Page 115 of 161 FirstFirst ... 1565105107108109110111112113114115116117118119120121122123125 ... LastLast
Results 2,851 to 2,875 of 4011
  1. #2851
    Thailand Expat harrybarracuda's Avatar
    Join Date
    Sep 2009
    Last Online
    @
    Posts
    96,541
    Congratulations to Voyager I, out there in the loneliness of interstellar space.

    It just passed 14 billion miles from earth.

    Voyager 2 is roughly 2.5 billion miles behind it.

    Voyager - Mission Status

  2. #2852
    Thailand Expat misskit's Avatar
    Join Date
    Dec 2009
    Last Online
    @
    Location
    Chiang Mai
    Posts
    47,989
    Hubble’s New Views of Jupiter - YouTube

    New images of Jupiter show new storm moving at 350 mph


    New photos by the Hubble Space Telescope have shown a 'remarkable new storm' raging across Jupiter and its moon Europa.


    The Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore released them on Thursday.




    A bright white splotch in Jupiter's northern latitudes indicates a new storm barreling around the planet at 350 mph. The massive storm is big enough to swallow Earth.


    Jupiter's Great Red Spot is unusually red in the photo.

    "Hubble's sharp view is giving researchers an updated weather report on the monster planet's turbulent atmosphere, including a remarkable new storm brewing," the European Space Agency/Hubble said in a statement.


    "While it's common for storms to pop up in this region, often several at once, this particular disturbance appears to have more structure behind it than observed in previous storms. Trailing behind the plume are small, counterclockwise dark clumps also not witnessed in the past, " the ESA said.


    "Researchers speculate this may be the beginning of a longer-lasting northern hemisphere spot, perhaps to rival the legendary Great Red Spot that dominates the southern hemisphere."

    NASA plans to launch a spacecraft, the Europa Clipper, later this decade to see if conditions there might be ripe for life.


    That mission "aims to explore both Jupiter and three of its largest moons: Ganymede, Callisto, and Europa."

    New images of Jupiter show new storm moving at 350 mph, Science News | wionews.com

  3. #2853
    Thailand Expat harrybarracuda's Avatar
    Join Date
    Sep 2009
    Last Online
    @
    Posts
    96,541
    Several liquid bodies have been found under the south pole of Mars, according to a major new study.

    The findings give extra credence to previous research that suggested there could be a large saltwater lake underneath the Martian surface, the researchers claim – and also led to them discovering a number of other wet areas.

    The findings could be key in the search for alien life on the planet, the researchers note, given life as we know it requires liquid water to survive.

    They will also be key to “planetary protection” work that ensures that humanity doesn’t contaminate other planets with life from Earth during missions to explore them.

    Multiple '''water bodies''' found under surface of Mars | The Independent

  4. #2854
    Making people dance. :-)
    Edmond's Avatar
    Join Date
    Apr 2020
    Last Online
    @
    Location
    Cebu
    Posts
    13,749
    Not long ago, a few months, one presumed one would need to travel to Europa or Enceladus to possibly find alien microbes (or a bit more), now possibly only the clouds of Venus or the Martian south pole.

  5. #2855
    Thailand Expat harrybarracuda's Avatar
    Join Date
    Sep 2009
    Last Online
    @
    Posts
    96,541
    Exoplanet observer reveals extreme alien world

    (28 September 2020 - ESA) ESA’s new exoplanet mission, Cheops, has found a nearby planetary system to contain one of the hottest and most extreme extra-solar planets known to date: WASP-189 b.

    The finding, the very first from the mission, demonstrates Cheops’ unique ability to shed light on the Universe around us by revealing the secrets of these alien worlds.

    Launched in December 2019, Cheops (the Characterising Exoplanet Satellite) is designed to observe nearby stars known to host planets. By ultra-precisely measuring changes in the levels of light coming from these systems as the planets orbit their stars, Cheops can initially characterise these planets — and, in turn, increase our understanding of how they form and evolve.


