Orion atop Delta 4 Heavy Booster. Credit: NASA/Kim Shiflett
Video Caption: Animation details NASA’s Orion Exploration Flight Test-1 (EFT-1) mission launching on Dec. 4. 2014. Credit: NASA
It’s not Science Fiction! It’s Not Star Trek!
No. It’s a really, really big NASA Mission! It’s Orion!
In fact, it’s the biggest and most important development in US Human Spaceflight since the end of the Space Shuttle Program in 2011.
Orion is launching soon on its first flight, the pathfinding Exploration Flight Test-1 (EFT-1) mission and sets NASA on the path to send humans to Mars in the 2030s.
Watch this cool NASA animation beautifully detailing every key step of Orion’s First Launch!
Orion is designed to take humans farther than they’ve ever gone before. Even farther into deep space than NASA’s Apollo moon landing which ended more than four decades ago!
We are T-MINUS 4 Days and Counting to the inaugural blastoff of Orion as of today, Sunday, November 30, 2014.
To learn even more about the 8 major events and goals happening during Orion’s EFT-1 mission be sure to check out my recent story with NASA’s fabulous new set of infographics – here.
Every aspect of the final processing steps now in progress by engineers and technicians from NASA, rocket provider United Launch Alliance, and Orion prime contractor Lockheed Martin is proceeding smoothly and marching towards launch.
Orion’s move to Launch Complex-37. Credit: Mike Killian
Orion will lift off on a United Launch Alliance Delta IV Heavy rocket on its inaugural test flight to space on the uncrewed Exploration Flight Test-1 (EFT-1) mission at 7:05 a.m. EST on December 4, 2014, from Space Launch Complex 37 (SLC-37) at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida.
The two-orbit, four and a half hour Orion EFT-1 flight around Earth will lift the Orion spacecraft and its attached second stage to an orbital altitude of 3,600 miles, about 15 times higher than the International Space Station (ISS) – and farther than any human spacecraft has journeyed in 40 years.
EFT-1 will test the rocket, second stage, jettison mechanisms as well as avionics, attitude control, computers and electronic systems inside the Orion spacecraft.
Then the spacecraft will carry out a high speed re-entry through the atmosphere at speeds approaching 20,000 mph and scorching temperatures near 4,000 degrees Fahrenheit to test the heat shield, before splashing down for a parachute assisted landing in the Pacific Ocean.
Orion is NASA’s next generation human rated vehicle that will carry America’s astronauts beyond Earth on voyages venturing farther into deep space than ever before – beyond the Moon to Asteroids, Mars, and other destinations in our Solar System.
NASA TV will provide several hours of live coverage
Here’s how Orion EFT-1 Launch will look!
Delta 4 Heavy rocket and super secret US spy satellite roars off Pad 37 on June 29, 2012, from Cape Canaveral, Florida. NASA’s Orion EFT-1 capsule will blastoff atop a similar Delta 4 Heavy Booster in December 2014. Credit: Ken Kremer- kenkremer.com
Watch for Ken’s ongoing Orion coverage and he’ll be onsite at KSC in the days leading up to the historic launch on Dec. 4.
Stay tuned here for Ken’s continuing Orion and Earth and planetary science and human spaceflight news.
Launch – It’s going to be loud. It’s going to be bright. It’s going to be smoky. Engines are fired, the countdown ends and Orion lifts off into space atop the United Launch Alliance Delta IV Heavy rocket from the launch pad at Cape Canaveral in Florida. Credit: NASA
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Learn more about Orion, SpaceX, Antares, NASA missions and more at Ken’s upcoming outreach events:
Dec 1-5: “Orion EFT-1, SpaceX CRS-5, Antares Orb-3 launch, Curiosity Explores Mars,” Kennedy Space Center Quality Inn, Titusville, FL, evenings
Dive teams attach tow lines to Orion test capsule during Aug. 15, 2013 recovery test at Norfolk Naval Base, VA. Credit: Ken Kremer/kenkremer.com
The Geoid 2011 model, based on data from LAGEOS, GRACE, GOCE and surface data. Credit: GFZ
People tend to think of gravity here on Earth as a uniform and consistent thing. Stand anywhere on the globe, at any time of year, and you’ll feel the same downward pull of a single G. But in fact, Earth’s gravitational field is subject to variations that occur over time. This is due to a combination of factors, such as the uneven distributions of mass in the oceans, continents, and deep interior, as well as climate-related variables like the water balance of continents, and the melting or growing of glaciers.
