Space News thread

[OhOh]

Great news.

A link to an article regarding the lander and rover portions.

https://gbtimes.com/heres-a-close-up...nder-and-rover

[harrybarracuda]

It’s set to be a particularly stunning holiday season this year, as stargazers are treated to a double feature of sparkles streaking across the sky.
Every December, the Geminid meteor shower gives astronomers one of the most spectacular shows of the year – and 2018 is no exception. It provides some of the best photos of the Winter sky, and this year even got its own Google doodle to commemorate the occasion.


Although the shower has already been visible for over a week, it’s set to peak in the early hours of Friday, December 14. According to NASA, stargazers will be able to see up to 100 meteors per hour shoot across the sky at around 2 a.m. CT – though those watching from the suburbs can expect to see less than half that number, thanks to the surrounding light pollution.


The Geminid shower comes to us courtesy of 3200 Phaethon, a mysterious asteroid that reflects unusually high levels of polarized light. Named after the son of Helios, the Greek god of the Sun, Phaethon orbits the Sun closer than any other asteroid, and as it reaches its perihelion it starts to shed the dust and debris that we see from Earth as the Geminids. Only one other asteroid is known to shed debris like this – most meteor showers are produced by comets – making tonight’s show even more special.

But that’s not all we can look forward to. Streaking across the sky like a festive bauble is 46P/Wirtanen, a delightfully green comet that’s set to make its closest approach to Earth for two decades this weekend. In fact, at less than 11.6 million kilometers (less than 7.2 million miles), the so-called "Christmas comet" is about to be the 20th closest comet to Earth in the past 12 centuries.


Once again, meteorologists warn that light pollution in built-up areas might make Wirtanen difficult to see, but those lucky enough to have a dark sky at their disposal should be able to spot it with the naked eye.

If that’s not the case, however, the good people over at The Virtual Telescope Project are planning to live-stream the display, so rest assured – there’s plenty of opportunity to catch the Christmas comet in action.



https://www.iflscience.com/space/spe...-this-weekend/

[David48atTD]

Virgin Galactic's tourist rocket reaches the edge of space in supersonic test flight




Virgin Galactic's tourism spaceship climbed more than 80 kilometres above California's Mojave Desert in a test flight, reaching for the first time what the company considers the boundary of space.

Key points:

• The spaceship hit an altitude of 82 kilometres before landing on a runway minutes later
• Virgin Galactic are charging more than 600 people up to $346,000 to travel on the spaceship
• The six-passenger craft is about the size of an executive jet

The rocket ship hit an altitude of 82 kilometres before beginning its gliding descent, mission official Enrico Palermo said.
It landed on a runway minutes later.

"We made it to space!" Mr Palermo said.


The supersonic flight takes Virgin Galactic closer to turning the long-delayed dream of commercial space tourism into reality.
The company aims to take paying customers on the six-passenger rocket, which is about the size of an executive jet.

[harrybarracuda]

Apparently his "edge of space" is a lot lower than everyone else's.

[Takeovers]

Apparently his "edge of space" is a lot lower than everyone else's.

Yes and no. The common international definition is 100km. But in the time of the X-planes the US Airforce awarded Astronaut Wings to their pilots when they reached 80km. Also there is presently ongoing discussion about generally lowering the defined altitude for space to 80km.

To me personally this is all irrelevant. My personal definition of reaching space is reaching orbit and these hops are far from that. Virgin Glactics flights and the flights of Blue Origins New Shepard are just carnival rides similar to the more extreme roller coasters. Blue Origin however is planning to go to space for real with their next generation rocket, the New Glenn, that's a plus.

[harrybarracuda]

To me personally this is all irrelevant.

As it is to anyone who can't afford to drop a bollock for a quick trip to the outer atmosphere.

[Takeovers]

Remember that hole in the Soyuz capsule? Now that they have a full complement of Astronauts at the ISS again the Russians have done an EVA (extra vehiclular activity) or spacewalk to inspect the Soyuz from the outside and salvage some samples for later inspection on the ground.

They have cut open the shielding around the Soyuz orbital module to get at the hole.



You see the hole in the red circle. From the outside it does not look like a drilled hole. But from the inside it clearly is a drilled hole.




There is footage of the whole EVA available but that is over 7 hours. Here a short compilation of relevant scenes from the BBC. If you think this looks wild you are right. But this is the orbital module of Soyuz. It will not land but burn up in the high atmosphere on reentry. That is one reason why they need to get the samples, it will not land. So it is not as bad as it looks. The debris that is floating away won't stay up very long. Thin as it is at over 400km altitude the residual air will brake the very light and fluffy pieces and they will deorbit quickly.

[Takeovers]

Something on rocket engines from Wikipedia.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RD-170

The RD-170 (РД-170, Ракетный Двигатель-170, Rocket Engine-170) is the world's most powerful liquid-fuel rocket engine, designed and produced in the Soviet Union by NPO Energomash for use with the Energia launch vehicle. The engine burns the Russian equivalent of RP-1 fuel and LOX oxidizer in four combustion chambers, all supplied by one single-shaft, single-turbine turbopump rated at 170 MW in a staged combustion cycle.^[3][5] By comparison, the Saturn V F-1 engines are the world's most powerful single-chamber combustion rocket engines.

