaving both those watching at home and the company clueless as to whether or not the rocket had landed safely. The rocket was visible upright on the pad for a moment between the smoke clouds. But something happened (perhaps a tip-over, like we saw earlier this year, or it simply came in too hard or fast), and the rocket was destroyed, according to SpaceX.

Although this rocket didn’t stick its landing, both satellites attached to the rocket were successfully deployed into space. We’ll update you on just what happened, as we find out the details.

*Update 10:15 am*: It appears the problem with this landing stems from insufficient thrust from one of the rocket’s three engines. Elon Musk  described the problem on Twitter as an “RUD=Rapid Unscheduled Disassembly”.

Engineers have apparently already begun working on a solution that would let the other engines compensate for such problems. Musk estimates that the fix should be ready before the end of the year.

*Update 10:40 am*: Although the rocket may not have emerged from today’s launch, the satellites both did quite nicely.

Musk also said that the footage of the crash, which he described as “maybe [the] hardest impact to date”, from the drone ship’s POV is on its way later today.

The drone ship, fortunately, emerged from its encounter unscathed.

Liftoff:






And, uh, landing:






...

Meh, stuff happens. The most important question in events like this is always "_Did your wreckage at least make it_"

Let's consult the flow chart:






Easy fix. Just add more boosters.

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## SvenSvensonov

Building the Future: Space Station Crew 3-D Prints First Student-Designed Tool in Space

When NASA fired up the *Additive Manufacturing Facility* on the *International Space Station* to begin more testing of the emerging 3-D printing technology in orbit, one college student in particular watched intently.

In autumn of 2014, a high school senior in Enterprise, Alabama, Robert Hillan entered the Future Engineers Space Tool design competition, which challenged students to create a device astronauts could use in space. The catch was that it must upload electronically and print on the new 3-D printer that was going to be installed on the orbiting laboratory.





_The Mulitpurpose Precision Maintenance Tool, created by University of Alabama in Huntsville student Robert Hillan as part of the Future Engineers Space Tool Challenge, was printed on the International Space Station. It is designed to provide astronauts with a single tool that can help with a variety of tasks, including tightening nuts or bolts of different sizes and stripping wires. Credits: NASA_

In January 2015, NASA and the American Society of Mechanical Engineers Foundation announced that Hillan's design, a *Multipurpose Precision Maintenance Tool*, was selected out of hundreds of entries to be printed on the station.

"Our challenges invite students to invent objects for astronauts, which can be both inspiring and incredibly tough," said Deanne Bell, founder and director of the Future Engineers challenges. "Students must have the creativity to innovate for the unique environment of space, but also the practical, hands-on knowledge to make something functional and useful. It’s a delicate balance, but this combination of creativity, analytical skills, and fluency in current technology is at the heart of engineering education."

Denmark? Norge? Borks in Spaaaaaaaace!!




_Robert Hillan, a sophomore engineering student at the University of Alabama in Huntsville, watches a 3-D printer on the International Space Station complete his winning design for the Future Engineers Space Tool Challenge. Part of his prize for winning the competition was going behind the scenes to watch the printing process from NASA's Payload Operations Integration Center -- mission control for space station science located at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville. Credits: NASA_

Hillan's design features multiple tools on one compact unit, including different sized wrenches, drives to attach sockets, a precision measuring tool for wire gauges, and a single-edged wire stripper. After the new manufacturing facility was installed on the station in March, NASA uploaded Hillan's design to be printed.

As a bonus, Hillan was invited to watch his tool come off the printer from a unique vantage point. On June 15, standing amidst the flight controllers in the Payload Operations Integration Center at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, which is mission control for space station science, Hillan looked on as NASA astronaut Jeff Williams displayed the finished tool from the station's Additive Manufacturing Facility. The Marshall Center is located just a few miles from where Hillan is a sophomore engineering student at the University of Alabama in Huntsville.

"I am extremely grateful that I was given the opportunity to design something for fabrication on the space station," Hillan said. "I have always had a passion for space exploration, and space travel in general. I designed the tool to adapt to different situations, and as a result I hope to see variants of the tool being used in the future, hopefully when it can be created using stronger materials."

Not only did Hillan get to watch his tool being made, he also got to spend a few minutes chatting with astronauts on the station.

NASA astronaut Tim Kopra, a current station crew member, congratulated Hillan, saying "When you have a problem, it will drive specific requirements and solutions. 3-D printing allows you to do a quick design to meet those requirements. That's the beauty of this tool and this technology. You can produce something you hadn't anticipated and do it on short notice."

"You have a great future ahead of you."

The space station's 3-D printer caught national headlines late in 2014 when it started operations and built nearly two dozen sample designs that were returned to the Marshall Center for further testing. NASA is continuing 3-D printing development that will prove helpful on the *journey to Mars* with the newly installed Additive Manufacturing Facility.

"When a part breaks or a tool is misplaced, it is difficult and cost-prohibitive to send up a replacement part," said Niki Werkheiser, NASA's 3-D Printer program manager at Marshall. "With this technology, we can build what is needed on demand instead of waiting for resupply. We may even be able to build entire structures using materials we find on Mars."

Winning this competition made Hillan see the space industry in a different light, and it may have changed the direction of his future.

"When I won the competition, I started seeing problems I face as new opportunities to create and learn," Hillan said. "Since then I have tried to seize every opportunity that presents itself. I love finding solutions to problems, and I want to apply that mentality as I pursue my engineering degree and someday launch my own company."

NASA’s Advanced Exploration Systems Division, in partnership with the American Society of Mechanical Engineers Foundation, continues to provide an ongoing series of Future Engineers 3-D Space Design Challenges. Through these challenges, students become the creators and innovators of tomorrow by using 3-D modeling software to submit their designs of 3-D printable objects for an astronaut to theoretically use in space. See *Future Engineers* for results and the latest information about the series.

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## indiatester

SvenSvensonov said:


> SpaceX Just Crashed a Rocket Right Into Its Drone Ship
> 
> Just as the Falcon 9 was touching down on the _Of Course I Still Love You_drone ship, SpaceX’s feed cut out, leaving both those watching at home and the company clueless as to whether or not the rocket had landed safely. The rocket was visible upright on the pad for a moment between the smoke clouds. But something happened (perhaps a tip-over, like we saw earlier this year, or it simply came in too hard or fast), and the rocket was destroyed, according to SpaceX.
> 
> Although this rocket didn’t stick its landing, both satellites attached to the rocket were successfully deployed into space. We’ll update you on just what happened, as we find out the details.
> 
> *Update 10:15 am*: It appears the problem with this landing stems from insufficient thrust from one of the rocket’s three engines. Elon Musk  described the problem on Twitter as an “RUD=Rapid Unscheduled Disassembly”.
> 
> Engineers have apparently already begun working on a solution that would let the other engines compensate for such problems. Musk estimates that the fix should be ready before the end of the year.
> 
> *Update 10:40 am*: Although the rocket may not have emerged from today’s launch, the satellites both did quite nicely.
> 
> Musk also said that the footage of the crash, which he described as “maybe [the] hardest impact to date”, from the drone ship’s POV is on its way later today.
> 
> The drone ship, fortunately, emerged from its encounter unscathed.
> 
> Liftoff:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> And, uh, landing:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> ...
> 
> Meh, stuff happens. The most important question in events like this is always "_Did your wreckage at least make it_"
> 
> 
> Easy fix. Just add more boosters.



Forget the rocket, engines, launch, satellites etc... even the live coverage is a treat to watch.
/me jealous


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## SvenSvensonov

Non-space NASA project

...

*NASA Electric Research Plane Gets X Number, New Name*
*



*
With 14 electric motors turning propellers and all of them integrated into a uniquely-designed wing, NASA will test new propulsion technology using an experimental airplane now designated the X-57 and nicknamed “Maxwell.”

NASA Administrator Charles Bolden highlighted the agency’s first X-plane designation in a decade during his keynote speech Friday in Washington at the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA) annual Aviation and Aeronautics Forum and Exposition, commonly called Aviation 2016.

“With the return of piloted X-planes to NASA’s research capabilities – which is a key part of our 10-year-long New Aviation Horizons initiative – the general aviation-sized X-57 will take the first step in opening a new era of aviation,” Bolden said.

As many as five larger transport-scale X-planes also are planned as part of the initiative. Its goals – like the X-57 – include demonstrating advanced technologies to reduce fuel use, emissions and noise, and thus accelerate their introduction to the marketplace.

The X-57 number designation was assigned by the U.S. Air Force, which manages the history-making process, following a request from NASA. The first X-plane was the X-1, which in 1947 became the first airplane to fly faster than the speed of sound.

“Dozens of X-planes of all shapes, sizes and purposes have since followed – all of them contributing to our stature as the world’s leader in aviation and space technology,” said Jaiwon Shin, associate administrator for NASA’s Aeronautics Research Mission Directorate. “Planes like the X-57, and the others to come, will help us maintain that role.”

NASA researchers working directly with the electric airplane also chose to name the aircraft “Maxwell” to honor James Clerk Maxwell, the 19th century Scottish physicist who did groundbreaking work in electromagnetism. His importance in contributing to the understanding of physics is rivaled only by Albert Einstein and Isaac Newton part of a four-year flight demonstrator plan, NASA’s Scalable Convergent Electric Propulsion Technology Operations Research project will build the X-57 by modifying a recently procured, Italian-designed Tecnam P2006T twin-engine light aircraft.

Its original wing and two gas-fueled piston engines will be replaced with a long, skinny wing embedded with 14 electric motors – 12 on the leading edge for take offs and landings, and one larger motor on each wing tip for use while at cruise altitude.

NASA’s aeronautical innovators hope to validate the idea that distributing electric power across a number of motors integrated with an aircraft in this way will result in a five-time reduction in the energy required for a private plane to cruise at 175 mph.

Several other benefits would result as well. “Maxwell” will be powered only by batteries, eliminating carbon emissions and demonstrating how demand would shrink for lead-based aviation fuel still in use by general aviation.

Energy efficiency at cruise altitude using X-57 technology could benefit travelers by reducing flight times, fuel usage, as well as reducing overall operational costs for small aircraft by as much as 40 percent. Typically, to get the best fuel efficiency an airplane has to fly slower than it is able. Electric propulsion essentially eliminates the penalty for cruising at higher speeds.

Finally, as most drivers of hybrid electric cars know, electric motors are more quiet than conventional piston engines. The X-57’s electric propulsion technology is expected to significantly decrease aircraft noise, making it less annoying to the public.

The X-57 research started as part of the NASA Aeronautics Research Mission Directorate's Transformative Aeronautics Program's Convergent Aeronautics Solutions project, with the flight demonstrations being performed as part of the Flight Demonstration Concepts project in the Integrated Aviation Systems Program.


*... *Stupid auto-merging



Blue Origin Will Soon Launch a Crew Capsule—and Then Crash It on Purpose






Blue Origin, the notoriously-secretive space company, is launching its New Shepherd crew capsule this weekend. And, for the first time, you’re going to be able to watch it happen—right up to a pretty probable crash-landing.

The plan is to launch New Shepherd using one of its new BE-4 rocket engines and begin some maneuvering tests of the capsule. But, seven minutes into the flight, something alarming is going to take place: one of the capsule’s parachutes is going to fail. On purpose.

Although New Shepherd is designed as a crew capsule, it will be empty on this run, which is an attempt to stress test the capsule. Like the old Apollo flights, New Shepherd uses a triple parachute combo to add drag to the capsule as it comes in for a touchdown.






In 1971, Apollo 15's crew capsule experienced exactly the same parachute failure scenario, with one of the three failing to open as it splashed down into the Pacific Ocean. All the crew members inside were unharmed, but the capsule did go through what NASA described as a “hard impact.”

Blue Origin CEO Jeff Bezos said in an emailed statement that he believes his capsule will be capable of “safely handling” a parachute failure and even a resulting crash-landing, thanks to a shock-absorbing crushable structure. The intention, though, is to use the capsule’s “retro rocket” system—which kicks in when New Shepherd is just feet above the ground—to avoid the crash altogether.

“On this flight, we’ll intentionally fail one string of parachutes on the capsule. There are three strings of chutes and two of the three should still deploy nominally and, along with our retrothrust system, safely land the capsule,” said Bezos. “Works on paper, and this test is designed to validate that.”

But, despite those measures, as he also tweeted this morning, “And of course–development test flight–anything can happen.”

The New Shepard launch was originally supposed to take place today, but a leaky gasket in the capsule’s nitrogen gas pressurization system grounded the capsule. The launch was instead pushed to Sunday morning.

*BE-4: just one of many rockets vying for the coveted spot currently occupied by the RD-180.





Previous Blue Origin launches have been heavily-shrouded from the public, with the launches often remaining secret until well after they had been successfully-completed. Competitor SpaceX used the opposite approach, releasing not just livecasts of all its launches—crashes and all—but also typically multiple views.

In just the last few months, Blue Origin has started to open up its process slightly, letting reporters into its facility for the first time. This, however, is the first launch that it will share with the public directly and not after the fact. And it’s no coincidence that it’s starting with a test of the New Shepard capsule.

Bezos has said that he wants to start operating space tourism flights within the next two years, by 2018. The New Shepard and the BE-4 engine that is launching it this weekend is exactly the same combination he’s identified as the probable vehicle for those tourism goals, shuttling up flights of six tourists at a time to experience brief bouts of weightlessness.

As the time when Blue Origin is going to attempt to book customers draws closer, broadcasting what is—essentially—an abilities-showcase and a safety test for that capsule/engine combination makes sense. We’ll be back on Sunday to see how it goes.

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## Hamartia Antidote

SpaceX almost sticks the 4th landing in a row.






Video is slow motion

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## SvenSvensonov

Hamartia Antidote said:


> SpaceX almost sticks the 4th landing in a row.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Video is slow motion



Even in failure, that's such a beautiful sight. Blue Origins who?

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## SvenSvensonov

International space happenings.

...
*
Three Space Station Crew Members Return to Earth, Land Safely in Kazakhstan*

Three crew members from the International Space Station returned to Earth at 5:15 a.m. EDT (3:15 p.m. Kazakhstan time) Saturday after wrapping up 186 days in space and several NASA research studies in human health.

Expedition 47 Commander Tim Kopra of NASA, flight engineer Tim Peake of ESA (European Space Agency) and Soyuz Commander Yuri Malenchenko of Roscosmos touched down southeast of the remote town of Dzhezkazgan in Kazakhstan












The crew completed the in-flight portion of NASA human research studies in ocular health, cognition, salivary markers and microbiome. From the potential development of vaccines, to data that could be relevant in the treatment of patients suffering from ocular diseases, such as glaucoma, the research will help NASA prepare for human long-duration exploration while also benefiting people on Earth.

The three crew members also welcomed four cargo spacecraft, including one that delivered the Bigelow Expandable Activity Module (BEAM), an expandable habitat technology demonstration. The BEAM, which arrived in April on the eighth SpaceX commercial resupply mission, was attached to the space station and expanded to its full size for analysis over the next two years. The BEAM is an example of NASA’s increased commitment to partnering with industry to enable the growth of commercial space, and is co-sponsored by the agency’s Advanced Exploration Systems Division and Bigelow Aerospace.

Two Russian Progress cargo craft docked to the station in December and April, bringing tons of supplies. Kopra and Peake also led the grapple of Orbital ATK’s Cygnus spacecraft to the station in March, the company's fourth commercial resupply mission, and the SpaceX Dragon spacecraft in April.

During his time on the orbital complex, Kopra ventured outside for two spacewalks. The objective of the first spacewalk was to move the station’s mobile transporter rail car to a secure position. On the second spacewalk, Kopra and Peake replaced a failed voltage regulator to restore power to one of the station’s eight power channels. Kopra now has 244 days in space on two flights, while Peake spent 186 days in space on this, his first, mission.

Having completed his sixth mission, Malenchenko now has spent 828 cumulative days in space, making him second on the all-time list behind Russian cosmonaut Gennady Padalka.

Expedition 48 continues on the station, with NASA astronaut Jeff Williams in command, with crewmates Oleg Skripochka and Alexey Ovchinin of the Russian space agency Roscosmos. The three-person crew will operate the station for three weeks until the arrival of three new crew members.

NASA astronaut Kate Rubins, Russian cosmonaut Anatoly Ivanishin and Takuya Onishi of the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency are scheduled to launch July 6 (Eastern time) from Baikonur, Kazakhstan.

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## SvenSvensonov

Blue Origin's Crew Capsule Just Crashed—And Survived






Blue Origin just launched its crew capsule into space—and then intentionally brought it in for a very soft crash.

Blue Origin’s reusable rocket, which just made its fourth trip to space, hit an apogee of 331,501 feet. It then touched down easily, like we’ve seen in previous flights. But the real action on this test was to see what happened to the crew capsule it was carrying.

Instead of using three parachutes to soften its landing, Blue Origin intentionally failed one to see how it would do with just two. Blue Origin’s commentators during the event said that it would hit the ground at a speed of just 1-2 miles per hour, but the company’s speed monitor appeared to show it at around 20 miles per hour as it hit the ground.

Still—despite that heavy cloud of dust it kicked up at touchdown—the capsule appeared intact at the end. Although, for a full-workup of how the capsule did, we’ll need to wait until Blue Origin retrieves it and checks it out. Assuming all went well, that same rocket and capsule will go back up in a future test flight.

...

The whole mission here:






Every time I see that rocket!!

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## SvenSvensonov

_A test version of the Orion spacecraft is pulled back like a pendulum and released, taking a dive into the 20-foot-deep (6.1 meters) Hydro Impact Basin at NASA’s Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia._

_Crash-test dummies wearing modified Advanced Crew Escape Suits are securely seated inside the capsule to help engineers understand how splashdown in the ocean during return from a deep-space mission could impact the crew and seats._

_Each test in the __water-impact series__ simulates different scenarios for Orion’s parachute-assisted landings, wind conditions, velocities and wave heights the spacecraft and crew may experience when landing in the ocean upon return missions in support of the journey to Mars.










The interim cryogenic propulsion stage test article made a five-hour journey on the Tennessee River from United Launch Alliance in Decatur, Alabama to NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama. At Marshall, the hardware will undergo tests critical to the first launch of NASA's Space Launch System -- the world’s most powerful rocket._

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## SvenSvensonov

_A prototype 13-kilowatt Hall thruster is tested at NASA's Glenn Research Center in Cleveland. This prototype demonstrated the technology readiness needed for industry to continue the development of high-power solar electric propulsion into a flight-qualified system._

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## Hamartia Antidote

http://www.space.com/33229-firefly-rocket-engine-test-photo.html

*Firefly Rocket Engine Looks Luminous During Test (Photo)*




A test of a single engine from the Firefly Alpha aerospike rocket looks like a work of art in this photo, posted to the company's Twitter account on June 10, 2016.
Credit: Edwards Media, Austin TX
A white, hot column of flame firing out of a rocket engine, backdropped by white clouds and a blue sky, looks like a work of art in this photo from the private company Firefly Space Systems.

This luminous image was posted to the company's Twitter account on June 10, and shows a single engine — one of 12 that will be included on the completed Firefly Alpha aerospike rocket. The aerospike design uses engine nozzles with a slightly different shape compared to the bell-shaped nozzles seen on many other rocket engines. 

Firefly is a company aiming to build "low-cost, high-performance space launch capability for the underserved small satellite market," according to the company's website. The company's first launch with its Firefly Alpha vehicle is scheduled for March 2018. That will be the first of four launches contracted by NASA. 

In the picture, the engine is attached to the "live ring," which will hold all 12 engines when the rocket is fully constructed. (Many rocket designs have multiple engines, such as SpaceX's Falcon 9 rocket, which has nine engines.) 

The aerospike engine design has been around since the 1960s, a representative for Firefly told Space.com via email, but the company believes it "will have the first aerospike engine in production when Firefly Alpha becomes operational in early 2018," he said.

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## Hamartia Antidote

Hamartia Antidote said:


> SpaceX almost sticks the 4th landing in a row.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Video is slow motion



looks like the barge is ok

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## indiatester

Hamartia Antidote said:


> looks like the barge is ok


Potty training is not complete yet


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## SvenSvensonov

_




A test version of the booster for NASA's new rocket, the Space Launch System, will __fire up for the second of two qualification ground tests at 10:05 a.m. EDT (8:05 a.m. MDT) Tuesday, June 28__ at prime contractor Orbital ATK's test facility in Promontory, Utah. NASA Television will air live coverage of the booster test June 28 beginning at 9:30 a.m._

_The test will provide NASA with __critical data to support booster qualification for flight__. When completed, two five-segment boosters and four RS-25 main engines will power the world's most powerful rocket, with the Orion spacecraft atop, to achieve human exploration to deep-space destinations, including our journey to Mars._

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## SvenSvensonov

Busy upcoming few weeks. An SLS Booster test on June 28th (Live stream at NASA TV) and Juno is set to reach Jupiter on July 4th. Until then, here's some photos taken by NASA missions.

