Author Topic: Space exploration thread - Unexpected Rapid Disassembly in the launch area.  (Read 309402 times)

Online farawayred

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Re: Space exploration thread
« Reply #40 on: March 27, 2012, 09:25:45 pm »
A cool video of a Martian twister based on an actual picture from the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wyjX0FiKnXU&feature=player_embedded
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Offline Tomaldinho

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Re: Space exploration thread
« Reply #41 on: March 29, 2012, 04:22:23 pm »
I don't understand how we can have gone backwards.... its not as if we've lost knowledge. If NASA wanted to and they had the funds they could still equal the best thing they've done so far.
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Re: Space exploration thread
« Reply #42 on: March 29, 2012, 08:05:27 pm »
I don't understand how we can have gone backwards.... its not as if we've lost knowledge. If NASA wanted to and they had the funds they could still equal the best thing they've done so far.
Yes, we have definitely lost knowledge. Think how knowledge is transferred - through documentation. Fifty years ago documentation filing, storage and retrieval was very different. We no longer have the same access even if we wanted to retrieve blueprints from the Saturn rocket, documents on the Apolo missions, Mariner, even Voyager. The generation that build those missions has long retired and a lot of them have long passed away, expertise and experience have been lost.

I work with this every day, and I see how expertise is lost from one mission to the next; it's a regular occurrence. NASA tries to go very heavy on procedure documentation, recording and storing, but I see the down side of that too - every procedure comes to replace one or a combination of experience, expertise and common sense. My involvement is in failure analysis and most issues I have to resolve originate from people strictly following procedures but lacking experience, expertise or common sense. And if you think of it, it makes perfect sense. A person, who knows a process is asked to describe it thoroughly in a procedure. However thoughtful that person can be, he/she cannot account for every factor that can influence the result and write the according steps. When an unfamiliar person blindly follow a procedure, he/she lacks the attributes to recognize a problem and mitigate it. In my view (and I have a strong opinion on that which isn't very popular at work) there is nothing that replaces those three ingredients of success. In terms of the lunar missions, we have lost two of them.
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Offline Tomaldinho

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Re: Space exploration thread
« Reply #43 on: April 2, 2012, 02:36:57 pm »
Yes, we have definitely lost knowledge. Think how knowledge is transferred - through documentation. Fifty years ago documentation filing, storage and retrieval was very different. We no longer have the same access even if we wanted to retrieve blueprints from the Saturn rocket, documents on the Apolo missions, Mariner, even Voyager. The generation that build those missions has long retired and a lot of them have long passed away, expertise and experience have been lost.

I work with this every day, and I see how expertise is lost from one mission to the next; it's a regular occurrence. NASA tries to go very heavy on procedure documentation, recording and storing, but I see the down side of that too - every procedure comes to replace one or a combination of experience, expertise and common sense. My involvement is in failure analysis and most issues I have to resolve originate from people strictly following procedures but lacking experience, expertise or common sense. And if you think of it, it makes perfect sense. A person, who knows a process is asked to describe it thoroughly in a procedure. However thoughtful that person can be, he/she cannot account for every factor that can influence the result and write the according steps. When an unfamiliar person blindly follow a procedure, he/she lacks the attributes to recognize a problem and mitigate it. In my view (and I have a strong opinion on that which isn't very popular at work) there is nothing that replaces those three ingredients of success. In terms of the lunar missions, we have lost two of them.

Well put, I didn't see it that way.
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Re: Space exploration thread
« Reply #44 on: April 4, 2012, 09:59:30 pm »
Curiosity is half way to Mars (on April 1) and almost everything seems to be working well. There were only a few hiccups and, of course, the drill problem hasn't been resolved yet, but all in good times.  ;)
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Offline wacko

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Re: Space exploration thread
« Reply #45 on: April 13, 2012, 11:33:43 am »
Captivating interactive animation of the scale of stuff in the universe:

http://htwins.net/scale2/scale2.swf?bordercolor=white

Including your new favourite part of the universe: Gomez's Hamburger.
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Re: Space exploration thread
« Reply #46 on: April 13, 2012, 12:33:56 pm »
That is fantastic Wacko!

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Re: Space exploration thread
« Reply #47 on: April 13, 2012, 04:18:13 pm »
I second that - awesome find, Wacko!
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Re: Space exploration thread
« Reply #48 on: April 13, 2012, 04:58:36 pm »
2 things struck me there. Is the Minecraft world as big as a planet? And the Eridanus Supervoid, what's that all about? I love all the parallel universe stuff but is it really the only explanation we have for it?