RP-1 is the fancy spaceflight name for kerosene. Admittedly a highly refined and constant quality kerosene unlike the stuff they burn in jet engines. Note that just the turbopumps that pump the propellant from the tanks into the engine alone have 170MW of power.

It is commonly said the F-1 engine of Saturn V is the most powerful engine but that is not true. It is the rocket engine with the biggest combustion chamber and nozzle however. RD-170 is not only more powerful, but also much more efficient. The Russians use 4 combustion chambers and nozzles but only one powerful turbopump. That way they avoid problems with combustion instability. American developers blew up many engines before they got that right for the F-1, without the advantage of modern computers to simulate combustion.

A 2 nozzle version, the RD-180 is what powers the US workhorse launch vehicle, the Atlas V, indispensible for NASA and Airforce until SpaceX built the Falcon 9 rocket with smaller engines but 9 of them. Also much less efficient than the RD-170 and RD-180

[harrybarracuda]

Remember that hole in the Soyuz capsule? Now that they have a full complement of Astronauts at the ISS again the Russians have done an EVA (extra vehiclular activity) or spacewalk to inspect the Soyuz from the outside and salvage some samples for later inspection on the ground.

They have cut open the shielding around the Soyuz orbital module to get at the hole.

So what was it? A micro-meteorite? Or a member of the Global Sedition?

[Takeovers]

So what was it? A micro-meteorite? Or a member of the Global Sedition?

It was clear from the looks of the hole at the inside that it was drilled from the inside and it must have been sealed by amateur methods. The protective covers outside looked undamaged and they had to cut through all the layers to find the hole. There were statements from Roskosmos that they have searched through video documentation from production and found no evidence it happened on the ground. Make of that what you want.

[harrybarracuda]

It was clear from the looks of the hole at the inside that it was drilled from the inside and it must have been sealed by amateur methods. The protective covers outside looked undamaged and they had to cut through all the layers to find the hole. There were statements from Roskosmos that they have searched through video documentation from production and found no evidence it happened on the ground. Make of that what you want.

Well let's face it, if you did it on the ground and realised you could be looking at decades in a Gulag, you'd make damned sure you fucking cover it up, wouldn't you?

[Takeovers]

SpaceX is getting ready to send their Crew Dragon to the ISS. Yesterday they made a presentation for VP Pence. They used the chance to show off every component of the vehicle, the launch vehicle and the Crew Dragon, demonstrating they have everything ready to go. You can think of Pence what you want but at least he seems a fan of space in general and of commercial space in particular.

The presentation was held at the assembly building at LC-39A at Cape Kennedy. They assemble the first and second stage and payload there before they go to the launch pad. LC-39A is the pad where Saturn V with Apollo 11 departed for their moon landing.

Planned launch date for the unmanned test flight is Jan. 17, 2018. NASA still needs to stamp many approvals and some have said this may delay the launch by several months still. But they have already invited the press for that date so we can hope it will be go.

On the right the Dragon capsule with the trunk, that's the cylindrical part. On the left the first stage in the back, the second stage in front. A rare view to see them not yet mated and you can see the huge engine bell of the second stage vacuum engine. The huge bell makes the engine much more efficient in vacuum but it would not work at sea level. The same area this one engine bell occupies has space for 9 sea level engines on the first stage.


A very important person on this photo. Gwynne Shotwell COO of SpaceX. She has a major share in the success of the company.



A rare treat, a very large picture of the second stage engine bell.


The Dragon Capsule from the other side. Dragon 2, the manned version has its solar panels directly on the trunk while Dragon 1 has wings for the solar panels like most satellites. This eliminates the step of unfolding the panels, reducing the failure risk by this step.

[Takeovers]

A few SpaceX logos in case you want to print your SpaceX t-shirt.

The old Dragon logo, I prefer it over the new one. The old is cute, the new one looks more agressive.


The new Dragon logo.


The Falcon 9 logo.


Some people like the Logo with a full Falcon written out but you can not find it on the net. So I took this photo and got the LOGO with a little photoshop.

[OhOh]

Is that their own font as well?

[Takeovers]

Is that their own font as well?

They use several fonts. I have no idea if they are proprietary. Quite possible they have only designed the letters they need, not a full font.

[harrybarracuda]

If dinosaurs had possessed telescopes and the will to gaze skyward 100 million years ago, they might have seen a very different Saturn - one without its iconic rings.


And if humans manage to survive another 100 million years, our descendants may also miss the discs of ice and dust that encircle the golden gas giant.

We live in an extraordinary era, scientists say - the brief blip in the 4.6-billion-year life of our solar system in which Saturn's rings are visible.

