Space and astronomy news
Mars is well-known for being a dry and arid place, where dusty red sand dunes are prevalent and water exists almost entirely in the form of ice and permafrost. An upside to this, however, is the fact that these conditions are the reason why Mars’ many surface features are so well preserved. And as missions like the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) have shown, this allows for some pretty interesting finds.
Consider the picture recently taken by Curiosity’s
The US President has done it again.
Just when you think things can’t get any more—”unusual”— in the White House, the President has Tweeted an American spy satellite image as part of a juvenile jab at Iranian leadership. After some sleuthing, astronomers were able to figure out which satellite it came from: a (formerly) top-secret satellite called USA 224, an optical reconnaissance satellite.
Continue reading “Thanks to Trump, We’ve Got a Better Idea of the Capabilities of US Surveillance Satellites”
Humanity’s future may lie in space, but getting out there is a very big challenge. In short, launching payloads into space from the bottom of Earth’s gravity well is quite expensive, regardless of whether or not reusable rockets are involved. And while some have suggested that building a Space Elevator would be a long-term solution to this problem, this concept is also very expensive and presents all kinds of engineering hurdles.
As an alternative, a pair of astronomy gradu
The past week has been pretty eventful for SpaceX. On Tuesday (Aug. 27th) at 05:00 PM local time (03:00 PST; 06:00 EST), the company conducted its second free-flight test of the Starship Hopper, which saw the test vehicle successfully ascend to 150 m (~500 ft) above the ground and then land in a different spot. This test brings SpaceX one step closer to orbital tests with their full-scale prototypes of the Starship.
But it was what came shortly after this successful test that has people buzzing right now. On Twitter, as Musk was sharing drone footage of the test, he mused about how big SpaceX’s next super-heavy launch system would be. According to Musk, the next-generation system (Starship 2.0, if you will) will be twice as large as the vehicle that is poised to send humans and cargo to the Moon and to Mars.
Continue reading “Elon Musks Says that his Next Starship Could be Twice as Big”
Work on the Mars 2020 Rover is heating up as the July/August 2020 launch date approaches. Mission engineers just attached the Mars Helicopter to the belly of the rover, where it will make the journey to Mars. Both the solar-powered helicopter and the Mars Helicopter Delivery System are now attached to the rover.
NASA’s Mars Helicopter will be the first aircraft to fly on another planet. The small rotor-craft only weighs 1.8 kg (4 lbs.) and is made of lightweight materials like carbon fiber and aluminum. It’s largely a technology demonstration mission, and is important to NASA. The overall mission for the Mars 2020 rover won’t depend on the helicopter, but NASA hopes to learn a lot about how to proceed with aircraft on future missions by putting the Mars helicopter through its paces on Mars.
Continue reading “Mars 2020 Rover Gets its Helicopter Sidekick”
A unique 3d printed telescope named the Analog Sky Drifter may spark a revolution in amateur telescope making.
Continue reading “A 3D Printed Telescope: The Analog Sky Drifter”
This week’s Carnival of Space is hosted by Brian Wang at his Next Big Future blog.
Click here to read Carnival of Space #626
And if you’re interested in looking back, here’s an archive to all the past Carnivals of Space. If you’ve got a space-related blog, you should really join the carnival. Just email an entry to [email protected], and the next host will link to it. It will help get awareness out there about your writing, help you meet others in the space community – and community is what blogging is all about. And if you really want to help out, sign up to be a host. Send an email to the above address.
When ‘Oumuamua crossed Earth’s orbit on October 19th, 2017, it became the first interstellar object to ever be observed by humans. These and subsequent observations – rather than dispelling the mystery of ‘Oumuamua’s true nature – only deepened it. While the debate raged about whether it was an asteroid or a comet, with some even suggesting it could be an extra-terrestrial solar sail.
In the end, all that could be said definitively was that ‘Oumuamua was an interstellar object the likes of which astronomers had never before seen. In their most recent study on the subject, Harvard astronomers Amir Siraj and Abraham Loeb argue that such objects may have impacted on the lunar surface over the course of billions of years, which could provide an opportunity to study these objects more closely.
Continue reading “By Continuously Watching the Moon, we Could Detect Interstellar Meteorites”
Is there a more complicated and sophisticated technological engineering project than a spacecraft? Maybe a particle accelerator or a fusion power project. But other than those two, the answer is probably no.
Spacecraft like the ESA’s JUICE don’t just pop out of the lab ready to go. Each spacecraft like JUICE is a singular design, and they require years—or even a decade or more—of work before they ever see a launch pad. With a scheduled launch date of 2022, JUICE is in the middle of all that work. Now its cameras are capturing images of Jupiter and its icy moons as part of its navigation calibration and fine-tuning.
“It felt particularly meaningful to conduct our tests already on our destination!”
Gregory Jonniaux, Vision-Based Navigation expert at Airbus Defence and Space.
One of the great accomplishments of the Apollo missions was to bring home hundreds of kilograms of lunar rock. Suddenly, geologists had a lifetime’s worth of lunar samples captured from several different spots across the Moon. These rocks and dust have been under continuous analysis since the Apollo 11 astronauts came home over 50 years ago.
Continue reading “Bringing Mars To Earth. The Plans For a Mars Sample Return Mission”