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Re: Space exploration thread
« Reply #49 on: April 14, 2012, 01:22:19 pm »
2 things struck me there. Is the Minecraft world as big as a planet? And the Eridanus Supervoid, what's that all about? I love all the parallel universe stuff but is it really the only explanation we have for it?

Minecraft: Sort of. It's length/width are comparable to the diameter of a planet, but the planet's surface would be much, much bigger.

Supervoid: I don't think anyone really knows why it's there.
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Re: Space exploration thread
« Reply #50 on: April 15, 2012, 05:29:06 am »
Oh, boy... I just found a new failure mode for the drill on the Mars rover (MSL, Curiosity); wait until I inform the project... Wire fatigue limits the useful life to 120-150 hours. Actually, it would be good if the drill doesn't fail before that, but I think we can make it work long enough. For a reference, one mission life is considered to be 16 hours, but we expect tom do a lot better than that. Maybe...
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Re: Space exploration thread
« Reply #51 on: April 17, 2012, 07:38:04 pm »
Cross posting from the Nuclear Energy thread (as these are better suited for here)

http://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2004/27sep_shieldsup/


    Shields Up!

    A breeze of interstellar helium atoms is blowing through the solar system.

    NASA

    September 27, 2004: If you've ever watched Star Trek, you know the importance of shields. When a star explodes or a Klingon death ray lances out of the darkness, the captain yells two words, "Shields up!", and all is well. Deflector shields: Don't leave home without one.

    The solar system, believe it or not, has got one.

    The solar system's deflector shield is a giant magnetic bubble called "the heliosphere." It's part of the sun's magnetic field. No one knows the precise dimensions of the heliosphere, but it's bigger than the orbit of Pluto. All nine planets are inside it.

    The heliosphere is important to life on our planet. A few million years ago, for instance, a cluster of massive stars drifted through our part of the Milky Way and exploded, one after another, like popcorn. Cosmic rays from the blasts were mostly deflected by the heliosphere, sparing early humanoids a radiation bath.

    But the bubble isn't perfect. The fact is, "it's leaky," says space scientist Eberhard Moebius of the University of New Hampshire. "Some things do get through." (This happens on Star Trek, too. If the ship's shields were impenetrable, there would never be any drama.)

    Take cosmic rays for example. They are fragments of atoms shattered and accelerated to light speed by supernova blasts. The heliosphere deflects about 90% of them; the rest, the most powerful 10%, penetrate the inner solar system.

    The bubble is even more vulnerable to particles with no electric charge. Magnetic fields can deflect charged particles like cosmic rays, but not neutral atoms and molecules or bits of dust and rock. The bubble is an open door to these.

    To wit: a stream of neutral helium atoms--"an interstellar breeze," says Moebius--is flowing into the solar system right now. "It's coming from the direction of the constellation Ophiuchus. Because the atoms in the stream are uncharged, the magnetic bubble does nothing to stop them."

    Studying this stream is important because it can teach us a great deal about the heliosphere--How big is it? How leaky is it? It can also teach us about the interstellar "stuff" lurking just outside, says Moebius.

    see captionThe stream, discovered 30 years ago, is actively monitored by a flotilla of NASA and European Space Agency spacecraft: SOHO, EUVE, ACE and, especially, Ulysses. Each measures something different. EUVE, for instance, can sense ultraviolet sunlight scattered from the stream, while Ulysses samples the stream itself, snatching atoms directly from the flow.

    For many years the physical characteristics of the stream were only vaguely known. "But the ability we have now to take a close-up look at the stream using these modern spacecraft has made a difference," says Moebius. He recently led a research team at the International Space Science Institute in Switzerland; using data from the spacecraft they were able to pinpoint the stream's temperature, density and velocity:

    Its temperature, 6000 C, is about the same as the surface temperature of the sun. A spacecraft flying through the stream won't melt, though, or even notice the heat. The gas in the stream is too wispy-thin, explains Moebius. "There are only 0.015 helium atoms per cubic centimeter." Earth's atmosphere at sea level, for comparison, is a thousand billion billion (1021) times denser. And, finally, the velocity of the stream is 26 km/s or 58,000 mph.

    These numbers confirm what astronomers have long suspected. The solar system is colliding with a vast interstellar cloud.

    Most people think space is empty, but it's not. The "void" between the stars is crowded with clouds of gas. Clouds on Earth are miles wide. Clouds in space are light years across. They range in character from inky-black and cold to colorful and glowing-hot. Stars are born in clouds, and they hurl even more clouds into space when they die. Interstellar clouds are everywhere, so it's no surprise that the solar system is running into one.

    The question is, what kind of cloud?

