nudge Posted August 3, 2020 Posted August 3, 2020 Japanese private company ispace announced its moon mission for 2022. 1 Quote
Subscriber CaaC (John)+ Posted August 6, 2020 Author Subscriber Posted August 6, 2020 SpaceX Crew Dragon astronauts believe the spacecraft is ‘ready to go’ The pair landed in the ocean on Sunday after a 19-hour journey from the International Space Station. The pair landed in the ocean, off the coast of Florida, at around 19:48 BST time on Sunday, after a 19-hour journey from the International Space Station. Speaking at a press conference in Houston on Tuesday, Behnken and Hurley told how the experience was “more” than they had expected, and their “surprise” at how quickly the events unfolded. Mr Behnken said: “Once we descended a little bit into the atmosphere Dragon really came alive, it started to fire thrusters and keep us pointed in the appropriate direction. “The atmosphere starts to make noise, you can hear that rumble outside the vehicle and as the vehicle tries to control you feel a little bit of that shimmy in your body.” He went on to say that the vehicle sounded “like an animal” as it entered the atmosphere and how the jolting felt like being “hit in the back of a chair with a baseball bat”. Hurley also told of how the vehicle was “rock solid”, performing “exactly how it was supposed to”. The pair made history on 30 May becoming the first people to launch into low-Earth orbit on a commercial spacecraft, built by SpaceX, owned by billionaire Elon Musk. The mission control said just after splashdown: “On behalf of the SpaceX and NASA teams, welcome back to Planet Earth. Thanks for flying SpaceX.” The reentry of SpaceX’s Crew Dragon capsule © PA Graphics Mr Hurley said: “Personally it’s significant because I was the last shuttle pilot and the first commander of Dragon and so that’s neat to think about now, I’ll certainly, maybe a year from now, will think a lot more about it. “But what I think is more important to me is the historical aspect for NASA and certainly for SpaceX. “For a company that’s only been around for a decade or a little more than that, to build a spaceship that takes the crew into orbit and returns them safely, that part of it, the historical aspect, for me is probably most significant. “And to be part of that, for me, is also by far the most important and one of the most incredible highlights that I’ll have for a professional career. “To just share in that journey, that odyssey, that endeavour – as we named our ship — was just one of the true honours of my entire life.” The pair also believe the spacecraft is “ready” to go on further missions. Mr Behnken said: “From a crew perspective, I think it’s definitely ready to go. “There are things that can be improved, just like even with the final flight of the space shuttle, I know Doug will tell you there are things that could have been improved.” Behnken went on to say that he and Hurley would give suggestions on how to make the vehicle more “comfortable and efficient”. He added: “From a crew perspective I think we’re perfectly comfortable saying that Crew One is ready when they finish the engineering and analysis.” Science Focus Quote
Subscriber CaaC (John)+ Posted August 16, 2020 Author Subscriber Posted August 16, 2020 What are some skywatching highlights in August 2020? See the Moon posing with various planets throughout the month, plus catch the peak of the annual Perseid meteor shower. Additional information about topics covered in this episode of What's Up, along with still images from the video, and the video transcript, are available at https://solarsystem.nasa.gov/whats-up... Credit: NASA-JPL/Caltech Quote
Subscriber CaaC (John)+ Posted August 21, 2020 Author Subscriber Posted August 21, 2020 New Ground Station Brings Laser Communications Closer To Reality Optical communications, transmitting data using infrared lasers, has the potential to help NASA return more data to Earth than ever. The benefits of this technology to exploration and Earth science missions are huge. In support of a mission to demonstrate this technology, NASA recently completed installing its newest optical ground station in Haleakala, Hawaii. The state-of-the-art ground station, called Optical Ground Station 2 (OGS-2), is the second of two optical ground stations to be built that will collect data transmitted to Earth by NASA’s Laser Communications Relay Demonstration (LCRD). Launching in early 2021, this trailblazing mission will be the linchpin in NASA’s first operational optical communications relay system. While other NASA efforts have used optical communications, this will be NASA’s first relay system using optical entirely, giving NASA the opportunity to test this method of communications and learn valuable lessons from its implementation. Relay satellites create critical communications links between science and exploration missions and Earth, enabling these missions to transmit important data to scientists and mission managers back home. OGS-2 optical telescope dome. Credits: NASA While optical communications provides missions with many advantages, it can be disrupted by atmospheric interference such as clouds. OGS-2 was chosen to be located in Hawaii because of its clear skies, but bad weather can still happen. On a cloudy day, LCRD would have to wait before transmitting data. In order to avoid delays, services may be transferred to another ground station developed by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory; OGS-1, located in Table Mountain, California. To