Space news and Exploration II

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ESA ATV tests new docking technology
By Anthony Wood
December 11, 2014
3 Pictures

The European Space Agency's (ESA) Automated Transfer Vehicle (ATV) Georges Lemaitre captured the International Space Station (ISS) in a new light in August, as it fired up a set of experimental sensors that may form the basis of the next generation of automated docking systems. Such tech will be vital for the increasingly-ambitious missions planned by NASA and its partners to explore the Red Planet and beyond.

 

[ScienceRocks]

Even in colour, Comet 67P is grey

The first colour image from the Rosetta spacecraft shows that Comet 67P is even more dark and monochrome than expected.

Despite being carefully assembled from three images taken with red, green and blue filters, the shot still looks effectively black and white.

It comes from the Osiris camera, which is on board the orbiting craft that last month made history by dropping a lander onto the comet's surface.

The Osiris team says 67P is "as black as coal" and surprisingly uniform.

 

[ScienceRocks]

MAVEN mission identifies links in chain leading to atmospheric loss
4 hours ago by Nancy Neal-Jones

Early discoveries by NASA's newest Mars orbiter are starting to reveal key features about the loss of the planet's atmosphere to space over time.

The findings are among the first returns from NASA's Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution (MAVEN) mission, which entered its science phase on Nov. 16. The observations reveal a new process by which the solar wind can penetrate deep into a planetary atmosphere. They include the first comprehensive measurements of the composition of Mars' upper atmosphere and electrically charged ionosphere. The results also offer an unprecedented view of ions as they gain the energy that will lead to their to escape from the atmosphere.

Read more at: MAVEN mission identifies links in chain leading to atmospheric loss


MESSENGER data suggest recurring meteor shower on Mercury
10 hours ago by Nancy Neal-Jones

The closest planet to the sun appears to get hit by a periodic meteor shower, possibly associated with a comet that produces multiple events annually on Earth.

The clues pointing to Mercury's shower were discovered in the very thin halo of gases that make up the planet's exosphere, which is under study by NASA's MESSENGER (MErcury Surface, Space ENvironment, GEochemistry, and Ranging) spacecraft.

"The possible discovery of a meteor shower at Mercury is really exciting and especially important because the plasma and dust environment around Mercury is relatively unexplored," said Rosemary Killen, a planetary scientist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, and lead author of the study, available online in Icarus.

Read more at: MESSENGER data suggest recurring meteor shower on Mercury

 

[ScienceRocks]

The world's largest single-aperture telescope is completed in China

The Five-hundred-metre Aperture Spherical radio Telescope (FAST) is a major new astronomical observatory built in Guizhou province, southwest China. Constructed between March 2011 and September 2016,* it becomes the largest single-aperture telescope in the world, half a kilometre wide and featuring a collecting area of 2.1 million sq ft (196,000 sq m). This dwarfs the next largest – the Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico – which had held the title since 1963.* The dish itself sits within a natural depression and is unable to move, due to its enormous size. However, the surface shape is changeable and the feed cabin (where radio waves are focused) can be moved around. This provides a viewing angle of up to 40° from the vertical.

FAST is able to gaze three times further into space and survey the skies ten times faster than Arecibo. Its primary roles include mapping the neutral hydrogen within the Milky Way at very high resolution, tripling the number of known pulsars from 2,000 to 6,000, and listening for possible signals from alien civilisations at distances of up to 1,000 light years; far more stars can be monitored than in previous surveys. FAST is the latest in a whole series of massive new telescopes being built around the world in the early 21st century, heralding a new era of astronomy.

Click to enlarge


Credit: NASA / National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC) and the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS)

 

[ScienceRocks]

Curiosity rover finds active, ancient organic chemistry on Mars
1 hour ago by Dwayne Brown

(Phys.org)—NASA's Mars Curiosity rover has measured a tenfold spike in methane, an organic chemical, in the atmosphere around it and detected other organic molecules in a rock-powder sample collected by the robotic laboratory's drill.

"This temporary increase in methane—sharply up and then back down—tells us there must be some relatively localized source," said Sushil Atreya of the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, and Curiosity rover science team. "There are many possible sources, biological or non-biological, such as interaction of water and rock."