...

The dark side of Pluto - New Horizons






Saturn and its rings - Cassini






Saturn and friends Tethys, Enceladus and Mimas - Cassini






Stargazing on the ISS - NASA Earth Observatory






Enceladus - Cassini






CST-100 Starliner - Manned space program






Deep Space Station 35 - Deep Space Network






Starburst Spider - Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter

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## SvenSvensonov

Just in case I'm not awake yet tomorrow (June 28, 2016) - and there's a good chance of that happening since I work from home on Tuesdays and have no reason to get up early - the SLS booster test can be seen here at 9:30 to 10:30 AM Eastern Standard Time:

http://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/nasatv/index.html#public

...

These are monstrous booster:
















...

As a bonus, here's a pic of Saturn's dark side and Enceladus as taken from Cassini.






And a teaser from Juno, which is due to reach Jupiter on July 4th.






_NASA's Juno spacecraft obtained this color view on June 21, 2016, at a distance of 6.8 million miles (10.9 million kilometers) from Jupiter. __Juno will arrive at Jupiter on July 4._

_As Juno makes its initial approach, the giant planet's four largest moons -- Io, Europa, Ganymede and Callisto -- are visible, and the alternating light and dark bands of the planet's clouds are just beginning to come into view._

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## SvenSvensonov

The Juno mission.


























Juno is powered by three large solar panels.






...

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## indiatester

@SvenSvensonov 

Off topic, but this is how I remember Juno mission


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## SvenSvensonov

SLS Booster test live stream.


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## Blue Marlin

SvenSvensonov said:


> Every time I see that rocket!!


whats wrong with it?


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## SvenSvensonov

2 Minutes, 10 seconds of burn time. Successful test!

In case you missed the live stream, here's the test:








Blue Marlin said:


> whats wrong with it?

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## Blue Marlin

SvenSvensonov said:


> 2 Minutes, 10 seconds of burn time. Successful test!
> 
> In case you missed the live stream, here's the test:


ahhh i see where your comming from but i dont think there supposed to be big ,fat and short.
it's supposed to be big fat and long

if its pointy then you need to see the doc asap


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## SvenSvensonov

The QM-2 test video can be seen two posts above^.

...

_*NASA's Space Launch System Booster Passes Major Milestone on Journey to Mars*






The second and final qualification motor (QM-2) test for the Space Launch System’s booster is seen, Tuesday, June 28, 2016, at Orbital ATK Propulsion System's (SLS) test facilities in Promontory, Utah. During the SLS flight the boosters will provide more than 75 percent of the thrust needed to escape the gravitational pull of the Earth, the first step on NASA’s Journey to Mars.
_
A booster for the most powerful rocket in the world, NASA’s Space Launch System (SLS), successfully fired up Tuesday for its second qualification ground test at Orbital ATK's test facilities in Promontory, Utah. This was the last full-scale test for the booster before SLS’s first uncrewed test flight with NASA’s Orion spacecraft in late 2018, a key milestone on the agency’s Journey to Mars.

“This final qualification test of the booster system shows real progress in the development of the Space Launch System,” said William Gerstenmaier, associate administrator for the Human Exploration and Operations Mission Directorate at NASA Headquarters in Washington. “Seeing this test today, and experiencing the sound and feel of approximately 3.6 million pounds of thrust, helps us appreciate the progress we’re making to advance human exploration and open new frontiers for science and technology missions in deep space.”

The booster was tested at a cold motor conditioning target of 40 degrees Fahrenheit –the colder end of its accepted propellant temperature range. When ignited, temperatures inside the booster reached nearly 6,000 degrees. The two-minute, full-duration ground qualification test provided NASA with critical data on 82 qualification objectives that will support certification of the booster for flight. Engineers now will evaluate these data, captured by more than 530 instrumentation channels on the booster.

When completed, two five-segment boosters and four RS-25 main engines will power SLS on deep space missions. The solid rocket boosters, built by NASA contractor Orbital ATK, operate in parallel with SLS’s main engines for the first two minutes of flight. They will provide more than 75 percent of the thrust needed for the rocket and Orion spacecraft to escape Earth’s gravitational pull.

"Today's test is the pinnacle of years of hard work by the NASA team, Orbital ATK and commercial partners across the country," said John Honeycutt, SLS Program manager at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama. “SLS hardware is currently in production for every part of the rocket. NASA also is making progress every day on Orion and the ground systems to support a launch from Kennedy Space Center in Florida. We're on track to launch SLS on its first flight test with Orion and pave the way for a human presence in deep space."

The first full-scale booster qualification ground test was successfully completed in March 2015 and demonstrated acceptable performance of the booster design at 90 degrees Fahrenheit – the highest end of the booster’s accepted propellant temperature range. Testing at the thermal extremes experienced by the booster on the launch pad is important to understand the effect of temperature on how the propellant burns.

The initial SLS configuration will have a minimum 70-metric-ton (77-ton) lift capability. The next planned upgrade of SLS will use a powerful exploration upper stage for more ambitious missions, with a 105-metric-ton (115-ton) lift capacity. In each configuration, SLS will continue to use the same core stage and four RS-25 engines.

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## SvenSvensonov



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## SvenSvensonov

_Pressure vessels built by SpaceX to test its Crew Dragon designs are going through structural testing, so engineers can analyze the spacecraft’s ability to withstand the harsh conditions of launch and spaceflight. A pressure vessel is the area of the spacecraft where astronauts will sit during their ride to the International Space Station. It makes up the majority of the Crew Dragon’s structure but does not include the outer shell, heat shield, thrusters or other systems._

_Even without those systems in place, however, SpaceX and NASA can learn enormous amounts about the design’s strength by placing the pressure vessel in special fixtures that stress the structure. SpaceX completed two pressure vessels that will be used for ground tests and two more are in manufacturing right now to fly in space during demonstration missions for NASA’s Commercial Crew Program._

_After the ground testing, the pressure vessels will be outfitted with all the systems they would need to be fully functional spacecraft.


*...*

_

June 24 the USN sent up a communications satellite called MUOS 5 aboard an Atlas 5.

Here's an alternate angle of the launch:


__ https://twitter.com/i/web/status/746359812582039552
And the launch as shot from a camera strapped to the rocket:

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## SvenSvensonov

People sometimes forget that NASA isn't just a space agency, it also does more Earth-bound flight (National Aeronautics and Space Administration) testing, research and development.

NASA maintains a fleet of specialized and modified aircraft ranging from the manned F/A-18 to the unmanned Predator and the mammoth Global Hawk.

Even within the fleet, each aircraft is used to test or experiment with different tasks. One F/A-18 is an airborne observatory. Another, this one, was a high Alpha research platform.






Yet another was used to design an active elastic wing, as shown here undergoing wing stress testing.






The innards of a NASA Global Hawk






The Predator B "IKhara" is a scientific platform. Here it is sporting a Raytheon designed pod for Arctic missions.






Occasionally NASA co-opted US Air Force aircraft like the B-52. Shown here is a B-52H loaned to NASA until 2001. It carries the X-38 lifting body aircraft.






That's a remote controlled F-15A. 3/8th-scale of course.






Some designs are unique versions of existing aircraft, like this F-5E.






Others, like the F-107A never made it past a prototype phase, but NASA helped test the aircraft every step of the way.






Space is glamorous and often more overt, but there isn't an aircraft flying in the US today that NASA research's touch avoided.

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## SvenSvensonov

Here's a few more platforms NASA used or helped develop.

AIM-54 Phoenix.






SR-71 Blackbird.






Tier-3 Darkstar.






TU-144LL Supersonic transport. Not even foreign aircraft are safe from NASA's grasp.






X-31 Semi-tailless.






X-29.






X-40 space plane.






And last but not least, the X-45.






If there's a program, space or terrestrial in the US, you can bet NASA will be there testing the platform every step it takes. And you can be even more sure that before those programs ever get off the drawing board, NASA has helped develop the technology and research that will make them possible.

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## Hamartia Antidote

SvenSvensonov said:


> Here's a few more platforms NASA used or helped develop.
> 
> 
> TU-144LL Supersonic transport. Not even foreign aircraft are safe from NASA's grasp.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> X-31 Semi-.



That is truly amazing. How did they get their hands on one of those???? I can't believe Russia allowed it.

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## SvenSvensonov

Hamartia Antidote said:


> That is truly amazing. How did they get their hands on one of those???? I can't believe Russia allowed it.



I was really surprised to see NASA helped research supersonic flight for Tupolev too. The development program was from 1996 to 1999, so relations between the US and Russia were markedly better. During the development of the TU-144 Supersonic Transport, NASA was asked to assist with research on supersonic flight.

NASA Research pilot C. Gordon Fullerton sits in cockpit of the TU-144LL SST.

























I'm really disappointed to see our relations with Russia sour... again. Cooperating, our two nations are capable of great feats of engineering.


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## Hamartia Antidote

SvenSvensonov said:


> I was really surprised to see NASA helped research supersonic flight for Tupolev too. The development program was from 1996 to 1999, so relations between the US and Russia were markedly better. During the development of the TU-144 Supersonic Transport, NASA was asked to assist with research on supersonic flight.
> 
> NASA Research pilot C. Gordon Fullerton sits in cockpit of the TU-144LL SST.



Wait...NASA helped bail out the TU-144 program after its disastrous 1973 air show crash? Wow! So in return they got a jet...unreal!


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## Hamartia Antidote

Juno probe insertion today...unfortunately Jupiter is a nasty planet and the chance of it destroying the probe is high compared to other planets.

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## Hamartia Antidote

http://www.space.com/33347-juno-team-celebrates-jupiter-orbit-success.html


*NASA, Juno Team Exult in Successful Jupiter Arrival*





NASA officials and members of the Juno mission team celebrate the spacecraft's successful arrival at Jupiter on July 4, 2016.
PASADENA, California — First came the sighs of relief, and then the shouts of joy.

The people behind NASA's Juno mission rode a wave of emotions Monday night (July 4) as the spacecraft approached Jupiter and then, after a picture-perfect, 35-minute engine burn, became just the second probe ever to enter orbit around the giant planet.

The tension was high Monday night, because the burn was a make-or-break maneuver: If Juno's engine didn't perform properly, the spacecraft would go sailing right past Jupiter. And the engine had to kick on — on autopilot, hundreds of millions of miles from Earth — just as Juno was zooming through the harshest part of Jupiter's intense radiation belts, where hordes of electrons zip around at nearly the speed of light. [Juno Team Cheers as Jupiter Arrival Confirmed (Video)]

"The more you know about the mission, you know just how tricky this [maneuver] was, and it had to be flawless," Juno program executive Diane Brown, who's based at NASA Headquarters in Washington, D.C., said during a news briefing here at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) after Juno's success was confirmed.

"I really can't put it into words," Brown added. "You imagine what it might feel like, but to actually have it, to know that we can all go to bed tonight not worrying about what's going to happen tomorrow? It's pretty awesome."

Juno principal investigator Scott Bolton, of the Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio, said he let loose a "huge sigh of relief and excitement" when it became clear that Juno had aced the engine burn.

"We're there — we're in orbit," Bolton said, as applause erupted throughout the briefing room at JPL. "We conquered Jupiter!"

The $1.1 billion Juno mission, which launched in August 2011, aims to map out the composition and internal structure of Jupiter, among other goals. Learning what Jupiter is made of — how much water swirls around in its atmosphere, and if it has a core of heavy elements, for example — will reveal a great deal about how the giant planet took shape, mission team members have said.

Juno won't begin studying Jupiter with its nine science instruments until late August, when it will loop back around for another close pass of the gas giant. (Monday night's engine burn placed Juno into a 53-day orbit.)

And the bulk of Juno's science work will start after an Oct. 19 engine burn shifts the spacecraft into its 14-day science orbit. Juno will then perform more than 30 such orbits, before finally plunging into Jupiter's atmosphere in an intentional death dive in February 2018.

So the Juno team has a lot to look forward to over the coming weeks and months.

"It's amazing, it feels wonderful, and it's also just the beginning," said Juno project scientist Steve Levin of JPL.

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## SvenSvensonov

Hamartia Antidote said:


> Juno probe insertion today...unfortunately Jupiter is a nasty planet and the chance of it destroying the probe is high compared to other planets.



Given the volatility of Jupiter, Juno has to rank among NASA's most dangerous missions, and one of its hardest. According to Scott Bolton, part of the Juno project:

_“We just did the hardest thing __NASA__ has ever done.”_

I'm hard-pressed to disagree with him given the monster Juno is up against.

And this is the space agency that put man on the moon.





Has a rover exploring Mars.





Got intimate with Pluto.





And sent a probe out of the f*cking solar system!!





Along the way there's been a lot of difficult missions, some have even cost human lives or untold billions in losses, but Jupiter with its massive EM field and wonky amounts of radiation is a different beast to our probes. One flare up and Juno would turn to literal dust and around 1.1 billion USD with it.

Even near the poles where Juno is to be completing 37 orbits, it's still a dicey proposition:

Juno will experience the equivalent radiation dose of _“a hundred million X-rays in less than a year,” - _Heidi Becker, Juno's radiation monitoring team lead.

This video shows the highly elliptical orbital path of the probes, oriented towards the poles, from Juno's perspective.






The first revolution will take Juno 53.5 days to complete, all to avoid Jupiter's mammoth EM field.

Juno of course has some help, including a 400 pound radiation shield made from Titanium, but even that may not be enough.






Fingers crossed.

...

I'm soooo excited to see the first up-close photos come in!!

But in the mean time, here's a teaser from the 1996 Galileo mission of Jupiter's rings:






The first images of Jupiter from Juno will take 48 minutes to reach Earth, and should start being transmitted around the end of August. A second 14 day revolution, aided by a kick from the main thruster, should return photos in October too.

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## SvenSvensonov

NASA's ER-2:





















Like its spy counterpart - https://defence.pk/threads/a-handy-guide-to-the-u-2-spy-plane.349567/ - the ER-2 can be configured with a variety of different missions.

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## SvenSvensonov

Ever wondered what the inside of a rocket's fuel tank looked like? Me neither, but now we both know. This is an inside view of the newly completed fuel tank for the Space Launch System.







The photo's pretty big, so resize it to glimpse both details and depth, otherwise it just looks flat.

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## SvenSvensonov

Time lapse of James Webb Telescope

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## SvenSvensonov

First color image from Juno. Up close images will begin to come in around August.

...






_The JunoCam camera aboard NASA's Juno mission is operational and sending down data after the spacecraft’s July 4 arrival at Jupiter. Juno’s visible-light camera was turned on six days after Juno fired its main engine and placed itself into orbit around the largest planetary inhabitant of our solar system. The first high-resolution images of the gas giant Jupiter are still a few weeks away._

_"This scene from JunoCam indicates it survived its first pass through Jupiter's extreme radiation environment without any degradation and is ready to take on Jupiter," said Scott Bolton, principal investigator from the Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio. "We can't wait to see the first view of Jupiter's poles." 

The new view was obtained on July 10, 2016, at 10:30 a.m. PDT (1:30 p.m. EDT, 5:30 UTC), when the spacecraft was 2.7 million miles (4.3 million kilometers) from Jupiter on the outbound leg of its initial 53.5-day capture orbit. The color image shows atmospheric features on Jupiter, including the famous Great Red Spot, and three of the massive planet's four largest moons -- Io, Europa and Ganymede, from left to right in the image._

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## SvenSvensonov

Seems like just yesterday that Curiosity touched down on Mars, and we're already planning for the next rover.

...

NASA's Next Mars Rover Progresses Toward 2020 Launch





_This image is from computer-assisted-design work on the Mars 2020 rover. The design leverages many successful features of NASA's Curiosity rover, which landed on Mars in 2012, but also adds new science instruments and a sampling system to carry out new goals for the 2020 mission.
Credits: NASA/JPL-Caltech_
After an extensive review process and passing a major development milestone, NASA is ready to proceed with final design and construction of its next Mars rover, currently targeted to launch in the summer of 2020 and arrive on the Red Planet in February 2021.

The Mars 2020 rover will investigate a region of Mars where the ancient environment may have been favorable for microbial life, probing the Martian rocks for evidence of past life. Throughout its investigation, it will collect samples of soil and rock and cache them on the surface for potential return to Earth by a future mission.

“The Mars 2020 rover is the first step in a potential multi-mission campaign to return carefully selected and sealed samples of Martian rocks and soil to Earth,” said Geoffrey Yoder, acting associate administrator of NASA’s Science Mission Directorate in Washington. “This mission marks a significant milestone in NASA’s Journey to Mars – to determine whether life has ever existed on Mars, and to advance our goal of sending humans to the Red Planet.”

To reduce risk and provide cost savings, the 2020 rover will look much like its six-wheeled, one-ton predecessor, Curiosity, but with an array of new science instruments and enhancements to explore Mars as never before. For example, the rover will conduct the first investigation into the usability and availability of Martian resources, including oxygen, in preparation for human missions.

Mars 2020 will carry an entirely new subsystem to collect and prepare Martian rocks and soil samples that includes a coring drill on its arm and a rack of sample tubes. About 30 of these sample tubes will be deposited at select locations for return on a potential future sample-retrieval mission. In laboratories on Earth, specimens from Mars could be analyzed for evidence of past life on Mars and possible health hazards for future human missions.

Two science instruments mounted on the rover’s robotic arm will be used to search for signs of past life and determine where to collect samples by analyzing the chemical, mineral, physical and organic characteristics of Martian rocks. On the rover’s mast, two science instruments will provide high-resolution imaging and three types of spectroscopy for characterizing rocks and soil from a distance, also helping to determine which rock targets to explore up close.

A suite of sensors on the mast and deck will monitor weather conditions and the dust environment, and a ground-penetrating radar will assess sub-surface geologic structure.

The Mars 2020 rover will use the same sky crane landing system as Curiosity, but will have the ability to land in more challenging terrain with two enhancements, making more rugged sites eligible as safe landing candidates.

"By adding what’s known as range trigger, we can specify where we want the parachute to open, not just at what velocity we want it to open,” said Allen Chen, Mars 2020 entry, descent and landing lead at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, California. "That shrinks our landing area by nearly half."

Terrain-relative navigation on the new rover will use onboard analysis of downward-looking images taken during descent, matching them to a map that indicates zones designated unsafe for landing.

"As it is descending, the spacecraft can tell whether it is headed for one of the unsafe zones and divert to safe ground nearby,” said Chen. "With this capability, we can now consider landing areas with unsafe zones that previously would have disqualified the whole area. Also, we can land closer to a specific science destination, for less driving after landing."

There will be a suite of cameras and a microphone that will capture the never-before-seen or heard imagery and sounds of the entry, descent and landing sequence. Information from the descent cameras and microphone will provide valuable data to assist in planning future Mars landings, and make for thrilling video.

"Nobody has ever seen what a parachute looks like as it is opening in the Martian atmosphere,” said JPL's David Gruel, assistant flight system manager for the Mars 2020 mission. “So this will provide valuable engineering information.”

Microphones have flown on previous missions to Mars, including NASA's Phoenix Mars Lander in 2008, but never have actually been used on the surface of the Red Planet.

"This will be a great opportunity for the public to hear the sounds of Mars for the first time, and it could also provide useful engineering information," said Mars 2020 Deputy Project Manager Matt Wallace of JPL.

Once a mission receives preliminary approval, it must go through four rigorous technical and programmatic reviews – known as Key Decision Points (KDP) — to proceed through the phases of development prior to launch. Phase A involves concept and requirements definition, Phase B is preliminary design and technology development, Phase C is final design and fabrication, and Phase D is system assembly, testing, and launch. Mars 2020 has just passed its KDP-C milestone.

"Since Mars 2020 is leveraging the design and some spare hardware from Curiosity, a significant amount of the mission's heritage components have already been built during Phases A and B,” said George Tahu, Mars 2020 program executive at NASA Headquarters in Washington. "With the KDP to enter Phase C completed, the project is proceeding with final design and construction of the new systems, as well as the rest of the heritage elements for the mission."

The Mars 2020 mission is part of NASA's Mars Exploration Program. Driven by scientific discovery, the program currently includes two active rovers and three NASA spacecraft orbiting Mars. NASA also plans to launch a stationary Mars lander in 2018, InSight, to study the deep interior of Mars.

JPL manages the Mars 2020 project and the Mars Exploration Program for NASA's Science Mission Directorate in Washington.

...

Some pics from (and of) Curiosity:





















If you're confused about how Curiosity takes a pic of itself, here's a handy link. And another here. One more, just in case you're still really confused.

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## SvenSvensonov

Pluto and Charon, from New Horizons - from a NASA feature on the mission.

