Orbit 17 +++ Space and beyond
galaxies, science, exploration, astronomy (blog)
Posts tagged NASA space
NASA Focuses Next Mission on Venus, Asteroid or the Moon
Jan 4th
NASA has narrowed the choices for its next unmanned space mission down to three potential expeditions: one aimed at Venus and the others promising to return samples of an asteroid or the moon.
But only one of those contenders will get the green light for $650 million in funding (which excludes rocket costs) and a launch sometime before Dec. 30, 2018. The competition is part of NASA’s New Frontiers program to develop medium-class missions to explore the solar system.
“These are projects that inspire and excite young scientists, engineers and the public,” said Ed Weiler, NASA’s associate administrator for the Science Mission Directorate, in a statement.
NASA has set aside $3.3 million in seed money for each of the three potential missions in 2010 to flesh out their project concepts, feasibility, costs and management plans. The proposals were submitted in July 2009 and a final selection will be made in mid-2011.
“These three proposals provide the best science value among eight submitted to NASA this year,” Weiler said.
Here’s a look at the top contenders vying for NASA’s next New Frontiers mission slot:
Target: Venus — The Surface and Atmosphere Geochemical Explorer (SAGE) mission to Venus would send a probe plunging through the planet’s atmosphere to land on its harsh surface. The spacecraft would perform extensive measurements of the Venusian atmosphere and weather on the way down, and then dig into the ground to study surface composition and mineralogy.
Water on the Moon, Ares I-X, Logistics on ISS – Future Aspirations Mark 2009
Jan 2nd
If the first half of 2009 for NASA demonstrated the agency’s unwavering attention to safety, NASA not only continued that trend – upholding the utmost safety standards in the Space Shuttle and International Space Station Programs – during the second half of the year but also placed itself and its various programs in a tremendous position for the years to come.
Highlighting the second half of 2009 for NASA was the resolution of the Gaseous Hydrogen leaks at the Ground Umbilical Carrier Plate on the Shuttle launch pad (which resulted in the successful launch of STS-127/Endeavour in July), the midnight ride of Discovery on STS-128 in August, the amazingly successful test flight of the Ares I-X rocket in October, the discovery of water on the moon in October/November from the Lunar CRater Observation and Sensing Satellite and the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, and the logistics run of shuttle Atlantis to the ISS in November.
Read the rest here…
Pluto probe closes in – NASA’s New Horizons probe passed a key milestone today
Dec 30th
An artist’s conception shows New Horizons at Pluto. Credit: NASA / JHU APL
NASA’s New Horizons probe passed a key milestone today on its nine-year journey and is now closer to Pluto, its primary target, than it is to Earth. But it still has more than five years and more than 1.5 billion miles to go.
The 1,054-pound (480-kilogram) piano-sized spacecraft blasted off for the solar system’s most controversial dwarf planet almost four years ago. New Horizons was the fastest spacecraft ever launched from Earth, and thanks to a gravitational boost from Jupiter, it’s closing in on Pluto at the rate of 750,000 miles (1.2 million kilometers) per day. The probe is due to zoom past Pluto and its three moons on July 14, 2015.
As of today, New Horizons is between the orbits of Saturn and Uranus – a little more than 1.527 billion miles (2.463 billion kilometers) from Earth and 1.526 billion miles (nearly 2.462 billion kilometers) from Pluto, according to today’s status report from mission control at John Hopkins University’s Applied Physics Laboratory in Maryland. (APL is managing the mission on NASA’s behalf.)
3 Astronauts Land on International Space Station
Dec 28th
Three astronauts have landed safely on the International Space Station
floating 220 miles away from Earth. The newest residents of the space station are NASA astronaut T.J.
Creamer, Japanese Aerospace
Exploration Agency astronaut and Russian cosmonaut Oleg Kotov. The crew met up with Jeff Williams and Maksim Suraev, who have been on board the ISS since October 2009.
The crew has several projects planned during their stay on the ISS over the next several months. The newest crew is slated to stay until May 2010. Kotov and Suraev are scheduled for a space walk in January with the others beginning work on various other projects.
Williams and Suraev are scheduled to return to Earth in March. Three more crew members from various space agencies
around the world will land on the ISS in April bumping the space crew total to six.
The newcomers brought plenty of Christmas cheer aboard the ISS. They brought a Christmas tree and Santa hats for a family photo aboard the ISS. The astronauts will have the Christmas holiday off before jumping back into work.
Voyager 2 on a ‘magic mission’ beyond Milky Way
Dec 27th
A map of the Milky Way. Credit: Jet Propulsion Laboratory
Holiday tidings come from NASA’s Voyager 2 this week, offering a view of deep space beyond our sun’s solar system.
Now speeding through space at more than 34,000 miles-per-hour, the 1977 space probe resides more than 8.3. billion miles away from the sun. That is twice as far as Pluto. Two years ago, Voyager 2 passed into the region of space where the sun’s solar wind peters out as it plows into the interstellar gases of our Milky Way galaxy. And now it’s giving us some news from this region, called the “heliosheath,” by astrophysicists.
“This is a magic mission,” says space scientist Merav Opher of George Mason University. in Fairfax, Va.. “After all these years, Voyager 2 is still working and sending us first hand (on-site) data.”
