Space news and Exploration II

[ScienceRocks]

 

[ScienceRocks]

Rare system of five stars discovered


8 July 2015

Astronomers have discovered a very rare system of five connected stars.
The quintuplet consists of a pair of closely linked stars - binaries - one of which has a lone companion; it is the first known system of its kind.
The pair of stars orbit around a mutual centre of gravity, but are separated by more than the distance of Pluto's orbit around the Sun.
The findings have been presented at the UK National Astronomy Meeting in Llandudno.
The unusual system lies 250 light-years away in the constellation Ursa Major. It was discovered in data gathered by the SuperWASP (Wide Angle Search for Planets) project.
This uses relatively small and low-cost cameras in the Canary Islands and South Africa to image much of the sky every few minutes.
Measurements of the brightness of individual stars are, over years, assembled into light curves - plots of brightness against time.
When the stars pass in front of one another, they produce a regular pattern of pairs of dips in the light curve.
Data from the new system revealed the existence of two binary stars, one of which was a so-called contact binary.

 

[Desperado]

OK, where are the GOP bills to add funds to NASA? Same place their bills to fund the study of the affects of global warming are.

Easy take the Money we give Israel and other Mideastern Countries and give that to NASA

 

[ScienceRocks]

OK, where are the GOP bills to add funds to NASA? Same place their bills to fund the study of the affects of global warming are.

Easy take the Money we give Israel and other Mideastern Countries and give that to NASA

I think we need to cut welfare, fix our healthcare system and end all foreign aid. Once we do that then we can give 50 billion per year to nasa.

The high paying skill based jobs are a great way to spend it.

 

[ScienceRocks]

NASA closer to sending astronauts to Mars - CNNPolitics.com

NASA took a key step forward in the goal to land a person on Mars on Thursday, naming the first four astronauts to train for a commercial trip to Mars.

Robert Behnken, Sunita Williams, Eric Boe and Douglas Hurley will train to fly to space on commercial crew vehicles, NASA said.

"We are on a journey to Mars, and in order to meet our goals for sending American astronauts to the Red Planet in the 2030s we need to be able to focus both on deep space and the groundbreaking work being done on the International Space Station," said NASA Administrator Charlie Bolden.

 

[ScienceRocks]

http://www.universetoday.com/121292/...gical-wonders/


Today’s image release clearly shows a world growing more geologically diverse by the day.

“We’re close enough now that we’re just starting to see Pluto’s geology,” said New Horizons program scientist Curt Niebur, on NASA’s website. Niebur, who’s keenly interested in the gray area just above the whale’s “tail” feature, called it a “unique transition region with a lot of dynamic processes interacting, which makes it of particular scientific interest.”

 

[ScienceRocks]

A Venus-Mass Planet orbiting a Brown Dwarf
1507.02388 A Venus-Mass Planet Orbiting a Brown Dwarf Missing Link between Planets and Moons

The co-planarity of solar-system planets led Kant to suggest that they formed from an accretion disk, and the discovery of hundreds of such disks around young stars as well as hundreds of co-planar planetary systems by the {\it Kepler} satellite demonstrate that this formation mechanism is extremely widespread. Many moons in the solar system, such as the Galilean moons of Jupiter, also formed out of the accretion disks that coalesced into the giant planets. We report here the discovery of an intermediate system OGLE-2013-BLG-0723LB/Bb composed of a Venus-mass planet orbiting a brown dwarf, which may be viewed either as a scaled down version of a planet plus star or as a scaled up version of a moon plus planet orbiting a star. The latter analogy can be further extended since they orbit in the potential of a larger, stellar body. For ice-rock companions formed in the outer parts of accretion disks, like Uranus and Callisto, the scaled masses and separations of the three types of systems are similar, leading us to suggest that formation processes of companions within accretion disks around stars, brown dwarfs, and planets are similar.

 

[ScienceRocks]

New Image of Pluto: 'Houston, We Have Geology'
July 11, 2015 by Tricia Talbert

Tantalizing signs of geology on Pluto are revealed in this image from New Horizons taken on July 9, 2015 from 3.3 million miles (5.4 million kilometers) away.

