Composite image of the far side of the moon taken by the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter in 2009. Credit: NASA
In these days of daily image releases from Saturn, Mars, the Moon and other spots in the universe, it’s hard to remember just how exciting it was back in the 1950s and 1960s when a few images trickled out to the world at the time. Perhaps one of the biggest early surprises was how jagged and cragged the back side of the moon looked. Where were the lunar “seas” that we are familiar with on the Earth-facing side of the moon?
About 55 years after the first Soviet images of the farside were sent to Earth, a team of researchers led by graduate astrophysics student Arpita Roy (at Penn State University) may have an explanation.
They say it’s due to the violent way that the Moon formed — likely after a Mars-sized object collided with our Earth, creating a sea of debris that gradually coalseced into the Moon we see today. The huge crash and gathering together heated up both our planet and the Moon, but the Moon got cooler first because it was smaller.
Since the Earth was still hot — radiating at more than 2,500 degrees Celsius (4,500 degrees Fahrenheit) — and the Moon very close to the planet, the heat of the Earth had quite the effect. The far side of the Moon cooled down while the near side remained very hot.
“This gradient was important for crustal formation on the moon. The moon’s crust has high concentrations of aluminum and calcium, elements that are very hard to vaporize,” Penn State stated.
Credit-Scott Chapman
Calcium and aluminum are the first elements that “snow out” as rock vapor cools, and they would have remained in the atmosphere on the Moon’s far side. (The near side was too hot.)
“Thousands to millions of years later, these elements combined with silicates in the Moon’s mantle to form plagioclase feldspars, which eventually moved to the surface and formed the Moon’s crust,” Penn State added. “The farside crust had more of these minerals and is thicker.”
The seas themselves were formed after huge meteors crashed into the Moon’s Earth-facing side, rupturing the crust and letting the basaltic lava beneath burst forth. The crust on the far side was too thick for the meteors to penetrate, in most cases, leaving the rugged surface we are familiar with today.
Still from the first Vine video from space showing the Sun never setting on the International Space Station. Video taken in June 2014. Credit: Reid Wiseman/Vine
Isn’t there something so soothing about watching the Sun go around and around in this short video? This is the first Vine video from space. Vine is a social website that publishes short videos (around six seconds), and it’s used to great illustration in this message beamed from the International Space Station.
Going around Earth usually takes the space station around 90 minutes, but NASA astronaut Reid Wiseman explained that at this time of year, it is flying parallel with the “terminator line” — the location where the Sun rises or sets on Earth.
This left the space station in 24-hour sunlight, providing some great marathon space station watching for those people wanting to wave at the guys from the ground. According to Universe Today writer Bob King, the marathon wraps up tomorrow, so be sure to keep your eyes peeled for the space station from your location.
Curiosity rover panorama of Mount Sharp captured on June 6, 2014 (Sol 651) during traverse inside Gale Crater. Note rover wheel tracks at left. She will eventually ascend the mountain at the ‘Murray Buttes’ at right later this year. Assembled from Mastcam color camera raw images and stitched by Marco Di Lorenzo and Ken Kremer. Credit: NASA/JPL/MSSS/Marco Di Lorenzo/Ken Kremer-kenkremer.com
Curiosity rover panorama of Mount Sharp captured on June 6, 2014 (Sol 651) during traverse inside Gale Crater. Note rover wheel tracks at left. She will eventually ascend the mountain at the ‘Murray Buttes’ at right later this year. Assembled from Mastcam color camera raw images and stitched by Marco Di Lorenzo and Ken Kremer. Credit: NASA/JPL/MSSS/Marco Di Lorenzo/Ken Kremer-kenkremer.com Story updated[/caption]
Within the past Martian day on Friday, June 6, NASA’s rover Curiosity captured a stunning new panorama of towering Mount Sharp and the treacherous sand dunes below which she must safely traverse before reaching the mountains foothills – while ‘On The Go’ to her primary destination.
See our brand new Mount Sharp photo mosaic above – taken coincidentally by humanity’s emissary on Mars on the 70th anniversary of D-Day on Earth.
