Archive for the ‘Space News’ Category
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February 23rd, 2015
Credit: NASA
“Houston, we’ve had a problem.”
That’s among the hundred-plus NASA audio files from historic spaceflights, current missions and even sounds of the future…sounds that you can easily download to your phone.
You can hear the roar of a space shuttle launch, snippets of President Kennedy’s declaration to reach for the Moon, or Neil Armstrong’s “One small step for [a] man, one giant leap for mankind” every time you get a phone call. Or, you can hear those anxious words from Apollo 13, “Houston, we’ve had a problem,’ every time you make an error on your computer.
NASA has made available MP3 and M4R (iPhone) sound files to download. The M4R files must be downloaded and imported via iTunes. They will not play in your browser.
Check out the menu of NASA sounds available for download to phones, tablets, and computers.
Go to:
Posted in 
New Mexico’s Spaceport America.
Credit: Spaceport America
A lawmaker in the Land of Enchantment is disenchanted with the state’s Spaceport America.
For one, the complex would be home for the commercial operations of Virgin Galactic’s suborbital space tourism business.
A Senate bill to sell New Mexico’s Spaceport America facility moved on to the Senate Finance (SFC) with a bipartisan no-recommendation last Thursday.
After a brief debate, the Senate Corporations and Transportation Committee (SCORC) voted to move along Senate Bill 267 (SB267), “Sale of Spaceport America,” sponsored by Senator George K. Muñoz (D-4-Cibola, McKinley & San Juan).
A hearing date in the SFC has not yet been scheduled.
The Senate bill can be found here at:
http://www.nmlegis.gov/lcs/legislation.aspx?Chamber=S&LegType=B&LegNo=267&year=15
Empty facility
According to Senator Muñoz, among a number of complaints: “There was a lot of hoopla before that if ‘we build it…they will come,’ but it has been several years now and nobody’s shown up yet. New Mexican taxpayers are continuing to foot the bill for a $250 million empty facility that is providing the Legislature shaky operational information at best.”
In response, Christine Anderson, New Mexico Spaceport Authority’s Executive Director, said:
“I think some legislators are impatient to have the commercial space industry literally take off! As others have said, space is hard and taking commercial passengers to space requires a great deal of due diligence.”
Credit: Spaceport America
End game
Anderson is responsible for the development and operation of the world’s first purpose-built, commercial spaceport, Spaceport America.
“In the end, the spaceport is doing fine,” Anderson said, as “it generated just over $1.6 million in income last year, and everyone needs to not lose sight of the end game,” she said.
“The sentiment to ‘sell the spaceport’ is not widely embraced,” Anderson said. There were many who spoke against the bill, she said.
BTW: Check out my good friend, Bob Martin’s TV report – a reporter for KRQE News 13 in Albuquerque – regarding the recent “fly-in” at Spaceport America:
Go to:
http://krqe.com/2015/02/14/pilots-passengers-get-special-spaceport-tour-at-fly-in/
Also, check out the Albuquerque Journal Editorial Board’s view of the topic:
http://www.abqjournal.com/544492/opinion/hold-the-countdown-on-sale-of-spaceport.html
Europe’s Automated Transfer Vehicle (ATV-5) reentry as seen from the International Space Station.
Credit: ESA/NASA
The European Space Agency’s (ESA) fifth and final Automated Transfer Vehicle — Georges Lemaître — was purposely dumped over the South Pacific on February 15.
The large cargo ferry craft was outfitted with an internal camera in the hopes of imaging from inside the reentry process.
While the ATV-mounted Break-Up Camera did produce images (nearly 6,000), those were lost in radio relay from an ATV-carried SatCom heatshield-protected sphere to Iridium telecom satellites as the hardware plummeted back to Earth.
ESA’s Break-Up Camera and data-storing SatCom – the white sphere – is seen installed aboard ATV-5 before Europe’s space truck left the International Space Station. The ATV burnt up on reentry. The SatCom survived the ATV break-up to return data to Earth that shows pictures were taken, but none made it back to ground.
Credit: ESA/NASA
Pictures were taken, but sadly none made it back to ground, according to an ESA statement. A team of researchers is investigating why further data packets didn’t make it through.
ATV’s death throes were recorded by other instruments, data that was returned successfully to the ground.
This “blackbox” system is part of ESA’s continuing research into reentry dynamics – information that is to help understand the projected outcome from reentering the multi-module International Space Station.
Here’s a sub story from me that finally surfaced on Space.com:
NASA Space Submarine Could Explore Titan’s Methane Seas
Credit: NASA/NIAC
by Leonard David, Space.com’s Space Insider Columnist
February 18, 2015 12:04 pm ET
http://www.space.com/28589-titan-submarine-robotic-saturn-ship.html
Credit: NASA/NIAC
Long March 5 engine test.