    This cloud, like most things in the Universe, consists mainly of hydrogen. We know this because the hydrogen absorbs telltale colors from the light of nearby stars. Astronomers use this absorption effect to trace the cloud's general outline: it is several light years wide and ragged-edged.

    The cloud's abundant hydrogen doesn't easily penetrate the heliosphere because hydrogen atoms in the cloud are ionized by interstellar ultraviolet radiation. Like cosmic rays the hydrogen atoms are charged and, thus, held at bay. Helium atoms, on the other hand, are mostly neutral, so they slip into the solar system.

    Although helium is only a minor ingredient of the cloud, it tells the researchers what the whole is like. The cloud's temperature is 6000 C, the same as the helium stream. Its velocity, 26 km/s, is the same, too. If the cloud contains a standard cosmic mix of hydrogen and helium--a reasonable assumption--then its overall density must be 0.264 atoms per cubic centimeter.

    Arcania? Not at all.
    These numbers are important. They are vital to the size and "leakiness" of the heliosphere. The bubble is inflated from the inside by the solar wind and compressed on the outside by the cloud. It's a balancing act. If the pressure of the cloud (a function of temperature, density and velocity) is high, it defeats the solar wind and makes the bubble smaller, lowering our defenses against cosmic rays.

    Thousands of years from now, some researchers believe, the solar system will pass completely through this cloud and emerge in a low-pressure cavity blown by those supernovas a few million years ago. The heliosphere will expand, providing improved protection against cosmic rays.

    After that who knows? Another cloud might come along compress the bubble again. The ISSI team's research, eventually, could tell us how the heliosphere will react.

    Shields up? Shields down? It's not science fiction any more.


http://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2005/10aug_crackling/



    Crackling Planets
    Astronauts on the Moon and Mars are going to have to cope with an uncommon amount of static electricity.

    August 10, 2005: Have you ever walked across a wool carpet in leather-soled shoes on a dry winter day, and then reached out toward a doorknob? ZAP! A stinging spark leaps between your fingers and the metal knob.

    That's static discharge--lightning writ small.

    Static discharge is merely annoying to anyone on Earth living where winters have exceptionally low humidity. But to astronauts on the Moon or on Mars, static discharge could be real trouble.

    "On Mars, we think the soil is so dry and insulating that if an astronaut were out walking, once he or she returned to the habitat and reached out to open the airlock, a little lightning bolt might zap critical electronics," explains Geoffrey A. Landis, a physicist with the Photovoltaics and Space Environmental Effects Branch at NASA Glenn Research Center in Cleveland, Ohio.

    This phenomenon is called triboelectric charging.

    The prefix "tribo" (pronounced TRY-bo) means "rubbing." When certain pairs of unlike materials, such as wool and hard shoe-sole leather, rub together, one material gives up some of its electrons to the other material. The separation of charge can create a strong electric field.

    Here on Earth, the air around us and the clothes we wear usually have enough humidity to be decent electrical conductors, so any charges separated by walking or rubbing have a ready path to ground. Electrons bleed off into the ground instead of accumulating on your body.

    But when air and materials are extraordinarily dry, such as on a dry winter's day, they are excellent insulators, so there is no ready pathway to ground. Your body can accumulate negative charges, possibly up to an amazing 20 thousand volts. If you touch a conductor, such as a metal doorknob, then--ZAP!--all the accumulated electrons discharge at once.

    On the Moon and on Mars, conditions are ideal for triboelectric charging. The soil is drier than desert sand on Earth. That makes it an excellent electrical insulator. Moreover, the soil and most materials used in spacesuits and spacecraft (e.g., aluminized mylar, neoprene-coated nylon, Dacron, urethane-coated nylon, tricot, and stainless steel) are completely unlike each other. When astronauts walk or rovers roll across the ground, their boots or wheels gather electrons as they rub through the gravel and dust. Because the soil is insulating, providing no path to ground, a space suit or rover can build up tremendous triboelectric charge, whose magnitude is yet unknown. And when the astronaut or vehicle gets back to base and touches metal--ZAP! The lights in the base may go out, or worse.

    Physicist Joseph Kolecki and colleagues at NASA Glenn first noticed this problem in the late 1990s before Mars Pathfinder was launched. "When we ran a prototype wheel of the Sojourner rover over simulated Martian dust in a simulated Martian atmosphere, we found it charged up to hundreds of volts," he recalls.

    That discovery so concerned the scientists that they modified Pathfinder's rover design, adding needles half an inch long, made of ultrathin (0.0001-inch diameter) tungsten wire sharpened to a point, at the base of antennas. The needles would allow any electric charge that built up on the rover to bleed off into the thin Martian atmosphere, "like a miniature lightning rod operating in reverse," explains Carlos Calle, lead scientist at NASA's Electrostatics and Surface Physics Laboratory at Kennedy Space Center, Florida. Similar protective needles were also installed on the Spirit and Opportunity rovers.

