Space News thread

[Takeovers]

Think outside the square, a propulsion, undetectable from earth, could deliver a small explosive devise, near an enemy satellite. Something the size of a lunch box, slowly moved into a kill position would go unnoticed in all that space junk in orbit.

They track pieces much smaller than this. Also such a device cannot be small as it needs a lot of power provided by a big solar array. Objects in space are not tracked by detecting their propulsion. Changes are detected by changes of their trajectory.

[BaitongBoy]

Interesting, indeed...

[harrybarracuda]

EM-drive is not, at least not yet, at a development level where it would provide significant advantages over conventional ion thrusters in earth orbit. So not a big advantage for military use.

Think outside the square, a propulsion, undetectable from earth, could deliver a small explosive devise, near an enemy satellite.
Something the size of a lunch box, slowly moved into a kill position would go unnoticed in all that space junk in orbit.

They wouldn't bother doing something so cumbersome. They probably already have lasers and EMP weapons deployed in orbit. What do you think all those secret shuttle missions were all about?

[BaitongBoy]

Scientists are reporting fast radio bursts coming from a source as far as 3 billion light years away.

That's quite far away, isn't it?...Apparently it's the second time...Fast radio bursts have come from the "same place" before...

[misskit]

SpaceX Aims for Jan. 8 Return to Flight with Falcon Rocket

CAPE CANAVERAL, FLA. —
Elon Musk's SpaceX plans to resume flying rockets next week following an investigation into why one of them burst into flames on a launch pad four months ago, the company said on Monday.

In a statement, SpaceX said it expected to launch a Falcon 9 rocket from California's Vandenberg Air Force Base on Jan. 8 to put 10 satellites into orbit for Iridium Communications Inc.

SpaceX had suspended flights after the same model rocket went up in a blaze on Sept. 1 as it was being fueled for a routine pre-launch test in Florida.

The explosion at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida destroyed the $62 million rocket and a $200 million communications satellite.

Space X, owned and operated by Tesla Motors Inc.

Chief Executive Officer Musk, has a backlog of more than 70 missions for NASA and commercial customers, worth more than $10 billion.

The company statement said that accident investigators concluded that a canister of helium inside the rocket's upper-stage oxygen tank had exploded.

In the short term, SpaceX plans to revamp its fueling procedures so that the super-cold liquid oxygen will not build up between the helium tank's liner and its outer covering, it added.

SpaceX said accumulation of oxygen in a void or buckle in the liner most likely led to the explosion.

"In the long term, SpaceX will implement design changes to the [helium canisters] to prevent buckles altogether," the statement said.

The company did not say when new helium canisters would be ready to fly, but that using warmer temperature helium and a slower fueling operation will prevent them from bursting.

"Iridium is pleased with SpaceX's announcement on the results of the September 1 anomaly as identified by their accident investigation team, and their plans to target a return to flight," company spokeswoman Diane Hockenberry said in a statement.

SpaceX has not said how much damage the Sept. 1 accident did to its primary Florida launch pad, nor when a new second pad in Florida, located at NASA's Kennedy Space Center, will be put into service.

SpaceX Aims for Jan. 8 Return to Flight with Falcon Rocket

[NZdick1983]

^ Reminds me of the movie we saw yesterday "Passenger"... this guys wakes up from his cryogenic sleep 90 odd years too early (prior to destination)...

Sending an SOS message back to earth takes 55 years lol...

Just brings to mind the enormity of the universe... it's not like we can send a rocket to investigate the source of the radio waves.. even a rocket that could travel at the speed of light, it would take 3 billion years to check it out...

In fact, it's impossible (in a direct way) to accelerate the mass of a rocket to anywhere near the speed of light, as it would take all the energy from the universe to propel it...

They will have to find a new propulsion device (non combustible) to have any chance to reach even our nearest neighboring planets/stars outside our solar system...

Then there is the fear of finding a civilization in the stars, which would likely be much more advanced than us, who might not be friendly...

[Luigi]

^ Wormholes, in centuries or more likely millenniums time, is how we (or AI) will manage that.

[Cujo]

.

Then there is the fear of finding a civilization in the stars, which would likely be much more advanced than us, who might not be friendly...