Read more at: Curiosity rover finds active ancient organic chemistry on Mars


Curiosity rover makes first detection of organic matter on Mars
2 hours ago

The team responsible for the Sample Analysis at Mars (SAM) instrument suite on NASA's Curiosity rover has made the first definitive detection of organic molecules at Mars. Organic molecules are the building blocks of all known forms of terrestrial life, and consist of a wide variety of molecules made primarily of carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen atoms. However, organic molecules can also be made by chemical reactions that don't involve life, and there is not enough evidence to tell if the matter found by the team came from ancient Martian life or from a non-biological process. Examples of non-biological sources include chemical reactions in water at ancient Martian hot springs or delivery of organic material to Mars by interplanetary dust or fragments of asteroids and comets.

Read more at: Curiosity rover makes first detection of organic matter on Mars

 

[ScienceRocks]

Researchers detect possible signal from dark matter
Researchers detect possible signal from dark matter -- ScienceDaily

Could there finally be tangible evidence for the existence of dark matter in the Universe? After sifting through reams of X-ray data, scientists in EPFL's Laboratory of Particle Physics and Cosmology (LPPC) and Leiden University believe they could have identified the signal of a particle of dark matter. This substance, which up to now has been purely hypothetical, is run by none of the standard models of physics other than through the gravitational force. Their research will be published next week in Physical Review Letters.

 

[ScienceRocks]

Study finds an exoplanet, tilted on its side, could still be habitable if covered in ocean
1 hour ago by Jennifer Chu

Credit: Christine Daniloff/MIT

Nearly 2,000 planets beyond our solar system have been identified to date. Whether any of these exoplanets are hospitable to life depends on a number of criteria. Among these, scientists have thought, is a planet's obliquity—the angle of its axis relative to its orbit around a star.

Earth, for instance, has a relatively low obliquity, rotating around an axis that is nearly perpendicular to the plane of its orbit around the sun. Scientists suspect, however, that exoplanets may exhibit a host of obliquities, resembling anything from a vertical spinning top to a horizontal rotisserie. The more extreme the tilt, the less habitable a planet may be—or so the thinking has gone.

Now scientists at MIT have found that even a high-obliquity planet, with a nearly horizontal axis, could potentially support life, so long as the planet were completely covered by an ocean. In fact, even a shallow ocean, about 50 meters deep, would be enough to keep such a planet at relatively comfortable temperatures, averaging around 60 degrees Fahrenheit year-round.

David Ferreira, a former research scientist in MIT's Department of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences (EAPS), says that on the face of it, a planet with high obliquity would appear rather extreme: Tilted on its side, its north pole would experience daylight continuously for six months, and then darkness for six months, as the planet revolves around its star.

Read more at: Study finds an exoplanet tilted on its side could still be habitable if covered in ocean

 

[ScienceRocks]

New space race aims at creating breathable air on Mars
By Eric Mack

December 17, 2014
New space race aims at creating breathable air on Mars
3 Pictures

Mars One's vision of a Martian base

The race to reach Mars is more like a decades-long marathon, but in the short term the latest space race involves inventing ways that might make setting up shop on the Red Planet possible. In the past few months alone, three teams have unveiled their visions of how humans might breathe on the fourth planet from the sun.

NASA hopes to conduct a manned mission to the Red Planet, but probably not until the mid-2030s. Meanwhile, SpaceX and Mars One are talking about making the trip in under 10 years from now. Whenever it is, establishing any kind of presence on Mars is going to require some new innovations just to deliver basic life support for anyone looking to stay for any extended duration.

Students from the University of Western Australia and Mars One astronaut candidate Josh Richards are finalists in the Mars One University competition, which would send key experiments to the surface of Mars in 2018. Mars One is a non-profit that has used a contest and media-centric approach to fund a one-way manned mission to establish a base on Mars, as soon as the mid-2020s.

The team, which calls its effort the "Helena Payload Project," hopes to demonstrate its method of extracting water from Martian soil and using electrolysis to produce breathable air.

 

[ScienceRocks]

NASA’s TESS Mission Cleared for Next Development Phase
NASA s TESS Mission Cleared for Next Development Phase International Space Fellowship

NASA has officially confirmed the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) mission, clearing it to move forward into the development phase. This marks a significant step for the TESS mission, which would search the entire sky for planets outside our solar system, known as exoplanets.

 

[ScienceRocks]

Island Telescope sees Extra-Solar Planet, 55 Cancri e

A telescope based on the ground in La Palma, one of the Canary Islands, called Nordic, has seen 55 Cancri e, an extrasolar planet, which is twice the size of earth and has a parent star.