According to a study published this week in the planetary science journal Icarus, the material that makes up this feature is "raining" into the planet's interior at a "worst case scenario" rate. The rings are already halfway to their death.


"We are lucky to be around" right now, the study's lead author, James O'Donoghue, said in a statement.

Scientists have long debated whether Saturn's rings were born with the planet or are a relatively new acquisition. Some models suggest that the ring material is debris left over from the planet's formation more than four billion years ago. But others theorise that the rings formed when objects like comets, asteroids or even moons broke apart in orbit around the massive planet.

It's hard to imagine the sixth planet from the sun without its most famous feature. Though Jupiter, Uranus and Neptune are also banded, Saturn's adornment is by far the most impressive in the solar system. The planet's rings span 273,500km across and are bright enough to be visible with a child's telescope.

And although they look solid from Earth, observations by the Voyager and Cassini spacecraft have revealed that the rings are instead made of floating bits of material, ranging in size from as small as specks to larger than the Empire State Building. They stay suspended around the planet's midsection through a careful balance of gravity, which tries to pull the material inward, and their orbital velocity, which seeks to sling them into space.

But sometimes ring particles get electrically charged by light from the sun or other cosmic phenomena. This makes them susceptible to the siren song of Saturn's magnetic field, which bends inward at the rings. The particles slide along magnetic field lines into the planet's atmosphere, where they vaporise, generating glowing, charged hydrogen and droplets of water.

O'Donoghue and his colleagues observed this phenomenon with the huge Keck telescope in Hawaii and concluded that a combination of Saturn's gravity and magnetism pulls an Olympic-size swimming pool worth of material into the planet every 30 minutes.

https://www.nzherald.co.nz/world/new...ectid=12180154

[Takeovers]

The NASA Insight lander has deployed its first instrument to the surface of Mars. It is the Seismometer. They hope to detect impacts of large meteorites and learn from the signals about the internal structure of Mars.

[OhOh]

Good to see their lander is working well.

[BaitongBoy]

What's the temperature there?...

[Takeovers]

What's the temperature there?...

For sure it is cold. North of the equator. There is an off chance the temperature might sometimes rise to around 0°C during the day.

[Takeovers]

A NASA promotional video on Commercial Crew. It is presently expected that both SpaceX and Boeing will fly their 2 demo missions next year. First unmanned and then a manned demo mission. I do have doubts that Boeing is as far along as they pretend.

Edit: Not sure why the YouTube links don't embed.



https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_co...&v=2Pyd_ZfpxsA

[OhOh]

Water on Mars PICTURED: ESA shares incredible IMAGES of Martian ice crater

"The European Space Agency has shared an incredible composite image showing a 50-mile wide crater on Mars that is filled with water ice all year long.

Budding future colonists hoping for a white Christmas on Mars will be somewhat disappointed as the ESA has confirmed that sitting in the Korolev crater is, in fact, a thick block of water ice, not snow. The enormous, 82-kilometer-wide, 2-kilometer-deep “ice trap” could still be good for ice skating though.

Even better, the 2,200 cubic kilometers of water ice – same as the volume of Canada’s Great Bear Lake – could be important for the survival of future colonists, and may even enable them to return back home, as water could be split into hydrogen and oxygen for rocket fuel.

The crater is found in the northern lowlands of Mars near the planet's north pole which is known as Olympia Undae for its wavy, dune-filled terrain. The crater's ice is protected by the topography and by a lair of cold air that shields it from the elements.

The composite image was taken by the Mars Express High Resolution Stereo Camera (HRSC) and was actually formed from five different “strips,” with each strip gathered over a different orbit as the Mars Express probe flew overhead. The 2003-launched mission this month marks the 15-year anniversary of the probe’s orbit insertion at the Red Planet.

The icy crater is named after chief rocket engineer and spacecraft designer Sergey Korolev, known as the father of Soviet space technology and the head of iconic space exploration missions including the Sputnik, Vostok, and Voskhod programs. A lesser known fact is that Korolev dreamt about a flight to Mars for decades and was actually working on a rocket that would have brought a man to the Red Planet – and who knows where this unfinished project might have ended if it wasn’t for the Soviet visionary’s untimely death in 1966."





https://www.rt.com/news/447139-mars-...ce-images-esa/

[Takeovers]

I like how Korolew was mentioned. He was a rocket genius of the highest level, for good reasons admired in the west as well. restricted by the limitation of resources the Soviet Union could throw on space.

That crater with all the water ice would be a very good place for first Mars colonization except it is too far north for solar energy to provide the needed power. The south facing crater wall would be a good location for solar power but during winter the days will be short and the nights very long. It would become very feasible if compact fusion reactors can be developed as some hope.

[OhOh]

All these planets/asteroids suddenly appear to have the one thing which supposedly made the Earth unique, water. It must expand the number of planets, "out there", which can support life, as we know it, an immense number.

Is this discovery because were didn't have the tech to find it, we not looking for it or looking in the wrong place?

[Takeovers]

It is both I imagine. Sensing has improved immensely.