Leonard David's INSIDE OUTER SPACE

Archive for the ‘Space News’ Category

New story from me up on SPACE.com:

China’s ‘Lunar Palace’ for Space Research Tested on Earth

http://www.space.com/26267-china-lunar-palace-space-research-mission.html

Jupiter’s moon Europa could fall under the intense scrutiny of tiny spacecraft making use of “cold atom sensing technology.”

That’s a new idea by Draper Laboratory in Cambridge, Mass – a concept that won a $100,000 NASA Innovative Advanced Concepts (NIAC) Program award earlier this month.

Draper Laboratory is developing the low-cost concept for NASA that could accelerate the space agency’s ability to explore other planets by combining initial orbiting survey missions and follow-on landing studies into a single mission.

The idea is to use a small cubesat to take gravity measurements over Jupiter’s moon Europa to spot areas of interest – like water – and then eject a batch of tiny ChipSats to land and take close observations and samples on the surface.

Lack of moving parts

A Draper press statement notes that gravity measurements today are generally taken by two spacecraft flying near a planetary body. As the body’s gravitational forces pull on them, the relative drift between the two spacecraft is measured.

These measurements are then used to map the gravitational field of the planetary body’s surface, which can be used to look for water and other items of interest that inform planning for future missions that may take place years later.

ChipSats — which have not been used for planetary surface exploration — may be well suited for the task as their lack of moving parts may make them highly capable of surviving impact on a planetary surface.

The low cost of ChipSats could also enable NASA to use a large batch, reducing the consequences of losing some upon impact.

 

Yes, the Sun has its spots!

And now you can take part in research that can help with some of solar physics’ unanswered questions, such as:

Are sunspots born complex or do they evolve to become complex?

Do sunspot groups that are more complex produce more eruptions?

There’s a new Zooniverse project now online called “Sunspotter.”

The Zooniverse is a collection of web-based citizen science projects that use the efforts of volunteers to help researchers deal with the flood of data that confronts them.

Sunspotter is essentially a game of hot-or-not for sunspot data.

A visitor of the site is shown two images of sunspot groups and asked which is more complex. All that boils down to information extremely useful in helping astronomers understand the physics of our star – the Sun.

A new batch of more than 200,000 images of the sun is now available on the site, with a request by Zooniverse officials to help rank them in order of complexity.

Science goal

According to the website, at the start of any research project, there’s a need to ask: What is the science goal?

The long term goal of the research is two-fold. In Sunspotter, the aim is to construct a reliable measure of sunspot group complexity. This means being able to take a picture of a sunspot group and say, from 1 to 10, how complex is this sunspot group?

“In the long term, we expect to develop a machine learning algorithm that will be able to determine the complexity of sunspot groups without the aid of humans,” explains the site.

Sunspotter volunteers will provide a dataset that will train the machine learning algorithm to do this.

“In the end, the volunteers will be the ones to thank for putting in the hard work and improving humanity’s ability to classify sunspots automatically!”

Put your shades on and eye this site:

http://www.sunspotter.org/

 

What is Virgin Galactic up to now?

Here’s a new story from me on SPACE.com:

 http://www.space.com/26237-virgin-galactic-commercial-spaceline-progress.html

In asteroid speak, it’s known as 2014 HQ124.

The space rock appears to be an elongated, irregular object that is at least 1,200 feet (370 meters) wide on its long axis.

This particular asteroid was only recently discovered by NASA’s NEOWISE mission, a space telescope adapted for scouting the skies for the infrared light emitted by asteroids and comets. That spacecraft first spotted the asteroid on April 23, 2014.

Now, thanks to paring the capabilities of the 230-foot (70-meter) Deep Space Network antenna at Goldstone, California with two other radio telescopes, one at a time, new radar images of the object have been obtained.

And it’s quite the view!

Sharp viewing

The new imagery shows features as small as about 12 feet (3.75 meters) wide. This is the highest resolution currently possible using scientific radar antennas to produce images. Such sharp views for this asteroid were made possible by linking together giant radio telescopes to enhance their capabilities.

To image the asteroid, researchers first paired the large Goldstone antenna with the 1,000-foot (305-meter) Arecibo radio telescope in Puerto Rico. They later paired the large Goldstone dish with a smaller companion, a 112-foot (34-meter) antenna, located about 20 miles (32 kilometers) away.

The result of combining all this technology is that there’s been a dramatic improvement in the amount of detail that can be seen in radar images.

An animation of the rotating asteroid and a collage of the images are available at:

http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/video/index.php?id=1310

 

UPDATE:

NASA’s Low Density Supersonic Decelerator will not launch Saturday, June 14, due to unfavorable weather conditions forecast for this last designated launch date in the current launch period.
 
NASA will research range availability for the coming weeks and the costs associated with extending the test flight period for launching LDSD’s high-altitude balloon and test vehicle, with programmatic decisions required to proceed.

Per a telecon on June 12th, the LDSD officials are looking at the prospect of possibly flying later this month – but the final go to attempt the flight is TBD.

First flight of NASA’s saucer-shaped experimental flight vehicle, the Low Density Supersonic Decelerator, or LDSD, has been repeatedly delayed due to weather conditions at the US Navy’s Pacific Missile Range Facility in Kaua‘i, Hawaii.

To duplicate many of the most important aspects of Mars’ thin atmosphere, NASA plans to use the very thin air found high in Earth’s stratosphere as a test bed for the LDSD mission.

LDSD will use a 20-foot diameter, solid rocket-powered balloon-like vessel called a Supersonic Inflatable Aerodynamic Decelerator (SIAD).