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## Hamartia Antidote

Falcon Heavy Launch site making progress





The rocket will be a beast!! (but not Space Shuttle level)

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## Technofoxxy

NASA underwater simulated mission:





_The NASA Extreme Environment Mission Operations (NEEMO) 21 mission began on July 21, 2016, as an international crew of aquanauts splashed down to the undersea Aquarius Reef Base, 62 feet below the surface of the Atlantic Ocean. The NEEMO 21 crew will perform research both inside and outside the habitat during a 16-day simulated space mission._

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## Hamartia Antidote




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## Olaf One-Brow

_
The heat shield that will protect the Orion crew module during re-entry after the spacecraft’s first uncrewed flight atop NASA’s Space Launch System rocket in 2018 arrived at the agency’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida on Aug. 25. The heat shield arrived aboard NASA’s Super Guppy aircraft at Kennedy’s Shuttle Landing Facility, and was offloaded and transported to the Neil Armstrong Operations and Checkout (O&C) Building high bay today._

_The heat shield was designed and manufactured by Lockheed Martin in the company’s facility near Denver. Orion’s heat shield will help it endure the approximately 5,000 degrees F it will experience upon reentry. The heat shield measures 16.5 feet in diameter._






_NASA's Juno mission successfully executed its first of 36 orbital flybys of Jupiter today. The time of closest approach with the gas-giant world was 6:44 a.m. PDT (9:44 a.m. EDT, 13:44 UTC) when Juno passed about 2,600 miles (4,200 kilometers) above Jupiter's swirling clouds. At the time, Juno was traveling at 130,000 mph (208,000 kilometers per hour) with respect to the planet. This flyby was the closest Juno will get to Jupiter during its prime mission._

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## Olaf One-Brow

Today, 8.28.16, a NASA funded simulated Mars mission ended after 365.25 days:

_Six scientists have completed a year-long simulation of a Mars mission, during which they lived in a dome in near-isolation._

_The group lived in the dome on a Mauna Loa mountain in Hawaii and were only allowed to go outside if wearing spacesuits. On Sunday the simulation ended and the scientists emerged._






Read the accompanying article here - https://www.theguardian.com/science/2016/aug/28/mars-scientists-nasa-dome-hawaii-mountain-isolation

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## Hamartia Antidote

http://www.wsj.com/articles/spacex-signs-first-customer-for-launch-of-refurbished-rocket-1472594431

*SpaceX Signs First Customer for Launch of Refurbished Rocket *
*Satellite operator SES agrees to launch one of its large commercial spacecraft*



ENLARGE
The recovered first stage of a Falcon 9 rocket is transported to the SpaceX hangar at the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Fla., in May. The company says reusable technology eventually will allow more frequent and significantly less expensive launches of all types of spacecraft. Photo: joe skipper/Reuters
By
Andy Pasztor
Aug. 30, 2016 6:00 p.m. ET
 7 COMMENTS 
Satellite operator SES SA has agreed to launch one of its large commercial spacecraft on a refurbished Space Exploration Technologies Corp. rocket, marking another advance for reusable boosters.

Scheduled to occur before the end of the year, the mission announced on Tuesday will be the first one to use the lower stage and nine main engines of a Falcon 9 rocket that experienced the rigors of a blastoff and acceleration through the atmosphere on a previous launch. No other commercial space company or military contractor has achieved such a landmark by recovering and reusing the entire lower stage intact, after an initial orbital flight.

Officials of SpaceX, as the Southern California company is called, have been eager to demonstrate such reusable technology, which they describe as a game changer that eventually will allow more frequent and significantly less expensive launches of all types of spacecraft. SpaceX officials have talked about ultimately being able to launch spacecraft at a faster tempo—and for a fraction of their current prices, which typically start at roughly $60 million.

The company so far has returned the main lower portions of six Falcon 9 rockets, by landing them vertically on land or on a specially outfitted floating ocean platform. The booster destined to carry the SES satellite lifted an unmanned cargo capsule toward the international space station in April.

SpaceX officials also have said the engines of boosters that have returned to Earth proved to be in excellent shape, requiring little refurbishment. The engines are slated to undergo extensive analysis, including repeated test firings on the ground, before being readied for repeat launches. Senior SpaceX officials have predicted that Falcon 9 engines could end up being reused multiple times—potentially up to dozens of missions, and other experts have concurred.

SpaceX founder and Chief Executive Elon Musk hasn’t said how much it is likely to cost to put used boosters back into service, nor has he indicated the extent of discounts available for customers willing to sign up for such launches. Overall, the company has signaled relatively little refurbishment work is expected to be necessary. Detailed structural and other tests are continuing on another returned booster, which experienced the highest re-entry forces.

The U.S. military remains cool to the general concept because it is reluctant to trust its expensive satellites to recycled boosters until the technology is proven. Claire Leon, the Air Force’s top rocket-acquisition official, told a space-industry conference in May: “It’s going to be a long time before we can actually say we’re going to reuse a rocket.” Some satellite industry consultants and SpaceX critics have argued that the company has a long way to go to demonstrate the benefits and most of all, the reliability, of reusable rockets.

But commercial satellite operators generally have been more supportive, and in recent months, SES officials have talked up the potential benefits of reusing boosters. The upcoming mission is intended, among other things, to demonstrate that a blue-chip customer is willing to accept a previously used rocket with a relatively short turnaround time to get it ready for another launch.

SpaceX officials also are betting that the Pentagon and other U.S. government customers, which are independently studying broader reusability questions, gradually will follow the lead of SES.

The decision by Luxembourg-based SES, which operates more than 50 large commercial satellites in high-Earth orbit, is particularly significant for several reasons. The move comes despite the fact that the company’s satellite-deployment plans have been disrupted by previous slips in SpaceX launch schedules.

SES, which years ago was the first commercial operator to launch with SpaceX, also has a reputation for technical expertise and long has been viewed by the rest of the industry as exercising caution in adopting new technologies.

As a result, the upcoming launch could help convince other operators, SpaceX customers and insurance providers that reusable rockets are likely to be a major trend.

In its press release, SES called the recycled booster a “flight-proven Falcon 9.” Martin Halliwell, chief technology officer at SES, said: “We believe reusable rockets will open up a new era of spaceflight, and make access to space more efficient in terms of cost and manifest management.”

In Tuesday’s joint release, Gwynne Shotwell, president and chief operating officer of SpaceX, said “relaunching a rocket that has already delivered spacecraft to orbit is an important milestone on the path to complete and rapid reusability.”

One technical issue industry that officials are likely to be watching closely is whether additional tests and work may be needed before relaunching boosters that previously placed satellites into orbits requiring extra propulsion. Those boosters follow faster trajectories, and undergo greater stresses, when returning to land.

*SpaceX Dragon Splashes Down with NASA’s Station Science Cargo*









Article Updated: 26 Aug , 2016

by Ken Kremer



SpaceX Dragon CRS-9 returned to Earth with a splash down in the Pacific Ocean on Friday, Aug. 26, 2016 after more than a month stay at the International Space Station. Credit: SpaceX

A SpaceX commercial Dragon cargo ship returned to Earth today, Friday, Aug. 26, 2016, by splashing down safely in the Pacific Ocean – thus concluding more than a month long stay at the International Space Station (ISS). The vessel was jam packed with some 1.5 tons of NASA cargo and critical science samples for eagerly waiting researchers.

The parachute assisted splashdown of the Dragon CRS-9 cargo freighter took place at 11:47 a.m. EDT today in the Pacific Ocean – located some 326 miles (520 kilometers) southwest of Baja California.

Dragon departed after spending more than five weeks berthed at the ISS.




This image, captured from NASA Television’s live coverage, shows SpaceX’s Dragon spacecraft departing the International Space Station at 6:10 am EDT Friday, Aug. 26, 2016, after successfully delivering almost 5,000 pounds of supplies and scientific cargo on its ninth resupply mission to the orbiting laboratory. Credits: NASA Television

It was loaded with more than 3,000 pounds of NASA cargo and critical research samples and technology demonstration samples accumulated by the rotating six person crews of astronauts and cosmonauts living and working aboard the orbiting research laboratory.

This station based research will contribute towards NASA’s strategic plans to send astronauts on a ‘Journey to Mars’ by the 2030s.

It arrived at the station on July 20 ferrying over 2.5 tons of priceless research equipment, gear, spare parts and supplies, food, water and clothing for the station’s resident astronauts and cosmonauts as well as the first of two international docking adapters (IDAs) in its unpressurized cargo hold known as the “trunk.”




The SpaceX Dragon is captured in the grips of the Canadarm2 robotic arm. Credit: NASA TV

Dragon was launched on July 18 during a mesmerizing post midnight, back-to-back liftoff and landing of the SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket in its upgraded, full thrust version.




SpaceX Falcon 9 launches and lands over Port Canaveral in this streak shot showing rockets midnight liftoff from Space Launch Complex 40 at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida at 12:45 a.m. EDT on July 18, 2016 carrying Dragon CRS-9 craft to the International Space Station (ISS) with almost 5,000 pounds of cargo and docking port. View from atop Exploration Tower in Port Canaveral. Credit: Ken Kremer/kenkremer.com

The SpaceX Falcon 9 blasted off at 12:45 a.m. EDT July 18, from Space Launch Complex 40 at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida and successfully delivered the Dragon CRS-9 resupply ship to its preliminary orbit about 10 minutes later.

SpaceX also successfully executed a spellbinding ground landing of the Falcon 9 first stage back at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station’s Landing Zone 1, located a few miles south of launch pad 40.

The dramatic ground landing of the 156 foot tall Falcon 9 first stage at LZ -1 took place about 9 minutes after liftoff. It marked only the second time a spent, orbit class booster has touched down intact and upright on land.




Moments before dramatic touchdown of SpaceX Falcon 9 1st stage at Landing Zone-1 (LX-1) accompanied by sonic booms after launching Dragon CRS-9 supply ship to orbit from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, Florida at 12:45 a.m., bound for the International Space Station (ISS). Credit: Ken Kremer/kenkremer.com

The stage was set for today’s return to Earth when ground controllers robotically detached Dragon from the Earth-facing port of the Harmony module early this morning using the station’s 57.7-foot (17.6-meter) long Canadian-built robotic arm.

Expedition 48 Flight Engineers Kate Rubins of NASA and Takuya Onishi of the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) then used Canadarm 2 to release Dragon from the grappling snares at about 6:10 a.m. EDT (1011 GMT) this morning.

“Houston, station, on Space to Ground Two, Dragon depart successfully commanded,” radioed Rubins.

The ISS was soaring some 250 miles over the Timor Sea, north of Australia.

“Congratulations to the entire team on the successful release of the Dragon. And thank you very much for bringing all the science, and all the important payloads, and all the important cargo to the station,” Onishi said. “We feel really sad to see it go because we had a great time and enjoyed working on all the science that the Dragon brought to us.”

Dragon then backed away and moved to a safe distance from the station via a trio of burns using its Draco maneuvering thrusters.

The de-orbit burn was conducted at 10:56 a.m. EDT (1456 GMT) to drop Dragon out of orbit and start the descent back to Earth.

SpaceX contracted recovery crews hauled Dragon aboard the recovery ship and are transporting it to a port near Los Angeles, where some time critical cargo items and research samples will be removed and returned to NASA for immediate processing.

SpaceX plans to move Dragon back to the firms test facility in McGregor, Texas, for further processing and to remove the remaining cargo cache.

Among the wealth of over 3900 pounds (1790 kg) of research investigations loaded on board Dragon was an off the shelf instrument designed to perform the first-ever DNA sequencing in space and the first international docking adapter (IDA) that is absolutely essential for docking of the SpaceX and Boeing built human spaceflight taxis that will ferry our astronauts to the International Space Station (ISS) in some 18 months.

During a spacewalk last week on Aug. 19, the initial docking adapter known as International Docking Adapter-2 (IDA-2) was installed Expedition 48 Commander Jeff Williams and Flight Engineer Kate Rubins of NASA.

Other science experiments on board included OsteoOmics to test if magnetic levitation can accurately simulate microgravity to study different types of bone cells and contribute to treatments for diseases like osteoporosis, a Phase Change Heat Exchanger to test temperature control technology in space, the Heart Cells experiments that will culture heart cells on the station to study how microgravity changes the human heart, new and more efficient three-dimensional solar cells, and new marine vessel tracking hardware known as the Automatic Identification System (AIS) that will aid in locating and identifying commercial ships across the globe.

The ring shaped IDA-2 unit was stowed in the Dragon’s unpressurized truck section. It weighs 1029 lbs (467 kg), measures about 42 inches tall and sports an inside diameter of 63 inches in diameter – so astronauts and cargo can easily float through. The outer diameter measures about 94 inches.

“Outfitted with a host of sensors and systems, the adapter is built so spacecraft systems can automatically perform all the steps of rendezvous and dock with the station without input from the astronauts. Manual backup systems will be in place on the spacecraft to allow the crew to take over steering duties, if needed,” says NASA.

“It’s a passive system which means it doesn’t take any action by the crew to allow docking to happen and I think that’s really the key,” said David Clemen Boeing’s director of Development/Modifications for the space station.

“Spacecraft flying to the station will use the sensors on the IDA to track to and help the spacecraft’s navigation system steer the spacecraft to a safe docking without astronaut involvement.”

CRS-9 counts as the company’s ninth of 26 scheduled flight to deliver supplies, science experiments and technology demonstrations to the International Space Station (ISS).

The CRS-9 mission was launched for the crews of Expeditions 48 and 49 to support dozens of the approximately 250 science and research investigations in progress under NASA’s Commercial Resupply Services (CRS) contract.

Watch for Ken’s continuing SpaceX and CRS mission coverage where he reported onsite direct from the Kennedy Space Center and Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, Florida.

Stay tuned here for Ken’s continuing Earth and Planetary science and human spaceflight news.

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## Olaf One-Brow

Opps.






Thank goodness nothing important was onboard when it exploded. Just some Facebook wonk.

...

In less explosive news... yeah I got nothing. So here's a pick of NASA's new all-electric aircraft X-57.






With the wing attached the aircraft will look like this:






The X-planes are back.

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## Olaf One-Brow

A pic from Juno of Jupiter's Southern Lights.






More pics from the Juno and other NASA missions here:

http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/targetFamily/Jupiter

...

Almost forgot! NASA's got an upcoming launch on September 8th. This is the OSIRIS-REx mission.











OSIRIS-REx will venture to a nearby asteroid, collect samples and return to Earth, becoming the first US spacecraft to do so.

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## Olaf One-Brow

Another pic from Juno. This one of Jupiter's South Pole.

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## Hamartia Antidote

https://www.theguardian.com/science...-rex-space-probe-asteroid-bennu-samples-video

*Nasa launches Osiris-Rex space probe to collect asteroid samples*

Nasa launches the Osiris-Rex spacecraft into space on Thursday, on an unprecedented seven-year quest to collect samples from the asteroid Bennu. The United Launch Alliance booster lifts off from Cape Canaveral air force station in Florida, as part of Nasa’s New Frontiers missions. The probe will reach its destination in August 2018, spend two years mapping the asteroid and send back interstellar material that could date back to the origins of the solar system.

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## Hamartia Antidote

http://www.space.com/34219-spacex-mars-spaceship-solar-system-exploration.html







*SpaceX's Mars Spaceship Could Explore the Entire Solar System, Elon Musk Says*

The spaceship that SpaceX is building to colonize Mars could also take people out to Jupiter's ocean-harboring moon Europa and beyond, company founder and CEO Elon Musk said.

On Tuesday (Sept. 27), Musk unveiled SpaceX's planned Interplanetary Transport System (ITS), a rocket-spaceship combo that the billionaire entrepreneur hopes will allow humanity to establish a permanent, self-sustaining, million-person settlement on the Red Planet.

Mars is the first planned stop for ITS, but it may not be the last. [SpaceX's Massive New Spaceship Could Go Beyond Mars (Video)]

"This system really gives you freedom to go anywhere you want in the greater solar system," Musk said Tuesday at the International Astronautical Congress meeting in Guadalajara, Mexico.





Artist's concept of SpaceX's Interplanetary Transport System spaceship on Jupiter's ocean-harboring moon Europa.
Credit: SpaceX
With the aid of strategically placed refueling depots, "you could actually travel out to the Kuiper Belt [and] the Oort Cloud," Musk added. The Kuiper Belt is Pluto's neck of the woods, while the Oort Cloud, the realm of comets, is even more distant; it begins about 2,000 astronomical units (AU) from the sun. (One AU is the distance between Earth and the sun — about 93 million miles, or 150 million kilometers.)

The ITS booster will be the most powerful rocket ever built, capable of lofting 300 tons (270 metric tons) to low Earth orbit (LEO) in its reusable version and 550 tons (500 metric tons) in its expendable variant, Musk said. This rocket will blast the spaceship, which will carry at least 100 people, to LEO, where further launches will fuel the smaller vehicle.


When the time is right — Earth and Mars align favorably for interplanetary missions just once every 26 months — a fleet of these spaceships will depart from LEO, arriving at the Red Planet in as little as 80 days, Musk said.

The ITS — both the rocket and the spaceship — will be powered by SpaceX's Raptor engines, which run on a combination of methane and oxygen. Both of these ingredients can be manufactured on Mars and other places in the solar system, Musk said, meaning that the spaceship can and will be refueled far from Earth. (The vehicles will go back and forth between Earth and the Red Planet multiple times, for example.)





A SpaceX Interplanetary Transport System spaceship explores the rings of Saturn in this artist's concept of the vehicle's potential to send astronauts beyond Mars.
Credit: SpaceX
The ITS spaceship could, therefore, go very far afield, provided it could access refueling stations along the way.

"By establishing a propellant depot in the asteroid belt or one of the moons of Jupiter, you can make flights from Mars to Jupiter, no problem," Musk said.

"It'd be really great to do a mission to Europa, particularly," he added, referring to the ocean-harboring Jovian moon, which many astrobiologists regard as one of the solar system's best bets to host alien life.





SpaceX's Interplanetary Transport System could potentially carry astronauts to the surface of Saturn's icy moon Enceladus, as seen in this artist's concept image.
Credit: SpaceX
Building additional depots farther from the sun — perhaps on Saturn's moon Titan, and Pluto, for example — could theoretically extend the ITS spaceship's reach all the way out to the Oort Cloud, Musk said.

"This basic system, provided we have filling stations along the way, means full access to the entire greater solar system," he said.

But ITS probably won't work for interstellar flight, which would require even greater velocities, Musk said. (He added that he views antimatter drives as the best way for humanity to travel among the stars.)





A SpaceX Interplanetary Transport System spaceship sails near Jupiter in this artist's concept of the deep-space crewed spacecraft.
Credit: SpaceX
There are some possible Earthly applications for the ITS as well, Musk said: The system could conceivably allow superfast cargo transport from point to point around the globe.

"You could go from New York to Tokyo in, I don't know, 25 minutes, cross the Atlantic in 10 minutes," he said. "There are some intriguing possibilities there, although we're not counting on that."











Successful Raptor Engine test

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## Hamartia Antidote

*Blue Origin Crew Capsule Escape Test Goes Flawlessly *

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## WAJsal

Should this thread not be moved to 'American' section?
Thoughts @Hamartia Antidote ?


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## Hamartia Antidote

WAJsal said:


> Should this thread not be moved to 'American' section?
> Thoughts @Hamartia Antidote ?



It's not my thread...but I think there must be a good reason why it was intentionally made a sticky here (probably because the America's thread is just full of one troll thread after another and isn't worth browsing. Meanwhile if posts like that happened in the China forum threads would be deleted quickly)


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## Fenrir

Hamartia Antidote said:


> (probably because the America's thread is just full of one troll thread after another and isn't worth browsing. Meanwhile if posts like that happened in the China forum threads would be deleted quickly)



Things will get on track soon enough. No longer will you need to suffer endless threads about Trump, or Ultron's random thoughts and wonk, or multiple threads on the same topic posted at least four times throughout the day.

Soon enough, just be patient.

...

In addition, I'll start contributing here again starting with what I do best - pictures.