    On the Moon, "Apollo astronauts never reported being zapped by electrostatic discharges," notes Calle. "However, future lunar missions using large excavation equipment to move lots of dry dirt and dust could produce electrostatic fields. Because there's no atmosphere on the Moon, the fields could grow quite strong. Eventually, discharges could occur in vacuum."

    "On Mars," he continues, "discharges can happen at no more than a few hundred volts. It's likely that these will take the form of coronal glows rather than lightning bolts. As such, they may not be life threatening for the astronauts, but they could be harmful to electronic equipment."

    So what's the solution to this problem?

    Here on Earth, it's simple: we minimize static discharge by grounding electrical systems. Grounding them means literally connecting them to Earth--pounding copper rods deep into the ground. Ground rods work well in most places on Earth because several feet deep the soil is damp, and is thus a good conductor. The Earth itself provides a "sea of electrons," which neutralizes everything connected to it, explains Calle.

    There's no moisture, though, in the soil of the Moon or Mars. Even the ice believed to permeate Martian soil wouldn't help, as "frozen water is not a terribly good conductor," says Landis. So ground rods would be ineffective in establishing a neutral "common ground" for a lunar or Martian colony.

    On Mars, the best ground might be, ironically, the air. A tiny radioactive source "such as that used in smoke detectors," could be attached to each spacesuit and to the habitat, suggests Landis. Low-energy alpha particles would fly off into the rarefied atmosphere, hitting molecules and ionizing them (removing electrons). Thus, the atmosphere right around the habitat or astronaut would become conductive, neutralizing any excess charge.

    Achieving a common ground on the Moon would be trickier, where there's not even a rarefied atmosphere to help bleed off the charge. Instead, a common ground might be provided by burying a huge sheet of foil or mesh of fine wires, possibly made of aluminum (which is highly conductive and could be extracted from lunar soil), underneath the entire work area. Then all the habitat's walls and apparatus would be electrically connected to the aluminum.

    Research is still preliminary. So ideas differ amongst the physicists who are seeking, well, some common ground.


http://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2005/22apr_dontinhale/



    Don't Breathe the Moondust

    When humans return to the Moon and travel to Mars, they'll have to be careful of what they inhale.

    NASA
    April 22, 2005: This is a true story.

    In 1972, Apollo astronaut Harrison Schmitt sniffed the air in his Lunar Module, the Challenger. "[It] smells like gunpowder in here," he said. His commander Gene Cernan agreed. "Oh, it does, doesn't it?"

    The two astronauts had just returned from a long moonwalk around the Taurus-Littrow valley, near the Sea of Serenity. Dusty footprints marked their entry into the spaceship. That dust became airborne--and smelly.

    Later, Schmitt felt congested and complained of "lunar dust hay fever." His symptoms went away the next day; no harm done. He soon returned to Earth and the anecdote faded into history.

    But Russell Kerschmann never forgot. He's a pathologist at the NASA Ames Research Center studying the effects of mineral dust on human health. NASA is now planning to send people back to the Moon and on to Mars. Both are dusty worlds, extremely dusty. Inhaling that dust, says Kerschmann, could be bad for astronauts.

    "The real problem is the lungs," he explains. "In some ways, lunar dust resembles the silica dust on Earth that causes silicosis, a serious disease." Silicosis, which used to be called "stone-grinder's disease," first came to widespread public attention during the Great Depression when hundreds of miners drilling the Hawk's Nest Tunnel through Gauley Mountain in West Virginia died within half a decade of breathing fine quartz dust kicked into the air by dry drilling--even though they had been exposed for only a few months. "It was one of the biggest occupational-health disasters in U.S. history," Kerschmann says.

    This won't necessarily happen to astronauts, he assures, but it's a problem we need to be aware of--and to guard against.

    Quartz, the main cause of silicosis, is not chemically poisonous: "You could eat it and not get sick," he continues. "But when quartz is freshly ground into dust particles smaller than 10 microns (for comparison, a human hair is 50+ microns wide) and breathed into the lungs, they can embed themselves deeply into the tiny alveolar sacs and ducts where oxygen and carbon dioxide gases are exchanged." There, the lungs cannot clear out the dust by mucous or coughing. Moreover, the immune system's white blood cells commit suicide when they try to engulf the sharp-edged particles to carry them away in the bloodstream. In the acute form of silicosis, the lungs can fill with proteins from the blood, "and it's as if the victim slowly suffocates" from a pneumonia-like condition.

