That's good, we wouldn't want them getting 2nd thoughts. :)Quote:
Originally Posted by Takeovers
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That's good, we wouldn't want them getting 2nd thoughts. :)Quote:
Originally Posted by Takeovers
Head of NASA has announced he is stepping down as soon as Biden gets in. I didn’t realise NASA was a political post
Seems these days everything, whether intended or not, is a political post.
Quote:
Originally Posted by TheRealKW
The head of NASA is a political post, always was. Though on a few occasions a new president kept the NASA administrator in place.
Jim Bridenstine was feared to be one of the worst Trump appointees when announced. Turned out to everybodys surprise as possibly the only good one. Democrat space fans lobbied to keep him. Some speculation on why he chose to retire. He was a climate change denier when appointed but turned on the topic as soon as he became NASA administrator. He gave out contracts as firm fixed price, opposed to SLS/Orion cost+ contracts that lets Boeing charge billions and never deliver. He kicked Boeing ass by throwing them out of competitions for being too expensive and techncally inferior to other offers. In two major contracts Boeing was even excluded from the final selection process because their offers were so obviously inferior that they were not even worth a closer look.
There is some fear among space fans that space, particularly manned space exploration may be the one area where the Biden administration may be detrimental.
Maybe the fears were premature.Quote:
Originally Posted by Takeovers
Ellen Stofan, like any possible Democrat candidate has emphasis on Earth science. But she is in favor of manned space exploration as well.Quote:
The NASA transition team for President-elect Joe Biden's administration, led by Smithsonian @airandspace director Ellen Stofan:
https://www.wilsonquarterly.com/quar...ars-for-earth/Quote:
WHY THE MOON? WHY MARS? FOR EARTH.
BY ELLEN STOFAN
I don't expect too much in that regard from NASA. As long as they don't get in the way and provide data from their archives, its good IMO. SpaceX will lead the way. NASA can then buy missions.
Voyage to Another World: The Victor Martin-Malburet Photograph Collection
"Tracing the artistic heritage of the Apollo Missions and Golden Age of space exploration, the Victor Martin-Malburet collection comprises over 2,400 photographs arranged chronologically across 700 lots. Through their cameras the astronauts, turned artists, were able to convey to humanity the beauty and profundity of their experiences, forever changing the way we see our place in the Universe.
Many of the montaged panoramas give us a sense of what it felt to stand on another planetary body and admire the stark lonely beauty of the view, other photographs are unreleased rarities that may only be known in a handful of extant prints. Meticulous research including radio snippets from the missions and contemporary press coverage deepens the story of the Golden Age of space exploration, as told by both the astronauts and billions of observers on Earth. The accompanying pdf catalogue establishes the connection between the photographs and mission transcripts.
Highlights from the collection were exhibited in 2019 at: the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, Copenhagen; Grand Palais, Paris; and Kunsthaus, Zurich. For Victor the juxtaposition of these photographs alongside masterpieces from antiquity through to Rothko was the zenith of his vision, placing them within the grand narrative of human ingenuity and creativity. He is delighted to offer them at auction for others to now add to their collections."
700 Images can be viewed here:
Voyage to Another World: The Victor Martin-Malburet Photograph Collection
The first official crew exchange flight with SpaceX Dragon is scheduled to lift off in a few hours.
at 7:27 p.m. EST on November 15, 00:27 UTC on November 16.
Coverage is already running, here the SpaceX stream. NASA has its own stream but content is the same.
Crew-1 Mission - YouTube
Presently the 4 Astronauts are driving from the preparation area to the pad. In style with Tesla cars of course.
Warning though. If you want to watch it you have to endure the NASA social media outreach content.
That's a great watch... at the doorway now.Quote:
Originally Posted by Takeovers
Looks like 4 astronauts are going to be on the flight. Going to be interesting if one of them turns out to be COVID positive a couple hundred miles above the earth.
Even cruise ships, which are setting sail certified COVID free, are consistently experiencing outbreaks.
More info about the voyage for anyone interested: Nasa SpaceX launch: Astronaut crew strapped in for flight - BBC News
They have been under quite strict quarantine for a while. They really don't want to carry COVID to the ISS. But they can't evacuate the ISS and need to rotate crew.Quote:
Originally Posted by TTraveler
BTW, little fun fact I heard today when the astronauts were introduced. Two of them have a doctor in philosophy on their resume. Among a lot of other qualifications.