_A high fidelity test version of NASA’s Advanced Plant Habitat (APH), the largest plant chamber built for the agency, arrived at Kennedy Space Center the third week of November, 2016. The APH unit, containing small flowering plant seeds, will be delivered to the International Space Station in 2017._





_U.S. Navy divers and other personnel in a rigid hull Zodiac boat have attached tether lines to a test version of the Orion crew module during Underway Recovery Test 5 in the Pacific Ocean off the coast of California. NASA and the U.S. Navy are conducting a series of tests to practice for recovery of Orion on its return from deep space missions._





_Thanks to a bill passed by Texas legislators that put in place technical voting procedure for astronauts, they have the ability to vote from space through specially designed absentee ballots. To preserve the integrity of the secret vote, the ballot is encrypted and only accessible by the astronaut and the county clerk responsible for casting it._





_A prototype of the Asteroid Redirect Mission (ARM) robotic capture module system is tested with a mock asteroid boulder in its clutches at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. The robotic portion of ARM is targeted for launch in 2021._





_NASA astronaut Kate Rubins inspected the Bigelow Aerospace Expandable Activity Module (BEAM) attached to the International Space Station. Expandable habitats are designed to take up less room on a spacecraft while providing greater volume for living and working in space once expanded._





_Engineers at NASA's Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia, used lasers inside the 14- by 22-Foot Subsonic Tunnel to map how air flows over a Boeing Blended Wing Body (BWB) model – a greener, quieter airplane design under development._





_The United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket and its GOES-R payload at the launch pad as preparations continue for launch at 5:42 p.m. EST, Saturday, Nov. 19, from Space Launch Complex 41._

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## Hamartia Antidote

Playing with the Microsoft Hololens on the International Space Station


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## Hamartia Antidote

http://www.thedrive.com/news/6339/take-a-virtual-tour-of-nasas-giant-boeing-747-observatory

*Take a Virtual Tour of NASA’s Giant Boeing 747 Observatory*





NASA

Over its five-decade lifespan, the Boeing 747 has served many roles: passenger jet, cargo carrier, presidential transport (doomsday and non-doomsday editions), aerial laser cannon, even big spoon to the space shuttle. But when it comes to weirdly awesome versions of the iconic jumbo jet, it’s hard to beat NASA’s Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy. Colloquially abbreviated to SOFIA, this 747 serves as the world’s largest flying observatory. And it’s about to head back to the skies to try and sort out some mysteries of the universe.

SOFIA is equipped with a reflecting telescope with an effective diameter of 100 inches—the same size as the Hooker Telescope at the Mount Wilson Observatory that Edwin Hubble used to demonstrate that the universe is expanding. Situated behind a retractable awning at the back of the plane, the telescope is gyro-stabilized and pneumatically and hydraulically isolated from the rest of the plane, in order to keep it level in spite of the microturbulence of everyday flight. Flying at an altitude of 39,000 to 45,000 feet means the telescope is above 99 percent of the water in the atmosphere, giving it a far better view than similar ground-based observatories.

As the name suggests, this four-engined flying telescope spends its days peering into the infrared bands of the EM spectrum. For the 2017 observing campaign (yes, that’s what NASA calls it), which stretches from February 2017 to January 2018, SOFIA will train her eye on Jupiter's satellite Europa, in order to try and learn more about the massive water plumes spied on the Galilean moon by the Hubble Space Telescope. The plane will also stare at Neptune’s enormous moon Triton, a massive interstellar region around the center of the Milky Way, and a supermassive black hole located roughly 12 billion light years away, among many other research projects being conducted by the telescope’s joint American/German team.


While SOFIA first flew in her current form a mere six years ago, her airframe will turn 40 next year. Originally delivered to Pan Am in 1977, the 747 was purchased by United in 1986, then bought by NASA in 2007. Considering Boeing may not build the 747 for all that much longer, it’s reassuring to see that these birds can still live full, productive lives well into their forties.

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## Zibago

John Glenn, first American to orbit Earth, dies at 95
December 9, 2016 By: Samaa Web Desk Published in SCI-TECH Be the first to comment!




STS-95 crewmember, astronaut and U.S. Senator John Glenn poses for his official NASA photo taken April 14, 1998. Courtesy NASA/Handout via REUTERS

OHIO: John Glenn, who became one of the 20th century’s greatest explorers as the first American to orbit Earth and later as the world’s oldest astronaut, and also had a long career as a U.S. senator, died in Ohio on Thursday at age 95.

Glenn, the last surviving member of the original seven American “Right Stuff” Mercury astronauts, died at the James Cancer Hospital at Ohio State University in Columbus, said Hank Wilson, a spokesman at the university’s John Glenn College of Public Affairs, which Glenn helped found.

Glenn was credited with reviving U.S. pride after the Soviet Union’s early domination of manned space exploration. His three laps around the world in the Friendship 7 capsule on Feb. 20, 1962, forged a powerful link between the former fighter pilot and the Kennedy-era quest to explore outer space as a “New Frontier.”

President Barack Obama, who in 2012 awarded Glenn the nation’s highest civilian honor, the Presidential Medal of Freedom, said: “With John’s passing, our nation has lost an icon.”

“When John Glenn blasted off from Cape Canaveral atop an Atlas rocket in 1962, he lifted the hopes of a nation,” Obama said in a statement. “And when his Friendship 7 spacecraft splashed down a few hours later, the first American to orbit the Earth reminded us that with courage and a spirit of discovery there’s no limit to the heights we can reach together.”



President-elect Donald Trump said on Twitter the United States had lost “a great pioneer of air and space in John Glenn. He was a hero and inspired generations of future explorers.”

As the third of seven astronauts in NASA’s solo-flight Mercury program to venture into space, Glenn became more of a media fixture than the others and was known for his composure and willingness to promote the program.

Glenn’s astronaut career, as well as his record as a fighter pilot in World War Two and the Korean War, helped propel him to the U.S. Senate in 1974, where he represented his home state of Ohio for 24 years as a moderate Democrat.

His star was dimmed somewhat by a Senate investigation of several senators on whether special favors were done for a major campaign contributor. He was cleared of wrongdoing.

Glenn’s entry into history came in early 1962 when fellow astronaut Scott Carpenter bade him “Godspeed, John Glenn” just before the Ohio native was rocketed into space for a record-breaking trip that would last just under five hours.



‘VIEW IS TREMENDOUS’

“Zero-G (gravity) and I feel fine,” was Glenn’s succinct assessment of weightlessness several minutes into his mission. “Oh, and that view is tremendous.”

After splashdown and recovery in the Atlantic, Glenn was treated as a hero, addressing a joint session of Congress and feted in a New York ticker-tape parade.

Glenn had been hospitalized since Nov. 25. He “died peacefully,” according to a statement from his family and Ohio State University. “He left this earth for the third time as a happy and fulfilled person,” the statement said.

“Glenn’s extraordinary courage, intellect, patriotism and humanity were the hallmarks of a life of greatness. His missions have helped make possible everything our space program has since achieved and the human missions to an asteroid and Mars that we are striving toward now,” NASA Administrator Charles Bolden said.

Glenn’s experiences as a pioneer astronaut were chronicled in the book and movie “The Right Stuff,” along with the other Mercury pilots. The book’s author, Tom Wolfe, called Glenn “the last true national hero America has ever had.”

“I don’t think of myself that way,” Glenn told the New York Times in 2012 to mark the 50th anniversary of his flight. “I get up each day and have the same problem others have at my age. As far as trying to analyze all the attention I received, I will leave that to others.”

Glenn’s historic flight made him a favorite of President John F. Kennedy and his brother Robert, who encouraged him to launch a political career that finally took off after a period as a businessman made him a millionaire.



HERO STATUS

Even before his Mercury flight, Glenn qualified for hero status, earning six Distinguished Flying Crosses and flying more than 150 missions in World War Two and the Korean War.

After Korea, Glenn became a test pilot, setting a transcontinental speed record from Los Angeles to New York in 1957.

The determination and single-mindedness that marked Glenn’s military and space career did not save him from misjudgments and defeat in politics. He lost his first bid for the Senate from Ohio in 1970, after abandoning a race in 1964 because of a head injury suffered in a fall.

He was elected in 1974 and was briefly considered as a running mate for Democratic presidential candidate Jimmy Carter in 1980. But a ponderous address at the Democratic National Convention – people walked out – caused Carter to remark that Glenn was “the most boring man I ever met.”

Glenn sought the Democratic presidential nomination himself in 1984 but was quickly eliminated by eventual nominee Walter Mondale, Carter’s vice president. His failure was all the more stinging because he had been touted as an early front-runner.

In the Senate, Glenn was respected as a thoughtful moderate with expertise in defense and foreign policy. His luster was dulled, however, by a Senate investigation of the “Keating Five” – five senators suspected of doing favors for campaign contributor Charles Keating Jr. The panel eventually found Glenn did nothing improper or illegal.



BACK TO SPACE

He took a leading role in seeking to prevent the spread of nuclear weapons, especially to Pakistan. He was the author of a law that forced the United States to impose sanctions on India and Pakistan in 1998 after both countries conducted nuclear tests.

He also was a staunch advocate of a strong military and took a keen interest in strategic issues. He retired from the Senate in 1999.

Thirty-six years after his maiden space voyage, Glenn became America’s first geriatric astronaut on Oct. 29, 1998. He was 77 when he blasted off as a mission specialist aboard the shuttle Discovery. He saw it as a blow to the stereotyping of the elderly.

“Maybe prior to this flight, we were looked at as old geezers who ought to get out of the way,” Glenn said after his nine-day shuttle mission. “Just because you’re up in years some doesn’t mean you don’t have hopes and dreams and aspirations just as much as younger people do.”

John Herschel Glenn Jr. was born on July 18, 1921, in Cambridge, Ohio.

In his latter years, he was an adjunct professor at the John Glenn College of Public Affairs.

He had a knee replacement operation in 2011 and heart surgery in 2014.

Glenn is survived by his wife of 73 years, his childhood sweetheart, Annie Castor. They had two children, David and Lyn. – Reuters
https://www.samaa.tv/technology/2016/12/john-glenn-first-american-to-orbit-earth-dies-at-95/

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## LA se Karachi

Great man. He had quite an illustrious political career as well.


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## Bilal9

*John Glenn: The Last American Hero?*
_By DALE BUTLAND_

DEC. 8, 2016






Columbus, Ohio — World War II and Korean War hero. First American to orbit the Earth. Kennedy family friend and confidant. The only four-term senator in Ohio history. An astronaut again at the age of 77.

Newspaper writers and evening news broadcasters will detail John Glenn’s one-of-a-kind biography — and most of them will surely observe that his passing on Thursday at the age of 95 marks “the end of an era.”

To me, John actually personified an era — one that, like him, has largely passed from the scene and may never again be recaptured. It was a period whose values were forged during the Great Depression, tested in the bloodiest war and expressed most clearly at the personal level by the interlocking virtues of modesty, courage and conviction.

Beginning in 1980 and continuing for nearly two decades, I was lucky enough to work for him, including as press secretary and director of his final re-election campaign in 1992. We were also friends, and I will cherish having been able to speak with him shortly before he died.

Despite his international celebrity, the ticker-tape parades and the schools and streets named in his honor, John never let any of it go to his head. He dined with kings, counseled presidents and signed autographs for athletes and movie stars. But he never pulled rank, rarely raised his voice and remained unfailingly polite and conscious of his responsibilities as a hero and a role model until the day he died.

The courage John displayed wasn’t merely physical, though he certainly had plenty of that. Anyone who flew 149 combat missions in two wars as a Marine fighter pilot — and then volunteered to become a Mercury 7 astronaut at a time when our rockets were just as likely to blow up on the launchpad as they were to return home safely — obviously had physical courage to spare.

But for me, even more impressive was John’s personal and political bravery, especially when it came to defending the values and friends he held dear.

Perhaps the best example of what I’m talking about occurred in an incident that, to the best of my knowledge, he never publicly disclosed.

Following his 1962 spaceflight, John and Robert F. Kennedy became such close friends that their families sometimes vacationed together.

By 1968, John had retired from the Marine Corps and taken a job as president of a major American corporation’s international division.

“We were living in New York, and they were paying me $100,000 a year, which at that time was real money,” he told me. “For the first time in our lives, Annie and I didn’t have to worry about putting our kids through college or helping our parents financially as they got older.”

That spring, Mr. Kennedy decided to run for president and John readily agreed to campaign for him.

John’s employer, however, wasn’t keen on having its highest profile executive publicly supporting Mr. Kennedy. So John was soon summoned to an “emergency meeting” of the corporate board where a resolution was to be passed barring any board member from “engaging in partisan politics in 1968.”

When the meeting was called to order, John rose from his seat to say that there was something his colleagues should know before taking a vote.

“Bob Kennedy asked me to campaign for him and I told him I would. And I will, because he is my friend. And if keeping my word means I can’t be associated with this company any longer, I can live with that.

“But if that’s what happens, we’re going to walk out of this room and you’re going to hold your press conference and I’m going to hold mine. And we’ll see who comes out better.”

No vote was called and the meeting was quickly adjourned.

John’s politics, of course, aren’t the point of this story. To me, it was his fierce determination to keep a promise to a friend, even at the expense of sacrificing the first real financial security he and his family had ever known. It’s the kind of courage we don’t see much anymore.

When John passed away, we lost a man who many say is the last genuine American hero. Not because others won’t do heroic things, but because national heroes aren’t easily crowned or even acknowledged in this more cynical age.

He belonged to an earlier and more innocent era — when we trusted our institutions, thought government could accomplish big and important things, still believed politics could be a noble profession, and didn’t think that ticker-tape parades were reserved for World Series or Super Bowl champions.

But the last “good” war ended almost 70 years ago. The Cold War is almost 30 years past. The space program has lost its luster. The clarity with which John saw honor and moral responsibility seems almost quaint today. And the time when we could all cheer for the same national hero may now be past.

_Dale Butland is a Democratic political consultant who lives in Columbus, Ohio._

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## Jugger

RIP
You have done the thing i have always dreamed of. I want to desparetly go into space.
I want to visit the moon or mars in my life time.

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## Hamartia Antidote

Jugger said:


> RIP
> You have done the thing i have always dreamed of. I want to desparetly go into space.
> I want to visit the moon or mars in my life time.



John Young might be up there on the list of Greats too. He is the only man to walk on the moon AND fly the Space Shuttle.

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## F-22Raptor

A true American hero. RIP among the stars Mr. Glenn.

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## Desertfalcon

Godspeed, John Glenn.


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## Hamartia Antidote




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## Galactic Penguin SST

*Daytime ISS Transit*








Spoiler



http://spaceweathergallery.com/full...5659.gif&PHPSESSID=cv28712g1tsld6a7fkruluc9u7
http://spaceweathergallery.com/indi...d=137640&PHPSESSID=82vn0t5h0ti7sda7pahdlqm571


▲ Taken by Leo Caldas on August 16, 2017 @ Brasilia Brazil 

Details:

Daytime ISS transit - Ago,16/2017 - 8:24am
Finally a descent capture of this event. A lot of Cirrus cloud made the settings and focus very dificult to acomplish, but the final result was good!
HD At: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TNug8CRnmUk

Camera DATA: Nikon D5300 lens 200-500mm + teleconverter 2x f/11 iso400 1/800. Video in 24fps e 4x slow mo.
Transit DATA: Site www.calsky.com Crosses the disk of Moon. Separation=0.049° Position Angle=310.6°, Position angle vertex=157.3°. Transit duration=0.66s
Angular diameter=54.4 size=109.0m x 73.0m x 27.5m
Satellite at Azimuth=333.7° NNW Altitude= 52.5° Distance=508.5 km Magnitude=-3.0mag
In a clock-face concept, the satellite will seem to move toward 3:46
Angular Velocity=48.1/s
Centerline, closest point →Map: Longitude= 48°0918W Latitude=-15°5228 (WGS84) Distance=0.17 km Azimuth=125.6° SE Path direction= 35.6° NE ground speed=7.480 km/s width=10.0 km max. duration=0.7 s
Sun altitude=+26° Elongation from Sun=71°

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## Gomig-21

Impressive images of yesterday's solar eclipse from NASA.

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## LuCiFeR_DeCoY

Gomig-21 said:


> Impressive images of yesterday's solar eclipse from NASA.


Now, can I look at these pictures bare-eyed?

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## Gomig-21

LuCiFeR_DeCoY said:


> Now, can I look at these pictures bare-eyed?



IKR, they really drove that point home didn't they. They must've made a lot of loot off of all those .50 cent cardboard glasses they mass produced for this event.

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## Gomig-21

This thing is NASTY! I feel bad for the people in Florida and the south and the islands but I hope it doesn't come up our way. Category 5 off of Puerto Rico & The Dominican Republic ATM and has already flattened out towns in Haiti, and the Virgin Islands with winds up to 275 mph. Mandatory evacuation in Miami Day County.






The smaller one was Hurricane Andrew in 1992 and it devastated Florida with 177 mph winds. Irma is the larger one and will be predicted to be packing 215 mph winds by the time it lands in FLA.

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## Gomig-21

Stunning new photos from NASA of Jupiter.

*See Jupiter Looking Downright Gorgeous in These New NASA Photos*
*By MAHITA GAJANAN *
*January 9, 2018*






















http://time.com/5095013/jupiter-new-junocam-images/

And the UFO sighting by a USAF F-15 pilot.

https://www.aol.com/article/news/20...footage-of-navy-pilots-spotting-ufo/23311812/

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## Hamartia Antidote

Tour the moon in 4K

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## Gomig-21

Hamartia Antidote said:


> Tour the moon in 4K



Ah yes, proof positive of Apollo 17's moon landing?  Where are the detractors? Oh wait, these are all fake images also lol.

You can even still see all the tracks by the rover are still there. Good stuff.

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## Hamartia Antidote

Gomig-21 said:


> Ah yes, proof positive of Apollo 17's moon landing?  Where are the detractors? Oh wait, these are all fake images also lol.
> 
> You can even still see all the tracks by the rover are still there. Good stuff.



Chinese scientists announced they saw proof but then went suddenly silent.
http://www.china.org.cn/china/2012-02/06/content_24561343.htm
“The scientists also spotted traces of the previous Apollo mission in the images, said Yan Jun, chief application scientist for China's lunar exploration project. ”

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## Hamartia Antidote

http://www.thisisinsider.com/mars-curiosity-rover-selfie-dust-storm-2018-6

*NASA's nuclear-powered Mars rover took an amazing selfie during an intense global dust storm*

A nasty dust storm is wrapping around Mars, and visibility in some regions is so poor that the skies look like night during the middle of the day.

It's a dire moment for NASA's Opportunity rover, which uses solar power to explore the red planet. The 15-year-old rover fell asleep on June 10 to conserve power in hopes of waiting out the storm until sunlight can reach its panels.

"This is the worst storm Opportunity has ever seen, and we're doing what we can, crossing our fingers, and hoping for the best," Steve Squyres, a planetary scientist at Cornell University and leader of the rover mission, told A.J.S. Rayl for a recent Planetary Society blog post.

Scientists think the storm may last weeks. If Opportunity's energy reserves run too low to keep its aging electronic circuits warm, blisteringly cold Martian temperatures could disable them.

But halfway around the planet, dust storm conditions aren't as dangerous for Curiosity — a car-size, nuclear-powered rover that NASA landed on Mars in 2012. Curiosity uses plutonium-238instead of solar cells to power its exploration of the red planet, so the darkness isn't a problem either.

In fact, Curiosity photographed itself on Friday during the dust storm.

*Curiosity's latest selfie*
The image comes from an instrument called the Mars Hand Lens Imager. The camera sits on the end of Curiosity's robotic arm and can function like a multi-million-dollar selfie stick.

Because the camera can't capture all of Curiosity in one shot, it has to take a series of photos — more than 200 in this case. So on Saturday, Kevin M. Gill, a NASA software engineer who processes spacecraft photos as a hobby, stitched them all together into a single panorama.

The full panoramic selfie also shows the rover's surroundings, including a rock with a drill hole in it and a small pile of orange dust:




NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS/Kevin M. Gill (CC BY 2.0)
Curiosity's drill was taken offline line in December 2016 after suffering a mechanical problem.

However, NASA eventually figured out a way to work around the problem and tested the drill in May 2018. Curiosity bored a two-inch-deep hole, then dropped some fresh Martian grit on the ground during a subsequent test (to see how much dirt the drill could collect for sampling).

*The perfect storm for science*


Scientists hope to gain more clues as to how such massive dust storms arise and dissipate on Mars by using Opportunity, Curiosity, and three satellites in orbit around the planet.

The last dust storm to enshroud Mars happened in 2007, but there weren't as many spacecraft there at the time. So, while NASA is concerned about the future of its Opportunity rover, scientists have waited more than a decade for a dust storm of this magnitude to brew and study.

"This is the ideal storm for Mars science," Jim Watzin, the director of NASA's Mars Exploration Program, said in a press release. "We have a historic number of spacecraft operating at the red planet. Each offers a unique look at how dust storms form and behave — knowledge that will be essential for future robotic and human missions."

The last time NASA updated the public about Curiosity, it was sitting on the edge of the growing dust storm, which had grown to the size of North America and Russia combined. A space agency representative could not immediately update Business Insider on the storm or the rovers' statuses.

*Future missions to Mars*
NASA recently launched its InSight Mars lander, which should touch down on November 26. Next up is the Mars 2020 rover, which is almost identical to Curiosity, though it may be better equipped to detect signs of past alien life and prepare a sample for return to Earth.

NASA is also working on its giant Space Launch System, and one of the planned versions might send a small crew to the red planet. In addition, private companies hope to explore Mars. SpaceX, Elon Musk's rocket company, aims to send people to the red planet in the mid-2020s with its upcoming Big Falcon Rocketsystem. Blue Origin, which is owned by Jeff Bezos, is designing aNew Glenn rocket that may be Mars-capable.

If any of these outfits can send people to Mars in relative safety, experts say it will be no walk in the park. Crews will face threats from explosions, radiation, starvation, and other dangers.

