Orbit 17 +++ Space and beyond
galaxies, science, exploration, astronomy (blog)
Posts tagged universe
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.
World’s Most Complete 4D Map Of The Universe
Dec 20th
The Known Universe takes viewers from the Himalayas through our atmosphere and the inky black of space to the afterglow of the Big Bang. Every star, planet, and quasar seen in the film is possible because of the world’s most complete four-dimensional map of the universe, the Digital Universe Atlas that is maintained and updated by astrophysicists at the American Museum of Natural History. The new film, created by the Museum, is part of an exhibition, Visions of the Cosmos: From the Milky Ocean to an Evolving Universe, at the Rubin Museum of Art in Manhattan through May 2010.
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.
MARS: Obama and NASA’s Bolden discuss space exploration #mars
Dec 19th
Mars Colony Concept Credit: NASA
Only a few details have dribbled out of the meeting in the Oval Office between President Obama and NASA Administrator Charles Bolden. Most observers do not expect any news of an Obama space exploration policy before the 2011 budget is released this February.
However the Orlando Sentinel has a few tid bits.
“Among the things Bolden told lawmakers and Congressional staff was that the White House was now favoring a $1 billion top line increase to NASA’s budget in 2011. This would be far better than the 5 percent cut that all agencies, including NASA, were asked by the White House to prepare, but difficult to secure given the deficit cutting mindset in Congress now.
ESA to launch Mars mission in partnership with NASA
Dec 19th
The ExoMars programme will be launched in partnership with NASA. Credit: ESA
The European Space Agency, in collaboration with NASA, will launch two Mars exploration
missions in 2016 and 2018.
The ExoMars mission will be undertaken to probe the Martian atmosphere, especially astrobiological issues and to develop and demonstrate new technologies for planetary exploration with a long-term view of a future Mars sample return mission in the 2020s, ESA said.
The project, for which around $1.2 billion (850 million euro) has been sanctioned, will include an Orbiter plus an Entry, Descent and Landing Demonstrator, to be launched in 2016, and two rovers which would be sent in 2018.
“This marks an important moment for Europe in its steps towards space exploration on the world scale,” David Southwood, Director of Science and Robotic Exploration, said.
“We have been to the planets before, sure. But now we have a plan for exploration ahead to build our technical capability and explore Mars in a long-term partnership,” he said.
Eleven of ESA’s 17 member states are participating in the project.
Source: BNS (Paris)
Moon poses radiation risk to future travelers
Dec 19th
In this 1969 file photo, Astronaut Edwin E ‘Buzz’ Aldrin Jr. walks on the surface of the moon. Future lunar travelers face a radiation dose 30 percent to 40 percent higher than originally expected from radioactive lunar soil. Credit: AP
Future lunar explorers counting on the moon to shield themselves from galactic cosmic rays might want to think about Plan B.
In a surprising discovery, scientists have found that the moon itself is a source of potentially deadly radiation.
Measurements taken by NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter show that the number of high energy particles streaming in from space did not tail off closer to the moon’s surface, as would be expected with the body of the moon blocking half the sky.
The Totalities of Copenhagen
Dec 11th
‘I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end, the first and the last.” Is it not obvious that the vision of apocalypse as it was revealed to Saint John of Patmos was, in fact, global warming?
Here’s a partial rundown of some of the ills seriously attributed to climate change: prostitution in the Philippines (along with greater rates of HIV infection); higher suicide rates in Italy; the 1993 “Black Hawk Down” battle in Somalia; an increase in strokes and heart disease in China; wars in the Middle East; a larger pool of potential recruits to terrorism; harm to indigenous peoples and “biocultural diversity.”
All this, of course, on top of the Maldives sinking under the waves, millions of climate refugees, a half-dozen Katrina-type events every year and so on and on—a long parade of horrors animating the policy ambitions of the politicians, scientists, climate mandarins and entrepreneurs now gathered at a U.N. summit in Copenhagen. Never mind that none of these scenarios has any basis in some kind of observable reality (sea levels around the Maldives have been stable for decades), or that the chain of causation linking climate change to sundry disasters is usually of a meaningless six-degrees-of-separation variety.
Still, the really interesting question is less about the facts than it is about the psychology. Last week, I suggested that funding flows had much to do with climate alarmism. But deeper things are at work as well.
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.”
The most violent object in the Universe confirmed: Hypernova
Dec 2nd
Most astronomers today believe that one of the most plausible reasons we have yet to detect intelligent life in the universe is due to the deadly effects of local supernova explosions that wipe out all life in a given region of a galaxy.
While there is, on average, only one supernova per galaxy per century, there is something on the order of 100 billion galaxies in the observable Universe. Taking 10 billion years for the age of the Universe (it’s actually 13.7 billion, but stars didn’t form for the first few hundred million), Dr. Richard Mushotzky of the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, derived a figure of 1 billion supernovae per year, or 30 supernovae per second in the observable Universe!
Certain rare stars -real killers -type 11 stars, are core-collapse hypernova that generate deadly gamma ray bursts (GRBs). These long burst objects release 1000 times the non-neutrino energy release of an ordinary “core-collapse” supernova. Concrete proof of the core-collapse GRB model came in 2003.
Even more from NASA here: A Hypernova: The Super-charged Supernova and its link to Gamma-Ray Bursts
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.