Voyager 2’s vantage, revealed in the Dec. 24 Nature journal in a study led by Opher and colleagues, shows that beyond the solar system, the galaxy’s magnetic field is unexpectedly strong, about twice as much as expected, and unexpectedly tilted. Our galaxy is essentially a twin-armed flat disk of stars 100,000 light years across rotating around a spherical ball of stars in its center (one light year is about 5.9 trillion miles.).
MSNBC +++ Cosmic Log +++ The year in space
Dec 27th
The highest highlight of 2009 was clearly the revival of the Hubble Space Telescope, a mission that blended moments of beauty and brute force 350 miles above the earth.
Or was it?
Maybe the top story was the reassessment of NASA’s plans for human spaceflight. After all, tens of billions of dollars could be at stake. Or maybe it was the series of victories in NASA-backed competitions that had gone unwon for years.
Trio of NASA missions in 2010 will probe answers to secrets of the Earth, sun
Dec 26th
Taken by astronaut William Anders from the Apollo 8 spacecraft, this December 1968 photo of Earth rising over the lunar surface would become one of the most famous images of the 20th century. Credit: NASA
NASA heads into 2010 with the bittersweet assignment of retiring the space shuttle after nearly three decades. But that’s not all the agency has planned: There are also launches of three new satellites aimed at better understanding the Earth’s climate and oceans, and the sun.
Two of the probes will examine Earth — specifically the concentration of salt in the world’s oceans and the presence of aerosol particles, such as soot, in the atmosphere. A third mission will study the sun and its effect on space weather including solar flares that can disrupt communication on Earth.
All three come at a critical time for NASA. Data from the two Earth probes will likely influence global-warming research, and the trio of launches could serve as bright spots in a year otherwise dominated by debate over the future of the agency’s manned space program.
“They are extraordinary timely,” said Michael Freilich, head of NASA’s Earth-science division, of the two Earth probes. “It is a quest for understanding of the Earth system and [to improve] our ability to predict how our wonderful environment and our planet is going to change in the future.”
Combined, the three missions will cost more than $1.5 billion.
NASA’s Kepler mission looks for new planets – just like Johannes wanted
Dec 26th
“…we must choose between two assumptions: either the souls which move the planets are the less active the farther the planet is removed from the sun, or there is only one moving soul in the center of all the orbits, that is the sun, which drives the planet the more vigorously the closer the planet is, but whose force is quasi-exhausted when acting on the outer planets because of the long distance and the weakening of the force which it entails.” (in ref. 1, p 261)
As the story goes, on Christmas night 2,000 years ago, wise men followed a star in the night sky to reach the baby Jesus. NASA-Ames is following the stars too, looking for life on other worlds, and astronomers have a new celestial tool to help them.
“If we’re going to be looking for planets, earth-like planets are the key,” Foothill College Astronomy Department Chair Andrew Fraknoi said.
Fraknoi has loved astronomy since childhood. He says NASA’s Kepler mission is one of the most exciting in quite some time.
“In the last 16 years, we’ve discovered over 400 planets going around other stars, but the methods so far that we have been using only allowed us to find big planets like Jupiter,” Fraknoi said.
Kepler is a telescope designed to find planets orbiting other stars by looking for a break in the star light as a planet moves in front of it.
The challenge now is to find planets that are half to twice the size of the earth in the habitable zone of their stars, where it is possible that water and even life might exist.
Astronauts Get Two Christmases in Space – Seasons Greetings from Orbit 17!
Dec 25th
Each year, the crew gets to choose when to hold their official holiday feast, during which they gather to share special delicacies beyond the scope of their normal daily rations.
Christmas comes twice to the astronauts aboard the International Space Station this year as the multi-nation crew celebrates the traditional Dec. 25 holiday as well as Russian Orthodox Christmas on Jan. 7.
Current station commander Jeff Williams of NASA is leading a crew of five, including Russian cosmonauts Maxim Suraev and Oleg Kotov, Japanese astronaut Soichi Noguchi, and American spaceflyer Timothy “T.J.” Creamer.
Kotov, Noguchi and Creamer arrived just recently, docking at the station aboard the Russian Soyuz TMA-17 spacecraft on Tuesday.
“We’re privileged this time of year to be in this unique place looking back at our planet,” Williams said in a video beamed down from the orbiting outpost. “It’s a time for us to be thinking about our family and friends… It’s also a time to look forward to the future year, finishing the assembly of the International Space Station.”
Obama Gives NASA Bigger Budget, Backs New Rocket, Cancels Ares 1
Dec 25th
President Barack Obama will ask Congress next year to fund a new heavy-lift launcher to take humans to the moon, asteroids, and the moons of Mars, ScienceInsider has learned. The president chose the new direction for the U.S. human space flight program Wednesday at a White House meeting with NASA Administrator Charles Bolden, according to officials familiar with the discussion. NASA would receive an additional $1 billion in 2011 both to get the new launcher on track and to bolster the agency’s fleet of robotic Earth-monitoring spacecraft.
The current NASA plan for human exploration is built around the $3.5 billion Constellation program, which would provide a way to get humans to the space station and beyond. But its initial launcher, Ares 1, has faced a string of cost and technical problems, and it was excluded from several options for future space flight put forth earlier this year by an outside panel chaired by retired aerospace executive Norman Augustine. Although that panel suggested a $3 billion boost to NASA’s $18.7-billion-a-year budget in order to take a firm next step in human space flight, Obama’s support for a $1 billion bump next year represents a major coup for the agency given the ballooning deficit and the continuing recession. And NASA just won a $1 billion boost from Congress for 2010 in a bill signed by the president.