Archive for the ‘Space News’ Category
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July 7th, 2014
The Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) in northern Chile’s Atacama desert.
Credit: ESO/B. Tafreshi (twanight.org)
A new story from me, up on SPACE.com today. For those “stupid” aliens – please go to:
Should Humanity Try to Contact Intelligent Aliens?
http://www.space.com/26449-contact-intelligent-aliens-active-seti.html
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This free-air gravity map shows deviations from the mean gravity that a cueball Moon would have.
Credit: NASA’s Scientific Visualization Studio/S. Goossens et al.
A “free-air” gravity map of the Moon’s southern latitudes has been developed from data returned by NASA’s Gravity Recovery and Interior Laboratory (GRAIL) mission.
The free-air gravity map shows deviations from the mean gravity that a cueball Moon would have.
The map extends from the south pole of the Moon up to 50°S and reveals the gravity for that region in even finer detail than the global gravity maps published previously.
The image illustrates the very good correlation between the gravity map and topographic features such as peaks and craters, as well as the mass concentration lying beneath the large Schrödinger basin in the center of the frame.
The terrain in the image is based on NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) altimeter and camera data.
The view is south-up, with the south pole near the horizon in the upper left and the crescent Earth in the distance. The terminator crosses the eastern rim of the Schrödinger basin. Gravity is painted onto the areas that are in or near the night side. Red corresponds to mass excesses and blue to mass deficits.
Launched as GRAIL A and GRAIL B in September 2011, the probes — renamed Ebb and Flow — operated in a nearly circular orbit near the poles of the Moon at an altitude of about 34 miles (55 kilometers) until their mission ended in December 2012.
The distance between the twin probes changed slightly as they flew over areas of greater and lesser gravity caused by visible features, such as mountains and craters, and by masses hidden beneath the lunar surface.
July 20, 2014 – 45 years ago, Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin became the first humans to walk on another world.
Credit: NASA
UPDATE:
Where were you 45 years ago – on July 20, 1969?
For some readers, you became part of an estimated 600 million people – at that time, the world’s largest television audience in history – glued to the TV screen as Apollo 11’s Eagle lunar lander touched down on the Moon.
That unprecedented endeavor involved Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin – the first two humans to set foot on another world.
To commemorate the 45th anniversary of that heart-stopping achievement, Buzz is launching the #Apollo45 social media campaign to not only remind people of the Moon landing feat, but also to get individuals to share their memories of this historic event…or how Apollo 11 inspired them.
NOTE: This campaign doesn’t launch until Tues, July 8. So stay tuned for a special video that you’ll find inspirational and participational!
Videos can be shared through YouTube, or on Facebook, Twitter, Google+ or Instagram.
For the special YouTube Channel URL that becomes open asking for your comments on Tuesday, July 8th, go to:
Some of the notable personalities who will be sharing their stories include, Quincy Jones, John Travolta, Stephen Colbert, Tim Allen, Jared Leto, Sir Richard Branson, Neil deGrasse Tyson, Bill Nye, HRH Prince Sultan of Saudi Arabia and London Mayor Boris Johnson, with more to come.
Buzz will be doing a countdown leading up to the anniversary, releasing new videos every day starting from July 10 leading up to July 20th.
More information on Buzz can be found at www.buzzaldrin.com, on twitter @TheRealBuzz and Facebook at www.facebook.com/BuzzAldrinOfficial
Dropping in on Mars: The ‘dropship’ quadcopter and mockup rover.
Credit: Airbus Defence & Space
The European Space Agency (ESA) has undertaken the work under the StarTiger project – a task that involves developing and demonstrating a European precision-landing capability for Mars and other targets.
This latest team was hosted at Airbus Defense & Space’s facility in Bremen, Germany, joined by engineers from the German Research Center for Artificial Intelligence, Spin.Works – an aeronautics company in Lisbon, Portugal, and Poland’s Poznań University of Technology Institute of Control and Information Engineering.