If NASA can master a small-scale nuclear reactor for space, though, future Martian crews would at least not have to worry about a dust storm threatening their power supply.

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## Galactic Penguin SST

What? Can't believe it, a thread dedicated to the U.S. space program, 23 pages and only beating around the bush!




Seems that all the posters here are as clueless as President Trump about what the U.S. space program is about!

_*Trump under fire for mocking senior Bush*

Sun Jul 8, 2018 05:54PM

US President Donald Trump has stirred controversy by poking fun at former President George H.W. Bush and his “Thousand Points of Light” slogan.

Bush, the 41st US president, is also referred to as "Bush 41", "Bush the Elder" and "Bush Senior" to distinguish him from his eldest son, George W. Bush, who became the 43rd US president.

“Thousand Points of Light. I never quite got that one. What the hell is that? Has anyone ever figured that one out?”  Trump said during a free-wheeling campaign rally Thursday in Montana.

Bush, 94, used the slogan to name a private organization he had established to promote volunteerism.

http://217.218.67.231/Detail/2018/07/08/567494/US-Bush-Trump-slogans​_







Spoiler: Link



http://
*Flight to the Lights 2 - Flying with auroras*
By Taichi NAKAMURA, Trace of Light Photography
Published on Mar 30, 2018
Chasing the Southern Lights. Captured from the Boing jet Dreamliner that was chartered for the ultimate aurora chasers' project “Flight to the Lights” during 22-23 March 2018. The plane departed from the largest airport in South Island New Zealand and went further south where it is close to Antarctica and where the Aurora Oval is, the place where the aurora is highly active. This video contains most of aurora's activity during the flight observed from the port side of the plane. Small reflections from the wing beacon and internal lights occasionally is in the frame. Captured with Sony ILCE-7S (a7s). Standard Youtube licence Sharing greatly appreciated with attribution
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=In-ZbBDAWkQ



▲ For the clueless, a glimpse at the U.S. 20,000 orbital psychotronic satellites.


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## Hamartia Antidote

*Moonlight (Clair de Lune)*


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## Gomig-21

Galactic Penguin SST said:


> Seems that all the posters here are as clueless as President Trump about what the U.S. space program is about!



Yeah, no. The only thing that is clueless is that comment itself. 



Hamartia Antidote said:


> Moonlight (Clair de Lune)



That's outstanding. Black & white footage actually gives you clearer detail than colored in many cases.


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## Hamartia Antidote



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## Gomig-21

Hamartia Antidote said:


>



Tremendous. The way it flames out at the end as they shut it down is great. Besides all the water they're running above it and under it to control the flame, is that liquid nitrogen they're using to cool it down?

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## Hamartia Antidote

Gomig-21 said:


> Tremendous. The way it flames out at the end as they shut it down is great. Besides all the water they're running above it and under it to control the flame, is that liquid nitrogen they're using to cool it down?



No idea but they must have to special case it since it isn't being cooled down by moving in the atmosphere.

8:20 of burn time is insane. Even the Falcon Heavy engines don't run for much more than 3 minutes. Have to give those Space Shuttle engines some thumbs up for taking such extreme abuse for so long without failing. Even the SaturnV F1 engines fired for only 2.5 minutes.

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## RabzonKhan

*Watch NASA release 450,000 gallons of water in 1 minute*

That is a lot of water.

NASA calls it the "Ignition Overpressure Protection and Sound Suppression water deluge system" and it is truly a sight to behold.

Just watch it in action:






In just over a minute the system releases roughly 450,000 gallons of water, sending it 100 feet into the air. The goal: reduce the extreme amount of heat and energy generated by a rocket launch.

For reference, that's not too far off the amount of water required to fill an Olympic-sized swimming pool. 

This test was conducted Oct. 15 at Kennedy Space Center's Launch Pad 39B in Florida in preparation for Exploration Mission-1, which is set to launch in June 2020. It will be the first uncrewed flight of the Space Launch System, a huge rocket arrangement NASA has been working for over a decade, set to be the most powerful booster ever built. *Source*

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## gambit

.007 arcseconds stability...

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## Hamartia Antidote

*Spacewalking Astronauts Install Parking Spot for Private Spaceships at Space Station*

https://www.space.com/spacewalkers-install-new-commerical-docking-port.html





Astronauts Nick Hague and Andrew Morgan install IDA-3 outside the International Space Station on Wednesday, August

Two NASA astronauts stepped outside the International Space Station Wednesday (Aug. 21) to install a new docking port for incoming commercial crew spacecraft during the fifth spacewalk from the station this year.


Nick Hague and Andrew Morgan began their 6 hour and 32 minute spacewalk at 8:27 a.m. EDT (12:27 GMT), exiting from the U.S.-built Quest airlock after switching their spacesuits over to battery power.


The pair installed the International Docking Adapter-3 (IDA-3) to the space-facing side of the station's Harmony connecting module. IDA-3 will serve as a second docking port at the space station for incoming commercial spacecraft built by Boeing and SpaceX. NASA has tapped Boeing's Starliner capsule and SpaceX's Crew Dragon spacecraft to ferry astronauts to and from the space station in the future.


The spacewalk marked Morgan's first time venturing outside the space station, while Hague has already performed two spacewalks earlier this year to assist in replacing some of the station's solar array batteries. During Wednesday's excursion, Hague was the first one out, followed by Morgan a few minutes later as the station soared over the Atlantic Ocean.

Hague's mother was watching the action from Earth at NASA's Mission Control center at the Johnson Space Center in Houston. She apparently cooked up some special treats for the flight controllers on the ground who assisted the astronauts on their spacewalk. 

"I heard she was busy in the kitchen yesterday," Hague radioed Mission Control while routing cables outside the station. "I'm glad you guys enjoyed, and I'm jealous." NASA did not disclose in spacewalk commentary what dishes Hague's mother prepared. 

Hague and Morgan expected to have some difficulty in wrangling the docking adapters cables, which have been baking in the sun on the station's exterior since their delivery five years ago. But those fears, it seemed, were unfounded. The astronauts installed the cables with ease, even finishing ahead of schedule.

The only trouble the spacewalkers experienced occurred as they stowed a bulky thermal cover for their tools. As spacecraft communicator Mike Barratt, also an astronaut, in Mission Control put it: "It's like beating a big hostile marshmallow."

After installing the docking port, Hague and Morgan went on to install two vital reflectors on the IDA-3, which will serve as a docking aid for visiting spacecraft, providing visual cues for those incoming vehicles. 

Hague and Morgan also got an extra hand from Canada's Dextre, a two-armed robot that was launched in 2008.








Spacewalkers Nick Hague and Andrew Morgan, both NASA astronauts, install cables for a new docking port for the International Space Station during a spacewalk on Aug. 21, 2019.

(Image credit: NASA TV)
In addition to Hague and Morgan, the station's six-person Expedition 60 crew includes NASA astronaut Christina Koch, Russian cosmonauts Alexey Ovchinin and Alexander Skvortsov and European Space Agency astronaut Luca Parmitano. Ovchinin commands the Expedition 60 mission. 

The crew is also tending to scientific research on board such as rodent experiments and stem cell differentiation. NASA's plan to use commercial spacecraft such as SpaceX's Crew Dragon and Boeing's Starliner will bolster scientific research and technology development to advance the agency's future missions to the moon and Mars, NASA officials said in a in a statement.

Wednesday's spacewalk brings Hague's total time outside the space station to 19 hours and 59 minutes across three spacewalks. Morgan ended the day with 6 hours and 32 minutes of spacewalking time as it was his career first.

"Welcome to the club, you did a brilliant job," Barratt congratulated Morgan as he stepped back into the station. 

Morgan apparently enjoyed his first walk in space.

"It's a special thing we get to do, and it's an honor to be part of such a stellar team," Morgan said


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## Hamartia Antidote

https://www.wjsu.org/post/meet-nuclear-powered-self-driving-drone-nasa-sending-moon-saturn#stream/0

*Meet The Nuclear-Powered Self-Driving Drone NASA Is Sending To A Moon Of Saturn*





NASA's Dragonfly mission will hop across Saturn's moon Titan, taking samples and photos.
JOHNS HOPKINS APL

On the face of it, NASA's newest probe sounds incredible. Known as Dragonfly, it is a dual-rotor quadcopter (technically an octocopter, even more technically an X8 octocopter); it's roughly the size of a compact car; it's completely autonomous; it's nuclear powered; and it will hover above the surface of Saturn's moon Titan.

But Elizabeth Turtle, the mission's principle investigator at the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory, insists that this is actually a pretty tame space probe, as these things go.

"There's not a lot of new technology," she says.

Quadcopters (even X8 octocopters) are for sale on Amazon these days. Self-driving technology is coming along quickly. Nuclear power is harder to come by, but the team plans to use the same kind of system that runs NASA's Curiosity rover on Mars. Everything that's going into Dragonfly is already being used somewhere else.

Which is not to say that the idea of a nuclear-powered drone flying around a moon of Saturn doesn't sound kind of crazy.

"Almost everyone who gets exposed to Dragonfly has a similar thought process. The first time you see it, you think: 'You gotta be kidding, that's crazy,' " says Doug Adams, the mission's spacecraft systems engineer. But, he says, "eventually, you come to realize that this is a highly executable mission."

NASA reached that conclusion when, after a lot of careful study, it gave Dragonfly the green light earlier this summer. "This revolutionary mission would have been unthinkable just a few short years ago," NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine said when the roughly $1 billion project was selected in June. "A great nation does great things."

For Shannon MacKenzie, a postdoc on the mission, there's no destination that could be greater than Titan. The largest moon of Saturn, it has dunes, mountains, gullies and even rivers and lakes — though on Titan, it's so cold the lakes are filled with liquid methane, not water.

"It is this complete package," she says. "It's this really unique place in the solar system where all of these different processes are coming together in a very Earthlike way."




The NASA space probe Cassini used infrared light to peer through Titan's hazy atmosphere and take rough measurements of its surface.
NASA/JPL/UNIVERSITY OF ARIZONA
Turtle says these features are part of what made Titan a target. It also appears that the surface is covered in organic molecules. The climate is probably too harsh for those molecules to make the shift into life, but Turtle thinks Titan could provide clues about how the building blocks of life started on Earth.

"All of these materials have been basically doing chemistry experiments for us," she says. "What we want to be able to do is go pick up the results of those experiments to understand the same kinds of steps that were taken here on Earth toward life."

Titan has one more feature that's worth noting: Although its mainly nitrogen atmosphere is denser than Earth's, its gravity is far lower. That makes it the perfect place to take to the skies.

"The conditions on Titan make it easier to fly there than on Earth," says Peter Bedini, the Dragonfly project manager. A drone is actually a much better way to explore such a world than a wheeled rover.

Dragonfly will launch from Earth in 2026 and arrive on Titan in 2034. After it enters the atmosphere, it will literally drop from the back of the capsule that brought it and fly down to a set of sandy dunes on the surface. From there, it will make a series of "hops" over two years, sampling the ground and sending back data and photos.







Adams is confident Dragonfly will be able to safely buzz across Titan's terrain. Because it can take nearly an hour-and-a-half for a signal to reach Titan from Earth, it will have to fly autonomously. But, he says, there's not a lot to run into: "We make the joke if we hit a tree, then we win because we found a tree on Titan," he says.

Adams plans to leverage a lot of technology from the recent drone revolution here on Earth. Radars, motors and software can all be used, or relatively easily adapted, for Dragonfly.

There is one thing he can't bring, however: "We don't actually have a map. There's no GPS; there's no magnetic field even to orient yourself," he says. He says the drone will navigate by continuously photographing the landscape, creating its own "map" as it goes.

For now, the Dragonfly team is still working with drones here on Earth to figure out how to build systems and software the probe will eventually need. But Turtle says they have time before the 2026 launch. "There's a lot to do between now and then," says Turtle. But she adds, it's all very doable.

Copyright 2019 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.
DAVID GREENE, HOST:

Earlier this summer, NASA announced that it would fund an ambitious new mission to send a quadcopter-style drone to a moon of Saturn. This drone will leave earth in 2026, but work has already begun on it.

NPR's Geoff Brumfiel has been visiting with the team of scientists behind this mission.

GEOFF BRUMFIEL, BYLINE: This drone will head to a moon called Titan. And the first thing to know about Titan is that it's cool - like literally, it's really cold.

ELIZABETH TURTLE: It's 94 Kelvin and negative 290 Fahrenheit.

BRUMFIEL: Zibi Turtle is head of the mission, which is being run out of the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory. Turtle - it should come as no surprise - also thinks Titan's figuratively cool.

TURTLE: Titan is a really fascinating world. It's the largest moon of Saturn. It's the only satellite in the solar system that has a dense atmosphere. In fact, its atmosphere is denser than Earth's atmosphere

BRUMFIEL: And there's more Earthlike things about it. Titan has dunes, mountains, gullies, even rivers and lakes. Though, on Titan, it's so cold the lakes are filled with liquid methane, not water. Think of it as a little, frigid Earthlette (ph) floating around the outer solar system. And that's what has Turtle and her teams so interested.

Like Earth, Titan is home to a lot of different kinds of organic molecules. The climate's probably too harsh for those molecules to turn into life. But Turtle thinks Titan could provide clues to how life started here on Earth.

TURTLE: All of these materials have been basically doing chemistry experiments for us. And so what we want to be able to do is go pick up the results of those experiments to understand, you know, the same kinds of steps that were taken here on Earth toward life.

BRUMFIEL: But look, I haven't told you the coolest thing about Titan yet.

TURTLE: If you had a good way to keep warm and some oxygen with you to breath and put wings on, you'd be able to fly.

BRUMFIEL: What - you mean, like, flapping?

TURTLE: Exactly. A human being would be able to fly on Titan. It's that much easier to fly on Titan than it is on Earth.

BRUMFIEL: Titan's dense atmosphere and low gravity make getting off the ground a cinch. And that's why Turtle's plan is to explore with a drone rather than a rover. Down the hall from her office in a conference room, there's a giant quadcopter.

Wow.

TURTLE: Sweet. I didn't know we had that - the larger one...

BRUMFIEL: This is fantastic. Look at this thing. Hi.

TURTLE: Before I forget...

DOUG ADAMS: Hey. I'm Doug Adams.

BRUMFIEL: Doug Adams is one of the lead engineers on the project. The drone he's showing me takes up the whole table. And it's only a fraction of the size of what they have in mind.

Oh, that's quarter scale?

ADAMS: That's quarter scale.

TURTLE: That's quarter scale.

BRUMFIEL: Oh...

TURTLE: Yeah.

BRUMFIEL: ...This thing's big.

TURTLE: It is.

BRUMFIEL: The real drone, known as Dragonfly, will be roughly the size of a compact car. Titan's distance from Earth means that nobody can fly Dragonfly by remote control. It'll have to be completely autonomous. And there's no way to recharge it, which - if you've ever owned a drone - you know needs to happen a lot. And at this point, you may be thinking what I was thinking - really?

ADAMS: Almost everyone that gets exposed to Dragonfly has a similar thought process. The first time you see it, you think, you've got to be kidding. That's crazy.

BRUMFIEL: But Adams says the mission really is possible using technology we use all the time on Earth. Quadcopter-style drones, for example, are all over the place. This one's just a little bigger. Self-driving technology is increasingly common - and bonus, it should be easy on Titan because there aren't any obstacles.

ADAMS: We make the joke, if we hit a tree then we win - right? - because, you know, we found a tree on Titan.

BRUMFIEL: Recharging is a problem, but they've got a solution for that, too - a nuclear battery. NASA actually already uses one on its Mars rover. Turtle says, as ambitious as Dragonfly sounds, it's just a bunch of old tech bolted together.

TURTLE: One of the strategies that lowers risk for a mission is to use proven technology (laughter).

BRUMFIEL: Yeah. But, I mean, you're building a nuclear-powered, self-driving drone for a moon of Saturn...

TURTLE: (Laughter).

BRUMFIEL: ...So it is something new, isn't it? I mean, let's not...

ADAMS: It is...

BRUMFIEL: ...Not understate that.

ADAMS: So we won't understate that. However, as Zibi pointed out, the secret is to limit the miracles, right? We're assembling as many technologies that are already existing as possible and limiting what we have to do.

BRUMFIEL: Even Dragonfly's scientific instruments that it will use to take samples and send data back to Earth have been tested on other missions. In fact, what Adams is most worried about is something we all have at our fingertips here on Earth that he can't take to Titan.

ADAMS: We don't actually have a map. There's no GPS. There's no magnetic field even to orient yourself.

BRUMFIEL: The biggest challenge facing Dragonfly is how to find its way around. Then again, any good explorer should get a little lost, right?

Geoff Brumfiel, NPR News.


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## Hamartia Antidote

https://www.space.com/mars-lake-salty-curiosity-rover.html

*Ancient Lake on Mars Turned Salty for a Spell, Curiosity Rover Finds*





This September 2016 self-portrait of NASA's Curiosity Mars rover shows the vehicle in the scenic Murray Buttes area on lower Mount Sharp

NASA's Curiosity Mars rover may have just captured a snapshot of the Red Planet's long-ago Great Drying.


Curiosity has detected relatively high levels of sulfate salts in the rocks of Gale Crater, a new study reports. Gale hosted a lake-and-stream system in the ancient past, and the newfound salts were likely concentrated by evaporation during a period of low water levels, researchers said.


This period may have been part of a normal cyclical fluctuation, a regular climatic change perhaps driven by recurring shifts in Mars' axial tilt or orbital parameters. "Alternatively, a drier Gale lake might be a sign of long-term, secular global drying of Mars, posited based on orbital observations," the scientists wrote in the new study, which was published online today (Oct. 7) in the journal Nature Geoscience. 


Mars was once a relatively warm and wet world, complete with rivers and lakes and, most researchers believe, an ocean covering a large swath of the planet's northern hemisphere.


But things began to change around 4.2 billion years ago. Mars lost its global magnetic field, which had protected the planet's atmosphere from the solar wind, the stream of charged particles flowing continuously from the sun. 


As a result, Mars lost the vast majority of its air to space by about 3.7 billion years ago, causing the planet to become much colder and drier. Today, Mars' air is just 1% as dense as Earth's atmosphere at sea level. (Luckily for us, Earth still has its global magnetic field.)











This NASA animation shows salty ponds and streams that scientists think may have been left behind as Gale Crater, home of the Curiosity rover, dried out over time. The crater's floor is seen at bottom of this image, with a central peak at left..


The Curiosity rover is helping scientists better understand the Red Planet's history, including its dramatic transformation. 


The car-size rover landed inside the 96-mile-wide (154 kilometers) Gale Crater in August 2012, tasked primarily with assessing the area's past habitability. Curiosity quickly found lots of evidence of long-ago liquid water. Indeed, the mission team has determined that Gale's floor is an ancient lake bed, and that the area could have supported Earth-like life for long stretches — perhaps hundreds of millions of years at a time — in the ancient past.


In September 2014, Curiosity reached the base of Mount Sharp, the bizarre, 3.4-mile-high (5.5 km) mountain that rises from Gale's center. The rover has been climbing the mountain's foothills ever since, examining younger and younger sediments as it goes. And that brings us to the new study.


The researchers analyzed measurements Curiosity made while exploring the upper Murray Formation, an assemblage of exposed sedimentary rock near Mount Sharp's base thought to be 3.3 billion to 3.7 billion years old.


They found that these rocks are strongly enriched in sulfate salts — much more so than the deposits Curiosity had previously examined on the crater floor. (Those older rocks indicated an aqueous environment with water so fresh it was probably drinkable, mission team members have said.)


"Bulk enrichments" of calcium sulfate are widespread through about 500 feet (150 m) of the Murray Formation, the new study reports, while nuggets of high magnesium sulfate concentration speckle a thinner section of rock layers.


These salts were probably deposited along the margins of the Gale Crater basin, where the water was shallow. The deposits may trace back to multiple ponds on the fringes of the central lake, the researchers said.


Still, these salty ponds may have been habitable, the researchers added, noting that hypersaline lakes here on Earth teem with life. Indeed, the nature of the detected salts is intriguing from an astrobiological point of view.


"Sulfur is a basic element for life," study lead author William Rapin, a planetary scientist at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, told Space.com. "And we show that there was sulfate available in the water."


It's possible that the Gale Crater lake system was drying out for good around the time these salty deposits were laid down, Rapin said.


"Maybe habitable environments had started to become niche," he said. "Maybe large regions of Mars were already too arid."


But there's also that other possibility — that Mars was in a temporary dry spell but would become wet again when its axis of rotation, or its orbital eccentricity, changed.


Curiosity's work could soon help solve this mystery. Mars orbiters have detected sulfate salts higher up on Mount Sharp. Curiosity is making its way toward those deposits and should start encountering them in the next year or two, if all goes according to plan, Rapin said. (The newfound salt deposits were not spotted by Mars orbiters.)