Basically she’s eating desiccated dirt while running a Martian marathon.
Having said ‘Goodbye Kimberley’ after drilling her third bore hole deep into a cold red slab of enticing bumpy textures of Martian sandstone in the name of science, our intrepid mega rover Curiosity is trundling along with all deliberate speed towards the inviting slopes of sedimentary rocks at the base of mysterious Mount Sharp which hold clues to the habitability of the Red Planet.
The sedimentary layers of Mount Sharp, which reaches 3.4 miles (5.5 km) into the Martian sky, is the six wheeled robots ultimate destination inside Gale Crater because it holds caches of water altered minerals.
Such minerals could possibly mark locations that sustained potential Martian microbial life forms, past or present, if they ever existed.
Mars was far wetter and warmer – and more conducive to the origin of life – billions of years ago.
Curiosity’s panoramic view departing Mount Remarkable and ‘The Kimberley Waypoint’ where rover conducted 3rd drilling campaign inside Gale Crater on Mars. The navcam raw images were taken on Sol 630, May 15, 2014, stitched and colorized. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Ken Kremer – kenkremer.com/Marco Di Lorenzo
The 1 ton robot is driving on a path towards the Murray Buttes which lies across the dunes on the right side of Mount Sharp as seen in our photo mosaic above, with wheel tracks on the left side.
She will eventually ascend the mountain at the ‘Murray Buttes’ after crossing the sand dunes.
Curiosity still has roughly another 4 kilometers of driving to go to reach the foothills of Mount Sharp sometime later this year.
Approximately four weeks ago, Curiosity successfully completed her 3rd drilling campaign since landing at the science waypoint region called “The Kimberley” on May 5, Sol 621, into the ‘Windjana’ rock target at the base of a 16 foot tall ( 5 Meter) hill called Mount Remarkable.
Composite photo mosaic shows deployment of NASA Curiosity rovers robotic arm and two holes after drilling into ‘Windjana’ sandstone rock on May 5, 2014, Sol 621, at Mount Remarkable as missions third drill target for sample analysis by rover’s chemistry labs. The navcam raw images were stitched together from several Martian days up to Sol 621, May 5, 2014 and colorized. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Ken Kremer – kenkremer.com/Marco Di Lorenzo
The fresh hole drilled into “Windjana” was 0.63 inch (1.6 centimeters) in diameter and about 2.6 inches (6.5 centimeters) deep and resulted in a mound of dark grey colored drill tailings piled around. It looked different from the initial holes drilled at Yellowknife Bay in the spring of 2013.
Windjana lies some 2.5 miles (4 kilometers) southwest of Yellowknife Bay.
Curiosity then successfully delivered pulverized and sieved samples to the pair of onboard miniaturized chemistry labs; the Chemistry and Mineralogy instrument (CheMin) and the Sample Analysis at Mars instrument (SAM) – for chemical and compositional analysis.
Before departing, Curiosity blasted the hole multiple times with her million watt laser on the Mast mounted Chemistry and Camera (ChemCam) instrument , leaving no doubt of her capabilities or intentions.
And she completed an up close examination of the texture and composition of ‘Windjana’ with the MAHLI camera and spectrometers at the end of her 7-foot-long (2 meter) arm to glean every last drop of science before moving on.
“Windjana” is named after a gorge in Western Australia.
While ‘On the Go’ to Mount Sharp, the rover is keeping busy with science activities by investigating the newly cored Martian material.
“Inside Curiosity we continue to analyse the Kimberley samples with CheMin and SAM,” wrote mission team member John Bridges in an update.
To date, Curiosity’s odometer totals 3.8 miles (6.1 kilometers) since landing inside Gale Crater on Mars in August 2012. She has taken over 154,000 images.
Stay tuned here for Ken’s continuing Curiosity, Opportunity, Orion, SpaceX, Boeing, Orbital Sciences, commercial space, MAVEN, MOM, Mars and more planetary and human spaceflight news.