    The new finding concerns a so-called ‘ultra-hot Jupiter’ named WASP-189 b. Hot Jupiters, as the name suggests, are giant gas planets a bit like Jupiter in our own Solar System; however, they orbit far, far closer to their host star, and so are heated to extreme temperatures.

    WASP-189 b sits around 20 times closer to its star than Earth does to the Sun, and completes a full orbit in just 2.7 days. Its host star is larger and more than 2000 degrees hotter than the Sun, and so appears to glow blue. “Only a handful of planets are known to exist around stars this hot, and this system is by far the brightest,” says Monika Lendl of the University of Geneva, Switzerland, lead author of the new study. “WASP-189b is also the brightest hot Jupiter that we can observe as it passes in front of or behind its star, making the whole system really intriguing.”


    Exoplanet observer reveals extreme alien world

  6. #2856
    Thailand Expat
    Takeovers's Avatar
    Join Date
    Nov 2008
    Last Online
    Today @ 09:16 AM
    Location
    Berlin Germany
    Posts
    7,049
    Quote Originally Posted by harrybarracuda View Post
    Spare a thought for the ISS staff, confined to the Russian bit for the weekend while they try and narrow down a leak. Like a space Bortsch and Tears.



    ISS Crew Temporarily Confined to Russian Module as Engineers Hunt for Pesky Air Leak

    That first test was inconclusive. They could not pin down the source. But recently the loss rate increased and they repeated the test. There was some mention of it during yesterdays Commercial Crew press conferences. The source could now be traced to one russian module. As they mentioned it is now down from a needle in 7 haystacks to a needle in only 1 haystack. They will now begin searching with a leak detector.

    As long as the leak rate does not increase dramatically, there is no risk for the ISS.
    "don't attribute to malice what can be adequately explained by incompetence"

  7. #2857
    Thailand Expat harrybarracuda's Avatar
    Join Date
    Sep 2009
    Last Online
    @
    Posts
    96,541
    Just a thought (this was in the news last week - ISS moves to avoid space debris. )

    Have they got an escape module handy in case it gets hit by a meteor shower? Or are they just taking their chances?

  8. #2858
    Thailand Expat
    Takeovers's Avatar
    Join Date
    Nov 2008
    Last Online
    Today @ 09:16 AM
    Location
    Berlin Germany
    Posts
    7,049
    Quote Originally Posted by harrybarracuda View Post
    Just a thought (this was in the news last week - ISS moves to avoid space debris. )

    Have they got an escape module handy in case it gets hit by a meteor shower? Or are they just taking their chances?

    There is always enough seat capacity in capsules docked at the ISS. Meteor showers have their pieces wide spread. It is not that one would leave the ISS perforated. The ISS may become uninhabitable with a single hit but if there is a known risk the astronauts are always near or in their escape capsules. There have been plenty of small hits but in 20 years not a single hit that would endanger the ISS or made a lander capsule unusable.

  9. #2859
    Thailand Expat harrybarracuda's Avatar
    Join Date
    Sep 2009
    Last Online
    @
    Posts
    96,541
    Quote Originally Posted by Takeovers View Post
    There is always enough seat capacity in capsules docked at the ISS. Meteor showers have their pieces wide spread. It is not that one would leave the ISS perforated. The ISS may become uninhabitable with a single hit but if there is a known risk the astronauts are always near or in their escape capsules. There have been plenty of small hits but in 20 years not a single hit that would endanger the ISS or made a lander capsule unusable.
    So are there permanently attached escape capsules or do they just have to be lucky?

  10. #2860
    Thailand Expat
    Takeovers's Avatar
    Join Date
    Nov 2008
    Last Online
    Today @ 09:16 AM
    Location
    Berlin Germany
    Posts
    7,049
    There is always the capsule they came up with. It stays docked until they go back. Usually down with the same capsule they came up with. Sometimes, when one astronaut stays longer than the usual 6 months, they swap seats. It also means if one astronaut needs to get down to Earth for health reasons the whole crew of 3, now with SpaceX Dragon crew of 4 needs to go down. This was fortunately never necessary.