Nordic was the first one to observe the planet that revolves around a sun-like star. It saw 55 Cancri e in 2004. The size and proximity to a sun makes it akin to the planets that can support life. It is expected that the telescope was able to see the planet due to the 'transit method'.

It is when a dip comes in star's brightness level when a planet passes in front of it. The method has proved quite beneficial for space-based telescopes to study the super-earths or earth-like exoplanets.

- See more at: Island Telescope sees Extra-Solar Planet 55 Cancri e Perfect Science

 

[ScienceRocks]

Details of the Technical Challenges for Reusing Rockets

During their next flight, SpaceX will attempt the precision landing of a Falcon 9 first stage for the first time, on a custom-built ocean platform known as the autonomous spaceport drone ship. While SpaceX has already demonstrated two successful soft water landings, executing a precision landing on an unanchored ocean platform is significantly more challenging.

The odds of success are not great—perhaps 50% at best. However this test represents the first in a series of similar tests that will ultimately deliver a fully reusable Falcon 9 first stage.

Returning anything from space is a challenge, but returning a Falcon 9 first stage for a precision landing presents a number of additional hurdles. At 14 stories tall and traveling upwards of 1300 m/s (nearly 1 mi/s), stabilizing the Falcon 9 first stage for reentry is like trying to balance a rubber broomstick on your hand in the middle of a wind storm.

 

[ScienceRocks]

India launches biggest ever rocket into space
2 minutes ago

The Geostationary Satellite Launch Vehicle (GSLV) Mk-III rocket lifts off from The Satish Dhawan Space Centre on Sriharikota Island, some 80kms north of Chennai, December 18, 2014

India successfully launched its biggest ever rocket on Thursday, including an unmanned capsule which could one day send astronauts into space, as the country ramps up its ambitious space programme.

The rocket, designed to carry heavier communication and other satellites into higher orbit, blasted off from Sriharikota in the southeast state of Andhra Pradesh.

"This was a very significant day in the history of (the) Indian space programme," Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) chairman K.S Radhakrishnan said from mission control as fellow scientists clapped and cheered.

ISRO scientists have been riding high since an Indian spacecraft successfully reached Mars in September on a shoe-string budget, winning Asia's race to the Red Planet and sparking an outpouring of national pride.

Although India has successfully launched lighter satellites in recent years, it has struggled to match the heavier loads sent up by other countries.

The new rocket, weighing 630 tonnes and capable of carrying 4 tonnes, is a boost for India's attempts to grab a greater slice of the $300-billion global space market.

"India, you have a new launch vehicle with you. We have made it again," ISRO mission director S. Somnath said.

Read more at: India launches biggest ever rocket into space

 

[mamooth]

Tomorrow's resupply mission to the ISS has been pushed to Jan. 6. SpaceX is investigating an unnamed issue found in the static test firing of the Falcon 9 rocket.

CRS-5 Launch Date NET Jan. 6 SpaceX

 

[HenryBHough]

Remember when America had an actual space program?

 

[ScienceRocks]

Remember when America had an actual space program?

We can have it again if we had leaders with real vision.

 

[ScienceRocks]

Kepler proves it can still find planets
5 hours ago

This artist's conception portrays the first planet discovered by the Kepler spacecraft during its K2 mission. A transit of the planet was teased out of K2's noisier data using ingenious computer algorithms developed by a CfA researcher. The …more

To paraphrase Mark Twain, the report of the Kepler spacecraft's death was greatly exaggerated. Despite a malfunction that ended its primary mission in May 2013, Kepler is still alive and working. The evidence comes from the discovery of a new super-Earth using data collected during Kepler's "second life."

"Like a phoenix rising from the ashes, Kepler has been reborn and is continuing to make discoveries. Even better, the planet it found is ripe for follow-up studies," says lead author Andrew Vanderburg of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (CfA).

NASA's Kepler spacecraft detects planets by looking for transits, when a star dims slightly as a planet crosses in front of it. The smaller the planet, the weaker the dimming, so brightness measurements must be exquisitely precise. To enable that precision, the spacecraft must maintain a steady pointing.

Read more at: Kepler proves it can still find planets
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Reborn Kepler Makes First Exoplanet Find of New Mission - SpaceRef

NASA's planet-hunting Kepler spacecraft makes a comeback with the discovery of the first exoplanet found using its new mission -- K2.
(…)
The newly confirmed planet, HIP 116454b, is 2.5 times the diameter of Earth and follows a close, nine-day orbit around a star that is smaller and cooler than our sun, making the planet too hot for life as we know it. HIP 116454b and its star are 180 light-years from Earth, toward the constellation Pisces.