Curiosity’s Panoramic view of Mount Remarkable at ‘The Kimberley Waypoint’ where rover conducted 3rd drilling campaign inside Gale Crater on Mars. The navcam raw images were taken on Sol 603, April 17, 2014, stitched and colorized. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Ken Kremer – kenkremer.com/Marco Di Lorenzo
Featured on APOD – Astronomy Picture of the Day on May 7, 2014 The Mars Hand Lens Imager on NASA’s Curiosity Mars rover provided this nighttime view of a hole produced by the rover’s drill and, inside the hole, a line of scars produced by the rover’s rock-zapping laser. The hole is 0.63 inch (1.6 centimeters) in diameter. The camera used its own white-light LEDs to illuminate the scene on May 13, 2014. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS
Artist's conception of the Titan Aerial Daughtercraft on Titan, a moon of Saturn. Credit: NASA
Sometimes a good idea takes some tinkering. You have a thought that it will work, but what it really requires is you take some money and time and test it out in a small form. This principle is sound if you’re trying to do home renovation (a paint splash on a wall can let you see if the color will work) and it is especially true if you’re planning a multi-million dollar mission to another planet.
This is the thought behind the NASA Innovative Advanced Concepts office, which announced a dozen far-flung drawing-board proposals that received $100,000 in Phase 1 funding for the next 9-12 months. There are vehicles to explore the soupy moon of Titan, a design to snag a tumbling asteroid, and other ideas to explore the solar system. (But be patient: These testbed ideas would take decades to come to fruition, if they are even accepted for further study and funding.) Check out a full list of the concepts below.
Titan Aerial Daughtercraft: A small rotorcraft that can touch down from a balloon or lander, with the idea being that it can jump between several spots to do close-up views. It would then bring its samples back to the “mothership” and possibly recharge there as well. “The autonomy needed for this concept is also applicable to exciting rotorcraft mission concepts for Mars and to in-situ exploration of Enceladus,” the description stated, referring to an icy moon of Saturn.
Titan Submarine: A small submarine would dive into Kraken Mare on Saturn’s moon, and there would be plenty to explore: 984 feet (300 meters) of depth, stretching across 621 miles (1,000 km). “Kraken Mare is comparable in size to the Great Lakes and represents an opportunity for an unprecedented planetary exploration mission,” the description stated. It would explore “chemical composition of the liquid, surface and subsurface currents, mixing and layering in the ‘water’ column, tides, wind and waves, bathymetry, and bottom features and composition.”
Comet Hitchhiker:This would be a “tethered” spacecraft that swings from comet to comet to explore icy bodies in the solar system. “First, the spacecraft harpoons a target as it makes a close flyby in order to attach a tether to the target. Then, as the target moves away, it reels out the tether while applying regenerative brake to give itself a moderate (<5g) acceleration as well as to harvest energy,” the description stated.
Artist’s conception of the Weightless Rendezvous And Net Grapple to Limit Excess Rotation (WRANGLER). Credit: NASA
Weightless Rendezvous And Net Grapple to Limit Excess Rotation (WRANGLER): This idea would capture space debris and small asteroids. It will use a small nanosatellite equipped with a “net capture device” and a winch. “The leverage offered by using a tether to extract angular momentum from a rotating space object enables a very small nanosatellite system to de-spin a very massive asteroid or large spacecraft,” the description stated.
The Aragoscope: A telescope that would look through an opaque disk at a distant object, which is different from the usual mirror arrangement.”Rather than block the view, the disk boosts the resolution of the system with no loss of collecting area,” the description states. This architecture … can be used to achieve the diffraction limit based on the size of the low cost disk, rather than the high cost telescope mirror.”
Mars Ecopoiesis Test Bed:A machine that would test how well bacteria from Earth could survive on Mars, which could be a precursor to “terraforming” the planet to make it more like our own. Researchers would select “pioneer organisms” and put them into a device that would embed itself into the Martian regolith (soil) in an area that would have liquid water. It would “completely seal itself to avoid planetary contamination, release carefully selected earth organisms (extremophiles like certain cyanobacteria), sense the presence or absence of a metabolic product (like O2), and report to a Mars-orbiting relay satellite,” the description states.