StarTiger stands for ‘Space Technology Advancements by Resourceful, Targeted and Innovative Groups of Experts and Researchers’ working within the Agency’s TRP Basic Technology Research Program.
Credit: ESA/Rutherford Appleton Laboratory
Vision-based
Starting from scratch for the eight-month project, the Dropter team was challenged to produce vision-based navigation and hazard detection and avoidance for the dropship.
It has to identify a safe landing site and height before winching down its passenger rover on a set of cables.
This sound familiar for those that survived “seven minutes of terror” brought to you by NASA’s Curiosity Mars rover?
The Skycrane that lowered Curiosity rover onto Mars showed the potential of this approach, precisely delivering rovers to their science targets while avoiding rock fields, slopes and other hazards.
Commercial components
According to an ESA overview of the work, the dropship was customized for the project from commercial quadcopter components, with a smaller drone used for preparatory indoor testing.
Using GPS and inertial systems to fly into position, it then switched to vision-based navigation supplemented by a laser range-finder and barometer to land its rover autonomously.
This demonstration having proved the concept, the dropship approach is now available for follow-on development by planetary missions to come.
Perhaps this concept might also find use for future expeditions to Mars – astronaut-guided drones to distant or dangerous spots on the Red Planet.
For a video view of this work, go to:
http://www.esa.int/spaceinvideos/Videos/2014/07/Dropship_offers_safe_landings_for_Mars_rovers
Earth clutter. This artist’s view shows the broad scope of space debris circling the planet, hundreds of miles above sea level, at the same height where low-Earth orbit satellites operate. The spatial density of debris objects increases at high latitudes. Note that the size of the debris elements in this image is greatly exaggerated compared to the size of Earth.
Credit: European Space Agency.)
The National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) in Boulder, Colorado is part of a collaborative effort to help satellites dodge space junk.
Testing is under way for implementation of a system that models the effects of space weather on satellite orbits.
The Atmospheric Density Assimilation Model (ADAM) is designed to take into account real-time information on satellite tracks and space weather to predict future satellite paths as much as 72 hours in advance.
ADAM has been commissioned by the U.S. Air Force and brought into testing mode this summer.
Atmospheric drag
The ADAM project is being spearheaded by the private firm, the Atmospheric & Space Technology Research Associates, LLC in Boulder, in collaboration with NCAR, the University of Colorado Boulder, and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Space Weather Prediction Center also in Boulder.
“Space debris is a big problem for satellite operations,” said Liying Qian, NCAR’s principal investigator on ADAM.
Another NCAR participant, Stan Solomon, noted that interest in the problem is on the rise: “There is more concern and awareness of space-junk issues, and more recognition that atmospheric drag is the major uncertainty in tracking it.”
Steer around debris
As you read this, there are roughly 19,000 pieces of space debris being tracked. But there’s nothing that can be done to change any path of a chunk of space junk. Instead, satellite operators have to adjust spacecraft orbits to steer around the debris.
As noted in an NCAR press statement: “To project those orbital adjustments accurately, scientists need to know how the density of the atmosphere is evolving in the low-Earth orbit (LEO) zone, several hundred miles above the surface. Both everyday heating by the Sun and occasional solar storms cause the upper atmosphere to expand. This exerts added drag on LEO satellites, pulling their orbits closer to Earth. Atmospheric waves propagating from below can also influence upper atmospheric density, a topic now being studied in the DEEPWAVE field project.”
The international DEEPWAVE project makes use of novel instruments — based in New Zealand – that will provide an unprecedented view of gravity waves, a major shaper of atmospheric variability at multiple heights.
Cone of trajectories
Similar to NOAA hurricane guidance, ADAM will help users produce a “cone” of possible future trajectories of space debris, together with projected satellite tracks, according to the NCAR release.
With the initial ADAM model now complete, the next phase is a round of testing that began in June and will continue through the summer of 2015 at the Air Force Research Laboratory.
Once finalized, ADAM could eventually be used in both military and commercial settings.