What the rover finds there, and along the way, should help researchers piece together the evolution of the Gale Crater lake system, he added.


"We know we're going to have an answer — maybe a big answer — about what happened next, including with the sulfate deposits, in the years to come," Rapin said


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## Hamartia Antidote

https://arstechnica.com/science/201...-late-this-year-crew-flight-soon-after/?amp=1

*It looks like SpaceX is now prioritizing Crew Dragon—which is great for NASA*

On Tuesday, SpaceX founder Elon Musk offered updates on progress with the Crew Dragon spacecraft the company is building for NASA. The new information suggests that Musk is now prioritizing the program to ready Dragon to fly astronauts Doug Hurley and Bob Behnken to the International Space Station.

This is a critical time for NASA, which is exploring the possibility of buying additional Russian Soyuz seats for missions to the International Space Station in mid- or late-2020. This may not be possible, due to political concerns as well as long lead-time needed to manufacture additional Soyuz vehicles. NASA's only other option is extending crew missions on the orbiting laboratory. Paramount to the agency is keeping at least one US crew member on the station in addition to its Russian complement.

Musk shared the new information on Twitter Tuesday in reply to a tweet by this reporter, which noted that "full panic" has ensued at NASA headquarters as the agency seeks to buy seats, possibly extend crew missions, and begin flying commercial crew missions.

*In-flight abort*
Before it flies a crewed mission, SpaceX must demonstrate the in-flight abort capabilities of the Dragon spacecraft. During a rocket failure, the spacecraft's Super Draco thrusters are designed to fire quickly to pull the spacecraft away from an exploding booster. This upcoming test took on added importance after the explosion of a Crew Dragon spacecraft during thruster tests in April.

Since that time, however, both SpaceX and NASA officials have said they understand the cause of that accident, and the company has begun to implement changes to prevent it from occurring again.

On Tuesday, Musk said both the Falcon 9 rocket and Crew Dragon vehicle that will be used for the in-flight abort test have been shipped to Cape Canaveral, Florida. The hardware must still be configured for the test flight, but he estimated that it will occur toward the end of November or early December.

*Parachutes*
The other key technical issue that SpaceX must address is its parachute system. The company has experienced a couple of failures during the dozens of drop tests it has performed with its four-parachute system. The company is seeking to balance the robustness of the parachute system while keeping its overall mass down.

"We had to reallocate some resources to speed this up & received great support from Airborne, our parachute supplier," Musk said on Twitter. "I was at their Irvine factory with the SpaceX team on Sat and Sun. We’re focusing on the advanced Mk3 chute, which provides highest safety factor for astronauts."

Despite all of the technical work ahead, Musk said he expected both the rocket and Crew Dragon spacecraft for the first crewed mission to arrive in Florida at the company's launch facilities within about 10 weeks. Within that time frame, he said testing on hardware should also be completed.

If this is the case, the ball would move to NASA's court to review all of the company's paperwork and procedures and sign off on a crewed mission. One source said it was possible this could be done in time to support a flight early in the spring of 2020—but no one is offering launch guarantees at this point.


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## Hamartia Antidote

https://www.space.com/nasa-tests-mars-2020-rover-descent-stage.html
*NASA Tests Mars 2020 Rover's Sky Crane Landing Tech*





A crane lifted the rocket-powered descent stage away from the Mars 2020 rover in a successful separation test at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, in September 2019. 
(Image: © NASA/JPL-Caltech)

NASA's Mars 2020 rover mission has checked off another milestone with a successful separation test of the descent stage that will deliver the six-wheeled robot to the surface of the Red Planet.

The test, which took place at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, California, on Sept. 28, involved using a crane to lift the large, rocket-powered descent stage away from the rover.

"Firing the pyrotechnic devices that held the rover and descent stage together and then doing the post-test inspection of the two vehicles was an all-day affair," Ryan van Schilifgaarde, a support engineer for Mars 2020 assembly at JPL, said in a statement from NASA. 

The Mars 2020 rover is scheduled to launch on a United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket in July 2020 from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida. The spacecraft will land inside the Red Planet's Jezero Crater on Feb. 18, 2021, where it will search for signs of habitable environments and evidence of past microbial life. 

If all goes according to plan, the Mars 2020 rover will be the first spacecraft in the history of planetary exploration with the ability to accurately retarget its point of touchdown during the landing sequence, according to the statement. 

"With this test behind us, the rover and descent stage go their separate ways for a while," van Schilifgaarde said in the statement. "Next time they are attached will be at the Cape next spring during final assembly."

However, before the Mars 2020 rover and descent stage ship off to Cape Canaveral, engineers at JPL will continue to test the rover's computers and mechanical systems under Mars-like conditions. A Surface Thermal Test, for example, will simulate the atmospheric temperatures and pressures the rover will encounter on Mars.


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## Hamartia Antidote

https://www.extremetech.com/extreme/299797-nasa-releases-3d-mapping-data-from-the-moon
*NASA Releases 3D Mapping Data From the Moon*






You can’t take a trip to the real moon, at least not right now. You might be able to visit the surface virtually before long, though. NASA has released a visual data set that it calls the “CGI Moon Kit,” which will allow designers to create authentic moonscapes in games and other types of media. The kit is, of course, completely free to download. 

The data for the Moon Kit comes from NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO), which has been in orbit of the moon since 2009. Its original mission was just one year, but it’s still going strong. During its time studying the moon, the LRO has produced a 3D map of almost the entire surface — 98.2 percent of it, to be exact. The only parts of the moon not covered are the polar areas in deep shadow. 

The Moon Kit comes from NASA designer Ernie Wright, who works in the Scientific Visualization Studio at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center. Wright initially created the Moon Kit as a tool for the Scientific Visualization Studio, but he received so many requests for the data that he decided to make the data set available to all designers publicly. 

You can download the Moon Kit from the Scientific Visualization Studio website right now. It comes as a pair of uncompressed TIFF files. One file is a composite of over 100,000 photos taken by the orbiter’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter Camera (LROC). The largest size option, which is what most designers will want, clocks in at almost 500 megabytes. This is essentially a texture map of the moon. 





The second TIFF file is what’s known as a displacement map. It contains data from the Lunar Orbiter Laser Altimeter instrument (LOLA), which tells you about the elevation of features on the moon. The largest version shows 64 pixels per degree, and clocks in at just shy of 1 GB. 

In 3D animation software, you can wrap both images around a spherical shell to create a very accurate model of the moon. The color file tells the program how the terrain should look, and the displacement map tells it how the surface is shaped. However, this isn’t a ready-made 3D version of the moon you can explore — it’ll take some serious 3D design work to make it into something tangible. In the coming years, we may see simulations of the lunar surface that are more accurate than anything that came before.

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## Hamartia Antidote

https://www.space.com/nasas-tess-sp...ets-and-is-poised-to-find-thousands-more.html

*NASA's TESS Spacecraft is Finding Hundreds of Exoplanets — And is Poised to Find Thousands More*





This artist's impression shows a view of the planet Proxima b orbiting the red dwarf star Proxima Centauri, the closest star to the solar system.
(Image: © M. Kornmesser/ESO)

Within just 50 light-years from Earth, there are about 1,560 stars, likely orbited by several thousand planets. About a thousand of these extrasolar planets – known as exoplanets – may be rocky and have a composition similar to Earth's. Some may even harbor life. Over 99% of these alien worlds remain undiscovered — but this is about to change.


With NASA's new exoplanet-hunter space telescope TESS, the all-sky search is on for possibly habitable planets close to our solar system. TESS — orbiting Earth every 13.7 days — and ground-based telescopes are poised to find hundreds of planets over the next few years. This could transform astronomers' understanding of alien worlds around us and provide targets to scan with next-generation telescopes for signatures of life. In just over a year, TESS has identified more than 1,200 planetary candidates, 29 of which astronomers have already confirmed as planets. Given TESS's unique ability to simultaneously search tens of thousands of stars for planets, the mission is expected to yield over 10,000 new worlds.


These are exciting times for astronomers and, especially, for those of us exploring exoplanets. We are members of the planet-hunting Project EDEN, which also supports TESS's work. We use telescopes on the ground and in space to find exoplanets to understand their properties and potential for harboring life.



*Undiscovered worlds all around us*
Worlds around us await discovery. Take, for example, Proxima Centauri, an unassuming, faint red star, invisible without a telescope. It is one of over a hundred billion or so such stars within our galaxy, unremarkable except for its status as our next-door neighbor. Orbiting Proxima is a fascinating but mysterious world, called Proxmia b, discovered only in 2016.


Scientists know surprisingly little about Proxima b. Astronomers name the first planet discovered in a system "b". This planet has never been seen with human eyes or by a telescope. But we know it exists due to its gravitational pull on its host star, which makes the star wobble ever so slightly. This slight wobble was found in measurements collected by a large, international group of astronomers from data taken with multiple ground-based telescopes. Proxima b very likely has a rocky composition similar to Earth's, but higher mass. It receives about the same amount of heat as Earth receives from the Sun.


And that is what makes this planet so exciting: It lies in the "habitable" zone and just might have properties similar to Earth's, like a surface, liquid water, and — who knows? — maybe even an atmosphere bearing the telltale chemical signs of life.


NASA's TESS mission launched in April 2018 to hunt for other broadly Earth-sized planets, but with a different method. TESS is looking for rare dimming events that happen when planets pass in front of their host stars, blocking some starlight. These transit events indicate not only the presence of the planets, but also their sizes and orbits.



Finding a new transiting exoplanet is a big deal for astronomers like us because, unlike those found through stellar wobbles, worlds seen transiting can be studied further to determine their densities and atmospheric compositions.










By measuring the depth of the dip in brightness and knowing the size of the star, scientists can determine the size or radius of the planet.

(Image credit: NASA Ames)


*Red dwarf suns*
For us, the most exciting exoplanets are the smallest ones, which TESS can detect when they orbit small stars called red dwarfs – stars with masses less than half the mass of our Sun.


Each of these systems is unique. For example, LP 791-18 is a red dwarf star 86 light-years from Earth around which TESS found two worlds. The first is a "super-Earth," a planet larger than Earth but probably still mostly rocky, and the second is a "mini-Neptune," a planet smaller than Neptune but gas- and ice-rich. Neither of these planets have counterparts in our solar system.


Among astronomers' current favorites of the new broadly Earth-sized planets is LHS 3884b, a scorching "hot Earth" that orbits its sun so quickly that on it you could celebrate your birthday every 11 hours.










Artist's impression of an exoplanet transiting a red dwarf star.

(Image credit: L. Calçada/ESO)


*No Earth-like worlds yet*


But how Earth-like are Earth-sized planets? The promise of finding nearby worlds for detailed studies is already paying off. A team of astronomers observed the hot super-Earth LHS 3884b with the Hubble Space Telescope and found the planet to be a horrible vacation spot, without even an atmosphere. It is just a bare rock with temperatures ranging from over 700 C (1300 Fahrenheit) at noon to near absolute zero (-460 Fahrenheit) at midnight.


The TESS mission was initially funded for two years. But the spacecraft is in excellent shape and NASA recently extended the mission through 2022, doubling the time TESS will have to scan nearby, bright stars for transits.


However, finding exoplanets around the coolest stars — those with temperatures less than about 2700 C (4900 F) — will still be a challenge due to their extreme faintness. Since ultracool dwarfs provide our best opportunity to find and study exoplanets with sizes and temperatures similar to Earth's, other focused planet searches are picking up where TESS leaves off.










Illustration of TESS, NASA's Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite

(Image credit: NASA Goddard Space Flight Center)


*The worlds TESS can’t find*
In May 2016, a Belgian-led group announced the discovery of a planetary system around the ultracool dwarf they christened TRAPPIST-1. The discovery of the seven transiting Earth-sized exoplanets in the TRAPPIST-1 system was groundbreaking.


It also demonstrated how small telescopes — relative to the powerful behemoths of our age — can still make transformational discoveries. With patience and persistence, the TRAPPIST telescope scanned nearby faint, red dwarf stars from its high-mountain perch in the Atacama desert for small, telltale dips in their brightnesses. Eventually, it spotted transits in the data for the red dwarf TRAPPIST-1, which — although just 41 light-years away — is too faint for TESS's four 10-cm (4-inch) diameter lenses. Its Earth-sized worlds would have remained undiscovered had the TRAPPIST team's larger telescope not found them.


Two projects have upped up the game in the search for exo-Earth candidates around nearby red dwarfs. The SPECULOOS teaminstalled four robotic telescopes – also in the Atacama desert – and one in the Northern Hemisphere. Our Exoearth Discovery and Exploration Network – Project EDEN – uses nine telescopes in Arizona, Italy, Spain and Taiwan to observe red dwarf stars continuously.


The SPECULOOS and EDEN telescopes are much larger than TESS's small lenses and can find planets around stars too faint for TESS to study, including some of the transiting Earth-sized planets closest to us.










This artist's concept shows what the TRAPPIST-1 planetary system may look like, based on available data about the planets' diameters, masses and distances from the host star, as of February 2018.

(Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech)


*The decade of new worlds*
The next decade is likely to be remembered as the time when we opened our eyes to the incredible diversity of other worlds. TESS is likely to find between 10,000 and 15,000 exoplanet candidates by 2025. By 2030, the European Space Agency's GAIA and PLATOmissions are expected to find another 20,000-35,000 planets. GAIA will look for stellar wobbles introduced by planets, while PLATO will search for planetary transits as TESS does.


However, even among the thousands of planets that will soon be found, the exoplanets closest to our solar system will remain special. Many of these worlds can be studied in great detail – including the search for signs of life. Discoveries of the nearest worlds also represent major steps in humanity's progress in exploring the universe we live in. After mapping our own planet and then the solar system, we now turn to nearby planetary systems. Perhaps one day Proxima b or another nearby world astronomers have yet to find will be the target for interstellar probes, like Project Starshot, or even crewed starships. But first we've got to put these worlds on the map.


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## Hamartia Antidote



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## Black Stone

Would be great to see ourselves setting foot on the moon again, but I think we should also attempt Mars.


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## Hamartia Antidote

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Douglas_G._Hurley
*Douglas G. Hurley*

Last man to pilot the Space Shuttle will be in 1st Crew Dragon launch


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## Galactic Penguin SST

*Future Imagery Architecture*

Future Imagery Architecture (FIA) was a program to design a new generation of optical and radar imaging US reconnaissance satellites for the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO). In 2005 NRO director Donald Kerr recommended the project's termination, and the optical component of the program was finally cancelled in September 2005 by Director of National Intelligence John Negroponte. FIA has been called by The New York Times "perhaps the most spectacular and expensive failure in the 50-year history of American spy satellite projects." Despite the optical component's cancellation, the radar component, known as Topaz, has continued, with five satellites in orbit as of 2018.

*History*

In 1999 the development contract for FIA was awarded to a Boeing team, which underbid Lockheed Martin's competing proposal by about US$1 billion (inflation adjusted US$ 1.53 billion in 2019). By 2005, an estimated US$10 billion had been spent by the US government on FIA, including Boeing's accumulated cost overrun of US$4 to 5 billion, and it was estimated to have an accumulated cost of US$25 billion over the ensuing twenty years. In September 2005 the contract for the electro-optical satellites was shifted to Lockheed Martin because of the cost overruns and delays of the delivery date. Lockheed was asked to restart production of KH-11 Kennen satellite system with new upgrades. The contract for the imaging radar satellite remained with Boeing. In September 2010 NRO director Bruce Carlson stated that while most NRO "(...) programs are operating on schedule and on cost (...)", one program is "(...) 700 percent over in schedule and 300 percent over in budget".

The exact scope and mission of FIA are classified, although the head of the NRO said in 2001 that the project would focus on creating smaller and lighter satellites. Some industry experts believe that a key objective is to make the satellites more difficult to attack, possibly by placing them in higher orbits. Because of the large size of the program, as well as number of workers involved, some experts have compared it to the 1940s Manhattan Project.

In 2012 NRO donated two sophisticated but unneeded space telescopes, reportedly built for FIA, to NASA for use in astronomy.

*Launches*

The first operational FIA Radar satellite, USA-215 or NROL-41, was launched on 21 September 2010. It is in a retrograde 1100 x 1105 km orbit inclined by 123 degrees, an orbital configuration indicating it is an SAR satellite. On 3 April 2012, a second satellite, USA-234 or NROL-25, was launched into a similar orbit.

The earlier USA-193 satellite, launched in 2006, is believed to have been a technology demonstration satellite intended to test and develop systems for the FIA radar programme. However, it failed immediately after launch, and was subsequently destroyed by a missile.


*Spacecraft*

USA-215 | COSPAR ID 2010-046A | SATCAT No. 37162 | launched on 21 September 2010, 04:03:30 UTC

USA-234 | COSPAR ID 2012-014A | SATCAT No. 38109 | launched on 3 April 2012, 23:12:57 UTC

USA-247 | COSPAR ID 2013-072A | SATCAT No. 39462 | launched on 6 December 2013, 07:14:30 UTC

USA-267 | COSPAR ID 2016-010A | SATCAT No. 41334 | launched on 10 February 2016, 11:40:32 UTC

USA-281 | COSPAR ID 2018-005A | SATCAT No. 43145 | launched on 12 January 2018, 22:10 UTC


*Successor program*

USA-224, launched on 20 January 2011, is believed to be the first of the large post-FIA optical reconnaissance satellites built by Lockheed.

The failed FIA program is to be succeeded by the Next Generation Electro-Optical (NGEO) program. NGEO is intended as a lower-risk modular system, which is capable of being modified incrementally over its lifetime.


*Topaz 5 (FIA-Radar 5, USA 281, NROL 47)*

A Delta IV rocket launched the classified NROL-47 satellite from Vandenberg in California on January 12, 2018. The satellite is believed to be the 5th member of the Topaz (FIA Radar) project, radar satellites operating in 1100km altitude, 123 degree inclined retrograde orbits.


Orbit of NROL-47 FIA Radar 5 (USA 281, Topaz-5) : 1,048 x 1,057 km - 106.00° - Period: 106.24 min



> Two Line Element Set (TLE):
> 
> USA 281
> 1 43145U 18005A 20143.99356618 0.00000000 00000-0 00000-0 0 01
> 2 43145 106.0035 64.3610 0001873 219.9859 140.0141 13.48020027 04



This behemoth was caught on camera as it was cruising in the same frames near the Chinese SIGINT Yaogan-25A/B/C triplet.

Evolving at the same altitude, the Topaz 5's Magnitude was brighter, due to its much bigger size!





http://archive.is/jm9Va/616c5e7ca5025c4378752e79b0bd7d7b3871f7b2.jpg ; https://archive.is/jm9Va/bbd398954a844b06d9ea3d7b299fa2f2d781e17f/scr.png ; http://web.archive.org/web/20200529210541/https://i.imgur.com/lS3mWJV.jpg 
▲ 1. Topaz 5 (FIA-Radar 5, USA 281, NROL 47) predited pass.

Image of Topaz 5 (FIA-Radar 5, USA 281, NROL 47) caught on camera a couple of nights ago, and calibrated with astrometry.net:





http://archive.vn/W0ilw/13c196bbca1729c1cbf33ec4beff160edc037a29.jpg ; https://archive.vn/W0ilw/e7826a321612437d5f0fd4b3141f3e9d7fd485e5/scr.png ; http://web.archive.org/web/20200529210938/http://nova.astrometry.net/annotated_full/4270869 ; http://nova.astrometry.net/user_images/3705363#annotated ; nova.astrometry.net/annotated_full/4270869 
▲ 2. Topaz 5 (FIA-Radar 5, USA 281, NROL 47) caught on camera.


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## casual

Starship prototype just blew up during static test

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## Hamartia Antidote

https://www.teslarati.com/spacex-starship-orbital-launch-debut-2020/

*




*
*SpaceX’s orbital Starship launch debut could still happen this year*
Despite the spectacular demise of a full-scale prototype just days ago, a senior SpaceX engineer and executive believes that Starship could still be ready for its first orbital launch attempt before the end of the year.

Even if the first launch attempt fails, that milestone – if realized – would be one of the single biggest upsets in the history of spaceflight, proving that Saturn V-scale orbital-class rockets can likely be built in spartan facilities with common materials for pennies on the dollar. Much like Falcon 1 suffered three launch failures before successfully reaching orbit, there’s a strong chance that Starship’s first shot at orbit will fall short, although each full-up launch failure would likely cost substantially more than the current prototypes being routinely tested to destruction in South Texas.

Most recently, what CEO Elon Musk later described as a “a minor test of a quick disconnect” went wrong in a spectacular fashion, causing a major liquid methane leak that subsequently ignited and created a massive explosion. Although Starship SN4 did technically complete its fifth Raptor engine static fire test just a minute or so prior, the ship and its immediate surroundings were obliterated by the violent explosion, leaving little more than steel shrapnel and the broken husk of a launch mount behind. It’s in this context that one of SpaceX’s most levelheaded, expert executives believes that an orbital launch could still happen _this year_.