Artist’s conception of ChipSats. Credit: NASA
ChipSats: Instead of having an orbiter and a lander in separate missions, why not put them in one? While there have been combinations before (e.g. Cassini/Huygens), this is a bit different: This concept would have a set of tiny sensor chips (ChipSats) that deploy from a larger mothership to make a landing on a distant planet or moon.
Swarm Flyby Gravimetry: While whizzing by a comet or asteroid, a single spacecraft would release a swarm of tiny probes. “By tracking those probes, we can estimate the asteroid’s gravity field and infer its underlying composition and structure,” the description stated.
Probing icy worlds concept: How thick is the ice on Jupiter’s Europa or Ganymede, or Saturn’s Enceladus? Open question, and makes it hard to predict how tough of a drill one would need to probe the ice — or how well life could survive. This concept would send a probe to one of these locations and receive “a naturally occurring signal generated by interactions of deep penetrating cosmic ray neutrinos” to better get a sense of the depth. This could allow for maps of the ice.
The cracked ice surface of Europa. Credit: NASA/JPL
Heliopause Electrostatic Rapid Transit System (HERTS):This would be a mission that goes deep into the solar-system and out to the heliopause, the spot where the sun’s sphere of influence gives way to the interstellar medium. Using no propellant, the spacecraft would use solar wind protons to bring it out into the solar system. “The propulsion system consists of an array of electrically biased wires that extend outward 10 to 30 km [6.2 miles to 18.6 miles] from a rotating spacecraft,” the researchers stated.
3D Photocatalytic Air Processor:A new design to make it easier to generate oxygen on a spacecraft, using “abundant high-energy light in space,” the proposal states. ” The combination of novel photoelectrochemistry and 3-dimensional design allows tremendous mass saving, hardware complexity reduction, increases in deployment flexibility and removal efficiency.”
PERIapsis Subsurface Cave OPtical Explorer (PERISCOPE): A way to probe caves on the moon from orbit. Using a concept called “photon time-of-flight imaging”, the researchers say they would be able to bounce the signal off of the walls of the canyon to peer into the crevice and see what is there.
Artist's conception of two celestial bodies smacking into each other. Such a collision is believed to have formed Earth's moon. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
Billions of years ago, so the theory goes, a Mars-sized body (sometimes called “Theia”) smashed into our young planet and caused a near-catastrophe. Earth fortunately survived the risk of blowing apart, and the fragments from the crash gradually coalesced into the Moon that we see today.
Even though this happened a heck of a long time ago, scientists believe they have found traces of Theia in lunar rocks pulled from the Apollo missions.
The isotopes or types of oxygen revealed in the new research appear to be different between the Earth and the Moon. And that’s important, because it implies that a body of different composition caused the changes. “If the Moon formed predominantly from the fragments of Theia, as predicted by most numerical models, the Earth and Moon should differ,” the study states.
An airplane at about 2,400 meters above the ground passes in front of the Moon on its way to landing at the Charles de Gaulle Airport in Paris, France. Taken from about 70 km from Paris. Credit and copyright: Sebastien Lebrigand.
Scientists scanned samples from the Apollo 11, 12 and 16 missions with scanning electron microscopes that are more powerful than what was available in the 1960s and 1970s, when scientists first looked at these samples from the manned moon missions.
Before, the “resolution” of these microscopes couldn’t find any significant differences, but the new data reveals the moon rocks have 12 parts per million more oxygen-17 than the Earth rocks.
“The differences are small and difficult to detect, but they are there,” stated lead researcher Daniel Herwartz, who was formerly with the University of Gottingen and is now with the University of Cologne. “This means two things; firstly we can now be reasonably sure that the giant collision took place. Secondly, it gives us an idea of the geochemistry of Theia.”
The work was published in Science and will also be presented at the Goldschmidt geochemistry conference in California on June 11.
