Orbit 17 +++ Space and beyond
galaxies, science, exploration, astronomy (blog)
Posts tagged astronaut
NASA reveals first-ever photo of liquid on another world #space #galaxy
Dec 21st
A photo from Cassini shows sunlight reflecting from a giant lake of methane on the northern half of Saturn’s moon Titan.
NASA scientists revealed Friday a first-of-its-kind image from space showing reflecting sunlight from a lake on Saturn’s largest moon, Titan.
It’s the first visual “smoking gun” evidence of liquid on the northern hemisphere of the moon, scientists said, and the first-ever photo from another world showing a “specular reflection” — which is reflection of light from an extremely smooth surface and in this case, a liquid one.
“This is the first time outside Earth we’ve seen specular reflection from another liquid from another body,” said Ralf Jaumann, a scientist analyzing data from the Cassini unmanned space probe.
Jaumann said he was surprised when he first saw the photos transmitting from Cassini, orbiting Saturn about a billion miles from Earth.
“It was great because if you look at photos of planets, you mostly see nothing is happening. But in two hours we saw a glint of light getting brighter.”
Five NASA space shuttle flights remain
Dec 19th
NASA says space shuttle Endeavour will begin the last year of shuttle flights by delivering the final U.S. module of the International Space Station.
That STS-130 mission is targeted for launch Feb. 7 from the Kennedy Space Center.
NASA officials said they will preview the mission during a series of briefings Friday, Jan. 15, at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston. NASA Television and the agency’s Web site will broadcast the briefings live.
Five shuttle missions are planned during 2010, with the final flight currently targeted for launch in September.
What will happen when astronauts no longer fly on the space shuttle?
Dec 11th
Dragon Spacecraft Credit: SpaceX
There are only five Space Shuttle flights left on NASA’s schedule. Since 1982, astronauts have traveled into low-Earth orbit aboard the workhorse of NASA’s space program. With the exception of the Hubble repair mission earlier this year, the remaining flights have all been focused on adding to and upgrading the International Space Station. However, as it stands, after 2010 the United States will need to look for a new way to push humans up Earth’s gravity well.
NASA’s Constellation program is hard at work with development of the Orion. Designed to serve as a vehicle for the trip to the ISS and to lunar orbit, Orion and the entire Constellation is currently under review by the Obama administration. In October of this year, the Augustine commission delivered a set of options to the President that will help shape the future of American human space flight. By the commission’s estimate, Orion will at best be ready in 2016, leaving the US with a six year gap in operations.
Six years is a long drought. So what alternate options are available?
In addition to the shuttle, the Russian Soyuz and Progress spacecraft have been regular visitors to the ISS. And in the coming US space flight gap, NASA is looking at $51 million USD per person for any trips on Soyuz. In the past two years, the Europeans and the Japanese have developed remotely-operated transfer vehicles. However, the new ships are currently only cargo-rated.
New NASA Craft, With Infrared Power, Will Map the Unseen Sky
Dec 11th
SEEING STARS The Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer, which contains a four-million-pixel camera, will photograph the entire sky every six months. Credit: NASA
Most of the light from stars and other objects like planets in the universe is doubly invisible. It comes in the form of infrared, or heat radiation, with wavelengths too long for our eyes to pick up. Moreover, most infrared wavelengths do not penetrate the Earth’s atmosphere to get to our unseeing eyes.
So to take a proper inventory of cosmic shenanigans, astronomers have had to take to space. On Friday, they will get a little more help when the National Aeronautics and Space Administration is scheduled to launch the Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer, or WISE, into orbit from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California as early as 9:09 a.m., Eastern time.
Circling the Earth in a polar orbit 300 miles high, the spacecraft, equipped with a 16-inch telescope and infrared detectors, will photograph the entire sky every six months.
WISE is a successor to the Infrared Astronomy Satellite, or IRAS, which was launched in 1983 and made the first heat maps of the sky. And it is a trailblazer for the giant James Webb Space Telescope due in 2014.