__ https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1267886615252238336

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## Hamartia Antidote



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## Hamartia Antidote



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## Hamartia Antidote



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## Hamartia Antidote



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## Vanguard One

Ceres is a dwarf planet and the largest known object in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter.

And now we know it may be an ocean world with intriguing geologic activity taking place on and just below its surface, according to new research.

While this global ocean beneath the planet's surface likely froze over time, remnants of it may still be present beneath a large impact crater on Ceres.





False color was used to highlight the recently exposed brine, or salty liquids, that were pushed up from a deep reservoir under Ceres' crust in the Occator Crater. (CNN)

The presence of salts may have preserved the liquid as a brine, despite cold temperatures.

The suite of seven studies were published in the journals Nature Astronomy, Nature Geoscience and Nature Communications.

READ MORE: NASA launches Mars rover to look for signs of ancient life

Between 2011 and 2018, NASA's Dawn mission embarked on a 6.9 billion-kilometre journey to two of the largest objects in our solar system's main asteroid belt.





Bright pits and mounds in Occator Crater were formed by salty liquid released as Occator's water-rich floor froze after the crater-forming impact about 20 million years ago. (CNN)

Ceres is about 953 km across, 14 times smaller than Pluto.

NASA's Dawn mission visited Vesta and Ceres, becoming the first spacecraft to orbit two deep-space destinations.

False colour was used to highlight the recently exposed brine, or salty liquids, that were pushed up from a deep reservoir under Ceres' crust in the Occator Crater.

This new research is based on observations made during Dawn's orbit of Ceres between 2015 and 2018, including close passes it made of the dwarf planet just 35 km above the surface toward the end of the mission.


During that time, Dawn was focused on the 93-km-wide Occator Crater, a 22-million-year-old feature that appeared to showcase bright spots.

These eye-catching characteristics were discovered to be sodium carbonate, or a compound including oxygen, carbon and sodium.

But it was unclear how those bright spots came to be in the crater.

Data from the end of Dawn's mission revealed an extensive and slushy reservoir of brine, or salty liquid, beneath the crater.

It's 40 km deep and extends out for hundreds of miles.





An artist's impression of Ceres. (Supplied)

When the impact that created the crater struck Ceres, it may have allowed the reservoir to deposit bright salts visible in the crater by fracturing the planet's crust.

As the fractures reached the salty reservoirs, the brine was able to reach the surface of the crater floor.

When the water evaporated, a bright, salty crust remained behind.

Brines still forming today
Brines may still be rising to the surface today which suggests the activity on Ceres is not due to melting that may have occurred when the planet was impacted.

In fact, Dawn's data also indicated the presence of hydrated chloride salts at the centre of the largest bright area at the crater's centre, called Cerealia Facula.

This hydrohalite compound is common in marine ice on Earth, but it's the first time hydrohalite has been found outside of our planet.





Ceres, Eris, Haumea, Pluto (L-R) (Getty, Wikipedia)

Bright pits and mounds in Occator Crater were formed by salty liquid released as Occator's water-rich floor froze after the crater-forming impact about 20 million years ago.

The salts appear to dehydrate quickly on the surface, at least, astronomically speaking.

This dehydration occurs over hundreds of years.

But the measurements taken by Dawn showed water was still present.

This suggests brine may still be rising to the surface of the crater and salty liquid could still exist inside of Ceres.

"For the large deposit at Cerealia Facula, the bulk of the salts were supplied from a slushy area just beneath the surface that was melted by the heat of the impact that formed the crater about 20 million years ago," Dawn's principal investigator at NASA's Jet Propulsion 

Laboratory in California, Carol Raymond said in a statement.

"The impact heat subsided after a few million years; however, the impact also created large fractures that could reach the deep, long-lived reservoir, allowing brine to continue percolating to the surface."





3D visualisation of a mountain on the dwarf planet Ceres based on data from Nasa's Dawn satellite. (NASA)

There are also mounds and hills visible in the crater, likely created when flows of water froze in place, suggesting geologic activity on Ceres.

These conical hills are similar to pingos on Earth, or small mountains made of ice found in the polar regions.

Although features like this have also been found on Mars, it's the first time they've been spotted on a dwarf planet.

*An unusual dwarf planet*

The pingo-like structures and the water that pushes up through fractures in the crater revealed that Ceres experienced cryovolcanic activity, or ice volcanoes, beginning around 9 million years ago and the process is likely ongoing.

This kind of cryovolcanic activity has been witnessed on icy moons in the outer solar system, with plumes of material ejecting into space.

But it was never expected to occur on dwarf planets or asteroids in the asteroid belt, which are thought to be waterless and inactive.

Ceres changes that theory because it has proven to be water-rich and active.





An artist's concept shows the Dawn spacecraft approaching the dwarf planet Ceres. (NASA/JPL-Caltech) (NASA/JPL-Caltech)

A survivor from the earliest days of the solar system as it formed 4.5 billion years ago, Ceres was more of an "embryonic planet"; essentially, it started to form, but never finished.

Jupiter, the largest planet in our solar system, and the force of its gravity likely stunted Ceres' growth.

So around 4 billion years ago, Ceres found its home in the asteroid belt along with all of the other leftovers from the formation of the solar system.

The idea that liquid water can remain preserved on dwarf planets and asteroids is an intriguing one for scientists.

Unlike other icy ocean worlds in our solar system, such as Saturn's moon Enceladus and Jupiter's moon Europa, asteroids and dwarf planets don't experience internal heating.

Enceladus and Europa benefit from internal heating that occurs when they interact gravitationally with the massive planets they orbit.

The Dawn mission ended in 2018 when the spacecraft ran out of fuel and could no longer communicate with NASA.

It was placed into long-term orbit around Ceres to prevent impact, protecting its organic materials and subsurface liquid.





The unidentified bright spots snapped from the Dawn probe on approach to Ceres. (Associated Press)

The findings made possible by the Dawn mission have scientists eager to explore the dwarf planet and its potential for life in greater detail in the future.

While there is not currently another mission planned for exploring Ceres, two upcoming missions will explore Jupiter and its icy moons Ganymede, Callisto and Europa.

"Dawn accomplished far more than we hoped when it embarked on its extraordinary extra-terrestrial expedition," Dawn's mission director at JPL, Marc Rayman said in a statement.

"These exciting new discoveries from the end of its long and productive mission are a wonderful tribute to this remarkable interplanetary explorer."

https://www.9news.com.au/world/nasa...f-planet/87abc746-ae10-4baa-833a-2bc409d19cdd

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## Hamartia Antidote

Blue Origin engineers deliver full-scale prototype Moon lander to NASA


“Testing this engineering mockup for crew interaction is a step toward making this historic mission real.”




futurism.com




*Blue Origin Engineers Deliver Full-Scale Prototype Moon Lander to NASA*






*The vision of returning American astronauts to the Moon by 2024 is looking more real than ever.*

The Blue Origin-led Human Landing System (HLS) National Team just delivered to NASA a full-scale prototype of a lander that could one day carry American astronauts to the surface of the Moon.






The 40-foot, full-scale mockup is made out of two different components: the Ascent Element (AE) and Descent Element (DE). The mockup will primarily serve as a platform to test out crew operations, i.e. how to get astronauts, equipment and supplies off and on the vehicle.

It could also help the teams at NASA to evaluate things like cabin ergonomics, viewing angles from the cabin, and what the experience is like entering and leaving the vehicle while wearing a bulky spacesuit, according to _SpaceNews_.

“The most interesting part of doing this kind of mockup assessment is finding the stuff that you didn’t think of,” Brent Sherwood, vice president of advanced development programs at Blue Origin, told _SpaceNews_. “There are going to be surprises that are revealed by this kind of physical environment, when you can be in it and see it and feel it.”


In April, NASA awarded contracts to three companies as part of its human landing systems (HLS) project. Apart from Blue Origin, which scored by far the biggest chunk of the total $967 million, Alabama-based aerotech company Dynetics as well as SpaceX were also awarded $253 million and $135 million respectively.

SpaceX was awarded funding to develop the Starship, a massive spacecraft meant to carry astronauts to the Moon’s surface using the company’s Super Heavy rocket.

A next round of contracts are due in late fall. It’s still unclear how many landers NASA will be able to support, especially considering a tight budget squeeze. “All we can control is the work that we need to do,” Sherwood told _SpaceNews_.

“Testing this engineering mockup for crew interaction is a step toward making this historic mission real,” Sherwood said in a statement. “The learning we get from full-scale mockups can’t be done any other way.”


In addition to Blue Origin, the project is a collaboration with a number of other avionics heavyweights, including Lockheed Martin and Northrop Grumman, each of which are drawing experience from a number of other projects, including NASA’s deep-space Orion vehicle and Northrop Grumman’s Cygnus vehicle, an expendable aircraft that has resupplied the International Space Station.

This is only the start; Blue Origin still has its work cut out before the lander will get even close to launching, including the development of the rocket engines powering the different stages.


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## Hamartia Antidote



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## Hamartia Antidote

In 1955 Disney produces "Man in Space" seen by President Eisenhower leading to the creation of NASA.








Disney then gets von Braun to speak about it (and shows the prototype Space Shuttle design with a glide landing)








Space Shuttle launch animation and landing (remember this is back in 1955 before even Sputnik)






It was supposed to be Space Shuttle then Moon landing.
It ended being Moon landing then the Space Shuttle.

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## Hamartia Antidote

NASA Underwater Training For The Artemis Moon Mission Is Underway


NASA is currently conducting training for the Artemis moon mission that will see the next man and the first woman land on the moon. Mission…




www.slashgear.com





*NASA underwater training for the Artemis moon mission is underway*

1




NASA is currently conducting training for the Artemis moon mission that will see the next man and the first woman land on the moon. Mission training underway at the Johnson Space Center using the Neutral Buoyancy Lab (NBL). The NBL is a massive pool of water with sand and rocks at the bottom used to simulate weightlessness.

During the testing, astronauts wear evaluation versions of the spacesuit to be worn on the moon to get used to how they move and function wearing the modern spacesuit. Engineers participate in the project using “hardhat” dive equipment to simulate different tasks crew could do on the moon’s surface. NASA notes that early testing will help determine the best compliment of hardware development facilities and requirements for future Artemis training and missions.

Tests are currently focusing on evaluating Johnson’s facilities for Artemis spacewalk testing, development, and crew training. Astronauts perform various tasks such as picking up samples of lunar regolith, examining a lunar lander, and planting the American flag. NASA expects the tests to inform future mission planners on various subjects, including how many spacewalks to conduct during a mission, how long the spacewalks will be, and how far away from a lander the crew can travel.

NASA extravehicular activity test lead Daren Welsh is in charge of the testing. He notes that tools can be evaluated in the lab or the rock yard, but there’s more to be learned by putting astronauts into a pressurized spacesuit. During the testing, the team is working on some of the mission basics, such as how the crew might get up and down a ladder safely, how to conduct safe missions in different lighting conditions than the Apollo crew operated in, and other tasks.

The testing is paying dividends already. According to NASA, the team is becoming more familiar with the service operation concepts. Testing will continue, and as it does, the scope of testing will be expanded with plans to complete full lunar spacewalk timelines. NASA plans to launch the Artemis mission in 2024.


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## Hamartia Antidote



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## Hamartia Antidote



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## jamahir

Hamartia Antidote said:


>





Hamartia Antidote said:


>



@ps3linux @fitpOsitive @Fawadqasim1, you have to watch these vids.

I badly want to be on Mars in the 2030s.

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## Hamartia Antidote




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## Hamartia Antidote




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## Hamartia Antidote

*WATCH: NASA Artemis Moon Hot Fire Rocket Test - Livestream*

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## Hamartia Antidote

*Perseverance Rover’s Descent and Touchdown on Mars (Official NASA Video)*

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## Hamartia Antidote

@waz @LeGenD can we remove all the non-US Space Program nonsensical spam stuff mixed into @Galactic Penguin SST posts. He is ruining a very nice serious sticky thread created 6 years ago that we have put a lot of effort keeping nice. Apparently he is an angry Iranian who just has to be childish in posting crap outside the Iran threads.

What does Russian planes, Soldiers with guns, and Godzilla pictures have to do with the US Space Program???

BTW I thought the title was "NASA, a thread". Suddenly it was changed to "US Space Program, a thread" (probably requested by Galactic Penguin himself so he could post crazy military conspiracy stuff here)

Can we put the title back.

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## dbc



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## Hamartia Antidote



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## Hamartia Antidote

The HiRISE camera aboard NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter captured this photo of the Curiosity rover ascending Mont Mercou on April 18, 2021. (Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/UArizona)

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## Hamartia Antidote

NASA's Curiosity rover spots strange, colorful clouds on Mars


Curiosity has been cloud-watching.




www.space.com









An image made from 21 photographs taken by Curiosity shows twilight clouds just after sunset on March 19, 2021, adjusted to appear as the scene would to human eyes. (Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS)





















It might look like a postcard from Arizona, but this snapshot shows something much more exotic: the planet Mars, as seen by NASA's Curiosity rover.

The image is a combination of 21 individual photographs the rover took recently to study a strange type of wispy cloud over its Gale Crater home. Scientists realized two Earth years ago that the cloud type was forming earlier in the Martian year than they expected. So this Martian year, Curiosity was watching for the early clouds, and it was not disappointed. The clouds did indeed show up beginning in late January, when the robotic skywatcher began documenting the wispy, ice-rich clouds scattering sunlight in sometimes-colorful displays.

"I always marvel at the colors that show up: reds and greens and blues and purples," Mark Lemmon, an atmospheric scientist with the Space Science Institute in Colorado, said in a NASA statement. "It's really cool to see something shining with lots of color on Mars."

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## Hamartia Antidote

360 in 4K!!

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## Hamartia Antidote




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## Hamartia Antidote

*Spacewalk to Install New International Space Station Solar Arrays*


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## Hamartia Antidote




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## Hamartia Antidote




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## Raider 21




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## Hamartia Antidote



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## Hamartia Antidote

NASA’s Juno Spacecraft Glimpses Jupiter’s Moons Io and Europa


NASA’s Juno mission captured this view of Jupiter’s southern hemisphere during the spacecraft’s 39th close flyby of the planet on Jan. 12, 2022.




www.nasa.gov




NASA’s Juno Spacecraft Glimpses Jupiter’s Moons Io and Europa​




zoom in to see the two moons on the right

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## khansaheeb

NASA restarts it's moon projects:-​First Rollout of NASA's Artemis I Moon Rocket (Official NASA Broadcast)​

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## khansaheeb

Hot Fire Engine Test for the Artemis Moon Rocket​

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## Hamartia Antidote

Innovative 3D Telemedicine to Help Keep Astronauts Healthy


Holoportation is a type of capture technology that allows high-quality 3D models of people to be reconstructed, compressed and transmitted live anywhere in real time.




www.nasa.gov




Innovative 3D Telemedicine to Help Keep Astronauts Healthy​
During almost two-years of the COVID-19 pandemic, the growth of telemedicine and new ways of reaching people has changed and developed. In October 2021, NASA flight surgeon Dr. Josef Schmid, industry partner AEXA Aerospace CEO Fernando De La Pena Llaca, and their teams were the first humans “holoported” from Earth into space.




NASA flight surgeon, Dr. Josef Schmid gives a space greeting Oct. 8, 2021, as he is holoported on to the International Space Station.


Using the Microsoft Hololens Kinect camera and a personal computer with custom software from Aexa, ESA (European Space Agency) astronaut Thomas Pesquet had a two-way conversation with live images of Schmid and De La Pena placed in the middle of the International Space Station. This was the first holoportation handshake from Earth in space.





Holoportation team members are seen projected virtually on the International Space Station, Oct. 8, 2021. From left are Andrew Madrid, Dr. Fernando De La Pena Llaca, RIhab Sadik, Dr. Joe Schmid, Kevin Bryant, Mackenzie Hoffman, Wes Tarkington.

Holoportation is a type of capture technology that allows high-quality 3D models of people to be reconstructed, compressed and transmitted live anywhere in real time, Schmid said. When combined with mixed reality displays such as HoloLens, it allows users to see, hear, and interact with remote participants in 3D as if they are actually present in the same physical space. Holoportation has been in use since at least 2016 by Microsoft, but this is the first use in such an extreme and remote environment such as space.

“This is completely new manner of human communication across vast distances,” Schmid said. “Furthermore, it is a brand-new way of human exploration, where our human entity is able to travel off the planet. Our physical body is not there, but our human entity absolutely is there. It doesn't matter that the space station is traveling 17,500 mph and in constant motion in orbit 250 miles above Earth, the astronaut can come back three minutes or three weeks later and with the system running, we will be there in that spot, live on the space station.”

NASA is demonstrating this new form of communication as a precursor for more extensive use on future missions. Plans are to use this next with two-way communication, where people on Earth are holoported to space and astronauts are placed back on earth. “We'll use this for our private medical conferences, private psychiatric conferences, private family conferences and to bring VIPs onto the space station to visit with astronauts.”



The next step after that is to combine holoportation with augmented reality, to truly enable Tele-mentoring.



“Imagine you can bring the best instructor or the actual designer of a particularly complex technology right beside you wherever you might be working on it. Furthermore, we will combine augmented reality with haptics. You can work on the device together, much like two of the best surgeons working during an operation. This would put everyone at rest knowing the best team is working together on a critical piece of hardware,” Schmid said. 



Holoportation and tools like it could have great implications on the future of deep space travel. As plans shape up for missions to Mars, an obstacle to overcome will be the communication delays that are present during the travel to and from Mars. A delay of up to 20 minutes each way will present a unique challenge to communication whether through simple radio transmissions, video streams or new methods such as Holoportation. Communication is critical, whether for medical or mission support reasons, or staying in touch with family members. The crew will need to be connected with Earth and Mission Control, no matter where humans explore.

There are also direct applications here on Earth. Whether in other extreme environments such as Antarctica, offshore oil rigs or military operation theaters, this type of technology may help people in such situations communicate, bringing people together no matter the distance or environmental challenges.


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## Hamartia Antidote

NASA Shows Off Psyche Spacecraft to Media


Members of the media were invited to a clean room at JPL to interview mission leaders and see the asteroid-orbiting spacecraft before it ships to Florida for its August launch.




www.jpl.nasa.gov




NASA Shows Off Psyche Spacecraft to Media​





Members of the media were invited to a clean room at JPL to interview mission leaders and see the asteroid-orbiting spacecraft before it ships to Florida for its August launch.

Engineers are putting the final touches on NASA’s Psyche spacecraft, which is set to launch from Cape Canaveral, Florida, in August on its journey to a metal-rich asteroid of the same name. Members of the media got a chance to see the spacecraft up close in a clean room at the agency’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory on Monday, April 11. Reporters also interviewed mission leaders, including Psyche’s principal investigator, Lindy Elkins-Tanton from Arizona State University, and its project manager, Henry Stone from JPL.

“Welcoming reporters into the clean room gives the public a glimpse of the years of hard work that have gone into this mission,” said Brian Bone, Psyche’s assembly, test, and launch operations manager at JPL. “Thanks to the Psyche team’s determination and skill, we’re in the final stretch of readying the spacecraft to head out to our launch site in Florida."
To prevent the van-size spacecraft from bringing Earth bacteria into space, reporters wiped down their equipment with isopropyl alcohol and donned protective smocks and hair coverings before entering the High Bay 2 clean room in the Lab’s storied Spacecraft Assembly Facility. NASA is set to ship Psyche to the agency’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida for launch this summer.

The spacecraft will fly by Mars for a gravity assist in May 2023 and, in early 2026, orbit around asteroid Psyche in the main asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter. Scientists think the asteroid, which is about 173 miles (280 kilometers) at its widest point, may consist largely of metal from the core of a planetesimal, one of the building blocks of the rocky planets in our solar system: Mercury, Venus, Earth, and Mars. If so, it could provide a unique opportunity to study how planets like our own Earth formed.

The mission has been in the phase known as assembly, test, and launch operations since March 2021. Optimal launch periods to the main asteroid belt are limited, so over the last year, the team has worked against the clock to complete assembly. They recently attached the largest solar arrays ever installed at JPL and have put the spacecraft through a series of rigorous tests to simulate the extreme conditions that a NASA spacecraft endures. After undergoing electromagnetic, thermal-vacuum, vibration, shock, and acoustic testing, Psyche has been cleared to proceed. The launch period opens Aug. 1.

*More About the Mission*

Arizona State University leads the Psyche mission. JPL, which is managed by Caltech for NASA, is responsible for the mission’s overall management, system engineering, integration and test, and mission operations. Maxar Technologies in Palo Alto, California, provided the high-power solar electric propulsion spacecraft chassis.

JPL also is providing a technology demonstration instrument called Deep Space Optical Communications that will fly on Psyche in order to test high-data-rate laser communications that could be used by future NASA missions.

Psyche is the 14th mission selected as part of NASA’s Discovery Program.