A large crater in Meridiani Planum on Mars, about 20 kilometers (12.4 miles) northwest of Opportunity's landing site and 42 kilometers (24.6 miles) northwest of Endeavour Crater, where Opportunity is right now. The crater is older than Victoria Crater (another target of Opportunity's), which is clear because it is more filled in with sediments and eroded. Credit: NASA/JPL/University of Arizona
Mars, that ever-changing and beautiful Red Planet practically next door to us, is one of the most well-studied places humans have in the universe. We’ve sent spacecraft there for about 50 years. Yet there’s still a lot of mysteries out there.
NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter is among the investigating spacecraft in the area checking out the planet’s past and looking for any interesting clues to tell us more about how Mars — and the Earth, and the solar system, and planets in general — formed. Mars had a wetter past (as the rovers have showed us), but where the water went and why its atmosphere are so thin are among the things scientists are trying to understand.
Luckily for us, the catalog of the University of Arizona’s High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) is easily available online for all of us to marvel at. Here are just some of the pictures sent back from across the solar system. To see more, look below and check out this HiRISE web page.
This image from Mars shows a variety of sandy features: ripples, transverse aeolian ridges (which are larger and lighter), dunes (dark) and draa (very large bedforms that are greater than 1 kilometer or 0.62 miles). Credit: NASA/JPL/University of ArizonaA Martian alluvial fan on the floor of a 60-kilometer (38-mile) crater near the equator of Mars. Scientists commonly study these features to learn more about the Red Planet’s wet past. Credit: NASA/JPL/University of ArizonaShiny dunes on Mars taken by the HiRISE camera on the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. Credit: NASA/JPL/University of ArizonaDunes migrating across the surface of Mars. Picture taken by the HiRISE camera on the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. Credit: NASA/JPL/University of Arizona
Near Earth asteroid 2014 KH39, discovered on May 24, 2014, is the faint 'star' in the crosshairs in this photo made on May 31. The telescope tracked the asteroid, so the stars are trailed. The streak is a satellite. Credit: Gianluca Masi
Got any plans Tuesday? Good. Keep them but know this. That day around 3 p.m. CDT (20:00 UT) asteroid 2014 KH39 will silently zip by Earth at a distance of just 272,460 miles (438,480 km) or 1.14 LDs (lunar distance). Close as flybys go but not quite a record breaker. The hefty space rock will buzz across the constellation Cepheus at nearly 25,000 mph (11 km/sec) near the Little Dipper at the time.
Observers in central Europe and Africa will have dark skies for the event, however at magnitude +17 the asteroid will be too faint to spot in amateur telescopes. No worries. The Virtual Telescope Project, run by astrophysicist Gianluca Masi, will be up and running with real-time images and live commentary during the flyby. The webcast begins at 2:45 p.m. CDT June 3.
2014 KH39 was discovered on May 24 by Richard Kowalski of the Catalina Sky Survey. (Kowalski is the same astronomer who discovered asteroid 2008 TC3, the small asteroid that impacted in Sudan in 2008). Further observations by the CSS and additional telescopes like Pan-STARRS 1 in Hawaii nailed down its orbit as an Earth-approacher with an approximate size of 72 feet (22 meters). That’s a tad larger than the 65-foot Chelyabinsk asteroid that exploded into thousands of small stony meteorites over Russia in Feb. 2013.
Diagram showing the orbit of 2014 KH39. Yellow shows the portion of its orbit above the plane of Earth’s orbit (grey disk); blue is below the plane. When farthest, the asteroid travels beyond Mars into the asteroid belt. It passes closest to Earth around 3 p.m. CDT June 3. Credit: IAU Minor Planet Center
Since this asteroid will safely miss Earth we have nothing to fear from the flyby. I only report it here to point out how common near-Earth asteroids are and how remarkable it is that we can spot them at all. While we’re a long ways from finding and tracking all potentially hazardous asteroids, dedicated sky surveys turn up dozens of close-approaches every year. On the heels of 2014 KH39, the Earth-approaching asteroid 2014 HQ124 will pass 3.3 LDs away 5 days later on June 8. With a diameter estimated at more than 2,100 feet (650-m) it’s expected to become as bright as magnitude +13.7. Southern hemisphere observers might track it with 8-inch and larger telescopes as its speeds across Horologium and Eridanus the morning before closest approach.