Look for the issue on newsstands, but you can order it here:
The Habitable Exoplanets Catalog now has 23 objects of interest including Gliese 832 c, the closest to Earth of the top three most Earth-like worlds in the catalog.
Credit: PHL @ UPR Arecibo
So close, yet so far…Gliese 832 c is the nearest best habitable world candidate to date.
An international team of astronomers, led by Robert Wittenmyer from the University of New South Wales, Australia, have reported the discovery of a new potentially habitable Super-Earth around the nearby red-dwarf star Gliese 832 – a mere hop, skip and a jump away at sixteen light years!
Earth Similarity Index
According to the Planetary Habitability Laboratory (PHL) at the University of Puerto Rico at Arecibo, Gliese 832 c has an “Earth Similarity Index (ESI)” making it one of the top three most Earth-like planets with respect to our planet’s stellar flux and mass.
However, other unknowns such as the bulk composition and atmosphere of the planet could make this world quite different to Earth and non-habitable.
Gliese 832 c is a prime object for follow-up observations.
Artistic representation of the potentially habitable exoplanet Gliese 832 c as compared with Earth. Gliese 832 c is represented here as a temperate world covered in clouds. The relative size of the planet in the figure assumes a rocky composition but could be larger – an ice/gas composition.
Credit: PHL @ UPR Arecibo
Dynamical role
The star, Gliese 832, is already known to harbor a cold Jupiter-like planet, Gliese 832 b, discovered in 2009.
So far, the two planets of Gliese 832 are a scaled-down version of our own Solar System, with an inner potentially Earth-like planet and an outer Jupiter-like giant planet.
The giant planet may well have played a similar dynamical role in the Gliese 832 system to that played by Jupiter in our Solar System.
Rare architecture
As noted by the PHL, “it will be interesting to know if any additional objects in the Gliese 832 system (e.g. planets and dust) follow this familiar Solar System configuration, but this architecture remains rare among the known exoplanet systems.”
The new planet, Gliese 832 c, was added to the PHL Habitable Exoplanets Catalog along with a total of 23 objects of interest. The number of planets in the catalog has almost doubled this year alone, according to a PHL press statement.
The original research by Wittenmyer, Mikko Tuomi and colleagues, can be found here:
http://arxiv.org/abs/1406.5587
The test vehicle for NASA’s Low-Density Supersonic Decelerator rides on a balloon to high altitude above Hawaii.
Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
UPDATE:
At a NASA telecom today regarding the LDSD test, lead engineers detailed that the key elements of the project – the parachutes, the hardware-lofting balloon, the saucer-shaped test article – all were recovered in ocean waters.
Also recovered is a huge amount of video and other recorded data contained within black boxes.
The Supersonic Inflatable Aerodynamic Decelerator (SIAD) inflated successfully and underwent over a minute of flight, much to the delight of LDSD engineers.
A ballute pilot chute did deploy, designed to extract a much larger parachute. That huge parachute – the size of a small warehouse — tried to fully deploy, but did not. Recovered test data should tell the true story of why the supersonic chute did not perform as intended.
The test vehicle is thought to have landed in the ocean at some twenty to thirty miles per hour. It was recovered intact.
The LDSD program will fly hardware twice next year from the Hawaii test site.
An LDSD site for video: http://go.usa.gov/9FBG
NASA’s Low-Density Supersonic Decelerator (LDSD) saucer shaped test vehicle was carried aloft by balloon June 28 from the U.S. Navy’s Pacific Missile Range Facility in Kauai, Hawaii.
The test vehicle was toted skyward to about 120,000 feet over the Pacific Ocean, then released from the balloon.
Rocketed to a higher altitude and higher speed after balloon separation, the LDSD vehicle flew its flight test profile as planned. The upper layers of Earth’s stratosphere are the most similar environment available to match the properties of the thin atmosphere of Mars.
During the test flight, two technologies were deployed.