    BTW this is why even when NASA was flying the Shuttle they were always dependent on russian Soyuz for emergency landing capability. The Shuttle could only stay in space for a few weeks and then returned to Earth. They had a Soyuz docked to the ISS for emergency return. NASA had planned to develop their own return capsule. It would get up unmanned on board of the Shuttle and stay with the Astronauts. But they decided to depend on Soyuz instead. At the time a decision mostly based on the wish to keep the russian Roskosmos viable after the end of the Soviet Union.

    As Soyuz is certified for staying in orbit for only just over 6 months, they rotate crews at this rate usually.

  11. #2861
    Thailand Expat
    qwerty's Avatar
    Join Date
    Apr 2006
    Last Online
    Today @ 09:30 AM
    Location
    Not far from Ratchada.
    Posts
    1,758
    There is a Soyuz space capsule docked to the ISS at all times.

  12. #2862
    Thailand Expat
    Takeovers's Avatar
    Join Date
    Nov 2008
    Last Online
    Today @ 09:16 AM
    Location
    Berlin Germany
    Posts
    7,049
    Someone did some calculations. Knowing the precise launch time of a rocket and knowing the position of the sun he found a location from where he could catch the rocket passing in front of the sun. Stunning coverage. Its a short video, watch it in full.




    Space News thread-passing-sun-jpg

  13. #2863
    Thailand Expat Saint Willy's Avatar
    Join Date
    Aug 2019
    Last Online
    30-04-2022 @ 02:44 AM
    Posts
    11,204
    That's amazing footage!

  14. #2864
    Thailand Expat
    Simon43's Avatar
    Join Date
    Jan 2009
    Last Online
    Today @ 09:34 AM
    Location
    Luang Prabang (again!!)
    Posts
    3,911
    Quote Originally Posted by TheRealKW View Post
    That's amazing footage!

    It's even better if you turn off the sound to remove that inane, yankee whooping....

  15. #2865
    Thailand Expat Saint Willy's Avatar
    Join Date
    Aug 2019
    Last Online
    30-04-2022 @ 02:44 AM
    Posts
    11,204
    Sound off is my default setting

  16. #2866
    Thailand Expat
    Takeovers's Avatar
    Join Date
    Nov 2008
    Last Online
    Today @ 09:16 AM
    Location
    Berlin Germany
    Posts
    7,049
    Quote Originally Posted by TheRealKW View Post
    Sound off is my default setting
    With rocket launches sound is usually impressive. However in this case I agree, off is way better.

  17. #2867
    Thailand Expat harrybarracuda's Avatar
    Join Date
    Sep 2009
    Last Online
    @
    Posts
    96,541
    This is a bit of a worry. I guess they are going to have to come up with some creative exercise regimes.

    Astronauts are more than cosmic travelers. They’re also research subjects in the careful study of what exactly outer space does to the human body. On the ground, researchers measure vitals, draw blood, swab cheeks, and more. In orbit around the Earth, the astronauts do the work themselves.

    That’s how they found the blood clot.

    An astronaut was carrying out an ultrasound on their own body as part of a new study, guided in real time by a specialist on the ground. A similar test before the astronaut launched to space had come back normal. But now the scan showed a clump of blood.


    “We were not expecting this,” says Karina Marshall-Goebel, a senior scientist at NASA and the author of the study,
    published earlier this month. “This has never been reported before.”


    NASA doctors took over. The astronaut wasn’t showing any symptoms stemming from the clot, but was still pulled out of the study and treated with blood-thinning drugs for the rest of their time in orbit. The researchers had discovered a new risk in human spaceflight.


    The study was designed to study different, well-known side effects of space travel. A decade ago, scientists started
    noticing that astronauts who spent months on the International Space Station came home with swollen optic nerves, slightly flattened eyeballs, and changes in vision. NASA started putting glasses on board the station for astronauts who found that their eyesight had worsened. Scientists have suspected that the cause involves an accumulation of the body’s fluids such as blood and water. Free from the steady tug of gravity, the fluids float toward the head and can increase pressure inside the skull.