Dragon in orbit. First stage landed on drone ship. Another info, yesterdays launch was canceled due to weather conditions. Launch would have been OK, but along the trajectory weather was bad. In case of abort weather conditions need to be good enough that the aborted Dragon capsule can be recovered. But NASA gave as the main concern landing conditions for the first stage. NASA wants to reuse that stage for the next manned flight of Dragon.
Dragon successfully separated from the second stage on nominal trajectory, is on the way to the ISS.
Thanks for your posts. Excellent result for all involved.Quote:
Originally Posted by Takeovers
Dragon has just docked to the ISS. Everything was very smooth and fast, fully automated. People on board the ISS and Dragon only monitored. Hatch opening is under way. Takes some time with checking of the seals and that everything is airtight.
Attachment 60140
NASA coverage YouTube streams are only 720p, low res. But I love what microgravity does to long hair. :)
Attachment 60141
Inside the ISS, opening the first hatch.
You are seeing US astronaut and microbiologist Kate Rubins. She is following procedure to open the hatches.
An older photo with Kate Rubins in the cupola, watching the Earth.
Attachment 60145
Pictures of Dragon with crew, already docked at the ISS. By now they have already taken off their spacesuits.
Attachment 60146
Attachment 60147
Dragon crew has entered the ISS.
This is the first time that there is a full complement of 4 long term crew of US astronauts on the ISS. So far they were limited to 3 due to the capacity of Soyuz. There were larger crews only during the short stays of the Spaceshuttle. This Dragon crew will stay ~6 months and will be released by another Dragon crew.
The plan had been that SpaceX Dragon and Boeing Starliner take turns but Boeing is not nearly ready after their dismal performance on the first unmanned flight. So the next flight will be Dragon for sure again and presently it is very likely that the third flight will be Dragon again. The first regular crew flight with Starliner is now expected in early 2022. Unmanned and manned demo flight of Boeing Starliner are expected in 2021. The problems are mostly software. Boeing has now hired the former head of the SpaceX software team as head of their software department. Let's hope he can sort out the mess Boeing has made of the software.
NASA has admitted that they very closely monitored SpaceX but monitored Boeing very little because they were the trusted incumbent who would get things right without much supervision. A major miscalculation. Boeing has lost the trust of NASA by now almost completely.
On average 2 astronauts are needed for ISS maintenance of the US side. With 3 crew 1 of them on average could do science. Now with 4 there are 2 available for science.
For some time Kate Rubins was the only US astronaut along with 2 Russian cosmonauts. One cosmonaut in the picture, one is busy elsewhere on the station.
Attachment 60149
Attachment 60150
LOL, they will have "duffed" their spacesuits. :)Quote:
Originally Posted by Takeovers
Earth's nearest miss on record as small asteroid zips by closer than ISS
Last week, the Earth had its closest shave with an asteroid ever recorded, when a small space rock skimmed just 370 km (230 miles) above the surface. For comparison, that’s closer than the orbit of the International Space Station.
The asteroid, dubbed 2020 VT4, made its closest approach at 17:20 UTC on Friday, November 13. But it wasn’t actually spotted until 15 hours later, by a survey called the Asteroid Terrestrial-impact Last Alert System (ATLAS) at the Mauna Loa Observatory in Hawaii.
That’s the closest we’ve ever seen any asteroid swing past the Earth, and the competition isn’t even close (no pun intended). This one is about eight times closer than the previous record holder, a rock named 2020 QG that whizzed by at a distance of 2,950 km (1,830 miles) in August this year.
Earth'''s nearest miss on record as small asteroid zips by closer than ISS
Whoops.Quote:
Originally Posted by Edmond
Not much point in pouring money into ATLAS then, is it?
But it wasnt that large either. Wiki tells us that
Given an estimated absolute magnitude of 28.7, 2020 VT4 is estimated to be around 5 to 10 metres in diameter. Had it impacted Earth, it would mostly disintegrate during atmospheric entry and might leave a common strewn field.[4]
A picture of Starship SN8. Just to show how magnificent the colors in the early morning can be. I have a series of pictures over the day with all kinds of changing colors. Residents say the colors in the area alone are reason enough to live there.
Attachment 60405
China Launches Moon Mission to Bring Back Lunar Rocks
By Steven Lee Myers and Kenneth Chang
China launched a spacecraft to the moon’s surface on Monday, aiming to be the first nation to bring back lunar rock and soil samples in more than four decades.
The mission, called Chang’e-5, is the latest step in an ambitious space program that China hopes will culminate with an international lunar research station and ultimately a human colony on the moon by the 2030s.