A screen shot shows the LDSD test vehicle after it dropped from the balloon that lifted it to high altitudes and fired its rocket. The picture was taken by a low-resolution camera onboard the vehicle. Earth is the blue-green orb in the background.
Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
The first is a doughnut-shaped tube called the Supersonic Inflatable Aerodynamic Decelerator (SIAD), with early indications that it deployed as expected.
However, the second technology – a huge Supersonic Disk Sail Parachute – appears not to have unfurled as expected. It was not immediately clear whether or not a pilot ballute was released prior to large parachute deployment.
The test vehicle splashed down in the ocean after the engineering test flight concluded.
This test was the first of three planned for the LDSD project – two more are slated for next year.
The LDSD effort is evaluating new landing technologies for future Mars missions, including how to support human expeditions to the Red Planet.
NASA’s LDSD program is under the wing of NASA’s Space Technology Mission Directorate, which is innovating, developing, testing and flying hardware for use in the space agency’s future missions.
As per local tradition, the test vehicle was blessed by native Hawaiian, “Uncle” Tom Takahashi, who dubbed it, “Keiki o ka honua,” or “boy from Earth.”
Credit: NASA/JPL
Curiosity self-portrait at “Windjana” drilling site. The Mars rover used the camera at the end of its arm in April and May 2014 to take dozens of component images combined into this space-based selfie.
Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS
A spectacular interactive panorama of images snagged by NASA’s Curiosity rover at Gale Crater has been produced by “panoramacist” Andrew Bodrov of 360cities.net.
Bodrov made use of images obtained by Curiosity’s Mast Camera.
A special tip of the space helmet visor goes to Nancy Atkinson, Universe Today’s Senior Editor, for posting about this unique panorama.
For a Martian eye-full, go to:
http://www.360cities.net/image/mars-panorama-curiosity-solar-day-647#171.29,0.00,15.0
Experimental Chang’e 5 lunar sample return capsule has undergone thermal vacuum tests.
Credit: China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation (CASC).
Space officials in China are detailing new plans to send a rover to Mars in 2020, followed a decade later by hauling back to Earth Martian samples.
The robotic Mars mission would consist of both an orbiter and a landing rover that will explore the planet jointly, said Ouyang Ziyuan, chief scientist with the Chang’e lunar mission and a member of the Chinese Academy of Sciences.
Ouyang outlined the Mars initiative at a meeting in Beijing, reported June 25 by Shanghai Daily.
The main goals of the mission will be to check for Mars life, both today and in the past, and to assess the planet’s environment, Ouyang said.
Moon missions
China is reportedly making progress in readying a new Moon mission, the Chang’e-5, signaling the third-phase of that country’s multi-pronged lunar program – the ability to rocket back to Earth lunar samples.
To be flown in 2017, the Chang’e-5 mission includes robotic sampling and return control. Doing so requires breakthroughs in Moon takeoff technology, sampling encapsulation, rendezvous and docking in lunar orbit, as well as high-speed Earth reentry.
Preparation for the 2017 launch of lunar probe Chang’e-5 is going as scheduled, said Ye Peijia, a top scientist with the Chang’e-3 lunar probe mission, as reported by China’s Xinhua news agency.
Drawing purportedly shows China’s Chang’e-5 – a robotic Moon lander and sampling craft to be launched in 2017.
Courtesy: China Space website posting
According to Hu Hao, chief designer of China’s lunar exploration program’s third phase, plans are also underway to loft an experimental spacecraft this year.
The purpose of the test is to validate the lunar return sample capsule to be used in the Chang’e-5 mission. That hardware, Hu told China Daily, would be exposed to high heat loads as it plows through the Earth’s atmosphere, approaching speeds of 11.2 kilometers per second.
Earlier this year, China’s space exploration goals were outlined in a Xinhua article, in which Ye Peijia said: “We plan to send a manned mission to the Moon. The Earth is our cradle, and humanity will go out from here someday. The Moon is the nearest… if we cannot land on it, where else can we go?”
