Space News thread

[harrybarracuda]

Put in your car and use it as a 3D map.

To what, Lilliput?

[Luigi]

As a 3D map.

In case you get lost coming back from Gulliver's or Tawang Daeng.

[misskit]

3 Astronauts Return to Earth After Four-Month Mission on ISS


Russian space agency rescue team helps U.S. astronaut Kate Rubins to get from the capsule shortly after landing of the Russian Soyuz MS space capsule about 150 km (90 miles) southeast of the Kazakh town of Dzhezkazgan, Kazakhstan, Sunday, Oct. 30, 2016.


Three astronauts have returned to Earth safely after a 115-day mission aboard the International Space Station where American Kate Rubins became the first person to sequence DNA in space.

Rubins, along with Japan's Takuya Onishi and Russia's Anatoly Ivanishin landed Sunday morning near Dzhezkazgan on the treeless Central Asian Steppes.

After they were removed from the capsule, the three space travelers sat on the chilly steppes still in their capsule seats while readjusting to the force of gravity after nearly four months of experiencing weightlessness. They were then taken to a nearby medical tent for examination.

During the mission, NASA's Rubins successfully sequenced samples of mouse, virus and bacteria DNA while scientists on Earth simultaneously sequenced identical samples. The U.S. space agency says the experiment could help identify possible dangerous microbes on the space station and diagnose illnesses in space.

Still onboard the ISS are Russian cosmonauts Andrei Borisenko and Sergey Ryzhykov, along with American astronaut Robert Shane Kimbrough. The three arrived at the space station on October 22.

3 Astronauts Return to Earth After Four-Month Mission on ISS

[Latindancer]

What on earth are those blue clips going across to her shoulders ? They seem to be pulling unnaturally against the material....

[BaitongBoy]

They were not on Earth, before...Maybe that's a clue...

[Takeovers]

What on earth are those blue clips going across to her shoulders ? They seem to be pulling unnaturally against the material....

My guess they help to retain some capability to move when cabin pressure is lost and the spacesuit is inflated. Google starfish syndrome. No, wait, better don't. In connection to spacesuits it means that the pressure tends to stretch the limbs out and severely restrict the ability to move unless you add means to avoid that problem.

[Takeovers]

Curiosity has found some nickel iron meteorites over time on Mars. Here a few photos.



A closeup of the same meteorite



Another, much larger meteorite, over 2m in size and dubbed Lebanon.



I have seen claims, there are so many nickel iron meteorites on the surface of Mars that you can easily collect and melt them for a large amount of steel. I don't think so because then Curiosity and the rovers Spirit and Opportunity would find them every day.

[Takeovers]

China has launched their new Long March 5 rocket for the first time. A heavy lift vehicle.








A space.com article

China Launches Heavy-Lift Long March 5 Rocket for 1st Time

China's powerful new heavy-lift rocket soared on its maiden flight today (Nov. 3), bringing the nation one step closer to building its own space station in Earth orbit.
The Long March 5 rocket lifted off from the Wenchang launch center on Hainan Island, off China's southern coast, at 8:43a.m. EDT (1000 GMT; 8:43 p.m. Beijing time), according to Chinese media reports.
Though Chinese space officials have not revealed many details about the Long March 5's maiden mission, the launcher apparently carried to orbit an experimental satellite called Shijian-17, which is designed to test electric-propulsion technology. [China's Space Station Plan in Pictures]
But the main goal of today's flight was to test the rocket, which consists of two stages and stands 187 feet (57 meters) tall. The Long March 5 is capable of lofting 27.6 tons (25 metric tons) to low-Earth orbit (LEO) and 15.4 tons (14 metric tons) to the more distant geostationary transfer orbit, according to the China Aerospace Science and Technology Corp.
The rocket is therefore nearly as powerful as United Launch Alliance's Delta IV Heavy launcher, the brawniest rocket operating today. (But some heftier rockets are coming online soon. For example, SpaceX's Falcon Heavy, which is expected to fly for the first time early next year, will be capable of sending 60 tons to LEO, company representatives have said.)
The Long March 5 is a crucial piece of China's ambitious space plans. For instance, the rocket will launch the big modules that make up China's 60-ton space station, which the nation hopes to have up and running by 2022.