The chart shows the cumulative known total of near-Earth asteroids (NEAs) vs. time. The blue area shows all NEAs while the red shows those roughly 1 km and larger. Thanks to many ground-based surveys underway as well as space probes like the Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE), discovery totals have ramped up in recent years. There are probably millions of NEOs smaller than 140 meters waiting to be discovered. Credit: NASA
Perusing the current list of upcoming asteroid approaches, these two will be our closest visitors at least through early August. Near-Earth objects (NEOs) are comets and asteroids whose original orbits have been re-worked by the gravity of the planets – primarily Jupiter – into new orbits that allow them to approach relatively close to Earth. The ones we’re most concerned about are a subset called Potentially Hazardous Asteroids or PHAs, defined as objects that approach within 4.65 million miles (7.48 million km) of Earth and span 500 feet (150-m) across or larger. The key word here is ‘potential’. PHAs won’t necessarily hit the Earth – they only have the potential to do so over the vastness of time. On the bright side, PHAs make excellent targets for sampling missions.
Most near-Earth asteroids fall into three classes named after the first asteroid discovered in that class. Apollo and Aten asteroids cross Earth’s orbit; Amors orbit just beyond Earth but cross Mars’ orbit. Credit: Wikipedia
As of May 30, 2014, 11,107 near-Earth objects have been discovered with 860 having a diameter of 1 km or larger. 1,481 of them have been further classified as potentially hazardous. NASA’s Near-Earth Object Program estimates that over 90% of NEOs larger than 1 km (the most potentially lethal to the planet) have been discovered and they’re now working to find 90% of those larger than 459 feet (140 meters) across. Little by little we’re getting to better know the neighborhood.
The probability that either 2014 KH39 and 2014 HQ124 will hit Earth on this round is zero. Nor do we know of any asteroid in the near future on a collision course with the planet. Enjoy the day.
Meet Dragon V2 - SpaceX CEO Elon pulls the curtain off manned Dragon V2 on May 29, 2014 for worldwide unveiling of SpaceX's new astronaut transporter for NASA. Credit: SpaceX
Meet Dragon V2 – SpaceX CEO Elon pulls the curtain off manned Dragon V2 on May 29, 2014 for worldwide unveiling of SpaceX’s new astronaut transporter for NASA. Credit: SpaceX Story updated[/caption]
SpaceX CEO and billionaire founder Elon Musk gushed with excitement as he counted down the seconds and literally pulled the curtain away to unveil his company’s new manned Dragon V2 astronaut transporter for all the world to see during a live streaming webcast shortly after 10 p.m. EST (7 p.m. PST, 0200 GMT) this evening, Thursday, May 29, from SpaceX HQ.
The first photos from the event are collected herein. And I’ll be adding more and updating this story as they flow in.
Musk’s Dragon V2 unveiling was brimming with excitement like a blockbuster Hollywood Science Fiction movie premiere – with lights, cameras and action.
But this was the real deal and hopefully gets America moving again back to thrilling, real space adventures in orbit and beyond – reaching for the stars.
“The Dragon V2 is a 21st century spacecraft,” Musk announced to a wildly cheering crowd. “As it should be.”
“We wanted to take a big step in spacecraft technology. It is a big leap forward in technology and takes things to the next level.”
“An important characteristic of that is its ability to land anywhere on land, propulsively. It can land anywhere on Earth with the accuracy of a helicopter.”
“I think that’s what a spaceship should be able to do.”
“It will be capable of carrying seven astronauts. And it will be fully reusable.”
Dragon V2, SpaceX’s next generation spacecraft designed to carry astronauts to space is unveiled by CEO Elon Musk on May 29, 2014. Credit: SpaceX
The sleek gleaming spaceship looks decidedly different from the current cargo Dragon V1.
Read my “Dragon V2” preview articles leading up to the May 29 event – here and here.
Elon Musk seated inside Dragon V2 explaining consoles at unveiling on May 29, 2014. Credit: SpaceX
This new manrated Dragon is aimed at restoring US human launch access to space from American soil by carrying crews of up to seven US astronauts to low Earth orbit and eventually perhaps Mars – starting as soon as 2017.