To reach the desired test altitude of 120,000 feet, the LDSD project will use a helium-filled scientific balloon provided by NASA’s Wallops Flight Facility and Columbia Scientific Balloon Facility.

When fully deployed, the balloon itself is over 34 million cubic feet. At that size alone, one could fit a professional football stadium inside it. The material that makes the balloon, a very thin film called polyethylene that is similar thickness to that of sandwich wrap, will lift the massive test article to 120,000 feet.

Fish nor foul weather?

NASA scientists and engineers borrowed a technique used by the ‘o’opu hue, also known as the Hawaiian pufferfish.

The technique: Rapid inflation.

For the pufferfish, it is simply a defense mechanism. For NASA, it is potentially the element that links to the future of space exploration.

LDSD is testing Mars reentry technology that may well be used for landing larger and larger payloads on the Red Planet – including future habitats for the first human explorers to plant their footprints on Mars.

The world lost a global visionary. Here’s my new SPACE.com account:

Peter Glaser, Father of Solar-Power Satellite Idea, Dies at 90

http://www.space.com/26175-peter-glaser-solar-power-satellite-obituary.html

A special video now highlights the findings of a just-released report from the U.S. National Research Council (NRC): Pathways to Exploration – Rationales and Approaches for a U.S. Program of Human Space Exploration.

Go to:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jiUJ2EfDDp0

Issued June 4^th, the NRC report is arguing for a continuation of America’s human space exploration program. This study concludes that the expense of human spaceflight and the dangers to the astronauts involved can be justified only by the goal of putting humans on other worlds. 

The report recommends that the nation pursue a disciplined “pathway” approach that encompasses executing a specific sequence of intermediate accomplishments and destinations leading to the “horizon goal” of putting humans on Mars. 

However, the success of this approach would require a steadfast commitment to a consensus goal, international collaboration, and a budget that increases by more than the rate of inflation.

To view the entire public briefing on the report, go to:

http://vimeo.com/97463104

For a press release on the report, go to:

http://www8.nationalacademies.org/onpinews/newsitem.aspx?RecordID=18801

To gain access to the full report, go to:

http://www.nap.edu/catalog.php?record_id=18801

The U.S. Department of Defense has released its annual report to Congress on military and security developments in China. Parts of the report deal with that country’s military space and space industry capabilities.

Noted in the report, for example, are:

1)

Development of a second Chinese responsive space launch vehicle dubbed the Long March 11 (LM-11). The LM-11 will provide China with “a vehicle to rapidly enter space and meet the emergency launching demand in case of disasters and contingencies,” and could be launched as early as 2014 and no later than 2016.

In parallel, China is developing a multi-dimensional program to improve its capabilities to limit or prevent the use of space-based assets by adversaries during times of crisis or conflict.

2)

China launched five new remote sensing satellites in 2013, which can perform both civil and military applications. China also launched one communications satellite, four experimental small satellites, one meteorological satellite, and one manned space mission.

3)

China continues to develop the Long March-5, designed for lifting heavy payloads into space. The LM-5 will more than double the size of payloads China may place into geosynchronous orbits. More than just a single heavy-lift launch vehicle, the LM-5 has propulsion technologies that are reconfigurable to produce the LM-6 light-lift- and LM-7 medium-lift launch vehicles.

The new Wenchang Satellite Launch Center, designed to host these new launch vehicles, is expected to be complete in time for the first LM-7 launch in late-2014. The first LM-5 launch, delayed by recent manufacturing difficulties, is expected no sooner than 2015.

4)

China’s space launch vehicle industry is expanding to support satellite launch services and the manned space program. The majority of China’s missile programs, including its ballistic and cruise missile systems, is comparable to other international top-tier producers, while its surface-to-air missile systems lag behind global leaders. China’s missile industry modernization efforts have positioned it well for the foreseeable future.

5)

People’s Liberation Army (PLA) writings emphasize the necessity of “destroying, damaging, and interfering with the enemy’s reconnaissance … and communications satellites,” suggesting that such systems, as well as navigation and early warning satellites, could be among the targets of attacks designed to “blind and deafen the enemy.”

6)

The PLA is acquiring a range of technologies to improve China’s space and counterspace capabilities. In addition to directed energy weapons and satellite jammers, China demonstrated a direct-ascent kinetic kill capability against satellites in low Earth orbit when it destroyed the defunct Chinese FY-1C weather satellite during a test in January 2007.

7)

China plans to continue to increase its on-orbit constellation with the launch of 100 satellites through 2015. The future launches will include imaging, remote sensing, navigation, communication, and scientific satellites, as well as manned spacecraft.

8)

In a special topic section of the report, China’s reconnaissance satellites are detailed. China has developed a large constellation of imaging and remote sensing satellites. These satellites can support military objectives by providing situational awareness of foreign military force deployments, critical infrastructure, and targets of political significance.

To read the full report, go to:

http://www.defense.gov/pubs/2014_DoD_China_Report.pdf

Globaïa has created a compelling infographic on asteroid impacts.

This bit of visual feast is based on the B612 Foundation’s video on incoming events between 2000 and 2013: See that thanks to Spine films at:

http://vimeo.com/92478179

The data was collected by a network of sensors that monitors Earth around the clock listening for the infrasound signature of nuclear detonations.

That network detected 26 explosions on Earth ranging in energy from 1-600 kilotons – all caused not by nuclear explosions, but rather by asteroid impacts.

A list of the impacts shown in the video can be found here at:

https://b612foundation.org/list-of-impacts-from-impact-video/

For more information on the B612 Foundation and its Sentinel project, go to:

https://b612foundation.org/sentinel-mission/

The impressive work of Globaïa that creates and disseminates tools for global education from a variety of scientific disciplines can be found here:

http://globaia.org/