NASA to launch spacecraft that will survey asteroids, stars, galaxies in infrared light
Dec 7th
NASA’s latest space telescope will scan the sky in search of never-before-seen asteroids, comets, stars and galaxies, with one of its main tasks to catalog objects posing a danger to Earth. The sky-mapping WISE, or Wide-Field Infrared Survey Explorer, is scheduled to launch no earlier than before dawn Friday from Vandenberg Air Force Base on the central California coast aboard a Delta 2 rocket.
If all goes as planned, WISE will orbit some 325 miles above the Earth and produce the most detailed map yet of the cosmos. It is designed to detect objects that give off infrared light or heat. Infrared light is ideal for uncovering dusty, cold and distant objects that often can’t be seen by optical telescopes.
The mission is expected to find millions of hard-to-see objects, said principal investigator Edward Wright of the University of California, Los Angeles.
“It’s really a mission to survey everything that’s out there,” Wright said. “What we’re trying to do is make a map of the universe.”
Final five – New year spells the end of the shuttle program
Dec 7th
The shuttle’s Space Shuttle Main Engines or SSMEs are scheduled to light one last time in Sep. 2010 Credit: NASA
Everything has its time. In the case of the space shuttle program some would argue that its time has come and gone. It cannot be argued however that the space shuttle program has given us some of the most spectacular moments in space history. Delivery of satellites into orbit, retrieval of satellites, repair missions to orbiting telescopes, missions to manned space station and an era where spacewalks went from a mysticism to an everyday occurrence – the shuttle era gave us all this. It also gave us a totally different type of vehicle, one that was not a one-time use, but instead would be used over and over again for 30 years.
Now there are only five missions left. The shuttle program will enter into its final year next month after a history spanning back to 1981, when the first space shuttle mission, STS-1, roared into orbit aboard Columbia. However, Between 1961 and 1969 NASA developed and flew four new manned space vehicles. The Mercury, Gemini and Apollo spacecraft and the Lunar Module or LM. Between 1976 and 2010 NASA will have flown one manned spacecraft the shuttle. There contrast between the two eras could not be more stark. One of growth and innovation and a second of limited growth. It seems almost as if in its formative years NASA raced to achieve it goal and then decided to stop and fully realize the realm it had entered.
Read the full post here…
Huge ocean ‘once covered much of northern half of Mars’
Nov 24th
The large body of water was fed through rivers carrying rainwater, scientists believe.
These created a network of valleys on the surface of the planet more than twice as extensive as previously thought, new research reveals.
The findings come just a week after Nasa, the American space agency, announced that they had found water on the surface of the Red Planet, raising hopes of finding life on Mars.
New maps showing that the valleys cover a larger area than previously appreciated has led scientists to believe there was once a single ocean covering much of planet’s northern half.
The extent of the Martian valleys, and what they mean for the chances of life on the planet, have been hotly debated since they were first discovered by the Mariner 9 Spacecraft in 1971.
Wired: This Week In Space
Nov 24th
Good day everyone and welcome to the inaugural edition of “This Week In Space”. A place to check in on events happening within the world’s space programs in the upcoming week. Every week we’ll try to capture as many planned launch events, landing events, activities with different missions, and other activities as we can. We’ll never capture everything but hopefully we will consistently give our readers a resource for educational activities, events, and other information.
Launches (Source: Spaceflight Now World Launch Schedule)
NASA will radiate monkeys for Mars mission, that’s right… radiate.
Nov 21st
NASA says it would take almost a year using conventional rockets to get to Mars. By that time a human body would likely turn to jello due to exposure to space radiation. But the space agency has come up with a solution – in fact two of them.
First they want to build the nuclear rocket (Project Prometheus) which NASA says would cut in half the amount of time it would take to get to the red planet. With nuclear reactors for engines NASA also says they could carry heavier payloads which would make it possible to “mine the sky” for precious minerals.
The other solution to the space radiation problem seems to rely on testing monkeys by exposing them to doses of radiation so NASA can further study the effects on the human body.
NASA news: astronauts send their first tweets from outer space
Nov 20th
How cool is it when the Atlantis astronauts can share their mission experiences with us Earthlings, right from space? That’s right. Yup. Who would have believed it possible? NASA astronauts Leland Melvin and Robert Satcher are sending tweets from outer space while on their STS-129 mission. These messages are a great way to keep your kids interested in the on-going mission.