    Lunar dust, being a compound of silicon as is quartz, is (to our current knowledge) also not poisonous. But like the quartz dust in the Hawk's Nest Tunnel, it is extremely fine and abrasive, almost like powdered glass. Astronauts on several Apollo missions found that it clung to everything and was almost impossible to remove; once tracked inside the Lunar Module, some of it easily became airborne, irritating lungs and eyes.

    Martian dust could be even worse. It's not only a mechanical irritant but also perhaps a chemical poison. Mars is red because its surface is largely composed of iron oxide (rust) and oxides of other minerals. Some scientists suspect that the dusty soil on Mars may be such a strong oxidizer that it burns any organic compound such as plastics, rubber or human skin as viciously as undiluted lye or laundry bleach.

    "If you get Martian soil on your skin, it will leave burn marks," believes University of Colorado engineering professor Stein Sture, who studies granular materials like Moon- and Mars-dirt for NASA. Because no soil samples have ever been returned from Mars, "we don't know for sure how strong it is, but it could be pretty vicious."

    Moreover, according to data from the Pathfinder mission, Martian dust may also contain trace amounts of toxic metals, including arsenic and hexavalent chromium--a carcinogenic toxic waste featured in the docudrama movie Erin Brockovich (Universal Studios, 2000). That was a surprising finding of a 2002 National Research Council report called Safe on Mars: Precursor Measurements Necessary to Support Human Operations on the Martian Surface.

    The dust challenge would be especially acute during windstorms that occasionally envelop Mars from poles to equator. Dust whips through the air, scouring every exposed surface and sifting into every crevice. There's no place to hide.


    To find ways of mitigating these hazards, NASA is soon to begin funding Project Dust, a four-year study headed by Masami Nakagawa, associate professor in the mining engineering department of the Colorado School of Mines. Project Dust will study such technologies as thin-film coatings that repel dust from tools and other surfaces, and electrostatic techniques for shaking or otherwise removing dust from spacesuits.

    These technologies, so crucial on the Moon and Mars, might help on Earth, too, by protecting people from sharp-edged or toxic dust on our own planet. Examples include alkaline dust blown from dry lakes in North American deserts, wood dust from sawmills and logging operations, and, of course, abrasive quartz dust in mines.

    The road to the stars is surprisingly dusty. But, says Kerschmann, "I strongly believe it's a problem that can be controlled."


Online farawayred

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Re: Space exploration thread
« Reply #52 on: April 18, 2012, 05:10:29 pm »
Those are some interesting posts. And while NASA has clearly demonstrated that they have no clue what they want, everyone will be exploring the opportunity to fantasize... In the mean time, Congress is about to remind Charles Bolden that he's less competent than his two predecessors, and that speaks volumes. Even though NASA cut the JPL Flagship missions, Congress will allocate $800M for another Mars mission. In your face, Bolden! Well, that money may be about half of what is needed, but it's something.
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Re: Space exploration thread
« Reply #53 on: April 18, 2012, 05:10:48 pm »
Back to missions and reality, some curious events have occurred in the mean time - a few spacecrafts suffered from single even effects (SEE), which cause electronic upsets. SEEs are usually caused by a high energy particle, such as protons from a solar flare or galactic cosmic ray (very energetic ions). They can be manifested in a huge number of ways causing practically unimportant events to loss of spacecraft. For example, a bit flip in an IC can send a command to fire an engine and go off course (just ask the Japanese), or a permanent latch up in a place that draws a lot of current and kills the flight computer... Or it can be a bad bit flip in an image, so who cares (we have 1000s of them in every digital camera).

So, what happened. One of the Grail tandem spacecraft (a mission mapping Lunar gravity) got hit, then the other got hit a few days later. JUNO (currently flying to Jupiter on a reconnaissance mission) got hit. MSL (the Mars rover spacecraft) got hit. All of this within a space of a few days, and the space weather folks say that there was nothing extraordinary like a solar flare that can account for the events. Interesting... While the long-term effects on Grail are unclear, JUNO got patched, and MSL was not really affected. I guess that's why they say JPL stands for Just Plain Lucky! ;) It turns out that the hit was in an unused area of a memory chip; the error was noted and the memory was reprogrammed. But the question still stands - what caused these events all in the space of a few days?
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Re: Space exploration thread
« Reply #54 on: April 18, 2012, 05:38:07 pm »
Been saying for a few years now that the 'Global Warming' thing is possibly being caused by an external (To our Solar System) influence.

Given changes in the past (Before humans got here) then that makes it even more likely.