Why would a civilisation we found in the stars 'likely' be more advanced than us?
If THEY found US sure, otherwise not necessarily 'likely'.

[BaitongBoy]

We at TeakDoor will find them, wherever they are...

[Luigi]

One fact that I like, and highlights just how fast development of a new technology is once it starts, is that:

The first human to fly, and the first human to walk on the moon could have met each other.


Like, deep, dude.

All we need is someone to discover how to master the safe manipulation of space time and we're on our way.

[Topper]

We at TeakDoor will find them, wherever they are...

The search here for intelligent life is a never ending quest!

[Takeovers]

SpaceX has not said how much damage the Sept. 1 accident did to its primary Florida launch pad, nor when a new second pad in Florida, located at NASA's Kennedy Space Center, will be put into service.

Mostly a good article. Thanks for posting that reminder. I have been anxiously waiting for return to flight.

The last sentence, the one I quoted is somewhat weird though.

The second pad is the famous LC-39A. the pad where Apollo 11 launched for the first ever moon landing and the first SpaceShuttle flight. SpaceX have worked for years to get it ready to fly Falcon 9 and the coming Falcon Heavy. It is scheduled to start launching this month as well. If everything goes well with the first from Vandenberg, California.

The destroyed LC-40 is expected to become operational again by summer this year.

[Takeovers]

We at TeakDoor will find them, wherever they are...

The search here for intelligent life is a never ending quest!

Make that the search for intelligent life on earth in general. Somewhat doubtful of success.

[CaptainNemo]

One fact that I like, and highlights just how fast development of a new technology is once it starts, is that:

The first human to fly, and the first human to walk on the moon could have met each other.


Like, deep, dude.

All we need is someone to discover how to master the safe manipulation of space time and we're on our way.

I imagine that man will travel to distant planets and stars, but not in their bodies, but by their virtual selves being beamed into an avatar at lightspeed, some crazy quantum thingy that is beyond current imagining.

[Luigi]

Good thinking, quite possibly. But even at lightspeed we're really quite held back to a few stars.



"Today, only 12 stars
(including one stellar
remnant) are known
to be located within
10 light-years of Sol."

We're gonna have to develop machines that bend space time, create wormholes to really get going.

Sound crazy to us today, but tell people in 1869 that in one hundred years that man would be flying to the moon, getting out and having a stroll around up there, when they currently even get off the ground.

[Latindancer]

Quantum connection is instantaneous.....and we may well do it.

[Takeovers]

Quantum connection is instantaneous

I have been assured by people who should know better than me, that they are not able to transfer information instantaneously.

[BaitongBoy]

I can only imagine "being" 3 billion light years from "here"...

Much, much faster than the speed of light...

[Auroria]

New Horizons now just two years from its next target—a dark, mysterious rock not much is known about 2014 MU69, which may only be slightly bigger than Manhattan.

New Horizons continues to deliver the goods. Having sent back all of the data collected during its Pluto flyby in 2015, the spacecraft is still speeding along at a velocity of 14.32 kilometers per second relative to the Sun. That has allowed it to travel almost halfway between Pluto and its next target, a small Kuiper Belt object called 2014 MU69. By last Sunday, in fact, it had come to within two years of its flyby date—January 1, 2019.



New Horizons now just two years from its next target?a dark, mysterious rock | Ars Technica

[Takeovers]

January 04, 2017
RELEASE 17-003
NASA Selects Two Missions to Explore the Early Solar System

These are two missions of the discovery class. Meaning they are relatively low cost. The cost for one mission is capped at app. 450 million $ plus the launch vehicle.

NASA has selected two missions that have the potential to open new windows on one of the earliest eras in the history of our solar system – a time less than 10 million years after the birth of our sun. The missions, known as Lucy and Psyche, were chosen from five finalists and will proceed to mission formulation, with the goal of launching in 2021 and 2023, respectively.

The Lucy mission goes to the Jupiter Trojan satellites. Trojans are smaller objects in Lagrange points ahead and behind Jupiter. These points are exceptional as they are able to hold objects for a long time. Other points at the orbit of a large object like a planet can not be stable as the gravitational forces will push them out.