The launch, from the Wenchang space site at Hainan Island in China’s south, was broadcast live by Chinese state media. China has often been secretive about its deep space missions, waiting until they made it to orbit before officially announcing success. The broadcast without any delay may be a sign of growing confidence in the proven track record of its space program.
Cameras mounted on the rocket showed its boosters falling away and the ejection of the protective faring over the robotic probe as it headed to space. Audio and video from the mission’s control room captured employees of China’s space program applauding as the first and second stage of the rocket separated, and then when the spacecraft reached orbit about 15 minutes after liftoff. An additional ignition of the spacecraft’s engine will set it on course to the moon.
If Chang’e-5’s journey to the moon and back is successful, China will be only the third nation to bring pieces of the moon back to Earth. NASA astronauts accomplished that feat during the Apollo moon landings, as did the Soviet Union’s Luna robotic landers, ending with Luna 24 in 1976. Those samples made major contributions to the understanding of the solar system’s evolution, and planetary scientists have waited eagerly for the day more samples would be brought back to Earth.
“This is a really audacious mission,” said David S. Draper, the deputy chief scientist at NASA. “They’re going to move the ball down the field in a big way with respect to understanding a lot of things that are important about lunar history.”
There has been a revival of interest in returning to the moon in the past couple of decades after the discovery of frozen water in shadowed craters in the polar regions. NASA has set a goal to send astronauts on new moon landings in the coming years with its Artemis program. Commercial companies — some under contract to NASA — are aiming to send robotic landers to the moon in the next year or two. India and an Israeli nonprofit tried to land spacecraft on the moon in 2019, but both spacecraft crashed.
In this century, so far only China has successfully put robotic spacecraft on the surface of the moon: Chang’e-3 in December 2013, and Chang’e-4, which in January 2019 became the first spacecraft to land on the far side of the moon. Chang’e-4’s rover, called Yutu-2, is still operating, studying lunar geology nearly two years later.
Although China ventured into space much later than the United States and the Soviet Union, the country has made huge progress over the past decade, and is now among the elite ranks of space-faring nations. In addition to the lunar missions, China’s astronauts have docked in orbit with space stations of the country’s own construction three times. In July, the Tianwen-1 mission set course for Mars, and will try to land on the red planet’s surface next year.
These accomplishments have become a source of national pride, carefully managed to emphasize the Communist Party’s strong and steady leadership. China’s space program remains secretive, but officials have offered more details than usual about Chang’e-5.
The entire Chang’e-5 mission, from liftoff to the recovery of the rock samples, will be over in less than a month.
After the spacecraft enters orbit around the moon, Chang’e-5 will split into two: A lander will head to the surface while the other piece, an orbiter, waits for its return.
Once it gets to the surface, in about a week, the lander needs to accomplish all of its drilling and scooping tasks within a single lunar day, which lasts 14 Earth days. The lander is not designed to survive the frigid dark lunar night.
The Chang’e-5 lander includes a small rocket, and before the sun sets it will blast off with the rock and soil samples. This rocket will rendezvous and dock with the piece of the spacecraft that remained in orbit. The samples will be transferred to the orbiter for the journey back to Earth.
The sample is scheduled to land in the Inner Mongolia region of China in the middle of December.
In an interview with China’s state television network, Yu Dengyun, deputy chief designer of China’s lunar exploration project, acknowledged that the complex choreography of Chang’e-5 was more technically challenging than that of earlier missions.
“We launch rockets on the ground with relatively mature technology, but we are using the lander as the launching platform on the lunar surface,” he said. “How to dissipate heat, how to divert flows and how to control the rising process are what we have never done before. These are hard nuts to crack.”
Chang’e-5 aims to deliver more than four pounds of specimens back to Earth. In the 1970s, three successful Soviet Luna missions brought back a total of about 10 ounces of moon. NASA’s Apollo astronauts lugged back 842 pounds of moon rock and soil. Scientists are still studying the Apollo and Luna samples.
The landing site is a volcanic plain called Mons Rümker in the Oceanus Procellarum region on the moon’s near side. For planetary scientists, rocks collected from this region promise a glimpse of a much younger part of the moon. The places explored by Apollo and Luna were all more than three billion years old. Mons Rümker is estimated to be around 1.2 billion years old.
Because it is so different from those earlier sites, “it’s possible to get new science outcomes,” Xiao Long, a planetary geologist at the China University of Geosciences in Wuhan, who was involved in selecting the landing site, said in an email.
Planetary scientists hope that rocks brought back by Chang’e-5 can calibrate a crater-counting technique used to estimate the ages of geological surfaces on the planets, moons and asteroids throughout the solar system.