Amazing the number of people that think that Earth just sits in some kind of magic bubble that leaves it unchanged through millenia - even more amazing when you see just how many times the climate has changed over 4,000,000,000 years.
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Offline gazzalfc

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Re: Space exploration thread
« Reply #55 on: June 17, 2012, 08:11:58 pm »


Voyager 1 is preparing to be the first man-made object to enter interstellar space.

The Voyager spacecrafts originally launched in 1977 to take advantage of a particularly favorable planetary alignment, allowing for the exploration of the outer planets with relative ease. After the stunning success of their missions, Voyagers 1 & 2 were sent on their way into interstellar space. Today, Voyager 1 is 11.1 billion miles from earth and still transmitting data which takes 16 hours and 38 minutes to travel back to earth.

Over the last 3 years, Voyager 1 has detected a gradual increase in galactic cosmic rays – about 25% in total. Scientists believe this is a sign that the ship is nearing the edge of our solar system. They also believe, as Voyager enters interstellar space, there will be a major change in the direction of the magnetic field lines surrounding the spacecraft from an East-West orientation to a North-South one.

We don’t know when Voyager will officially make its historic crossing, but that day is bound to be soon. I, and the rest of the scientific community, just hope that voyager still has enough power to transmit data when it gets there.

For more information on the latest Voyager news check out http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/voyager/index.html

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Re: Space exploration thread
« Reply #56 on: June 17, 2012, 10:41:40 pm »
Holy shit can't believe Curiosity has almost reached Mars!  :o  Lands on Aug 6th.

Feels just like yesterday when it blasted off.
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Great anti climax for those expecting jizzihno....

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Re: Space exploration thread
« Reply #57 on: June 18, 2012, 12:43:10 am »
Holy shit can't believe Curiosity has almost reached Mars!  :o  Lands on Aug 6th.

Feels just like yesterday when it blasted off.
Tell me about it!... ;)

I'm still working on the drill issues though...
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Re: Space exploration thread
« Reply #58 on: June 18, 2012, 04:08:09 pm »
Imagine if Voyager left the Solar System but then reappeared on the other side (like in Asteroids).  Love it when something like Curiosity is close to the 'end/beginning' of its journey.  Hope it all goes well.

Offline wacko

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Re: Space exploration thread
« Reply #59 on: June 18, 2012, 07:30:28 pm »
Imagine if Voyager left the Solar System but then reappeared on the other side (like in Asteroids).  Love it when something like Curiosity is close to the 'end/beginning' of its journey.  Hope it all goes well.

Oh man. If I were a space alien I'd totally make that happen.
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Re: Space exploration thread
« Reply #60 on: June 28, 2012, 10:56:56 am »
ESA launches MSG-3 next Thurs. This is an earth observation satellite, so not particularly exciting stuff. Am involved in the support of the ground systems for this launch so need to be at work at 3am next Fri :o

Next up in Sept/Oct time,  SWARM - a constellation of satellites to observe earth's magnetic field.

The more interesting ones are a year (GAIA) or more from launching. BepiColombo has been put back a year to 2015. :(

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Re: Space exploration thread
« Reply #61 on: July 23, 2012, 07:03:32 am »
Well, MSL is getting there... On Tuesday we start recharging the batteries to 100%, make final course corrections on the 28th, configure for entry descent and landing (EDL) on the 30th, couple more correction maneuvers and hope to survive the 7-minute terror on Aug. 5 (Aug. 6 for Europe). And if the landing goes well, I'm happy to say that the drill will work (90-90) and we would be able to look for organics; just have to convince the Project...

I haven't had a free weekend since December and I need a fricken vacation... But a day after the landing, whatever happens, I'm off to Africa to volunteer for a while and hike Kilimanjaro. Can't wait...

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Re: Space exploration thread
« Reply #62 on: July 23, 2012, 07:59:19 pm »
Good luck fella :wave Are you at JPL?

Wish ESA had more inter planetary stuff, but naturally the budget here is limited and (rightly) better spent on earth observation missions and fulfilling a commitment to the ISS through ATV .

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Re: Space exploration thread
« Reply #63 on: July 23, 2012, 08:14:33 pm »
Good luck fella :wave Are you at JPL?

Wish ESA had more inter planetary stuff, but naturally the budget here is limited and (rightly) better spent on earth observation missions and fulfilling a commitment to the ISS through ATV .
Yes, I'm at JPL, working in Failure Analysis.