Credit: CMSE/CCTV
China rocket builders are reporting success in test firing engines for the Long March 5 booster. That launcher is tasked to further the Chinese space station program, as well as boost their future Moon exploration agenda.
China’s State Administration of Science, Technology and Industry for National Defense (SASTIND) reported the major ground test of the engines last week.
The Long March 5 will have a payload capacity of 25 tons to low Earth orbit, or 14 tons to geostationary transfer orbit.
According to the China Manned Space Engineering Network, the engine test firing was the country’s largest undertaken to date and reached the longest test system-level of power.
The engines use non-toxic and non-polluting liquid oxygen and liquid hydrogen as propellants.
SASTIND noted that the booster’s maiden flight has been scheduled in 2016 from China’s new launch center in Hainan province.
NASA’s satellite launching concept is called the Towed Glider Air-Launch System, or TGALS.
Credit: NASA
NASA is pressing ahead on an air-launched concept to toss small spacecraft into Earth orbit.
The rocket-launching concept is called the Towed Glider Air-Launch System, or TGALS.
The first flights of the one-third-scale twin fuselage towed glider took place last year at the NASA Armstrong Flight Research Center in California.
One of NASA Armstrong’s DROID small unmanned research aircraft tows the twin-fuselage towed glider into the blue sky on its first test flight.
Credit: NASA Armstrong/Tom Tschida
That test program involved a 27-foot-wingspan glider that was towed behind the Dryden Remotely Operated Integrated Drone, or DROID, in the skies above Edwards Air Force Base. Once the towline was released, the twin fuselage aircraft glided to a landing on the dry lakebed.
NASA Armstrong researchers are developing TGALS, which is funded as a part of the Space Technology Mission Directorate’s Game Changing Development program.
The one-third-scale twin fuselage towed glider rests on the Rogers Dry Lake at Edwards Air Force Base prior to its first flight Oct. 21, 2014 in this photo shot with a 16-mm. fisheye lens.
Credit: NASA Armstrong/Tom Tschida
In a test of the launch scenario, NASA plans to outfit TGALS with a scale-model Mini Sprite rocket, built by Whittinghill Aerospace of Camarillo, California. That firm is investigating many modular designs for 3, 4, and 5 stage vehicles of different (solid, liquid, and hybrid) propellant types.
The TGALS demonstration’s goal is to provide proof-of-concept of a towed, airborne launch platform.
Check out this video at:
Credit: Spaceport America
New Mexico’s Spaceport America hosted ten private pilots and 24 of their guests in a first ever Fly-in event held today at the spaceport on Valentine’s Day.
Visiting aircraft at today’s event ranging from a large twin-engine, 6-passenger Cessna aircraft to a two seat, homebuilt, RV 4, parked on the spaceport apron around the iconic “Gateway to Space” terminal hangar building.
Spaceport America is the first purpose-built commercial spaceport in the world. The launch complex is situated on 18,000 acres adjacent to the U.S. Army White Sands Missile Range in southern New Mexico.
Credit: ESA
The European space transporter ATV (Automated Transfer Vehicle) ‘Georges Lemaître’ has “de-docked” from the International Space Station (ISS).
The ATV-5 spent more than 200 days in space – the longest period of any of the ATV spacecraft.
It is filled with 2.5 tons of waste – dry refuse, waste water and equipment that is no longer needed and will make a controlled re-entry into the Earth’s atmosphere shortly. It is being aimed at a designated “spacecraft graveyard” in an empty stretch of the South Pacific.
A Break-Up Camera, or BUC, is flying for the first time on this mission.
The slow burn. So long to ATV-5.
Credit: Roscosmos-O. Artemyev
This ATV’s fiery demise will be tracked with a battery of cameras and imagers, on the ground, in the air and even from the Station itself, and this time on the vehicle itself.
“The battery-powered camera will be trained on the Automated Transfer Vehicle’s forward hatch, and will record the shifting temperatures of the scene before it,” explains Neil Murray, overseeing the project for ESA.
“Recording at 10 frames per second, it should show us the last 10 seconds or so of the ATV,” Murray reports. “We don’t know exactly what we might see – might there be gradual deformations appearing as the spacecraft comes under strain, or will everything come apart extremely quickly?”
Results from gathering the ATV-5 reentry data is expected to be helpful for the eventual reentry of the International Space Station, according to ESA.
Keep an eye on the ATV-5 reentry at:
http://blogs.esa.int/atv/2015/02/13/undockingreentry-timeline/
And also this twitter feed at:
Credit: Copyright – Don Davis – Used with Permission
It has been two years since a sky blast rocked the Chelyabinsk region in Russia on February 15, 2013. The event injured scores of people and damaged property as the over 65-feet (20-meter) across space rock fragmented in the atmosphere.