It began as a point of light. Then, it evolved into a fuzzy orb. Now – in its latest portrait from NASA's New Horizons spacecraft – Pluto is being revealed as an intriguing new world with distinct surface features, including an immense dark band known as the "whale."

Read more at: http://phys.org/news/2015-07-image-pluto-houston-geology.html#jCp

 

[ScienceRocks]

Skylon spaceplane developers reveal the antifreeze method for the sabre hypersonic engine

Reaction Engines of the UK is developing the hypersonic Synergetic Air-Breathing Rocket Engine (Sabre). It is designed to power a vehicle from a standing start to Mach 5.5 in air-breathing mode, and from the edge of the atmosphere to low Earth orbit in pure rocket mode. A fundamental enabler of the concept is a complex heat-exchanger system...

I don't know why nasa or some rich American won't copy this.

 

[danielpalos]

I believe rail gun technology could help us launch more probes for better coverage.

 

[ScienceRocks]

Kepler-453 b.
http://exoplanetarchive.ipac.caltech.edu/cgi-bin/DisplayOverview/nph-DisplayOverview?objname=Kepler+453+b&type=CONFIRMED_PLANET

 

[ScienceRocks]

Charon is beginning to look spectacular, with fresh rayed craters and a series of vast chasms. http://www.nasa.gov/feature/charon-s-chasms-and-craters… pic.twitter.com/X591VPSn6k


Another #PlutoFlyby image just released. Check out Charon: http://www.nasa.gov/feature/charon-s-chasms-and-craters… pic.twitter.com/h5jET19cTm

 

[ScienceRocks]

 

[ScienceRocks]

Surprise! Pluto is bigger than scientists thought

NASA's New Horizons settles the size debate. Pluto may be classified as a dwarf planet, but it's larger than many estimates.

Pluto's ego took a major blow in 2006 when it was demoted from a full-on planet to a dwarf planet. It can take back some of that pride with the news that NASA's New Horizons mission has discovered it's a bigger space object than many scientists expected.

NASA announced Monday that Pluto is 1,473 miles in diameter, which the space agency says is "somewhat larger than many prior estimates." The determination was made using images collected by the probe's Long Range Reconnaissance Imager (LORRI).

Surprise Pluto is bigger than scientists thought - CNET

 

[ScienceRocks]

 

[ScienceRocks]

New Horizons speeds past Pluto and into the history books
By David Szondy - July 14, 2015 6 Pictures

The first age of deep space planetary exploration came to an end today as NASA's New Horizons spacecraft flew by Pluto at 7:49 am EDT. The nuclear-powered unmanned probe sped past the dwarf planet at a distance of 7,750 miles and a speed of 31,000 mph, making it the final classical planet to be visited by a spacecraft.

 

[ScienceRocks]

Here's the best image of Pluto in false color (2015-07-13)
‪#‎NewHorizons‬ ‪#‎PlutoFlyby‬

 

[danielpalos]

I have recently been watching a documentary about alien artifacts on the moon. Why not simply "rail gun" launch a few probes to find out.

 

[ScienceRocks]

I have recently been watching a documentary about alien artifacts on the moon. Why not simply "rail gun" launch a few probes to find out.

Rail guns shoot objects up to around 100 miles
The moon is 230,000 miles
This would be a very small probe of around 20-50 pounds.
How would you slow it down to enter orbit around the moon? You can't carry much if any fuel on board in order to carry camera', science instruments. etc.

This is even more mind blowing if you wish to land this object on the moon.

 

[danielpalos]

I have recently been watching a documentary about alien artifacts on the moon. Why not simply "rail gun" launch a few probes to find out.

Rail guns shoot objects up to around 100 miles
The moon is 230,000 miles
This would be a very small probe of around 20-50 pounds.
How would you slow it down to enter orbit around the moon? You can't carry much if any fuel on board in order to carry camera', science instruments. etc.

This is even more mind blowing if you wish to land this object on the moon.

The probes just need to escape enough gravity to go on their merry way and shouldn't need much more than surveying instruments for a solar system survey.