A young surface is smooth and almost unblemished, while an old surface is more heavily cratered. But until Apollo, counting craters provided only relative ages; scientists could tell that one place was older than the other but not exactly how old.
With moon rocks collected by Neil Armstrong and other astronauts, scientists could measure radioactive elements in the rocks and precisely calculate when a volcanic eruption had occurred, and thus the age of the parts of the moon where the Apollo explorers set down. But none of the missions landed on a younger part of the moon, leaving a large gap of uncertainty.
The eastern half of Mons Rümker is a plain of basalt — a rock of hardened lava — that is relatively crater-free, suggesting an age not much more than one billion years.
“It has implications way beyond the moon,” said James W. Head III, a professor of geological sciences at Brown University who participated in analyzing Mons Rümker with Dr. Xiao and other Chinese scientists. “So it’s really a great place to go.”
Scientists also want to understand some of the differences in composition of varying parts of the moon, and the samples might also explain how part of the moon was still molten some three billion years after it formed. For example, they want to see whether rocks from Möns Rumker contain high levels of thorium. If the moon’s upper mantle in this region contained an abundance of that radioactive element, which generates heat as it decays, that might have produced the volcanism that spilled lava onto the surface before cooling into the basaltic plain.
“Or is there some other factor, or is the interior still hot?” Dr. Head asked. “By sampling these, we will be able tell whether these are high thorium or not. And if not, that resets that whole question.”
If there is little thorium, “scientists will need to rethink how this young volcanic rock was created,” Dr. Xiao said.
To study these and other questions, Carolyn H. van der Bogert, a research scientist at the Institute for Planetology at the Westfälische Wilhelms-Universität in Münster, Germany, said researchers needed more than the wealth of data that has been gathered by orbiting spacecraft such as NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter.
“What we really need now are very targeted ground truth missions,” Dr. van der Bogert said. Missions like Chang’e-5, she added, “are going to be really critical for testing and improving our remote sensing data sets.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/23/s...oon-rocks.html
LoL!
Attachment 60409
It doesn't appear to be the Chinese who are passing national laws to make areas of the moon/any other planet their national property.Quote:
Originally Posted by Simon43
"The more ambitious administration vision could include new moon landings that "see private American astronauts, on private space ships, circling the Moon by 2020; and private lunar landers staking out de facto 'property rights' for American on the Moon, by 2020 as well," according to a summary of an "agency action plan" that the transition drew up for NASA late last month."
More at:
Trump advisers' space plan: To moon, Mars and beyond - POLITICO
The poor video of the launch, the Chinese do need to improve their presentation, indicated more of a semi-controlled explosion. But maybe that's what all heavy lift rocket launches are?Quote:
Originally Posted by TheRealKW
Video here:
Chang'e 5 sets out to collect moon samples in landmark mission - Chinadaily.com.cn
That's just how it looks with an unexperiencec cameraman, maybe on automatic. Way overexposed.Quote:
Originally Posted by OhOh
But yes, launching heavy rockets is a barely controlled explosion. The forces involved are enormous. Even just the forces needed for the propellant pumps are equivalent to the output of major grid scale power plants.
NASA has launched an Earth observation satellite Michael Freilich. It can measure sea levels to unprecedented levels of accuracy. The satellite is a cooperation between ESA and NASA.
NASA TV Airs Sentinel-6 Michael Freilich Launch, Prelaunch Activities | NASA
Video coverage of launch and landing of the Falcon booster. Provided by the Airforce as this satellite was launched from Vandenberg Airforce base into a near polar orbit. Absolutely stunning video quality. The whole thing is a bit long. But don't miss the booster landing, beginning at 12:00. Landing has never been documented this clearly.
You see the booster reentering the atmosphere on its way down. There is a reentry burn to slow it down. Clearly visible the entry burn starts with 1 engine then switches to 3 engines. The 3 engine phase is known as Saurons eye. Watching it you will know why.
The booster falls closer to horizontal than vertical and rights itself only for the landing burn. That way it falls more slowly and saves on landing propellant.
https://images.nasa.gov/details-KSC-..._Views-3263265
With all of these launches, and so many objects flying in space, why don't we ever see reports about satellite collisions?
Because space is big... but occaisionally there is a risk as more and more junk goes up there.Quote:
Originally Posted by TTraveler
Good planningQuote:
Originally Posted by TTraveler
The 1996 collision between the French Cerise military reconnaissance satellite and debris from an Ariane rocket.Quote:
Originally Posted by TTraveler
The 2009 collision between the Iridium 33 communications satellite and the derelict Russian Kosmos 2251 spacecraft, which resulted in the destruction of both satellites.