monitor cloud coverage and determine if OGS-1 is needed, commercial partner Northrop Grumman provided an atmospheric monitoring station that observes weather conditions at the site. This monitoring station runs nearly autonomously 24 hours a day, seven days a week. LCRD and OGS-2 will demonstrate the numerous capabilities of optical, or laser, communications for use as a communications relay. Optical communications provides significant benefits for missions, including data rate increases of 10 to 100 times more than comparable radio frequency communications systems. This increase means higher resolution data for missions, giving scientists a much more detailed look at our planet and solar system. Benefits also include decreased power needs, size and weight, meaning longer battery life, more room for additional instruments on spacecraft and potential cost savings at launch due to lighter payloads. “LCRD and its ground stations will demonstrate optical communications as a relay, which means missions will be able to transmit data from points in their orbit without direct line of sight of the ground stations,” said Dave Israel, LCRD principal investigator at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. “In 2013, NASA’s Lunar Laser Communication Demonstration set a space communications bandwidth record from the Moon using optical communications with a system requiring a direct line of sight.” NASA’s Space Network manages OGS-2’s integration, test and operations and will eventually operate LCRD. The Space Network oversees a constellation of NASA communications satellites, known as Tracking and Data Relay Satellites, and their associated ground stations, which includes the White Sands Complex in White Sands, New Mexico. The network provides continuous communications services to missions in low-Earth orbit through radio frequency. While radio frequency will continue to have utility in space communications well into the future, the growing communications needs of many missions necessitates greater data rates. OGS-2’s installation was a collaborative effort between government, commercial and academic institutions. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Lincoln Laboratory provided the test and diagnostics terminal, which consists of three parts: an optical subsystem, digital subsystem and controller electronics. The three components send, receive and process optical signals to and from LCRD. Optical communications, through the development of LCRD and its two ground terminals, could have far-reaching impacts for future knowledge of Earth and our solar system. Spacecraft equipped with optical communications systems will effectively allow enhanced data, such as high-resolution video, to be brought back down to Earth faster, thanks to increased data rates. With this data, scientists will get a closer look at our universe with the potential to uncover exciting new discoveries. https://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/2020/new-ground-station-brings-laser-communications-closer-to-reality Quote
Subscriber CaaC (John)+ Posted August 23, 2020 Author Subscriber Posted August 23, 2020 Russian cosmonaut spots 'space guests' amid dazzling auroras in the video. They're not aliens. https://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/techandscience/russian-cosmonaut-spots-space-guests-amid-dazzling-auroras-in-video-theyre-not-aliens/ar-BB18fUIu?li=BBoPWjQ Quote
Subscriber CaaC (John)+ Posted August 25, 2020 Author Subscriber Posted August 25, 2020 (edited) Ancient galaxy is quite chill, actually The galaxy is 'surprisingly unchaotic, contradicting theories that all galaxies in the early Universe were turbulent and unstable'. Astronomers have spotted an extremely distant galaxy that looks “surprisingly” like the Milky Way. The galaxy, named SPT0418-47, looks as it was when the Universe was just 1.4 billion years old, just 10 per cent of its current age. This is because it took more than 12 billion years for the light from this faraway galaxy to reach Earth. According to the researchers, the findings, published in the journal Nature, suggest that this galaxy is “surprisingly unchaotic, contradicting theories that all galaxies in the early Universe were turbulent and unstable”. Study co-author Simona Vegetti, from the Max Planck Institute for Astrophysics in Germany, said: “What we found was quite puzzling; despite forming stars at a high rate, and therefore being the site of highly energetic processes, SPT0418-47 is the most well-ordered galaxy disc ever observed in the early Universe. “This result is quite unexpected and has important implications for how we think galaxies evolve.” Co-author Filippo Fraternali, from the Kapteyn Astronomical Institute, the University of Groningen in the Netherlands, added: “The big surprise was to find that this galaxy is actually quite similar to nearby galaxies, contrary to all expectations from the models and previous, less detailed, observations.” Images of the galaxy were taken using European Southern Observatory’s Atacama Large Millimetre/submillimetre Array (ALMA), a group of telescopes in the Atacama Desert of northern Chile. Because SPT0418-47 is so far away, the astronomers took help from a nearby galaxy by converting it into a giant magnifying glass, an effect known as gravitational lensing. The result is a rather “misshapen and magnified” version of SPT0418-47, appearing in the sky as a near-perfect ring of light. The astronomers then used computer modelling to reconstruct the