The article states that the rocket is nearly as powerful as the ULA Delta IV Heavy. Long March 5 has an upper stage that burns hydrogen so is very capable for lunar or interplanetary missions too.

[bobo746]

The James Webb Space Telescope Mirror is seen during a media unveiling at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center at Greenbelt, Maryland, on November 2, 2016. The telescope is set to be launched into space in October of 2018, and will be positioned nearly a million miles from the Earth.

[Luigi]

and will be positioned nearly a million miles from the Earth.

Blimey.

[kingwilly]

Wow, that's roughly 4 times the distance of the moon and about half way to mars.

[kingwilly]

Here's your Christmas present sorted Takeovers.

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects...se-in-a-sphere

'






I wonder how accurate it is ?

[Latindancer]

Wow, that's roughly 4 times the distance of the moon and about half way to mars.

Nonsense. You have no sense of proportion.

The telescope will be a million miles away (4 times the distance from us to the moon), but Mars is another 224 million miles.


Mars and Earth can be 401 million km apart (249 million miles) when they are in opposition and both are at aphelion. The average distance between the two is 225 million km

[Takeovers]

Noticed the men in white coveralls for size? This thing is huge. One of the big challenges was to fold it into a volume small enough to be launched and then reliably unfold it into shape precise enough for an advanced optical instrument.

[kingwilly]

Wow, that's roughly 4 times the distance of the moon and about half way to mars.

Space News thread 07-11-2016 06:04 PM Latindancer Ignorant clod

That's quite a post to take offence to and red me for prancer/stalker.

I missed a few zeros.... no big deal. For some reason I was thinking Mars was an average of 2 million miles away, instead of 200+ million miles.

But nice googling skills.

[Luigi]

Reports of a Nasa paper being released i the next month with results of their Em-Drive testing does show thrust after all margins of error have been accounted for.

EmDrive: Leaked Nasa peer review paper replicates Roger Shawyer's 2006 results

[BaitongBoy]

Mars and Earth can be 401 million km apart (249 million miles) when they are in opposition and both are at aphelion. The average distance between the two is 225 million km

But they do get much closer:

In 2016, the planet Mars will appear brightest from May 18 to June 3. Mars Close Approach is May 30, 2016. That is the point in Mars' orbit when it comes closest to Earth. Mars will be at a distance of 46.8 million miles (75.3 million kilometers).

[Auroria]

What are people's take on the so called Planet 9.

Looks like it may well exist, going by its effect on the solar system (the wobble of the Sun, the gravtational pulls on KBO, etc.), estimated to be 4 times the mass of the Earth with an orbit of about 20,000 years. Possibly a wandering planet that got sucked into our neighborhood or an inner planet that got thrown out.

[Luigi]

Planet 9.

Pluto.

Reports of a Nasa paper being released i the next month with results of their Em-Drive testing does show thrust after all margins of error have been accounted for.

EmDrive: Leaked Nasa peer review paper replicates Roger Shawyer's 2006 results

Controversial Propellentless EmDrive is said to be undergoing tests in space on the Tiangong-2 station and US Air Force X-37B plane


Next Big Future: Controversial Propellentless EmDrive is said to be undergoing tests in space on the Tiangong-2 station and US Air Force X-37B plane

[Takeovers]

Controversial Propellentless EmDrive is said to be undergoing tests in space on the Tiangong-2 station and US Air Force X-37B plane

This is going to be interesting. I have been following the EM-drive for a while. The inventor Roger Shawyer is a snakeoil vendor if I ever saw one. I will never ever believe anything he says until it is confirmed by at least 5 well reputed sources. The same is true for the few others I saw strongly claiming it does work.