    To investigate this theory, Marshall-Goebel and her team targeted a jugular vein, which delivers blood from the head to the heart. The study’s astronaut subjects included nine men and two women. (The study did not disclose their identities.) Before the astronauts launched, researchers measured blood flow in the astronauts’ jugular vein in seated, supine, and tilted positions. The readings looked normal. The researchers had the astronauts repeated the ultrasounds during their missions on the ISS.


    Scans showed that blood flow in the vein had stalled in five of 11 astronauts. “Sometimes it was sloshing back and forth a bit, but there was no net forward movement,” Marshall-Goebel says. It’s rare to see stagnant blood flow in this kind of vein, she says; the condition usually occurs in the legs, like when people sit still for hours on planes. The finding was concerning. Stagnant blood, whether it’s in the neck or the legs, can clot. Blood clots can dissolve on their own or with the help of anticoagulants, but the blockages can also
    cause serious problems, such as lung damage.


    In two astronauts, blood in the vessel actually started moving in the opposite direction, from the heart towards the head, which is “extremely abnormal” for this vein, according to Marshall-Goebel. The researchers think the blood switched directions because of a blockage somewhere downstream. The phenomenon has been reported in non-astronauts with tumors or masses that forced blood to find a different path to the heart.


    “It’s almost like a detour, when you’re in your car and you sometimes have to go down the wrong street to get where you need to go,” Marshall-Goebel says. Perhaps something similar was happening in the astronauts; like their bodily fluids, the organs in their torsos had shifted upward and blocked off certain veins. Marshall-Goebel says she was rather impressed at this — the body, plunged into an environment unlike anything it had experienced, found a small way to adapt.


    The researchers had astronauts spend some time inside a special suit that Russian cosmonauts use to prepare for their return to Earth. The
    suit, which looks like a pair of puffy pants, uses suction to simulate gravity and draw some fluids back toward the lower body. Blood flow improved in some astronauts, but not others.


    The researchers attribute the effects they observed to the space environment. All the astronauts were considered to be in good health before they launched. And when they came home, the conditions vanished in nearly all of them. When the researchers analyzed the data, they found that a second astronaut may have developed a blood clot no one had seen while they were in orbit. But no one experienced any health troubles. “None of the crew members actually had any negative clinical outcomes,” Marshall-Goebel says.


    Researchers who study astronaut health and were not involved in this work say that the findings are compelling and require further investigation. “We definitely have enough evidence to consider this to be an important risk to human health in spaceflight that warrants additional research,” says Virginia Wotring, an associate professor of space medicine at the International Space University, in France. “I think we need to understand this before we embark on long-duration missions where the astronaut would be so far away that we wouldn’t be able to help them in the case of a medical emergency.”


    Wotring says she’d like to see a study that probes differences in risk for male and female astronauts. The researchers
    warn that their findings may have implications for women who use birth-control pills, which increase the risk of developing blood clots, to suppress their period during their missions. (Menstruating in space, contrary to suggestions in early spaceflight history, is not dangerous, but some women avoid it out of convenience.) “There are an awful lot of effects of space on the human body that we’re not aware of yet,” Wotring says.


    The researchers say that shifting blood flow in an astronaut about 260 miles above Earth isn’t as dire as it sounds. It’s possible that many other spacefarers have experienced the same conditions, without anyone noticing. “Time is needed to develop a clot when flow is stagnant, but you don’t need several months for this to occur,” says Michael Stenger, the head of the Cardiovascular and Vision Laboratory at NASA’s Johnson Space Center and one of the study’s co-authors. “It can happen in hours and days.” These days, astronauts usually spend six months on the ISS, and some stay for
    nearly a year.


    But the clot was an uncomfortable surprise. “I think it was probably scary for everybody,” Marshall-Goebel says. “But I think the fact that we found this now is really, really good news, because it’s something that — if you know this is a risk factor of spaceflight, it’s something that you can monitor and prevent.” If something goes wrong now, astronauts can be back on the ground in a matter of hours. On the moon, they’d be days away, and on Mars, months.


    A NASA spokesperson says the agency is now drawing up plans for a formal ultrasound program to monitor all of its astronauts while they’re in orbit. It has also made sure that the ISS “is equipped with appropriate treatments in the medical kit available to crew members.”