galaxy’s true shape and found that it resembled the Milky Way – with a rotating disc and a bulge, where a large group of stars are packed tightly around the galactic centre. According to the researchers, this is the first time a bulge has been seen this early in the history of the Universe. They say the findings raise questions on how a well-ordered galaxy could have formed so soon after the Big Bang. Francesca Rizzo, a PhD student from the Max Planck Institute for Astrophysics, who led the research, said: “When I first saw the reconstructed image of SPT0418-47 I could not believe it: a treasure chest was opening.” A reconstruction of the true shape of SPT0418-47, showing its rotating disc and bulge © ALMA (ESO/NAOJ/NRAO), Rizzo et al. She added: “This result represents a breakthrough in the field of galaxy formation, showing that the structures that we observe in nearby spiral galaxies and in our Milky Way were already in place 12 billion years ago.” Although SPT0418-47 has features similar to the Milky Way, astronomers say they expect it to evolve into a galaxy very different from the one that contains the Solar System. They believe SPT0418-47 will join the class of elliptical galaxies, another type of galaxies that are dotted across the Universe. Science Focus Edited August 25, 2020 by CaaC (John) Quote
nudge Posted August 28, 2020 Posted August 28, 2020 Just watched The Farthest, a fantastic in depth account of NASA's Voyager mission. Superb documentary, loved every second of it... not just for the incredible story of the Voyagers that will in all likelihood outlive humanity (and may well be the last record of our existence), but also because of the wonderful directing and music. Just amazing. Thanks, @Bluewolf. It also made me think that some intelligent inhabitants of a far away galaxy finding the Golden Record and learning about us some millions years into the future would make a great plot for a scifi movie or novel. Maybe I should start working on it Quote
Subscriber CaaC (John)+ Posted August 30, 2020 Author Subscriber Posted August 30, 2020 The first element of the spacecraft for Artemis III, a NASA astronaut assigned to a future Commercial Crew flight, and a strong storm was seen from space … a few of the stories to tell you about – This Week at NASA! Quote
Subscriber CaaC (John)+ Posted September 2, 2020 Author Subscriber Posted September 2, 2020 Black holes: Cosmic signal rattles Earth after 7 billion years Imagine the energy of eight Suns released in an instant. This is the gravitational "shockwave" that spread out from the biggest merger yet observed between two black holes. The signal from this event travelled for some seven billion years to reach Earth but was still sufficiently strong to rattle laser detectors in the US and Italy in May last year. Researchers say the colliding black holes produced a single entity with a mass 142 times that of our Sun. This is noteworthy. Science has long traced the presence of black holes on the sky that are quite a bit smaller or even very much larger. But this new observation inaugurates a novel class of so-called intermediate-sized black holes in the range of 100-1,000 Sun (or solar) masses. The analysis is the latest to come out of the international LIGO-VIRGO collaboration, which operates three super-sensitive gravitational wave-detection systems in America and Europe. FULL REPORT Quote
Subscriber CaaC (John)+ Posted September 3, 2020 Author Subscriber Posted September 3, 2020 (edited) Europe's small Vega rocket returns to action The European Vega rocket is back in business. An enforced hiatus following the loss of a vehicle in July 2019 ended late on Wednesday with the successful deployment of 53 new satellites. The payloads were dropped off high above the Earth using a new dispenser system that will now become a regular feature on future missions. The aim is for Vega to service a big chunk of the vibrant market now emerging for small satellites. Operators of these spacecraft, who're often just start-ups, SMEs or university departments, can't afford a dedicated launch and look to lower the cost by sharing a ride to orbit. FULL REPORT Edited September 3, 2020 by CaaC (John) Quote
Administrator Stan Posted September 4, 2020 Administrator Posted September 4, 2020 Beautiful. 1 Quote
Administrator Stan Posted September 4, 2020 Administrator Posted September 4, 2020 22 minutes ago, nudge said: ???? Quote
nudge Posted September 4, 2020 Posted September 4, 2020 Just now, Stan said: ???? That was a Star Wars joke about it being the Death Star 1 Quote
Subscriber CaaC (John)+ Posted September 4, 2020 Author Subscriber Posted September 4, 2020 4 minutes ago, nudge said: That was a Star Wars joke about it being the Death Star Still beautiful to see. Quote
Administrator Stan Posted September 4, 2020 Administrator Posted September 4, 2020 8 minutes ago, nudge said: That was a Star Wars joke about it being the Death Star I know. I was taking it to a different place. Quote
Administrator Stan Posted September 4, 2020 Administrator Posted September 4, 2020 Wounded. @CaaC (John) took my heart away. How rude. Quote
Subscriber CaaC (John)+ Posted September 4, 2020 Author Subscriber Posted September 4, 2020 12 minutes ago, Stan said: Wounded. @CaaC (John) took my heart away. How rude. Lol, the video disappeared in your post that's why I removed the heart and to be honest I thought Ingar knew something that I didn't, and it wasn't a moon I put your heart back. Quote
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