The 22 January 2013 collision between debris from Fengyun FY-1C satellite and the Russian BLITS nano-satellite.
The 22 May 2013 collision between two CubeSats, Ecuador's NEE-01 Pegaso and Argentina's CubeBug-1, and the particles of a debris cloud around a Tsyklon-3 upper stage (SCN 15890)[1] left over from the launch of Kosmos 1666.
One of those was a real satellite to satellite collision.
The 2009 collision between the Iridium 33 communications satellite and the derelict Russian Kosmos 2251 spacecraft, which resulted in the destruction of both satellites.
Satellite collision - Wikipedia
Fortunately they are rare. Satellites are getting more. But satellite tracking and collision avoidance is also getting better.
Much worse is space debris by not deorbited dead satellites and upper stages that are not properly passivised and explode later. Notorious are old US spy sats and ULA upper stages. But russian upper stages too. They use many of them. Reason is usually not properly terminated batteries, sometimes residual propellant that should have been vented.
^ What's your take on the the lost cosmonauts, TO?
The rumors that there are cosmonauts floating off into space in their broken spaceships forever more, after failed secret missions during the space-race? True or not?
I believe there's also recording of what is supposed to be a female cosmonaut burning up during a failed reentry.
Not a matter I am much interested in. I think we would have heard about it. The Russians announced flights not in advance but after successful launch. So we may never hear about failures during launch. We do know about Cosmonauts dying on reentry when the capsule lost air. Since then Russian and US Astronauts wear board suits during critical mission phases.Quote:
Originally Posted by Edmond
But we knew about the N-1 failures on the pad. US space surveillance would have picked up and we would know. So I believe it is mostly rumors. There were russian zond missions in preparation for manned moon missions. Crew capsules that failed but they were unmanned for all we know.
I had no idea. Sounds like space isn't so safe after all, or simple.Quote:
Originally Posted by Takeovers
To avoid further accidents, would all of the different entities sending items into orbit need to coordinate somehow, sharing orbit info so that each can ensure that no orbits cross at the same time. I can't even imagine the nightmare of trying to piece together such logistics.
But more importantly, having a fail-safe plan for disposing of satellites at the end of their lives is essential.
That would not be very helpful, unfortunately. The trajectory of dead objects does change slowly over time. Lower ones by traces of atmosphere that irregularly brakes them. Even the ISS at over 400km altitude needs frequent boosts so that it does not decay. This effect is present to almost 1000km altitude. Satellites up there slowly decay over decades. Above 1000 km it takes hundreds or thousands of years. But up there and higher the orbit is influenced by the sun and Moon, so also not stable without any active steering.Quote:
Originally Posted by TTraveler
Fortunately the US Airforce, now Spaceforce, tracks all dead satellites and stages and even thousands of debris pieces with radar and makes the data available so that satellite operators worldwide can do avoidance maneuvers when there is a threat of collision. The ISS does it sometimes. The german DLR is presently building a similar facility.
Satellite operators are ridiculously irresponsible. Especially in the important geostationary orbit, where all the TV sats are located. Operators are supposed to move their satellites to a higher orbit at the end of their life to keep that orbit clean. Instead they operate their sats way longer than their nominal life time until they drop dead in their location and are a threat to all operational satellites. A criminal behaviour.
And sometimes people do really idiotic, selfish and irresponsible things, like the way the Chinese blew up their satellite, spraying pieces everywhere.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Latindancer
The US has done the same, to test and demonstrate their anti sat capabilities. Just a lot earlier.
ASM-135 ASAT - Wikipedia
Even earlier the US used a system with a nuclear warhead because they were not yet capable of direct hits. This is when they learned about EMP. The test did a lot of damage.Quote:
NASA learned of U.S. Air Force plans for the Solwind ASAT test in July 1985. NASA modeled the effects of the test. This model determined that debris produced would still be in orbit in the 1990s. It would force NASA to enhance debris shielding for its planned space station.
Quote:
Originally Posted by TheRealKW
The chinese lunar lander has separated from the orbiter and has reached a transfer orbit that indicates it will land at 10:13 PM Bangkok time today.
https://twitter.com/rhZhao/status/1333242777971216384
Tweet with a gif of lander separation.
There is a live stream for the lunar landing.
Chang'e 5 Moon Landing Live Stream - YouTube
has something gone wrong?
I think the Australians shot it down.......Quote:
Originally Posted by TheRealKW
Live stream has stopped. But CCTV 13 reports successful landing.