In October EmDrive inventor Roger Shawyer confirmed that the UK Ministry of Defence and the US Department of Defense are interested in using the EmDrive to power space satellites, because a propellant-less rocket engine would enable the military to get close to a target without anyone knowing it was there.

My opinion on Shawyer does not preclude though that the EM-drive might actually work. Which would throw the whole present world of physics in turmoil. There would be a lot of explaining and reworking physics.

I am waiting for december. By that time a peer reviewed study of the NASA eagleworks group is expected to be published. The history behind this: Eagleworks made early work public and were cut down and silenced by the NASA leadership. They are under strict order to make nothing public until they present a much better researched study and that study is then peer reviewed by another group. Leaked info says this new study was positive again on the EM-drive and the peer reviewed paper will be published by a reputable scientific outlet. The mere fact that it was accepted for peer review indicates that it was indeed strong evidence for the EM-drive working.

That the US airforce is working on it, is only claims by Roger Shawyer, which is not credible for me. He claimed that he gave a working EM-drive to Boeing, they evaluated it, a contract was prepared and then suddenly Boeing did not sign the contract and said they are not interested.

But there is that chinese link as well. That is interesting for every conspiracy theorist. A chinese researcher published data of a working EM-drive. Then suddenly, no more info from her. Public claims her funding was cut and she retired. But it seems she is nowhere to be found. Which gives a little credibility to rumours that she is working now with the chinese military, because indeed she presented something valuable.

[Takeovers]

Some more on the EM-drive. It is revolutionary because it would produce thrust without anything in physics theory explaining why. Thrust without propellant. If working it violates the very basic physical rule of conservation of momentum. One of the pillars of modern physics. Drives built by credible people show thrust that is miniscule, so small that it can be explained away as measurement error. NASA eagleworks and a number of amateurs are trying presently to build drives that prove thrust beyond that doubt but still very small. No matter how small, it would be the beginning of a revolution.

NASA eagleworks tries to do it by producing very small thrust but eliminating all possible errors in measurement through precision of their measurement setup.

Amateurs try to produce drives with higher thrust so getting above measurement error margins is easier. Many amateurs work on it but it is really hard.

Roger Shawyer and people working with him claim they can build EM-drives strong enough to build hover cars and air planes and even rockets that can lift off on earth and reach space purely using the EM-drive revolutionizing spaceflight. They have made such claims for awhile but they have not yet backed up their claims with hardware. The usual snakeoil vendor claims that they cannot publish because they are in negotiations with investors.

[Luigi]

You're obviously way more knowledgeable than me about such stuff. Some of the bits I've glanced over have mentioned something about it exhausting light photons, which would mean that it working (if it does, of course) wouldn't break any laws of physics as we know them. Could be headline grabbing baloney, of course.

[Takeovers]

Some of the bits I've glanced over have mentioned something about it exhausting light photons,

A photon drive would produce even less thrust with the amount of energy put in. There are some more exotic attempts to explain the EM-drive with something that are not really photons as we know them. For the moment I just want to see proof it works. The scientific community can then try to find explanations.

I am certainly not knowledgeable in this field. I just find it exciting if there would be something that really shakes up established physics. Something that can be proven, not one of the countless baseless claimes, we can find every day scanning through web pages.

[Takeovers]

Running on the ISS

[Takeovers]

I think there was no reporting on the manned chinese mission to their new space station tiangong 2. Time to do some reporting before they come back to earth.

They sent 2 Taikonauts for one month to their space station. Only 2 because they have to bring all their supplies in their rather small spaceship.

The launch


Some experiments in the station. They have silkworms and want to see how they build their cocoons in microgravity.


Taikonauts arrive at the station.



A tracking ship, anchored in Auckland. They don't have tracking stations around the world like NASA has. Looks like very well equipped.