    After nearly 60 years of human space exploration, scientists know quite a bit about how the body behaves in space. Before the first men went up, some worried that weightlessness would
    wreck simple functions such as swallowing. Research has shown that the human body doesn’t love spending months being weightless, but it manages pretty well.


    But unknowns remain, and the risks may become more pressing if commercial companies such as SpaceX follow through on their promise to send paying customers into space. Christopher Mason, a geneticist at Weill Cornell Medicine who has
    studied spaceflight-related changes in the twin astronauts Scott and Mark Kelly, wonders how members of the general population might fare. “We take these super-fit astronauts up and they can adapt and be okay, but what will it look like when we send two random people?” Mason says. “Hopefully they’ll be fine, but we don’t have really any data on it, so it’s hard to tell.”
    https://medium.com/the-atlantic/an-a...m-28843773b4de

  18. #2868
    Thailand Expat OhOh's Avatar
    Join Date
    Jul 2010
    Last Online
    Today @ 11:59 AM
    Location
    Where troubles melt like lemon drops
    Posts
    25,218
    Nah, just add some spinning bits to create some gravity.

    Space News thread-1280-598537750-futuristic-space-station-jpg

  19. #2869
    Thailand Expat
    Klondyke's Avatar
    Join Date
    Aug 2014
    Last Online
    26-09-2021 @ 10:28 PM
    Posts
    10,105
    Quote Originally Posted by harrybarracuda View Post
    This is a bit of a worry.
    Not only harry is worrying... Can it be trusted? (me-too???)

    A Soyuz capsule just made a record-breaking 3-hour flight to the International Space Station
    13 hours ago

    It's the fastest Soyuz crew trip ever.

    Three new crewmembers arrived at the International Space Station today (Oct. 14) after a record-breaking speedy flight to the orbiting lab.

    The Russian Soyuz MS-17 spacecraft carrying NASA astronaut Kate Rubins and Russian cosmonauts Sergey Ryzhikov and Sergey Kud-Sverchkov docked with the space station at 4:48 a.m. EDT (0848 GMT), just 3 hours and 3 minutes after lifting off from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan on a Soyuz rocket.

    A Soyuz capsule just made a record-breaking 3-hour flight to the International Space Station | Space

  20. #2870
    Thailand Expat
    Takeovers's Avatar
    Join Date
    Nov 2008
    Last Online
    Today @ 09:16 AM
    Location
    Berlin Germany
    Posts
    7,049
    Quote Originally Posted by harrybarracuda View Post
    This is a bit of a worry. I guess they are going to have to come up with some creative exercise regimes.
    Something I am very interested in. I am not a fan of artificial gravity. It comes with major drawbacks for a spaceship. Like problems with orientation in space for thermal management and solar panels oriented to the sun.

    There are solutions using internal short arm centrifuges developed both in Europe and by NASA. They can't be used on the ISS because they are quite compact but still too big for the ISS. Even if they would add a large enough module the centrifuges would cause vibrations that make most of the experiments impossible. But the centrifuges could be easily accomodated by a large enough vessel like Starship.

    Working out in artificial gravity | MIT News | Massachusetts Institute of Technology

    Astronauts on the International Space Station (ISS) have a number of exercise options, including a mechanical bicycle bolted to the floor, a weightlifting machine strapped to the wall, and a strap-down treadmill. They spend a significant portion of each day working out to ward off the long-term effects of weightlessness, but many still suffer bone loss, muscle atrophy, and issues with balance and their cardiovascular systems.


    To counteract such debilitating effects, research groups around the world are investigating artificial gravity — the notion that astronauts, exposed to strong centrifugal forces, may experience the effects of gravity, even in space. Engineers have been building and testing human centrifuges — spinning platforms that, at high speeds, generate G-forces strong enough to mimic gravity. An astronaut, riding in a centrifuge, would presumably feel gravity’s reinforcing effects.