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## Hamartia Antidote



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## Hamartia Antidote

These 8 NASA missions just got more time to explore Mars, asteroids and the solar system


Mars, the moon and asteroids will get a deeper look from these spacecraft.




www.space.com




These 8 NASA missions just got more time to explore Mars, asteroids and the solar system​





NASA's Curiosity rover will be taking shots like this on Mars for another three years. (Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS)

Eight interplanetary spacecraft have a go to continue their missions at Mars, the moon or various asteroids.



NASA extended these the work of these missions "due to their scientific productivity and potential to deepen our knowledge and understanding of the solar system and beyond," the agency said in a statement.


The decision to keep these longstanding missions going happened after independent reviews of their work, including academia, industry and NASA input. The panel evaluations comprising 50 reviewers "validated that these eight science missions hold substantial potential to continue bringing new discoveries and addressing compelling new science questions," the agency said.

1) Curiosity rover on Mars​






NASA's Curiosity rover imaged Mars using its navigation cameras. (Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech)

Curiosity, also known as the Mars Science Laboratory (MSL), landed on Mars in 2012 and will explore for another three years. It has spent several years climbing Mount Sharp (Aeolis Mons) after landing on the Red Planet's Gale Crater. It is on a long-term hunt to understand how water, and potential conditions for life, arose in that region of the planet. 


"In its fourth extended mission, MSL will climb to higher elevations, exploring the critical sulfate-bearing layers which give unique insights into the history of water on Mars," NASA stated.

2) Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter at the moon​





NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter photographed the Apollo 11 lunar module and the rest of the mission's landing site in 2009. (Image credit: NASA/GSFC/Arizona State University)

The Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) has been in operation since 2009, and will work for another three years. It is best-known for mapping surface detail of the moon in high-definition, tracking down landing missions (or crashes) past and present, and seeking preserves of ice water on the moon. 


NASA will be using its data in planning for its Artemis moon-landing program that plans boots on the surface no earlier than 2025, the agency said, giving LRO another three years for this work.


"LRO will continue to study the surface and geology of the moon," NASA stated of the extension. "The evolution of LRO's orbit will allow it to study new regions away from the poles in unprecedented detail, including the permanently shadowed craters near the poles where water ice may be found. LRO will also provide important programmatic support for NASA's efforts to return to the moon."

3) OSIRIS-APEX/OSIRIS-REx at asteroid Apophis​






NASA's OSIRIS-REx spacecraft captured this image of the asteroid Bennu using its MapCam imager on Dec. 12, 2018. (Image credit: NASA/Goddard/University of Arizona)

The Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification, Security-Regolith Explorer (OSIRIS-REx) mission will have another stop after dropping off pieces of asteroid Bennu at Earth in 2023. The spacecraft, in flight since 2016, will be redirected to visit Apophis, a near-Earth asteroid that was once deemed a slight threat to Earth in 2068. The mission will also acquire a new name: OSIRIS-Apophis Explorer (APEX).


The renamed mission will orbit Apophis shortly after the asteroid safely comes within 20,000 miles (32,000 kilometers) of Earth in 2029, NASA stated. "It plans to study changes in the asteroid caused by its close flyby of Earth, and use the spacecraft’s gas thrusters to attempt to dislodge and study the dust and small rocks on and below Apophis’ surface."


OSIRIS-APEX will have a new principal investigator: Daniella DellaGiustina, a planetary scientist at the University of Arizona who is deputy principal investigator on the current mission, OSIRIS-REx. The principal investigator for OSIRIS-REx, planetary scientist Dante Lauretta from the same university, will pivot to analyzing samples from Bennu after their return.

4) MAVEN at Mars​





An artist's depiction of NASA's MAVEN spacecraft in orbit around Mars. (Image credit: NASA/GSSFC)

The Mars Atmosphere and Volatile EvolutioN mission (MAVEN) launched in November 2013 to look at changes in the atmosphere of the Red Planet. It is suspected that gradual erosion of the atmosphere over the eons led to less running water at the surface of Mars, when pressure dropped.


The extended mission, which will clock another three years, "plans to study the interaction between Mars' atmosphere and magnetic field during the upcoming solar maximum," NASA stated. "MAVEN's observations as the sun's activity level increases toward the maximum of its 11-year cycle will deepen our understanding of how Mars' upper atmosphere and magnetic field interact with the sun."


MAVEN will also acquire a new principal investigator: Shannon Curry, a planetary scientist at the University of California, Berkeley. (The previous one, Bruce Jakosky from the Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics at the U

5) InSight Mars lander​








NASA's InSight lander snapped this image of the area in front of it on July 20, 2021. (Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech)

nSight landed on Mars in 2018 and has been useful in getting information on "marsquakes" to learn more about the planet's interior and how that evolved over the eons. 


The spacecraft has been working well, aside from the failure of a below-surface probe known as a "mole" and gradual dust buildup on its solar panels. Given its shaky power status, the mission has a few more months tacked on its mission until the end of 2022, but may not last that long.


"The extended mission will continue InSight's seismic and weather monitoring if the spacecraft remains healthy," NASA stated. "However, due to dust accumulation on its solar panels, InSight's electrical power production is low, and the mission is unlikely to continue operations for the duration of its current extended mission unless its solar panels are cleared by a passing 'dust devil' in Mars’ atmosphere."

6) New Horizons in the Kuiper Belt​
New Horizons launched in 2006 and has visited two worlds so far: dwarf planet Pluto in 2015, and the Kuiper Belt object Arrokoth (2014 MU69) in 2019. The mission is expected to fly as far as 63 astronomical units (or Earth-sun distances) in its next three years, but what is coming next (and if another flyby is planned) is still under wraps.


"The New Horizons spacecraft can potentially conduct multi-disciplinary observations of relevance to the solar system, and NASA's heliophysics and astrophysics divisions. Additional details regarding New Horizons' science plan will be provided at a later date," NASA stated.


7) Mars Odyssey​








This stunning view shows what an explorer might see on the Red Planet's north pole. This image is a 3D view created from observations recorded by the THEMIS instrument on NASA's Mars Odyssey spacecraft. Image released May 26, 2016. (Image credit: NASA/JPL/Arizona State University, R. Luk)

The Mars Odyssey spacecraft started work in 2001 and continues to work well in its third decade in space. While NASA warned the mission is running low on propellant, it hopes to squeeze another three years from the mission. Besides being a remote scientist, Odyssey serves as a relay for other Mars spacecraft on the surface in sending their communications back to Earth.


On the science side, NASA stated, "Mars Odyssey's extended mission will perform new thermal studies of rocks and ice below Mars’ surface, monitor the radiation environment, and continue its long-running climate monitoring campaign."

8) Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter​






A new crater on Mars, which appeared sometime between September 2016 and February 2019, shows up as a dark smudge on the landscape in this high-resolution photo from the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. (Image credit: NASA/JPL/University of Arizona)

The Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter has been in service since 2005 and provides a long-term view of the surface of the Red Planet. It charts changes in sand dunes, ice caps and other features and also keeps an eye on missions on the Red Planet. 


Aside from the loss of one instrument (the Compact Reconnaissance Imaging Spectrometer for Mars, or CRISM) due to a loss of coolant that shut down one of the two spectrometers, the mission should operate for another three years. MRO will continue its relay services for surface missions, too.


"In its sixth extended mission, MRO will study the evolution of Mars’ surface, ices, active geology, and atmosphere and climate. In addition, MRO will continue to provide important data relay service to other Mars missions," NASA stated.

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## Hamartia Antidote

Hubble telescope spots stunning 'Hidden Galaxy' hiding behind our own Milky Way


If it weren't for all the interstellar matter in the way, IC 342 would be one of the brightest galaxies in the sky.




www.space.com




Hubble telescope spots stunning 'Hidden Galaxy' hiding behind our own Milky Way​
_If it weren't for all the interstellar matter in the way, IC 342 would be one of the brightest galaxies in the sky._





This new view of the spiral galaxy IC 342, also known as Caldwell 5, as seen by the Hubble Space Telescope was released by NASA on May 11, 2022. Seen here is a zoomed-in view. (Image credit: NASA, ESA, P. Sell (University of Florida), and P. Kaaret (University of Iowa); Image processing: G. Kober (NASA Goddard/Catholic University of America))

Behold the "Hidden Galaxy" coming into view.

This glorious Hubble Space Telescope image showcases spiral galaxy IC 342, also known as Caldwell 5. No matter what you call this galaxy, scientists have had some difficulty observing it due to obstacles in the way, earning it its "hidden" nickname, according to NASA.


"It appears near the equator of the Milky Way's pearly disk, which is crowded with thick cosmic gas, dark dust, and glowing stars that all obscure our view," NASA wrote in a May 11 statement(opens in new tab).






The Hubble Space Telescope's full view of the spiral galaxy IC 342, aka Caldwell 5. The galaxy is 11 million light-years away and 50,000 light-years across. (Image credit: NASA, ESA, P. Sell (University of Florida), and P. Kaaret (University of Iowa); Image processing: G. Kober (NASA Goddard/Catholic University of America))


Hubble can peer through the debris, to an extent, as the telescope does have infrared capabilities. Infrared light is less scattered by dust and allows a clearer view of the galaxy in behind the interstellar matter.

"This sparkling, face-on view of the center of the galaxy displays intertwined tendrils of dust in spectacular arms that wrap around a brilliant core of hot gas and stars," NASA wrote of the picture.

"This core is a specific type of region called an H II nucleus — an area of atomic hydrogen that has become ionized. Such regions are energetic birthplaces of stars where thousands of stars can form over a couple million years."

The blue stars ionize or energize the hydrogen surrounding their birthplaces due to emitting ultraviolet light, NASA said. The galaxy would be one of the brightest galaxies in our sky if there was not so much dust in the way.

IC 342 is also relatively close in galactic terms, only 11 million light-years from Earth. It's about half the diameter of our own Milky Way (50,000 light-years across), making it relatively large, too.

Hubble has been in space for a generation and has photographed this galaxy several times before. You can also spot its imaging of IC 342 in 2017(opens in new tab) and 2010(opens in new tab).

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## Hamartia Antidote

Perseverance Mars rover spots weird snake-head rock and balancing boulder (photo)


This is a truly otherworldly landscape.




www.space.com









NASA's Mars rover Perseverance snapped this photo of a balancing boulder and snake-head rock on June 12, 2022, using its Mastcam-Z camera system. (Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/ASU)


Landscape starting to get a little weird...hopefully it doesn't find the cyclops


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## Hamartia Antidote



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## Hamartia Antidote

Hubble Peers at Mysterious Cosmic ‘Keyhole’


This peculiar portrait from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope showcases NGC 1999, a reflection nebula in the constellation Orion.




www.nasa.gov


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## Hamartia Antidote

LOFTID Inflatable Heat Shield Test A Success, Early Results Show


LOFTID Inflatable Heat Shield Test A Success, Early Results Show




www.nasa.gov




LOFTID Inflatable Heat Shield Test A Success, Early Results Show​



NASA's Low-Earth Orbit Flight Test of an Inflatable Decelerator, or LOFTID, launched on Nov. 10, 2022, to demonstrate inflatable heat shield technology that could be key to landing humans on Mars.

About an hour after launch on a United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket, LOFTD inflated and deployed in space. After being released by the Centaur upper stage, the heat shield, or aeroshell, began its perilous re-entry journey through Earth's atmosphere, entering the atmosphere at more than 18,000 miles per hour. LOFTID created enough drag to slow to less than 80 miles per hour by the end of its demonstration. At this point, LOFTID's onboard parachutes deployed, carrying the heat shield to a gentle splashdown in the Pacific Ocean.

The team recovered the LOFTID aeroshell within a few hours, and early indications show that the demonstration was successful. In addition to achieving its primary objective of surviving the intense dynamic pressure and heating of re-entry, it appears that the aft side of the heat shield – opposite LOFTID's nose – was well protected from the re-entry environment. This suggests that inflatable aeroshells can keep payloads safe during atmospheric entry.

Full study of LOFTID's performance is expected to take about a year. The results of the LOFTID demonstration will inform future designs for inflatable heat shields that could be used to land heavier payloads on worlds with atmospheres, including Mars, Venus, Saturn's moon Titan, and Earth.

Learn more about LOFTID at: nasa.gov/loftid

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## Hamartia Antidote

Artemis I Launch to the Moon (Official NASA Broadcast) - Nov. 16, 2022​


NASA

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Collins Aerospace selected to develop new space station spacesuit - SpaceNews


NASA has selected Collins Aerospace to develop a next-generation spacesuit for the space station, replacing aging suits that have become a safety concern.




spacenews.com


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Orion passing the moon









Cool!


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## Hamartia Antidote

NASA Mars lander InSight falls silent after four years


It could be the end of the red dusty line for NASA's InSight lander, which has fallen silent after four years on Mars.




phys.org




NASA Mars lander InSight falls silent after four years​






It could be the end of the red dusty line for NASA's InSight lander, which has fallen silent after four years on Mars.

The lander's power levels have been dwindling for months because of all the dust coating its solar panels. Ground controllers at California's Jet Propulsion Laboratory knew the end was near, but NASA reported that InSight unexpectedly didn't respond to communications from Earth on Sunday.

"It's assumed InSight may have reached the end of its operations," NASA said late Monday, adding that its last communication was Thursday. "It's unknown what prompted the change in its energy."

The team will keep trying to contact InSight, just in case.

InSight landed on Mars in 2018 and was the first spacecraft to document a marsquake. It detected more than 1,300 marsquakes with its French-built seismometer, including several caused by meteoroid strikes. The most recent marsquake sensed by InSight, earlier this year, left the ground shaking for at least six hours, according to NASA.

The seismometer readings shed light on Mars' interior.

Just last week, scientists revealed that InSight scored another first, capturing a Martian dust devil not just in pictures, but sound. In a stroke of luck, the whirling column of dust blew directly over the lander in 2021 when its microphone was on.

The lander's other main instrument, however, encountered nothing but trouble.

A German digging device—meant to measure the temperature of Mars' interior—never made it deeper than a couple feet (half a meter), well short of the intended 16 feet (5 meters). NASA declared it dead nearly two years ago.

InSight recently sent back one last selfie, shared by NASA via Twitter on Monday.

"My power's really low, so this may be the last image I can send," the team wrote on InSight's behalf. "Don't worry about me though: my time here has been both productive and serene. If I can keep talking to my mission team, I will—but I'll be signing off here soon. Thanks for staying with me."

NASA still has two active rovers on Mars: Curiosity, roaming the surface since 2012, and Perseverance, which arrived early last year.

Perseverance is in the midst of creating a sample depot; the plan is to leave 10 tubes of rock cores on the Martian surface as a backup to samples on the rover itself. NASA plans to bring some of these samples back to Earth in a decade, in its longtime search for signs of ancient microscopic life on Mars.

Perseverance also has a companion: a mini helicopter named Ingenuity. It just completed its 37th flight and has now logged more than an hour of Martian flight time.

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## Hamartia Antidote

Russian space debris forces space station to dodge, cancels US spacewalk


The Russian space junk is part of an old Fregat upper stage and will pass within a quarter-mile of the station at 11:17 a.m. ET.




www.space.com





Russian space debris forces space station to dodge, cancels US spacewalk​
The Russian space junk is part of an old Fregat upper stage and will pass within a quarter-mile of the station at 11:17 a.m. ET.

NASA has called off a planned spacewalk at the last moment after a large piece of Russian space debris came dangerously close to the orbital outpost.

NASA astronauts Frank Rubio and Josh Cassada were getting ready to step out from the QUEST airlock on the International Space Station early Wednesday (Dec. 21) morning to install new solar arrays to improve the power system of the orbital outpost when their ground control team commanded them to halt the work. Instead, the space station will perform an emergency maneuver to get out of the way of a large piece of space debris that is on track to get dangerously close to the lab later today. 


The debris in question is a piece of a Russian rocket, the 11-foot-wide (3.35 meters) Fregat upper stage used on Soyuz and Zenith launchers. The junk was predicted to get within less than a quarter of a mile (0.4 kilometers) from the station later today, triggering a "red," highest-level warning, Dan Huot, NASA spokesperson at Mission Control at the Johnson Space Center in Houston, said during live commentary.


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## Hamartia Antidote

NASA astronauts unfurl 4th roll-out solar array on spacewalk outside space station


Only two more new solar arrays to be installed after successful spacewalk.




www.space.com




NASA astronauts unfurl 4th roll-out solar array on spacewalk outside space station​Only two more new solar arrays to be installed after successful spacewalk.

The International Space Station (ISS) has a fourth new solar array thanks to the work of two NASA astronauts on a seven-hour spacewalk. 



Frank Rubio and Josh Cassada, both flight engineers on the space station's Expedition 68 crew, again ventured outside of the orbiting complex on Thursday (Dec. 22) to install a new ISS Roll-Out Solar Array (iROSA) to augment the station's power supply. The spacewalk was a near repeat of the extravehicular activity (EVA) that Rubio and Cassada performed almost three weeks ago, but this time focused solely on a power channel located on the station's port-side truss.


The two astronauts also reversed roles, with Rubio serving as the lead spacewalker (EV-1) for Thursday's outing. Rubio and Cassada began the spacewalk at 8:19 a.m. EST (1319 GMT), exiting the U.S. Quest airlock and quickly getting to work on their first assigned tasks. As Cassada set up a foot restraint at the end of the station's Canadarm2 robotic arm, Rubio configured the cables that they would later connect to tie the new array into the station's 4A power channel. 






NASA astronaut Frank Rubio (in the foreground) transitions along the space station as fellow NASA astronaut and Expedition 68 crewmate Josh Cassada moves an International Space Station (ISS) Roll-Out Solar Array (iROSA) on the end of the Canadarm2 robotic arm during a spacewalk on Thursday, Dec. 22, 2022. (Image credit: NASA TV)

The two astronauts then worked together to free the iROSA from the platform on which it was launched and temporarily stowed on the station. Like the array that was installed on Dec. 3, the 4A iROSA was delivered to orbit by a SpaceX CRS-26 Dragon cargo spacecraft, which arrived at the ISS on Nov. 27.



After Rubio freed the last bolt holding the array in place, Cassada, now positioned at the end of the robotic arm, took hold of the assembly to carry it to its installation site. At the controls of the Canadarm2 was NASA astronaut Nicole Mann, with Koichi Wakata of the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) coordinating her actions with Cassada outside.


"Just a head's up, Koichi," radioed Cassada during a break between moves, "that last one stopped a little quickly on me. If you see it ramping up on the next one, can you give me a heads up? That would be awesome." Although weightless in the microgravity environment of space, the mass of the 750-pound (340-kg) still had significant inertia when being moved.

Rubio transitioned along the truss to meet Cassada the P4 site. The two spacewalkers then unfolded the iROSA from its launch configuration and then secured the array atop a mounting bracket installed on an earlier EVA. Using a power tool specifically designed for astronauts to use on spacewalks, Rubio tightened the four bolts on the right and left sides of the iROSA to hold the assembly open.


After waiting for the space station to be in "eclipse," or when it was in the shadow of Earth, such that the existing solar array wings were not producing electricity, Rubio and Cassada then integrated the iROSA into the 4A power channel by attaching cables connecting the new array to the station.

At that point, all that was left to do was let the iROSA unfurl. With the release of two bolts, the potential energy stored by the rolled-up carbon composite booms caused the array to unroll on its own to its full 63-foot (19 meter) length with no motor needed. 






A new International Space Station (ISS) Roll-Out Solar Array (iROSA) unfurls in front of the legacy 4A solar array wing, augmenting the power for the orbiting complex. (Image credit: NASA TV)

"We can finally run that microwave we've wanted to run," said Cassada, joking about the extra power from the new array.


The whole process took about 10 minutes. Cassada tightened two bolts to stiffen the array and its installation was complete.


The ISS Roll-Out Solar Arrays are being installed in front of, and partially overlaying, slightly-degraded, existing solar panel wings. When used in tandem and once all six iROSAs are in place, the upgraded power system will increase the space station's electricity supply by 20 to 30 percent.


Cassada and Rubio completed the spacewalk by cleaning up and taking inventory of their tools before reentering the airlock at 3:27 p.m. EST (2027 GMT), seven hours and eight minutes after they began the EVA.


Thursday's excursion was had been scheduled for Wednesday, but was delayed a day because the space station needed to be maneuvered away from an approaching piece of Russian rocket debris. It was the third spacewalk for both Rubio and Cassada. They now have logged 21 hours and 24 minutes working the vacuum of space. 


The EVA was the 12th for the year, the fourth for Expedition 68 and 257th since 1998 in support of assembly and maintenance of the ISS.

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## Hamartia Antidote

Astronaut Harrison Schmitt (the last man to walk on the moon) talks about the 50 year Anniversary of his Apollo 17 mission.

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Best Space Station Science Images of 2022​


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Fly to space and back in amazing SpaceX booster cam video - Launch to Florida landing​


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