“Lucy will visit a target-rich environment of Jupiter’s mysterious Trojan asteroids, while Psyche will study a unique metal asteroid that’s never been visited before,” said Thomas Zurbuchen, associate administrator for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate in Washington. “This is what Discovery Program missions are all about – boldly going to places we’ve never been to enable groundbreaking science.”

Lucy, a robotic spacecraft, is scheduled to launch in October 2021. It’s slated to arrive at its first destination, a main belt asteroid, in 2025. From 2027 to 2033, Lucy will explore six Jupiter Trojan asteroids. These asteroids are trapped by Jupiter’s gravity in two swarms that share the planet’s orbit, one leading and one trailing Jupiter in its 12-year circuit around the sun. The Trojans are thought to be relics of a much earlier era in the history of the solar system, and may have formed far beyond Jupiter’s current orbit.

“This is a unique opportunity,” said Harold F. Levison, principal investigator of the Lucy mission from the Southwest Research Institute in Boulder, Colorado. “Because the Trojans are remnants of the primordial material that formed the outer planets, they hold vital clues to deciphering the history of the solar system. Lucy, like the human fossil for which it is named, will revolutionize the understanding of our origins.”

Lucy will build on the success of NASA’s New Horizons mission to Pluto and the Kuiper Belt, using newer versions of the RALPH and LORRI science instruments that helped enable the mission’s achievements. Several members of the Lucy mission team also are veterans of the New Horizons mission. Lucy also will build on the success of the OSIRIS-REx mission to asteroid Bennu, with the OTES instrument and several members of the OSIRIS-REx team.

The Psyche mission visits a large nickel iron asteroid. Such a metallic mass can only form at the center of a larger object, large enough to have a liquid core, like a planet.

The Psyche mission will explore one of the most intriguing targets in the main asteroid belt – a giant metal asteroid, known as 16 Psyche, about three times farther away from the sun than is the Earth. This asteroid measures about 130 miles (210 kilometers) in diameter and, unlike most other asteroids that are rocky or icy bodies, is thought to be comprised mostly of metallic iron and nickel, similar to Earth’s core. Scientists wonder whether Psyche could be an exposed core of an early planet that could have been as large as Mars, but which lost its rocky outer layers due to a number of violent collisions billions of years ago.

The mission will help scientists understand how planets and other bodies separated into their layers – including cores, mantles and crusts – early in their histories.

“This is an opportunity to explore a new type of world – not one of rock or ice, but of metal,” said Psyche Principal Investigator Lindy Elkins-Tanton of Arizona State University in Tempe. “16 Psyche is the only known object of its kind in the solar system, and this is the only way humans will ever visit a core. We learn about inner space by visiting outer space.”

Psyche, also a robotic mission, is targeted to launch in October of 2023, arriving at the asteroid in 2030, following an Earth gravity assist spacecraft maneuver in 2024 and a Mars flyby in 2025.

In addition to selecting the Lucy and Psyche missions for formulation, the agency will extend funding for the Near Earth Object Camera (NEOCam) project for an additional year. The NEOCam space telescope is designed to survey regions of space closest to Earth’s orbit, where potentially hazardous asteroids may be found.

“These are true missions of discovery that integrate into NASA’s larger strategy of investigating how the solar system formed and evolved,” said NASA’s Planetary Science Director Jim Green. “We’ve explored terrestrial planets, gas giants, and a range of other bodies orbiting the sun. Lucy will observe primitive remnants from farther out in the solar system, while Psyche will directly observe the interior of a planetary body. These additional pieces of the puzzle will help us understand how the sun and its family of planets formed, changed over time, and became places where life could develop and be sustained – and what the future may hold.”

Discovery Program class missions like these are relatively low-cost, their development capped at about $450 million. They are managed for NASA’s Planetary Science Division by the Planetary Missions Program Office at Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama. The missions are designed and led by a principal investigator, who assembles a team of scientists and engineers, to address key science questions about the solar system.

The Discovery Program portfolio includes 12 prior selections such as the MESSENGER mission to study Mercury, the Dawn mission to explore asteroids Vesta and Ceres, and the InSight Mars lander, scheduled to launch in May 2018.