    Now engineers at MIT have built a compact human centrifuge with an exercise component: a cycle ergometer that a person can pedal as the centrifuge spins. The centrifuge was sized to just fit inside a module of the ISS. After testing the setup on healthy participants, the team found the combination of exercise and artificial gravity could significantly lessen the effects of extended weightlessness in space — more so than exercise alone.


    Laurence Young, the Apollo Program Professor in MIT’s Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics, says artificial gravity would be a huge benefit for astronauts, particularly those embarking on long-duration space missions, such as a journey to Mars. The risks, he says, are uncertain, but potentially significant.


    “With exploration-class missions, like Mars, where you’re gone for three years, you could run the risk of having astronauts not sufficiently conditioned to perform effectively, and also to not be in good health when they finally get to the surface of Mars,” says Young, a former NASA payload specialist. “You really don’t want to send a jellyfish to represent us on another planet.”


    Young says a human centrifuge aboard a Mars-bound spacecraft would help keep an astronaut in shape over the many months it would take to get to the Red Planet. He and his colleagues, former graduate students Ana Diaz and Chris Trigg, have published results from their experiments in the journal Acta Astronautica.


    Spinning up artificial gravity


    The team’s compact centrifuge resembles a rotating metal cage with three main elements: a chair; a cycle ergometer, or the mechanical portion of a stationary bicycle; and a suite of sensors to measure cardiovascular variables such as blood pressure, heart rate, respiration rate, muscle activity, and foot forces.


    The researchers conducted experiments to test human responses and exercise performance at varying levels of artificial gravity. The experiments involved 12 healthy subjects, who participated in three sessions, each consisting of a bicycling workout under one of three artificial gravity levels: zero G, in which the centrifuge did not rotate; 1 G, measured at the feet, in which the centrifuge spun at 28 revolutions per minute (rpm); and 1.4 G, also measured at the feet, at 32 rpm.


    “When it spins around, we create centrifugal force, which depends on the angular velocity, or how fast we are rotating — the higher the angular velocity, the greater the artificial gravity,” Diaz says.


    During each session, participants were asked to pedal for 15 minutes at three workout intensities, or levels of resistance, set by the cycle ergometer. The remaining 10 minutes involved spinning up and slowing down the centrifuge.


    Beyond a “universal solution”


    After each session, participants filled out a survey to gauge symptoms such as motion sickness and light-headedness. Overall, Diaz found that participants tolerated the experiments well, suffering little motion sickness even while spinning at relatively high velocities. Participants only reported feelings of discomfort while initially speeding up and slowing down.


    “During the spinning process, participants were pushed against the chair due to the centrifugal force, making them sit comfortably, and facilitating their leg biomechanics for biking,” Diaz says.


    As the researchers increased the centrifuge’s spin, raising its artificial gravity, participants used correspondingly more force to pedal — an unsurprising but encouraging result.


    “That tells us that if we use artificial gravity, we’re able to get higher foot forces, and we know higher foot forces are good for bones, and help you generate more bone,” Diaz says. “Even if we expected this, we were able to quantify it and find a relationship between foot forces and artificial gravity.”


    Similarly, as artificial gravity intensified, so did participants’ overall cardiovascular activity, a response that Diaz says may be beneficial over the long term.


    Young says the study may begin to bridge two seemingly opposing camps: those who believe exercise alone will prevent bone loss, muscle atrophy, and other effects of extended weightlessness, and those who believe in artificial gravity as the solution.


    “I think the principal finding here is supporting the conclusion that exercise alone is not a sufficient countermeasure,” Young says. “For the first time, we’re showing there’s a symbiosis when one combines the best aspects of exercise, and the best aspects of artificial gravity. So I feel this is an important demonstration.”


    This research was funded in part by the National Space Biomedical Research Institute and a Skoltech/MIT seed grant.

  21. #2871
    Thailand Expat
    Takeovers's Avatar
    Join Date
    Nov 2008
    Last Online
    Today @ 09:16 AM
    Location
    Berlin Germany
    Posts
    7,049
    Quote Originally Posted by OhOh View Post
    Nah, just add some spinning bits to create some gravity.
    Space News thread-1280-598537750-futuristic-space-station-jpg

    Ah! The classic, a von Braun space wheel.