Too bad that the joint Mars mission fell through, I was looking forward to that... Sadly, we couldn't agree on other planetary exploration - Jupiter vs. Saturn. For some reason, NASA wants to go to Europa more than Titan, and I agree that there is a good reason for that. But for the same cost I feel that the European proposal for a Titan mission would return more science, whereas the Jovian environment would return more technology. It's really challenging to go there and make sure that everything works for a long time with all that radiation around...
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Re: Space exploration thread
« Reply #64 on: July 23, 2012, 08:33:33 pm »
I thought it was down to NASA not having the budget? Or was it they had the budget but, as you say, other priorities? In the mean time we've jumped into bed with JAXA for the joint Bepi mission to Mercury.

Am no rocket scientist though and just deal in parts of the ground station / operations centre technology. :P

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Re: Space exploration thread
« Reply #65 on: July 23, 2012, 09:59:37 pm »
I thought it was down to NASA not having the budget? Or was it they had the budget but, as you say, other priorities? In the mean time we've jumped into bed with JAXA for the joint Bepi mission to Mercury.

Am no rocket scientist though and just deal in parts of the ground station / operations centre technology. :P
Neither ESA not NASA have a budget for to go alone, but it's far more complicated than that. I don't know how much I can go into, but it's been out in the open that the joined Mars mission idea was doomed from the beginning, because ESA wanted to pitch in big money but to get our rover technology, to which (my understanding is that) NASA originally looked favorably but then got cold feet. It's actually interesting to me that we never seem to reuse the technology but rather develop most from scratch, which costs big money. Like the Pathfinder, the shoe-box-sized rover, was put in a pyramid surrounded with airbags and dropped on Mars. The exact same pyramid was used for the twin Spirit and Opportunity rovers that were almost golf-cart-sized (how they fitted in is another story!). But now Curiosity, an SUV-sized-rover has outgrown that to such an extent that airbags won't work anymore; ergo - the Sky Crane. That's never been tested though. In the process, we figured out that a lot of the systems could have been designed better and it is clear as day for me that we won't build it the same way again. So, why not share the technology anyway with the benefit of enabling a mission? But what do I know about politics...

As for Europa versus Titan, NASA has invested huge money in radiation hard technology for the purpose of going to the Jovian environment, so they try to leverage their political stance with that. ESA, on the other hand, are new to planetary exploration and, starting from a clean slate, they are leaning toward something that will bring more to science as I see it. But I'm a physicist, not an astrobiologist...
Cruyff: "Victory is not enough, there also needs to be beautiful football."

Offline Shanks1965

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Re: Space exploration thread
« Reply #66 on: July 23, 2012, 10:21:53 pm »
Can anyone in anyway shape or form get their head around just how big, vast and never ending (is it?) the Universe and beyond is and then try to explain to me just how or why.....?
Seen more titles than he can remember...

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Re: Space exploration thread
« Reply #67 on: July 23, 2012, 10:33:02 pm »
I don't know how much I can go into


Me thinks the less the better for you personally ;) JPL and ESA may be publicly funded organisations, but if you want to spew your guts I'd recommend starting your own blog!

Quote
As for Europa versus Titan, NASA has invested huge money in radiation hard technology for the purpose of going to the Jovian environment, so they try to leverage their political stance with that. ESA, on the other hand, are new to planetary exploration and, starting from a clean slate

Hey, come on. Both MEX and VEX have been going for nearly a decade now and have been very successful. We're not that new! :D

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Re: Space exploration thread
« Reply #68 on: July 24, 2012, 12:21:05 am »
Hey, come on. Both MEX and VEX have been going for nearly a decade now and have been very successful. We're not that new! :D
No offense, mate! :wave

I can actually see pros and cons about the space exploration approaches of NASA, ESA, JAXA and the Russians are quite on a different Universe... If we can somehow combine the science ambition of the European projects with the reliability of NASA, the technology capability of JAXA and the robustness of the Russian engineering, we'd have super missions! But hell, the world is too divided...
Cruyff: "Victory is not enough, there also needs to be beautiful football."

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Re: Space exploration thread
« Reply #69 on: July 24, 2012, 12:27:21 am »
Can anyone in anyway shape or form get their head around just how big, vast and never ending (is it?) the Universe and beyond is and then try to explain to me just how or why.....?
Well, Einstein did when he said that two things are infinite - human stupidity and the Universe, but he was not so certain about the latter...  ;D

Fair question and it's all abstract knowledge. We can't comprehend even much smaller things. Take the dollar (or pound), for example. Everyone knows what a few bucks mean, what a thousand is, etc. A million is on the scale of a good house, a billion is on the scale of the foreign debt of a small country. But what is a trillion? I mean, I know how many zeros are after the one, but I can't compare it to anything. Well, maybe the US debt, but even that is backwards, because the debt is measured in trillions and I have no clue what that means. And that's only 12 zeros...
Cruyff: "Victory is not enough, there also needs to be beautiful football."