Musk unveiled the gumdrop-shaped Dragon V2, or Version 2, to an overflow crowd of employees and media at SpaceX headquarters and design and manufacturing facility in Hawthorne, CA.
SpaceX Dragon V2 next generation astronaut spacecraft unveiled May 29, 2014. Credit: NASA
But Musk and SpaceX are not alone in striving to get Americans back to space.
Two other US aerospace firms – Boeing and Sierra Nevada – are competing with SpaceX to build the next generation spaceship to ferry astronauts to and from the ISS by 2017 using seed money from NASA’s Commercial Crew Program in a public/private partnership.
Altogether they have received more than $1 Billion in NASA funding.
SpaceX CEO Elon Musk unveils SpaceX Dragon V2 next generation astronaut spacecraft on May 29, 2014. Credit: Robert Fisher/America Space
The BoeingCST-100 and Sierra Nevada Dream Chaser ‘space taxis’ are also vying for funding in the next round of contracts to be awarded by NASA around late summer 2014.
The ‘Dragon V2’ is an upgraded, man-rated version of the unmanned Dragon cargo spaceship that just completed its third operational resupply mission to the ISS with a successful splashdown in the Pacific Ocean on May 18.
Stay tuned here for Ken’s continuing SpaceX, Boeing, Sierra Nevada, Orbital Sciences, commercial space, Orion, Mars rover, MAVEN, MOM and more planetary and human spaceflight news.
No rocket sleds were harmed in the making of this video. (NASA/JPL)
So what does an agency like NASA do after making a daring new type of landing with the Mars Curiosity rover? Try to make it even better for next time.
NASA is readying a new technology for landing on the Red Planet that is supposed to help brake the spacecraft in the atmosphere by inflating a buffer around the heat shield to slow things down. And after testing this so-called “Low-Density Supersonic Decelerator” on a rocket sled in January and April, the team is ready for the next major test: heading aloft.
As early as June 3, NASA will strap a test device below a high-altitude balloon and send it up to 120,000 feet — about the same altitude that Felix Baumgartner jumped from in 2012. The device will then drop from the balloon sideways, spinning like a football, and reach a velocity of four times the speed of sound. Then the LDSD will inflate, if all goes as planned, and NASA will evaluate how well it performs.
The agency hopes to use this technology to land heavier and heavier spacecraft on the Red Planet. If the testing goes as scheduled and the funding is available, NASA plans to use an LDSD on a spacecraft as early as 2018.
Neptune's largest Moon, Triton. Astronomers think that Triton is a captured Kuiper Belt Object. Credit: NASA/JPL
Leaving aside the complications of space treaties, a new video lays out another case for why you wouldn’t want to purchase property on Triton — at least, if you were buying for the ultra-long term, over millions of years. The moon is being slowed down by Neptune and will eventually crash or break up into a ring system.
All joking aside, the video also puts forward an interesting hypothesis: that Triton was once a dwarf planet, with a companion, and that Neptune captured Triton and flung the companion away when the giant gas planet moved further out into the solar system, billions of years ago.
Checking into the theory’s credentials, it’s worth noting that the author — Kurzgesagt — represents a startup company that has posted other videos about the solar system. They’re cutely done, although the company’s website does not appear to list any names, at least yet; they describe themselves as a “team of designers, journalists and musicians.” (That might be because they’re operating in “stealth mode”, a term describing startups that aren’t quite ready to make their idea or founders public yet.)
NASA’s web page about Triton doesn’t mention the binary system or dwarf planet hypothesis, but says “scientists think Triton is a Kuiper Belt Object captured by Neptune’s gravity millions of years ago.” (The Kuiper Belt is a collection of objects near Neptune’s orbit.)
Some of the reasons include its strange orbital motion that is opposite to Neptune’ s rotation, and the fact that Triton is overwhelmingly the largest moon in the system — suggesting it ejected other ones when it was captured.
Makes you want to send another spacecraft to Neptune, doesn’t it? The first and only visitor there, Voyager 2, flew past there in 1989.