And now, for the first time ever, these variations have been captured in the image known as the “Potsdam Gravity Potato” – a visualization of the Earth’s gravity field model produced by the German Research Center for Geophysics’ (GFZ) Helmholtz’s Center in Potsdam, Germany.
And as you can see from the image above, it bears a striking resemblance to a potato. But what is more striking is the fact that through these models, the Earth’s gravitational field is depicted not as a solid body, but as a dynamic surface that varies over time.This new gravity field model (which is designated EIGEN-6C) was made using measurements obtained from the LAGEOS, GRACE, and GOCE satellites, as well as ground-based gravity measurements and data from the satellite altimetry.
The 2005 model, which was based on data from the CHAMP and GRACE satellites and surface data, was less refined than the latest one. Credit: GFZ
Compared to the previous model obtained in 2005 (shown above), EIGEN-6C has a fourfold increase in spatial resolution.
“Of particular importance is the inclusion of measurements from the satellite GOCE, from which the GFZ did its own calculation of the gravitational field,” says Dr. Christoph Foerste who directs the gravity field work group at GFZ along with Dr. Frank Flechtner.
The ESA mission GOCE (Gravity Field and Steady-State Ocean Circulation Explorer) was launched in mid-March 2009 and has since been measuring the Earth’s gravitational field using satellite gradiometry – the study and measurement of variations in the acceleration due to gravity.
“This allows the measurement of gravity in inaccessible regions with unprecedented accuracy, for example in Central Africa and the Himalayas,” said Dr. Flechtner. In addition, the GOCE satellites offers advantages when it comes to measuring the oceans.
Within the many open spaces that lie under the sea, the Earth’s gravity field shows variations. GOCE is able to better map these, as well as deviations in the ocean’s surface – a factor known as “dynamic ocean topography” – which is a result of Earth’s gravity affecting the ocean’s surface equilibrium.
Twin-satellites GRACE with the earth’s gravity field (vertically enhanced) calculated from CHAMP data. Credit: GFZ
Long-term measurement data from the GFZ’s twin-satellite mission GRACE (Gravity Recovery And Climate Experiment) were also included in the model. By monitoring climate-based variables like the melting of large glaciers in the polar regions and the amount of seasonal water stored in large river systems, GRACE was able to determine the influence of large-scale temporal changes on the gravitational field.
Given the temporal nature of climate-related processes – not to mention the role played by Climate Change – ongoing missions are needed to see how they effect our planet long-term. Especially since the GRACE mission is scheduled to end in 2015.
In total, some 800 million observations went into the computation of the final model which is composed of more than 75,000 parameters representing the global gravitational field. The GOCE satellite alone made 27,000 orbits during its period of service (between March 2009 and November 2013) in order to collect data on the variations in the Earth’s gravitational field.
The final result achieved centimeter accuracy, and can serve as a global reference for sea levels and heights. Beyond the “gravity community,” the research has also piqued the interest of researchers in aerospace engineering, atmospheric sciences, and space debris.
But above all else, it offers scientists a way of imaging the world that is different from, but still complimentary to, approaches based on light, magnetism, and seismic waves. And it could be used for everything from determining the speed of ocean currents from space, monitoring rising sea levels and melting ice sheets, to uncovering hidden features of continental geology and even peeking at the convection force driving plate tectonics.
A still from the first Star Wars: Episode VII - The Force Awakens trailer, released in November 2014. Credit: Lucasfilm/Bad Robot/Walt Disney Pictures/MOVIECLIPS Trailers/YouTube (screenshot)
Just how fast can X-wings hope of Star Wars fans go? In the first day since the new Star Wars: Episode VII — The Force Awakens trailer was released, the YouTube channel racked up more than 19 million views, inspiring discussion about how good the new films could be. You can watch the trailer above.
Below (with minor spoilers) is a roundup of the coverage and a cute Lego-inspired parody from a fan.
Entertainment Weekly published seven things that Star Wars fans have learned from the trailer, including the fact that no outer space is featured (!), none of the old-time stars are present yet (why?) and how the new lightsaber actually has a Game of Thrones look.
Ars Technica declared the trailer “definitely looks like Star Wars” because it includes the familiar elements we have been accustomed to since 1977, ranging from stormtroopers to the Millennium Falcon. “One of the challenges … in reviving the Star Wars movie franchise is winning over hardcore fans and washing away the bad taste of the critically reviled prequel films, and there’s no better way to start doing that than by appealing to nostalgia,” the mini-review read.
The Verge cleverly finds a Lego-themed parody of the Star Wars trailer and appears to like the bricked lightsaber more than the one showed in the trailer. And yes, the famous bricks are important to the franchise due to the immensely popular Lego video game series based on Star Wars.
IGN covers what it considers “the major talking points” of the trailer, including the fact that we’re on Tatooine, John Boyega “looks a little anxious” for a stormtrooper, and questions about some of the junk lurking in the background of one of the shots.
Business Insider finds the ultimate Easter egg for Star Wars fans. No, we’re not going to spoil the surprise — you’re going to have to click through to see it.
Star Wars Fanpedia fulfills our destiny for even MORE fan-made trailers. Expect to see more as the release date comes up in about a year.
Mashable has some amusing asides based on what we see in the trailer. Our favorite: “There’s one piece of writing in the trailer, on the X-wing pilot’s uniform, written in the language of the Star Wars universe, known as Aurebesh. And what does it say? Star Wars nerds had that answer almost immediately: ‘Pull to inflate.’ ”
This artist's conception illustrates a supermassive black hole (central black dot) at the core of a young, star-rich galaxy. Now astronomers have found a rogue SMBH travelling through space. Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
Scientists have long suspected that supermassive black holes (SMBH) reside at the center of every large galaxy in our universe. These can be billions of times more massive than our sun, and are so powerful that activity at their boundaries can ripple throughout their host galaxies.
In the case of the Milky Way galaxy, this SMBH is believed to correspond with the location of a complex radio source known as Sagittarius A*. Like all black holes, no one has even been able to confirm that they exist, simply because no one has ever been able to observe one.
But thanks to researchers working out of MIT’s Haystack Observatory, that may be about to change. Using a new telescope array known as the “Event Horizon Telescope” (EHT), the MIT team hopes to produce this “image of the century” very soon.Initially predicted by Einstein, scientists have been forced to study black holes by observing their apparent effect on space and matter in their vicinity. These include stellar bodies that have periodically disappeared into dark regions, never to be heard from again.
As Sheperd Doeleman, assistant director of the Haystack Observatory at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), said of black holes: “It’s an exit door from our universe. You walk through that door, you’re not coming back.”
Image of the M87, a giant elliptical galaxy that is believed to have a SMBH at its center. Credit: NASA/CXC/KIPAC/NSF/NRAO/AUI
As the most extreme object predict by Einstein’s theory of gravity, supermassive black holes are the places in space where, according to Doeleman, “gravity completely goes haywire and crushes an enormous mass into an incredibly close space.”
To create the EHT array, the scientists linked together radio dishes in Hawaii, Arizona, and California. The combined power of the EHT means that it can see details 2,000 times finer than what’s visible to the Hubble Space Telescope.
These radio dishes were then trained on M87, a galaxy some 50 million light years from the Milky Way in the Virgo Cluster, and Sagittarius A* to study the event horizons at their cores.
Other instruments have been able to observe and measure the effects of a black hole on stars, planets, and light. But so far, no one has ever actually seen the Milky Way’s Supermassive black hole.
According to David Rabanus, instruments manager for ALMA: “There is no telescope available which can resolve such a small radius,” he said. “It’s a very high-mass black hole, but that mass is concentrated in a very, very small region.”
Doeleman’s research focuses on studying super massive black holes with sufficient resolution to directly observe the event horizon. To do this his group assembles global networks of telescopes that observe at mm wavelengths to create an Earth-size virtual telescope using the technique of Very Long Baseline Interferometry (VLBI).
Image of Sagittarius A*, the complex radio source at the center of the Milky Way, and believed to be a SMBH. Credit: NASA/Chandra
“We target SgrA*, the 4 million solar mass black hole at the center of the Milky Way, and M87, a giant elliptical galaxy,” says Doeleman. “Both of these objects present to us the largest apparent event horizons in the Universe, and both can be resolved by (sub)mm VLBI arrays.” he added. “We call this project The Event Horizon Telescope (EHT).”
Ultimately, the EHT project is a world-wide collaboration that combines the resolving power of numerous antennas from a global network of radio telescopes to capture the first image ever of the most exotic object in our Universe – the event horizon of a black hole.
“In essence, we are making a virtual telescope with a mirror that is as big as the Earth,” said Doeleman who is the principal investigator of the Event Horizon Telescope. “Each radio telescope we use can be thought of as a small silvered portion of a large mirror. With enough such silvered spots, one can start to make an image.”
“The Event Horizon Telescope is the first to resolve spatial scales comparable to the size of the event horizon of a black hole,” said University of California, Berkeley astronomer Jason Dexter. “I don’t think it’s crazy to think we might get an image in the next five years.”
First postulated by Albert Einstein’s Theory of General Relativity, the existence of black holes has since been supported by decades’ worth of observations, measurements, and experiments. But never has it been possible to directly observe and image one of these maelstroms, whose sheer gravitational power twists and mangle the very fabric of space and time.
Finally being able to observe one will not only be a major scientific breakthrough, but could very well provide the most impressive imagery ever captured.
Illustration of MESSENGER in orbit around Mercury (NASA/JPL/APL)
Don’t take these spectacular Mercury images (below the jump) for granted. Three weeks ago, NASA’s orbiting Mercury spacecraft did an engine fire to boost its altitude above the hothouse planet. Another one is scheduled for January.
But all this will do is delay the end of the long-running mission — the first one to orbit Mercury — until early 2015, the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory wrote in an update. These maneuvers “extend orbital operations and delay the probe’s inevitable impact onto Mercury’s surface until early next spring,” the organization said in a statement.
Until MESSENGER (MErcury Surface, Space ENvironment, GEochemistry, and Ranging) flew by Mercury for the first time in January 2008, we knew very little about the planet. The only close-up pictures previously came from Mariner 10, which whizzed by a few times in 1974-75. After a few flybys, MESSENGER settled into orbit in 2011.
A 3-D image of Balanchine crater on Mercury obtained by the MESSENGER spacecraft. Scientists are examining the region to learn more about its oddly shaped ejecta, which may have occurred when one impact crater dumped material on top of another pile. Credit: NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Carnegie Institution of Washington
Mercury’s high density compared to other planets remains a mystery. MESSENGER investigations found a surface that didn’t have a lot of iron in it, but lots of volatile materials such as sodium and sulfur.
The surface had volcanoes on it and still has water ice in permanently shadowed craters near the poles.
Its magnetic field produces weird effects that are still being examined. NASA speaks of “unexplained bursts of electrons and highly variable distributions of different elements” in its tenuous atmosphere, called an exosphere.
This is an Andy Warhol-like image of an unnamed crater near Mercury’s north pole. Data obtained by the MESSENGER spacecraft makes scientists suspect there is water ice inside the 15-mile (24-kilometer) divot. Credit: NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Carnegie Institution of Washington
“Our only regret is that we have insufficient propellant to operate another 10 years, but we look forward to the incredible science returns planned for the final eight months of the mission,” stated Andy Calloway, MESSENGER mission operations manager at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory, at the time.
MESSENGER has done several orbital-boosting maneuvers in recent months to prolong the mission as possible. The first one in June adjusted its orbit to between 71.4 miles (115 kilometers) and 97.2 miles (156.4 kilometers), while the second in September went lower: a minimum of 15.7 miles (25.2 kilometers) to 58.2 miles (93.7 kilometers).
As of late October, MESSENGER’s minimum altitude was 115.1 miles (185.2 miles) and it took roughly eight hours for it to orbit Mercury. Once it finally crashes, Europe’s and Japan’s BepiColombo is expected to be the next Mercury orbiting mission. It launches in 2016, but will take several flybys past planets to get there and won’t arrive until 2024.
Ice is lurking at the bottom of these craters on Mercury in this double image. From left to right, the large craters are Chesterton, Tryggvadóttir, and Tolkien. The right-hand image is stretched to show the permanent dark bottoms in each crater. Data is from the NASA MESSENGER mission. Credit: NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Carnegie Institution of Washington
Image of the spiral galaxy NGC 4151, aka. "Sauron's Eye". Credit: X-ray: NASA/CXC/CfA/J.Wang et al.; Optical: Isaac Newton Group of Telescopes, La Palma/Jacobus Kapteyn Telescope; Radio: NSF/NRAO/VLA.
Determining the distance of galaxies from our Solar System is a tricky business. Knowing just how far other galaxies are in relation to our own is not only key to understanding the size of the universe, but its age as well. In the past, this process relied on finding stars in other galaxies whose absolute light output was measurable. By gauging the brightness of these stars, scientists have been able to survey certain galaxies that lie 300 million light years from us.
However, a new and more accurate method has been developed, thanks to a team of scientists led by Dr. Sebastian Hoenig from the University of Southampton. Similar to what land surveyors use here on Earth, they measured the physical and angular (or apparent) size of a standard ruler in the galaxy to calibrate distance measurements.
Early Spring Dust Storms at the North Pole of Mars. Early spring typically brings dust storms to northern polar Mars. As the north polar cap begins to thaw, the temperature difference between the cold frost region and recently thawed surface results in swirling winds. The choppy dust clouds of several dust storms are visible in this mosaic of images taken by the Mars Global Surveyor spacecraft in 2002. The white polar cap is frozen carbon dioxide. (NASA/JPL/Malin Space Science Systems)
Maybe you can’t climb on a rocketship to Mars, at least yet, but at the least you can get your desire for exploration out through other means. Today, take comfort that humanity is sending 90,000 messages in the Red Planet’s direction. That’s right, the non-profit Uwingu plans to transmit these missives today around 3 p.m. EST (8 p.m. UTC).
Among the thousands of ordinary folks are a collection of celebrities: Bill Nye, the Science Guy; George Takei (“Sulu” on Star Trek) and commercial astronaut Richard Garriott, among many others.
“This is the first time messages from people on Earth have been transmitted to Mars by radio,” Uwingu stated. “The transmission, part of Uwingu’s ‘Beam Me to Mars’ project, celebrates the 50th anniversary of the 28 November 1964 launch of NASA’s Mariner 4 mission—the first successful mission to explore Mars.”
The project was initially released in the summer with the idea that it could help support struggling organizations, researchers and students who require funding for their research. The messages cost between $5 and $100, with half the money going to the Uwingu Fund for space research and education grants, and the other half for transmission costs to Mars and other needed things.
While only robots can receive those messages for now, it’s another example of transmission between the planets that we take for granted. For example, check out this stunning picture below from Mars Express, a European Space Agency mission, that was just released yesterday (Nov. 27). Every day we receive raw images back from the Red Planet that anyone can browse on the Internet. That was unimaginable in Mariner 4’s days. What will we see next?
Close-up of a trough in the huge Hellas Basin on Mars, taken by the European Space Agency’s Mars Express spacecraft and released Nov. 27, 2014. Credit: ESA/DLR/FU Berlin
Just before dawn on Wednesday (Nov. 26), a pilot in Belgrade caught this stunning video of a “huge number of glowing pieces of whatever” breaking up in the atmosphere above.
You know what this is? A rocket, most likely! It’s the upper stage for the Soyuz that launched three people to space on Sunday (Nov. 23), the European Space Agency says.
It happens to all lovers of astronomy sooner or later.
I once had a friend who was excited about an upcoming conjunction of Saturn and Venus. They were passing closer than the apparent diameter of the Full Moon in the dawn sky, and you could fit ‘em both in the same telescopic field of view. I invited said friend to stop by at 5 AM the next morning to check this out. I was excited to see this conjunction as well, but not for the same reasons.
Said friend was into astrology, and I’m sure that the conjunction held a deep significance in their world view. Sure, I could have easily told them that ‘astrology is bunk,’ and the skies care not for our terrestrial woes… or I could carefully help guide this ‘at risk friend’ towards the true wonders of the cosmos if they were willing to listen.
We bring this up because this weekend, the Sun enters the constellation Ophiuchus, one of 13 modern constellations that it can appear in from our Earthly vantage point.
If you’re born from November 30th to December 18th, you could consider yourself an “Ophiuchian,” or being born under the sign of Ophiuchus the Serpent Bearer. But I’ll leave it up to you to decide what they might be like.
Seen at the Albany Park Zoo: Herpetology, or a modern day “serpent bearer?” Photo by author.
You might remember how the “controversy” of the 13th sign made its news rounds a few years back. Hey, it was cool to at least see an obscure and hard to pronounce constellation trending on Twitter. Of course, this wasn’t news to space enthusiasts, and to modern astronomers, a ‘house’ is merely where you live, and a ‘sign’ is what you follow to get there.
The modern 88 constellations we use were formalized by the International Astronomical Union in 1922. Like political boundaries, they’re imaginary constructs we use to organize reality. Star patterns slowly change with time due to our solar system’s motion — and that of neighboring stars —about the galactic center.
Astrologers will, of course, counter that their craft follows a tropical scheme versus a sidereal cosmology. In the tropical system, ecliptic longitude 0 starts from the equinoctial point marking the beginning of spring in the northern hemisphere, and the zodiac is demarcated by 12 ‘houses’ 30 degrees on a side.
This neatly ignores the reality of our friend, the precession of the equinoxes. The Earth’s poles do a slow wobble like a top, taking about 26,000 years to make one turn. This means that in the sidereal scheme of things, our vantage point of the Sun’s position along the zodiac against the background stars if reference to our Gregorian calendar is slowly changing: live out a 72 year lifespan, and the constellations along the zodiac with respect to the Sun will have shifted about one degree due to precession.
Our changing pole star. Credit: Starry Night Education Software.
Likewise, the direction of the North and South Pole is changing as well. Though Polaris makes a good pole star now, it’ll become increasingly less so as our north rotational pole begins to pull away from it after 2100 A.D. To the ancient Egyptians, Thuban (Alpha Draconis) was the pole star.
Precession over time. Credit: Tfr000 under Wikimedia Creative Commons 3.0 license.
Astrology and astronomy also have an intimate and hoary history, as many astronomers up until the time of Kepler financed their astronomical studies by casting royal horoscopes. And we still use terms such as appulse, conjunction and occultation, which have roots in astrology.
But the science of astronomy has matured beyond considering whether Mercury in retrograde has any connection with earthly woes. Perhaps you feel that you’re unlucky in love and have a vast untapped potential… sure, me too. We all do, and that just speaks to the universal state of the human condition. Astrology was an early attempt by humanity to find a coherent narrative, a place in the cosmos.
But the rise of the Ophiuchians isn’t nigh. Astrology relented to astronomy because of the latter’s true predictive power. “Look here, in the sky,” said mathematician Urbain Le Verrier, “and you’ll spy a new planet tugging on Uranus,” and blam, Neptune was discovered. If the planets had any true influence on us, why didn’t astrologers manage to predict the same?
Combating woo such as astrology is never simple. In the internet era, we often find tribes of the like-minded folks polarized around electronic camp fires. For example, writing ‘astrology is woo’ for an esteemed audience of science-minded readers such as Universe Today will no doubt find a largely agreeable reception. We have on occasion, however, written the same for a general audience to a much more hostile reception. Often, it’s just a matter of being that lone but patient voice of rationalism in the woods that ultimately sinks in.
Zodiacal artwork seen at the Yerkes observatory. Photo by author.
So, what’s the harm? Folks can believe whatever they want, and astrology’s no different, right? Well, the harm comes when people base life decisions on astrology. The harm comes when world leaders make critical decisions after consulting astrologers. Remember, Nancy and President Ronald Reagan conferred with astrologers for world affairs. It’s an irony of the modern age that, while writing a take down on astrology, there will likely be ads promoting astrology running right next to this very page. And while professional astronomers spend years in grad school, you can get a “PhD in Astrology” of dubious value online for a pittance. And nearly every general news site has a astrology page. Think of the space missions that could be launched if we threw as much money at exploration as we do at astrology as a society. Or perhaps astronomers should revert back to the dark side and resume casting horoscopes once again?
But to quote Spiderman, “with great power comes great responsibility,” and we promise to only use our astronomical powers for good.
What astronomers want you to know is that we’re not separate from the universe above us, and that the cosmos does indeed influence our everyday lives. And we’re not talking about finding your car keys or selling your house. We’re thinking big. The Sun energizes and drives the drama of life on Earth. The atoms that make you the unique individual that you are were forged in the hearts of stars. The ice that chills our drink may well have been delivered here via comet. And speaking of which, a comet headed our way could spell a very bad day for the Earth.
Don’t leave home without one… a travelling “pocket planetarium” circa 16th century seen at the Tampa Bay History Center. Photo by author.
All of these are real things that astronomy tells us about our place in the cosmos, whether you’re an Ophiuchian or a Capricorn. To paraphrase Shakespeare, the heavens may (seem to) blaze forth for the death of princes, but the fault lies not in the heavens, but ourselves. Don’t forget that, as James Randi says, “you’re a member of a proud species,” one loves to look skyward, and ultimately knows when to discard fantasy for reality.
Orion atop Delta 4 Heavy Booster. Credit: NASA/Kim Shiflett
At T MINUS 1 Week on this Thanksgiving Holiday, all launch processing events remain on track for the first blast off of NASA’s new Orion crew vehicle on Dec. 4, 2014 which marks the first step on the long road towards sending Humans to Mars in the 2030s.
Orion will lift off on a United Launch Alliance Delta IV Heavy rocket on its inaugural test flight to space on the uncrewed Exploration Flight Test-1 (EFT-1) mission at 7:05 a.m. EST on December 4, 2014 from Space Launch Complex 37 (SLC-37) at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida.
Technicians and engineers installed Orion’s batteries and have been conducting a thorough checkout of all the electrical and battery connections between the crew module, service module and Delta IV Heavy second stage while working inside the mobile service tower at pad 37.
With access doors at Space Launch Complex 37 opened, the Orion and Delta IV Heavy stack is visible in its entirety inside the Mobile Service Tower where the vehicle is undergoing launch preparations. Credit: NASA/Kim Shiflett
There is some margin time available in the schedule in case additional testing and checkouts are required.
Orion’s launch window opens at 7:05 a.m. EST on Dec. 4 at the beginning of a launch window that extends 2 hours, 39 minutes.
One week ago, top NASA and Lockheed Martin managers gave the “GO” to continue with launch preparations after the vehicle passed the Flight Readiness Review (FRR) on Thursday, Nov. 20.
This past week the doors of the Mobile Servicing Tower (MST) at pad 37 were opened to reveal the Orion spacecraft stack atop the Delta IV Heavy that will carry the spacecraft into orbit.
NASA’s Orion EFT-1 spacecraft atop Delta 4 Heavy Booster at Cape Canaveral, Florida ahead of launch set for Dec. 4, 2014. Credit: NASA/Kim Shiflett
The Delta IV Heavy is the world’s most powerful rocket.
The MST will be rolled back from the rocket stack on Wednesday evening, Dec. 3 starting 8 hours, 15 minutes before launch to allow the rocket to be fueled and continue into the final stage of launch operations and the countdown to liftoff on Thursday morning Dec. 4.
I’ll be at the pad during MST rollback reporting live for Universe Today.
Orion’s move to Launch Complex-37. Credit: Mike Killian
The two-orbit, four and a half hour Orion EFT-1 flight around Earth will lift the Orion spacecraft and its attached second stage to an orbital altitude of 3,600 miles, about 15 times higher than the International Space Station (ISS) – and farther than any human spacecraft has journeyed in 40 years.
Orion is NASA’s next generation human rated vehicle that will carry America’s astronauts beyond Earth on voyages venturing farther into deep space than ever before – beyond the Moon to Asteroids, Mars and other destinations in our Solar System.
NASA’s Orion EFT 1 crew module enters the Payload Hazardous Servicing Facility on Sept. 11, 2014 at the Kennedy Space Center, FL, beginning the long journey to the launch pad and planned liftoff on Dec. 4, 2014. Credit: Ken Kremer – kenkremer.com
Watch for Ken’s ongoing Orion coverage and he’ll be onsite at KSC in the days leading up to the historic launch on Dec. 4.
Stay tuned here for Ken’s continuing Orion and Earth and planetary science and human spaceflight news.
Learn more about Orion, SpaceX, Antares, NASA missions and more at Ken’s upcoming outreach events:
Dec 1-5: “Orion EFT-1, SpaceX CRS-5, Antares Orb-3 launch, Curiosity Explores Mars,” Kennedy Space Center Quality Inn, Titusville, FL, evenings
These three RS-68 engines will power each of the attached Delta IV Heavy Common Booster Cores (CBCs) that will launch NASA’s maiden Orion on the EFT-1 mission in December 2014. Credit: Ken Kremer/kenkremer.com Orion flight test profile for the Exploration Flight Test-1 (EFT-1) launching on Dec. 4, 2014. Credit: NASA