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Re: Space exploration thread
« Reply #70 on: July 24, 2012, 10:41:42 am »
Well, Einstein did when he said that two things are infinite - human stupidity and the Universe, but he was not so certain about the latter...  ;D

Fair question and it's all abstract knowledge. We can't comprehend even much smaller things. Take the dollar (or pound), for example. Everyone knows what a few bucks mean, what a thousand is, etc. A million is on the scale of a good house, a billion is on the scale of the foreign debt of a small country. But what is a trillion? I mean, I know how many zeros are after the one, but I can't compare it to anything. Well, maybe the US debt, but even that is backwards, because the debt is measured in trillions and I have no clue what that means. And that's only 12 zeros...

You should read this

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Googolplex
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Re: Space exploration thread
« Reply #71 on: July 24, 2012, 04:37:57 pm »
You should read this

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Googolplex
How many tons of dark chocolate squares with pepper is that?  ;D
Cruyff: "Victory is not enough, there also needs to be beautiful football."

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Re: Space exploration thread
« Reply #72 on: August 2, 2012, 01:27:23 am »
Saw a documentary on Curiosity the other night, (it's probably on iPlayer still), and the landing they're proposing is straight out of Star Wars. If this thing lands safely I'll be stunned and in awe at the same time.

I must get up early to watch it.

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Re: Space exploration thread
« Reply #73 on: August 2, 2012, 04:42:02 am »
Yep, it's something, isn't it?... Here is the NASA web page:
http://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/videogallery/index.html?media_id=146903741
and a longer video on YouTube:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P4boyXQuUIw

It's gonna be an interesting night... JPL will be like a zoo. They already banned all personnel except for the essential people for the landing to free space for the media.
Cruyff: "Victory is not enough, there also needs to be beautiful football."

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Re: Space exploration thread
« Reply #74 on: August 2, 2012, 04:51:51 am »
wow that is insane.  so many things could go wrong with that haha.  i must say i dont keep up with a lot of things regarding space exploration but it does interest me.  if i come across a decent space documentary i will always give it a watch. 

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Re: Space exploration thread
« Reply #75 on: August 2, 2012, 10:17:36 am »
Those graphics are the same ones used in the documentary. The Hans Zimmer-esque music is pretty cool though.  ;D

Are you involved in this farawayred? Or is your involvment over now?

And...Is 22:51 PDT the same as 6:51 GMT? Can't get with this daylight time.

I came across this too: http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/msl/index.html

Amazing how the timing can be so precise when firing something at a rock a quater of a billion miles away. I can't plan a trip to the shops with that kind of precision.
« Last Edit: August 2, 2012, 10:22:53 am by RedRabbit »

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Re: Space exploration thread
« Reply #76 on: August 3, 2012, 01:23:27 am »
http://universesandbox.com/  :wave      If you're reading this thread, you'll enjoy this!
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Re: Space exploration thread
« Reply #77 on: August 3, 2012, 05:59:13 am »
Yeah, I'm still involved... Unfortunately... I'm a Failure Analyst and my job is to put myself out of a job, but... Murphy is looking after me, I suppose.

It's quite a hectic time here. There are still unresolved problems, but I think we are good for the landing. I worked on almost every part of the rover, especially the arm with all of its suite of tools, but we have flown other spacecraft with more flaws. The two MER rovers Spirit and Opportunity took off with FPGAs burned and one degree of redundancy less, but they managed almost 8 years when we had 90 sols (1 Martian day =25 hours) planned mission. In a spacecraft with that degree of complexity you can't have everything working to perfection... I hear all the time how expensive we are, and there is some truth to that, but good luck to anyone who tries to do the same for less; the Russian Grunt mission for example. Space-X is trying to fly cheap and it's all nice and dandy, but wait for the time they have to fly a human being and not kill him/her...

Anyway, I wanted to post a few pictures of several Mars spacecraft models (most are 1-to-1) that were set up outside for the press. You've seen it first here... ;)

(don't know how to post all with the 200 kb limit)
« Last Edit: August 3, 2012, 06:01:24 am by farawayred »
Cruyff: "Victory is not enough, there also needs to be beautiful football."

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Re: Space exploration thread
« Reply #78 on: August 3, 2012, 06:00:45 am »
The MSL rover close up

Cruyff: "Victory is not enough, there also needs to be beautiful football."

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Re: Space exploration thread
« Reply #79 on: August 3, 2012, 06:03:05 am »
MER (Spirit and Opportunity type) left, Pathfinder (the shoebox rover) right, and Phoenix at the back.

Cruyff: "Victory is not enough, there also needs to be beautiful football."