Confirmation and characterization of the protoplanet HD100546 b - Direct evidence for gas giant planet formation at 50 au
1412.5173 Confirmation and characterization of the protoplanet HD100546 b - Direct evidence for gas giant planet formation at 50 au

We present the first multi-wavelength, high-contrast imaging study confirming the protoplanet embedded in the disk around the Herbig Ae/Be star HD100546. The object is detected at L' (~3.8 micron) and M' (~4.8 micron), but not at K_s (~2.1 micron), and the emission consists of a point source component surrounded by spatially resolved emission. For the point source component we derive apparent magnitudes of L'=13.92±0.10 mag, M'=13.33±0.16 mag, and K_s>15.43±0.11 mag (3-σ limit), and a separation and position angle of (0.457±0.014)'' and (8.4±1.4)∘, and (0.472±0.014)'' and (9.2±1.4)∘ in L' and M', respectively. We demonstrate that the object is co-moving with the central star and can reject any (sub-)stellar fore-/background object. Fitting a single temperature blackbody to the observed fluxes of the point source component yields an effective temperature of Teff=1028+227−253 K and a radius for the emitting area of R=6.0+2.5−2.6 Jupiter radii. The best-fit luminosity is L=(2.3+0.9−0.3)⋅10−4 solar luminosities. We quantitatively compare our findings with predictions from evolutionary and atmospheric models for young, gas giant planets, discuss the possible existence of a warm, circumplanetary disk, and note that the de-projected physical separation from the host star of (53±2) au poses a challenge standard planet formation theories. Considering the suspected existence of an additional planet orbiting at ~13-14 au, HD100546 is a unique laboratory to study the formation of multiple gas giant planets empirically.

 

[ScienceRocks]

NASA considers possibilities for manned mission to Venus
10 hours ago by Bob Yirka

HAVOC. Credit: NASA Langley Research Center

(Phys.org) —NASA's Systems Analysis and Concepts Directorate has issued a report outlining a possible way for humans to visit Venus, rather than Mars—by hovering in the atmosphere instead of landing on the surface. The hovering vehicle, which they call a High Altitude Venus Operational Concept (HAVOC), would resemble a blimp with solar panels on top, and would allow people to do research just 50 kilometers above the surface of the planet.

Read more at: NASA considers possibilities for manned mission to Venus

 

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NASA Awards Launch Services Contract for Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite

NASA Awards Launch Services Contract for Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite NASA

NASA has selected SpaceX to provide launch services for the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) mission. TESS will launch aboard a Falcon 9 v1.1 launch vehicle, with liftoff targeted for August 2017 from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida.

The total cost for NASA to launch TESS is approximately $87 million, which includes the launch service, spacecraft processing, payload integration, tracking, data and telemetry, and other launch support requirements.

TESS’s science goal is to detect transiting exoplanets orbiting nearby bright stars. During a three-year funded science mission, TESS will sample hundreds of thousands of stars in order to detect a large sample of exoplanets, with an emphasis on discovering Earth- and super-Earth-sized planets in the solar neighborhood.

The Launch Services Program at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida is responsible for management and oversight of the Falcon 9 v1.1 launch services for TESS. The TESS Mission is led by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, with oversight by the Explorers Program at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland.

Space x rules!!!

 

[ScienceRocks]

Astronauts at ISS use 3D printer to print a socket wrench

Submitted by Safar Haddad on Fri, 12/19/2014 - 18:59

Astronauts at the International Space Station, for the very first time have printed a wrench, designed on Earth and then transmitted to space for manufacturing directly at ISS.

This is done by the ‘Made In Space’, a California company that designed the 3D printer aboard the ISS. In the past, International Space Station Commander Barry Wilmore had mentioned about the need for a ratcheting socket wrench and so the team decided to create one.

Up till now, every time an astronaut needed a specific tool, it would have to be flown up on the next mission to the ISS, which took months.

- See more at: Astronauts at ISS use 3D printer to print a socket wrench Perfect Science

 

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Google Lunar XPrize deadline extended to 2016 – Milestone Prize winners to be announced in January
By Chris Wood
December 19, 2014
3 Pictures

Teams competing for the Google Lunar XPrize have been given some significant leeway to develop their projects, with the final deadline now pushed back to 2016. According to the competition’s judges, there’s been significant progress towards completing the lofty goal, with US$6 million in funding to be awarded in January 2015.