NASA’s other missions to asteroids began with the NEAR orbiter of asteroid Eros, which arrived in 2000, and continues with Dawn, which orbited Vesta and now is in an extended mission phase at Ceres. The OSIRIS-REx mission, which launched on Sept. 8, 2016, is speeding toward a 2018 rendezvous with the asteroid Bennu, and will deliver a sample back to Earth in 2023. Each mission focuses on a different aspect of asteroid science to give scientists the broader picture of solar system formation and evolution.

[Latindancer]

Scientists spot new, extremely rare galaxy unlike any ever seen before

There might be no galaxy like it in the entirety of the universe, scientists have said.


Scientists have spotted a galaxy that doesn't look anything like what we've seen before.
PGC 1000714, as it is known, might be a one of a kind in the entire universe. At the heart of it is a 5.5 billion-year-old core, that looks red; that's circled by a faint blue ring.
The galaxy belongs to a specific class of Hoag-type galaxies, which by themselves make up less than 0.1 per cent of all observed galaxies.


Most galaxies are disc-shaped, like our own galaxies. But Hoag-type galaxies are round cores that are surrounded by a circular ring, with nothing connecting the two bits.
Scientists can use strange galaxies like the newly-discovered one to understand more about how galaxies are formed and how they change over time.


In studying PGC 1000714, researchers collected multi-waveband images of it. They could then determine the ages of the tow main features of it, its outer ring and its central, main part.
But the real shock came when the researchers found another second ring around the central part. What is unique is that strange, diffuse red inner ring that sits inside of the blue one.
Understanding more about how that strange ring – which are formed from colliding gas – will tell us more about how those galaxies can be formed.




"The different colors of the inner and outer ring suggest that this galaxy has experienced two different formation periods," said Burcin Mutlu-Pakdil, lead author of the paper. "From these initial single snapshots in time, it's impossible to know how the rings of this particular galaxy were formed."
And it could even upset our understanding of how the universe works.
"Whenever we find a unique or strange object to study, it challenges our current theories and assumptions about how the Universe works," said Patrick Treuthardt, a co-author of the study. "It usually tells us that we still have a lot to learn."


Scientists spot new, extremely rare galaxy unlike any ever seen before | The Independent

[Luigi]

Colliding stars will light up the night sky in 2022



A team of astronomers is making a bold prediction: In 2022, give or take a year, a pair of stars will merge and explode, becoming one of the brightest objects in the sky for a short period. It’s notoriously hard to predict when such stellar catastrophes will occur, but this binary pair is engaged in a well-documented dance of death that will inevitably come to a head in the next few years.

Colliding stars will light up the night sky in 2022 | Science | AAAS


It is, of course, a prediction of an event that's already occurred.

[VocalNeal]

Sound crazy to us today, but tell people in 1869 that in one hundred years that man would be flying to the moon, getting out and having a stroll around up there, when they currently even get off the ground.

In 1969 the Earth's population was only 48% of what it is now. In 100 years time the people who would have been going to the stars will be either living in a nuclear desert (or the desert) or trying to feed all the extra billions of humans.

[Auroria]

An asteroid just flew by Earth about 50% closer than the moon, and we barely saw it coming.



The asteroid, dubbed 2017 AG13, was discovered only Saturday by the University of Arizona's Catalina Sky Survey, according to an email from Slooh, a company that broadcasts live views of space.

It's between 50 and 111 feet (15 to 34 meters) long, and when it swung by Earth, 2017 AG3 was moving at 9.9 miles per second (16 kilometers per second). The near-Earth object, or NEO, came within about half the distance that the moon is from Earth, according to Slooh.

"This is moving very quickly, very nearby to us," Eric Feldman, an astronomer with Slooh, said during a live broadcast of the flyby at 7:47 a.m. ET on January 9. "It actually crosses the orbits of two planets, Venus and Earth."

http://finance.yahoo.com/news/astero...172000181.html

[BaitongBoy]

Maybe we will go with a Bang, after all...


“This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but a whimper.”

― T.S. Eliot

What would be the result of a "hit?"...