    Today the O#Neill cylinder derived types are more popular among fans. They have their own drawbacks.


    O'Neill cylinder - Wikipedia


    Space News thread-1280px-spacecolony1-jpg

  22. #2872
    Thailand Expat harrybarracuda's Avatar
    Join Date
    Sep 2009
    Last Online
    @
    Posts
    96,541
    There is a fundamental problem with moving parts and extremely long journeys....

  23. #2873
    Thailand Expat harrybarracuda's Avatar
    Join Date
    Sep 2009
    Last Online
    @
    Posts
    96,541
    It's going to happen sooner or later with the amount of crap being put up there.

    Two items of space junk expected to pass close to one another have avoided collision, said a company which uses radar to track objects in orbit.

    LeoLabs had said a defunct Russian satellite and a discarded Chinese rocket segment were likely to come within 25m of each other.

    It said there were no signs of debris over Antarctica on Friday morning.

    Other experts thought Kosmos-2004 and the ChangZheng rocket stage would pass with a far greater separation.

    With the objects having a combined mass of more than 2.5 tonnes and relative velocity of 14.66km/s (32,800mph), any collision would have been catastrophic and produced a shower of debris.

    And given the altitude of almost 1,000km, the resulting fragments would have stayed around for an extremely long time, posing a threat to operational satellites.

    Pieces of orbiting space junk '''avoid collision''' - BBC News



  24. #2874
    Thailand Expat
    Takeovers's Avatar
    Join Date
    Nov 2008
    Last Online
    Today @ 09:16 AM
    Location
    Berlin Germany
    Posts
    7,049
    Quote Originally Posted by harrybarracuda View Post
    There is a fundamental problem with moving parts and extremely long journeys....
    That's why I don't like the original O'Neill cylinder concept and used the term "derived". It has 2 connected cylinders to cancel out inertia along the rotation axles. They needed it back then so they are able to point the large windows to the sun. Today it would be just one cylinder with changing attitude and use solar panels and artificial lighting, eliminating the large critical windows and the coupling of two rotating cylinders.

  25. #2875
    Thailand Expat misskit's Avatar
    Join Date
    Dec 2009
    Last Online
    @
    Location
    Chiang Mai
    Posts
    47,989
    A NASA Spacecraft Is About to Land on an Asteroid And Grab a Sample. Watch It Live

    Imagine parallel parking a 15-passenger van into just two to three parking spaces surrounded by two-story boulders. On October 20, a University of Arizona-led NASA mission 16 years in the making will attempt the astronomical equivalent more than 200 million miles (320 million kilometres) away.




    A NASA mission called OSIRIS-REx will soon attempt to touch the surface of an asteroid and collect loose rubble.


    OSIRIS-REx is the United States' first asteroid sample return mission, aiming to collect and carry a pristine, unaltered sample from an asteroid back to Earth for scientific study. The spacecraft will attempt to touch the surface of the asteroid Bennu, which is hurtling through space at 63,000 miles per hour (101,000 kilometres per hour).


    If all goes according to plan, the spacecraft will deploy an 11-foot-long (3-metre-long) robotic arm called TAGSAM – Touch-and-Go Sample Acquisition Mechanism – and spend about 10 seconds collecting at least two ounces (50 grams) of loose rubble from the asteroid. The spacecraft, monitored remotely by a team of scientists and engineers, will then stow away the sample and begin its return to Earth, scheduled for 2023.


    You can watch this sample collection "Touch-And-Go" maneuver October 20 at 5:00 pm EDT/ 2:00 pm PDT (2100 UTC) below, or on NASA Television and the agency's website.



    MORE A NASA Spacecraft Is About to Land on an Asteroid And Grab a Sample. Watch It Live

Page 115 of 161 FirstFirst ... 1565105107108109110111112113114115116117118119120121122123125 ... LastLast

Thread Information

Users Browsing this Thread

There are currently 2 users browsing this thread. (0 members and 2 guests)

Posting Permissions

  • You may not post new threads
  • You may not post replies
  • You may not post attachments
  • You may not edit your posts
  •