However, the whereabouts of its parent asteroid remains elusive according to a new paper published in the journal Icarus.
Astronomers had originally predicted that a 2-km near-Earth asteroid (NEA) designated (86039) 1999 NC43 could be the source body from which the Chelyabinsk meteoroid was ejected prior to its encounter with the Earth.
“These two bodies shared similar orbits around the sun and initial studies suggested even similar compositions,” said Planetary Science Institute Research Scientist Vishnu Reddy, lead author of “Link between the Potentially Hazardous Asteroid (86039) 1999 NC43 and the Chelyabinsk meteoroid tenuous” that appears in Icarus.
Unlikely link
However, reanalysis of the orbital parameters and spectral data by an international team of researchers led by Reddy has shown that the link between Chelyabinsk and 1999 NC43 is unlikely.
“The composition of Chelyabinsk meteorite that was recovered after the event is similar to a common type of meteorite called LL chondrites. However, the near-Earth asteroid has a composition that is distinctly different from this,” Reddy said.
The study also showed that linking specific meteorites to an asteroid is extremely difficult due to the chaotic nature of the orbits of these bodies.
To view this research paper, go to:
http://www.psi.edu/news/reddypaper
Deep space mission
“The week of February 15th is a good time to remember the fact that asteroids do hit our planet,” says Ed Lu, a three-time U.S. shuttle astronaut, now co-founder and CEO of the B612 Foundation.
Ed Lu, a three-time U.S. shuttle astronaut, now co-founder and CEO of the B612 Foundation.
Credit: B612 Foundation
The B612 Foundation is building the Sentinel Space Telescope which will provide advance warning of where asteroids are and where they are headed, and it will see them far enough in advance so that we have time to move them out of Earth’s path.
“The B612 Foundation is leading the first privately managed deep space mission with the goal to protect our world from the impact of devastating asteroids. The fact of the matter is that asteroid impacts can be prevented using technology we can employ right now. And unlike other potentially global scale catastrophic events, the solution is nearly purely a technical one, and with a relatively small and known cost,” Lu notes in a B612 Foundation statement.
Protect, deflect
So what do we need to do to protect the Earth from asteroid impacts?
“The surprising answer is that we must find the asteroids that will hit the Earth,” Lu responds.
“In fact, sometime in the next decade, the Sentinel Mission is likely to discover an asteroid on course to hit Earth. And while that asteroid will probably be only about the size of the asteroid that hit Chelyabinsk…that means that we may soon witness the first mission to deflect an asteroid to protect our planet. It is hard to believe that science and technology have advanced to this point. We live in truly amazing times,” Lu concludes.
United Nations: action plan
Meanwhile, the United Nations is making progress on responding to any potential near-Earth object impact threat.
Credit: United Nations
The UN’s Scientific and Technical Subcommittee of the Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space formally dissolved its Action Team 14.
It dissolved the special Action Team in recognition of the successful completion of its mandate to coordinate international mitigation efforts for near-Earth object (NEO) threats.
“Action Team 14 coordinated the establishment of the Space Mission Planning Advisory Group (SMPAG) and the International Asteroid Warning Network (IAWN) and thus played a vital role in the international community’s response to any potential near-Earth object impact threat,” said Elöd Both of Hungary, Chair of the Subcommittee.
Heads up…but what next?
Credit: NASA
Can we — or should we — try to protect Earth from potentially hazardous impacts?How about harvesting asteroids for potential economic benefits? Could asteroid exploration be used to boost our capabilities and help clear a pathway to Mars? How should we balance costs, risks, and benefits of human exploration in space?
An effort set up between NASA, the US government’s space agency, and a group led by Arizona State University called ECAST—Expert and Citizen Assessment of Science and Technology—is offering ordinary citizens a say in decisions about the future of space exploration.
ECAST is a network of different institutions, launched in 2010 to provide a 21st Century model for technology assessment.
Let’s discuss
Want to give your opinion on what to do about NASA’s Asteroid Initiative?
Last November, several hundred people in Phoenix, Boston, and online came together to learn about NASA’s Asteroid Initiative. They took part to consider and discuss different approaches to dealing with the opportunities and threats posed by asteroids.
Lots of things to consider: Detection; Increase Space-Based Observations; Mitigation; Build-Up Civil Defense; An International Consortium Should Lead Efforts; Use Nuclear Weapons; Use Kinetic Impactor Technology.
Now, the next phase of “informing” NASA’s Asteroid Initiative is an open invite for everyone to participate. So weigh in on the questions considered by the in-person and online forums.
This phase is open now, and anyone can participate.
Go to: https://ecastonline.consider.it/
Also, go to this informative video on this citizen outreach effort:
