The SpaceX Grasshopper during its test flight on March 7, 2013. Credit: SpaceX.
Did you take a moment to look at that August video of the Grasshopper rocket deliberately going sideways and then appearing to hover for a bit before returning to Earth? For more video fodder, there’s also this high-flying test the rocket took in October.
We hope you enjoyed these views, because Grasshopper is being retired. SpaceX now wants to focus its energy and resources on to the larger Falcon 9-R first stage, which should see its first test flight in New Mexico this December.
It sounds like SpaceX would have loved to go further, in a sense. “In some ways we’ve kind of failed on the Grasshopper program because we haven’t pushed it to its limit,” SpaceX president Gwynne Shotwell said at the International Symposium for Personal and Commercial Spaceflight (ISPCS) in New Mexico last week, as reported in the NewSpace Journal. “We haven’t broken it.”
Grasshopper took eight test flights during its flight history, which spanned about a year between September 2012 and October 2013. It was intended to test Vertical Takeoff Vertical Landing technology (VTVL). The strange appearance of a rocket leaving Earth and gently, deliberately touching back down again turned heads — even in the general public.
We have coverage — and videos! — of most of its past test flights here (the dates below are flight dates, not publication dates)
Most rockets are single-use only and are discarded either in orbit or (better yet, for space debris concerns) are put in a path to burn up in Earth’s atmosphere. SpaceX, however, wants its next-generation Falcon 9 rocket to have a reusable first stage to cut down on launch costs. (Grasshopper was about 10 storeys high, while the Falcon 9 will be about 14 storeys tall when carrying a Dragon spacecraft on board.)
The Falcon 9-R during a 10-second test in June 2013. Credit: Elon Musk on Twitter
As for the Falcon 9 series, a rocket flight in September delivered its payload (which included the Canadian Cassiope satellite) to space successfully, but faced some technical problems with the upper stage — and the first stage, as the rocket was supposed to be slowed down for splashdown.
As Space News reported, two burns were planned. The first worked, but the second burn took place while the rocket was spinning, which affected the flow of fuel. A picture shown by SpaceX demonstrated the rocket was intact three meters above the ocean, although it did not survive after it hit.
“Between the flights we’ve been doing with Grasshopper and this demonstration that we brought that stage back, we’re really close to full and rapid reuse of stages,” Shotwell said in the report.
The orbital paths of the International Space Station and the Cygnus capsule overlap in this 20 second exposure taken from Bannister Green, England on October 22, 2013. Credit and copyright: Wendy Clark.
Here’s a nice photo of the trails in the sky from the International Space Station and Orbital Science’s Cygnus freighter. This was captured just a few hours after Cygnus was undocked from the station on October 22, 2013. Astrophotographer Wendy Clark says to “please ignore my garden spaceship to the right,” but sorry, having a model of the starship Enterprise in your yard is just too wonderful to ignore!
This is a 20 sec exposure at ISO 1600 f4.5, 18mm, taken at 19.25 BST. The brightened spot is a flare (sun-glint) from one of the spacecraft.
And about an hour ago from this posting, Orbital Sciences confirmed that the Cygnus had deorbited:
We have lost the signal from #Cygnus. Reentry accomplished. Represents the official completion of our COTS program with @NASA partners
Cygnus’ mission elapsed time (launch through deorbit) was 35 days 3 hours 18 minutes 27 seconds
Here’s another great photo of the two spacecraft together in the sky from Germany by Wolfgang Dzieran:
The International Space Station and the Cygnus capsule on October 22, 2013, as seen from from Bad Lippspringe, Eastwestphalia, Germany. Credit and copyright: Wolfgang Dzieran.
He explains what you are seeing in the photo: “The long, light line is the track in the middle is the ISS. The second track, which runs almost parallel to the orbit of the ISS is the Cygnus supply module, and at one point becomes conspicuously bright. This bright illumination is called a flare,” Dzieran writes on his website. “At top right and bottom you can see the traces of two aircraft.
Thanks to both astrophotographers for sharing their images!
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Artist's impression of the New Horizons spacecraft. Image Credit: NASA
Now that’s a tune for a space geek’s ears. This is a highly modified sound bite of ranging signals between the Pluto-bound New Horizons spacecraft with NASA’s Deep Space Network (DSN) receiving stations.
What are the changes? The frequency has been altered to something that human ears can hear, explained a scientist in a New Horizons blog post this week:
“The ranging technique is just like seeing how much time it takes to hear the echo of your voice reflected off some object to measure how far away you are,” stated Chris DeBoy, New Horizons telecommunications system lead engineer who is with the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory.
The ranging code first emanated from the DSN, which sent it to New Horizons. The spacecraft demodulated (or processed) the signal and sent it back to Earth. The DSN then calculated the delay (in seconds) between when it sent the signal, and when the answer was received.
“The DSN’s ‘voice’ is a million or more times higher in frequency than your voice, travels almost a million times faster than the speed of sound, and the round-trip distance is more than four billion miles,” DeBoy added.
In this case, the signals were sent June 29, 2012 from a DSN station in Goldstone, California. The answer arrived at a fellow DSN station in Canberra, Australia and yielded a round trip time of six hours, 14 minutes and 29 seconds.
Despite its great distance away, New Horizons is still almost two years from its brief encounter with Pluto and its moons in July 2015. Some interesting trivia about the mission: some Plutonian moons were discovered while the spacecraft was en route. Shows how quickly science changes in a few years.
Comet C/2012 X1 LINEAR as imaged by Howes, Guido & Nicolini on Monday, October 21st. (Credit: remanzacco.blogspot)
It’s swiftly becoming an “all comets, all the time” sort of observing season. The cyber-ink was barely dry on our “How to Spot Comet 2P/Encke” post this past Monday when we were alerted to another comet that is currently in the midst of a bright outburst.
That comet is C/2012 X1 LINEAR. Discovered on December 8th, 2012 by the ongoing Lincoln Near Earth Asteroid Research (LINEAR) survey based in Socorro, New Mexico, Comet X1 LINEAR was expected to peak out at about +12th magnitude in early 2014.
That all changed early this week, when amateur observers began to report a swift change in brightness for the otherwise nondescript comet. Japanese observer Hidetaka Sato reported the comet at magnitude +8.5 on October 20th, a full 5.5 magnitudes above its expected brightness of +14. Remember, the magnitude scale is logarithmic, and the lower the number, the brighter the object. Also, 5 magnitudes represent an increase in brightness of 100-fold.
Astronomers Nick Howes, Martino Nicolini and Ernesto Guido used the remote 0.5 metre iTelescope based in New Mexico on the morning of Monday, October 21st to confirm the outburst. Other amateurs and professional instruments are just now getting a look at the “new and improved” Comet X1 LINEAR low in the dawn sky. Romanian amateur observer Maximilian Teodorescu noted on yesterday’s Spaceweather that the comet was not visible through his 4.5 inch refractor, though it was easy enough to image.
Comet X1 LINEAR currently sits in the constellation Coma Berenices about mid-way between the stars Diadem, (Alpha Coma Berenices) and Beta Coma Berenices. Shining at +8.5 magnitude, the coma is about 85” across with a 10” bright central region. This gives X1 LINEAR the appearance of an unresolved +8th magnitude globular cluster. In fact, a classic globular and a star party fave known as M3 lies about 8 degrees away at the junction of the constellations Canes Venatici, Boötes and Coma Berenices. M3 shines at +7th magnitude and will make a great contrast on the hunt for the comet.
Unfortunately, the window of time to search for the comet is currently short. From latitude 30 degrees north, the comet sits only 15 degrees about the northeast horizon 30 minutes before local sunrise. The situation is a bit better for observers farther to the north, and mid-November sees the comet 20 degrees above the horizon in the dawn sky.
Comet X1 LINEAR is currently covering 40’ (2/3rds of a degree, or 1 1/3 the size of a Full Moon) a day, and will spend most of the month of November in the constellation Boötes. Keep in mind, X1 LINEAR is currently still on brightening trend “with a bullet.” Revised light curves now show it on track to reach magnitude +6 near perihelion early next year, but further brightening could still be in the cards for this one. Remember Comet 17P/Holmes a few years back? That one jumped from an uber-faint +17th magnitude to a naked eye brightness of +2.8 in less than 48 hours.
Comet X1 LINEAR will reach a perihelion of 1.6 Astronomical Units (A.U.s) from the Sun on February 21st, 2014, and pass 1.6 A.U.s from the Earth around June 28th, 2014. The comet has a high inclination of 44.4° degrees relative to the ecliptic, and is on a respectable 1872 year orbit.
Here are some notable dates for the comet through the end of 2013;
The path of Comet C/2012 X1 LINEAR from October 23 to November 28th. Click to enlarge. (Credit: Created using Starry Night Education Software).
-November 2nd: Crosses into the constellation Boötes.
-November 6th: Passes near the +4.9th magnitude star 6 Boötis.
-November 16th: Passes near the bright star Arcturus.
-December 6th: Crosses into the constellation Serpens Caput.
-December 10th: Passes near the +5 magnitude star Tau1 Serpentis.
-December 14th: Comet X1 LINEAR sits only 8 degrees from Comet ISON.
-December 26th: Crosses into the constellation Hercules.
Note: “Passes near” on the above list denotes a pass closer than one degree, except as noted.
Now, we REALLY need the Moon to pass Last Quarter phase this coming Saturday so we can get a good look at all of these dawn comets! As of writing this, the current scorecard of binocular comets— comets with a brightness between magnitude +6 and +10 —sits at:
-2P Encke: +7.9 magnitude in Leo.
-C/2013 R1 Lovejoy: +8.7th magnitude in Canis Minor.
-C/2013 X1 LINEAR: +8.5th magnitude in Coma Berenices.
Comet X1 LINEAR on the morning of October 25th, as seen from latitude 30 degrees north 45 minutes prior to sunrise. (Created using Stellarium).
It’s also amusing to note how the method of notification for these sorts of outbursts has changed in recent years. I first heard of the outburst of X1 LINEAR on Monday evening via Twitter. Contrast this with Comet Holmes in 2007, which came to our attention via message board RSS feed. And way back in 1983, we all read about of the close passage of Comet IRAS-Araki-Alcock… weeks after it occurred!
Another curious phenomenon may also work its way through the news cycle. When Comet Holmes became a hit back in 2007, spurious reports of comets brightening became fashionable. If you were to believe everything you read on the web, it suddenly seemed like every comet was undergoing an outburst! This sort of psychological trend towards wish fulfillment may come to pass again as interest in comet outbursts mounts.
It’s also worth noting that, contrary to rumors flying around ye’ ole web, Comet X1 LINEAR is not following Comet ISON. The two are on vastly different orbits, and only roughly lie along the same line of sight as seen from our Earthly vantage point.
The orbital path of Comet C/2012 X1 LINEAR. (Credit: The JPL Solar System Dynamics Small-Body Database Browser).
And that’s it for our weekly (daily?) segment of “As the Comets Turn…” don’t forget to “fall back” one hour and plan your morning comet-hunting vigil accordingly this coming Sunday if you live in Europe-UK. North America still has until November 3rd to follow suit.
Happy comet hunting!
-Got a recent pic of Comet X1 LINEAR? be sure to post it in the Universe Today Flickr forum!
More than 1,000 exoplanets have been confirmed and cataloged (PHL @ UPR Arecibo)
It was just last week that we reported on the oh-so-close approach to 1,000 confirmed exoplanets discovered thus far, and now it’s official: the Extrasolar Planets Encyclopedia now includes more than 1,000! (1,010, to be exact.)
21 years after the first planets beyond our own Solar System were even confirmed to exist, it’s quite a milestone!
The milestone of 1,000 confirmed exoplanets was surpassed on October 22, 2013 after twenty-one years of discoveries. The long-established and well-known Extrasolar Planets Encyclopedia now lists 1,010 confirmed exoplanets.
Not all current exoplanet catalogs list the same numbers as this depends on their particular criteria. For example, the more recent NASA Exoplanet Archive lists just 919. Nevertheless, over 3,500 exoplanet candidates are waiting for confirmation.
The first confirmed exoplanets were discovered by the Arecibo Observatory in 1992. Two small planets were found around the remnants of a supernova explosion known as a pulsar. They were the surviving cores of former planets or newly formed bodies from the ashes of a dead star. This was followed by the discovery of exoplanets around sun-like stars in 1995 and the beginning of a new era of exoplanet hunting.
A “Periodic Table of Exoplanets” as listed by the Extrasolar Planets Encyclopedia (PHL)
(The first exoplanets to be confirmed were two orbiting pulsar PSR B1257+12, 1,000 light-years away. A third was found in 2007.)
Exoplanet discoveries have been full of surprises from the outset. Nobody expected exoplanets around the remnants of a dead star (i.e. PSR 1257+12), nor Jupiter-size orbiting close to their stars (i.e. 51 Pegasi). We also know today of stellar systems packed with exoplanets (i.e. Kepler-11), around binary stars (i.e. Kepler-16), and with many potentially habitable exoplanets (i.e. Gliese 667C).
“The discovery of many worlds around others stars is a great achievement of science and technology. The work of scientists and engineers from many countries were necessary to achieve this difficult milestone. However, one thousand exoplanets in two decades is still a small fraction of those expected from the billions of stars in our galaxy. The next big goal is to better understand their properties, while detecting many new ones.”
– Prof. Abel Mendéz, Associate Professor of Physics and Astrobiology, UPR Arecibo
Source: Press release by Professor Abel Méndez at the Planetary Habitability Laboratory (PHL) at Arecibo
While not illustrating the full 1,010 lineup, this is still a mesmerizing visualization by Daniel Fabrycky of 885 planetary candidates in 361 systems as found by the Kepler mission. (I for one am looking forward to the third installment!)
Of course, scientists are still hunting for the “Holy Grail” of extrasolar planets: an Earth-sized, rocky world orbiting a Sun-like star within its habitable zone. But with new discoveries and confirmations happening almost every week, it’s now only a matter of time. Read more in this recent article by Universe Today writer David Dickinson.
Artist's conception of World View's planned balloon mission some 19 miles (30 kilometers) up. Credit: World View Enterprises Inc.
Doesn’t that look fun? A startup company is proposing to send customers 19 miles (30 kilometers) into the air via balloon, where they can linger for two hours and look at the curvature of the Earth and experience a black sky. While it’s not high enough to qualify as a spaceflight, the listed ticket price may be a little more affordable for space enthusiasts: $75,000.
Don’t get too excited yet — the project appears to be in very early stages, and no “first flight” date is listed yet. But there are some interesting notes for those looking for space and science experience in the company.
The executive also includes Jane Poynter and Taber MacCallum, who were both members of Biosphere 2. More recently, they also took on senior positions in Inspiration Mars, a Dennis Tito-led project that aims to send humans past Mars. (The target launch date for that is Jan. 5, 2018.)
The company proposing to build it is Paragon Space Development Corp. (which Poynter and MacCallum co-founded.) Paragon’s customers for thermal, environment and life support systems include a lot of name brands (including NASA). Paragon is also doing work for the Inspiration Mars project as well as Mars One, which aims to send colonists on a one-way trip to the Red Planet by 2023.
Artist’s conception of World View’s passenger capsule that will be carried aloft during a proposed balloon flight. Credit: World View Enterprises Inc.
“Seeing the Earth hanging in the ink-black void of space will help people realize our connection to our home planet and to the universe around us, and will surely offer a transformative experience to our customers,” stated Poynter, who is CEO of World View. “It is also our goal to open up a whole new realm for exercising human curiosity, scientific research and education.”
World View’s announcement came after the Federal Aviation Administration “determined that World View’s spacecraft and its operations fall under the jurisdiction of the office of Commercial Space Flight,” the company added.
More information on their mission is available on the World View website. It’s a bit of a different track than Virgin Galactic and XCOR, who are offering rides into suborbital space for prices of $250,000 and $95,000, respectively. Neither company has an operational spacecraft yet, but they are in flight testing. Reports indicate they are hoping to get flights going next year.
So often, when we think of all the Apollo missions to the Moon, we recall the videos of the astronauts walking, jumping and driving around on the Moon. But the actual landing of the Lunar Module was such a key – if not nail-biting – part of the mission. Here in this video you can watch all six Apollo lunar landings at once. The footage uses the original descent camera coverage, realigned by the person who put this together —lunarmodule5 on YouTube — to 45 degrees to show what the lunar module pilots saw on the descent. There’s also the actual audio from all the landings. It’s amazing to hear both calm and anxiety in the voices of the LMP, Commander and Mission Control, as well as the jubilation after landing.
You can also watch all thirteen Saturn V launches at once in the video below — Apollo 4 thru Skylab with the Apollo 4 CBS audio added.
The Bubble Nebula, also known as NGC 7635, seen in the Hubble Palette. Credit and copyright: Terry Hancock.
Here’s a beautiful look at the Bubble Nebula, taken by astrophotographer Terry Hancock using what’s known as the “Hubble Palette,” — imaging in very narrow wavelengths of light using various filters. This allows very subtle details to be revealed, things that the human eye cannot see. Terry has been working on this one for a while — since mid-August — but the results are spectacular!
Terry took images from his “DownUnder Observatory” in Fremont, Michigan. He explains the image and techniques he used:
This last capture over 10 nights took me since mid-August 2013 to complete due to very high moisture in our West Michigan Skies right through this shoot. So, the data is therefore noisy and not the best but it is time to call it done for this year and move on! Due to poor conditions I had to use the H-Alpha data I had from my RGB+HA version using the QHY11 and combine with only one night capture using the QHY9 with it’s 3nm H-Alpha filter.
Using narrow band filters and post processed using the Hubble Palette technique the SII filter is assigned to Red, SII is assigned to Green and OIII is assigned to blue channel.
Total exposure time was 26 hours — persistence pays off! Thanks to Terry for sharing his gorgeous image!
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Sergei Krikalev gives a thumbs up during suit check before the launch of STS-88 in 1998. Credit: NASA.
Is time travel a fact or is it just science fiction? Thanks to time dilation and Einstein’s theory of relativity, we know that time travel can and actually does happen, albeit only in extremely tiny increments at the speeds and distances we can travel in space. If you add up the accumulated speed cosmonaut Sergei Krivalev has traveled in space – the most of any human with a total time spent in orbit of 803 days 9 hours and 39 minutes – he has actually time-traveled into his own future by 0.02 seconds.
Time dilation is caused by differences in either gravity or relative velocity — each of which affects time in different ways. When astronauts and satellites orbit the Earth, they are slightly further away from the center of the planet –compared to people on the ground – and so they actually experience less gravitational time dilation. This means the astronauts’ time would run slightly faster, and when they return to Earth, they’d have to “come back” to the past compared to when they were in space.
But time dilation due to velocity means that clocks for astronauts in space run slightly slower relative to people who are on the ground. When you come back to Earth, you’d be have to go into the future slightly to catch up with clocks on the ground.
The effect of time dilation due to gravity, however, “is quite small because Earth’s gravity is quite weak,” says educator Colin Stuart in this great instructional video from TedEd, “and so the time dilation due to their speed wins out and astronauts really do travel a tiny amount into their futures.”
But, as stated earlier, with our current technology limiting the velocities of astronauts, these differences are minuscule: after 6 months on the ISS, an astronaut has aged less than those on Earth, but only by about 0.007 seconds. The effects would be greater if we could get the ISS to orbit Earth at near the speed of light (approximately 300,000 km/s), instead of the actual speed of about 7.7 km/s.
This effect has been proven by GPS satellites, which orbit Earth at about 14,000 km/h (9,000 mph) which cuts several microseconds off their clocks daily, relative to clocks on Earth.
The Cygnus commercial resupply craft departed the ISS this morning (Oct. 22) to complete its maiden voyage after being released from Canadarm2 by station astronauts. Credit: NASA TV
Commercial space took another major leap forward this morning, Oct 22., when the privately developed Cygnus cargo vehicle undocked from the International Space Station on its historic maiden flight and successfully completed a highly productive month long stay during its demonstration mission – mostly amidst the US government shutdown.
The Cygnus was maneuvered about 10 meters (30 feet) away from the station and held in the steady grip of the stations fully extended robotic arm when astronauts Karen Nyberg and Luca Parmitano unlatched the arm and released the ship into free space at 7:31 a.m. EDT today – signifying an end to joint flight operations.
The next Cygnus resupply vessel is due to blast off in mid-December and is already loaded with new science experiments for microgravity research and assorted gear and provisions.
After the Expedition 37 crew members quickly pulled the arm back to a distance 1.5 meters away from Cygnus, ground controllers issued a planned “abort” command to fire the ships thrusters and safely depart from the massive orbiting lab complex.
Space Station robotic arm releases Cygnus after detachment from the ISS Harmony node. Credit: NASA TV
“It’s been a great mission. Nice work today!” radioed Houston Mission Control at NASA’s Johnson Space Center.
The vehicles were flying over the Atlantic Ocean and off the east coast of Argentina as Cygnus left the station some 250 miles (400 km) overhead in low Earth orbit.
The event was carried live on NASA TV and Cygnus was seen moving rapidly away.
Barely five minutes later Cygnus was already 200 meters away, appeared very small in the cameras view and exited the imaginary “Keep Out Sphere” – a strictly designated safety zone around the million pound station.
Cygnus commercial cargo craft rapidly departed the ISS this morning (Oct. 22) after release from the Canadarm2 robotic arm. Station modules visible at bottom. Credit: NASA TV
The Cygnus resupply ship delivered about 1,300 pounds (589 kilograms) of cargo, including food, clothing, water, science experiments, spare parts and gear to the six person Expedition 37 crew.
After the crew unloaded all that cargo, they packed the ship with 2,850 pounds of no longer needed trash.
On Wednesday (Oct. 23), a pair of deorbit burns with target Cygnus for a destructive reentry back into the Earth’s atmosphere at 2:18 p.m. EDT, to plummet harmlessly into the Pacific Ocean.
Cygnus was developed by Orbital Sciences Corp. with seed money from NASA in a public-private partnership between NASA and Orbital Sciences under NASA’s COTS commercial transportation initiative.
SpaceX Corp. was also awarded a COTS contract to develop the Dragon cargo carrier so that NASA would have a dual capability to stock up the station.
COTS was aimed at fostering the development of America’s commercial space industry to deliver critical and essential supplies to the ISS following the retirement of the Space Shuttle program.
“Congratulations to the teams at Orbital Sciences and NASA who worked hard to make this demonstration mission to the International Space Station an overwhelming success,” NASA Administrator Charles Bolden said in a statement.
Antares rocket lifts off at 10:58 a.m. EDT Sept 18 with commercial Cygnus cargo resupply ship bound for the International Space Station (ISS) from Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport Pad-0A at NASA’s Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia. Credit: Ken Kremer (kenkremer.com)
“We are delighted to now have two American companies able to resupply the station. U.S. innovation and inspiration have once again shown their great strength in the design and operation of a new generation of vehicles to carry cargo to our laboratory in space. Orbital’s success today is helping make NASA’s future exploration to farther destinations possible.”
America completely lost its capability to send humans and cargo to the ISS when NASA’s space shuttles were forcibly retired in 2011. Orbital Sciences and SpaceX were awarded NASA contracts worth over $3 Billion to restore the unmanned cargo resupply capability over 20 flights totally.
“Antares next flight is scheduled for mid December,” according to Frank Culbertson, former astronaut and now Orbital’s executive Vice President responsible for the Antares and Cygnus programs.
After launching to orbit atop the Antares rocket on Sept. 18, the first ever Cygnus cargo spacecraft chased the ISS and docked on Sept 29. Here is full scale, high fidelity mockup of Cygnus to give a feel for its size being similar to a small room. Credit: Ken Kremer (kenkremer.com)
