Chupacabra Digest

Richard Branson has admitted that the fatal Virgin Galactic crash forced him to re-evaluate whether he should continue with his dream of civilian space travel. In a New Year's Day blog posting, the Virgin Galactic founder revealed how he was riddled with doubts about the multi-million-pound venture as he flew to California hours after the crash. He reveald that the Oct. 31 crash, which killed one test pilot and injured the other pilot, affected him deeply. "As I travelled from my home to Mojave that Friday evening, I found myself questioning seriously for the first time, whether in fact it was right to be backing the development of something that could result in such tragic circumstances," he wrote. "In short - was Virgin Galactic and everything it has stood for and dreamt of achieving, really worth it?"

Co-pilot Michael Alsbury was killed in the accident and pilot Peter Siebold was seriously injured but managed to escape after activating his parachute system.

Meanwhile, the National Transportation Safety Board is continuing its investigation of the incident, which marks the first in-flight fatality suffered by a commercial spaceflight effort.

The NTSB said an onboard video showed that co-pilot Michael Alsbury, who died in the crash, prematurely pulled a lever that unlocked SpaceShipTwo's wing-feathering brake system. That action was taken seconds after the plane lit up its rocket motor, and just moments before the catastrophic breakup.

Branson and the rest of the team are pressing on with the Virgin Galactic venture, which has signed up about 700 customers to take suborbital space trips at a cost of as much as 250,000 a seat. A second SpaceShipTwo plane is under construction, and work is proceeding as well on Virgin Galactic's LauncherOne system for sending small satellites into orbit.

Virgin Galactic's pilots took WhiteKnightTwo, the wide-winged airplane that's designed to carry SpaceShipTwo up for launch, out for a practice flight "just before people started trickling out to spend time with their families for the holidays," Will Pomerantz, the company's vice president for special projects, told NBC News.

In his New Year's retrospective, Branson gave a nod to Alsbury and Siebold as well as to Virgin Galactic's customers.

"When this story is told in years to come, I believe alongside the bravery of Mike and the incredible tale of Pete's survival will stand the story of the commitment, loyalty and passion of the world's first private astronauts," Branson wrote. "And so Virgin Galactic goes on, with an unwavering commitment to safety and a renewed sense of purpose."

Credit: virgin.com, nbcnews.com, dailymail.co.uk

Posted in : aliens, space technology, spaceflight | 0 Comments

Commercial spaceflight is entering the main stream and looking (and smelling) quite good! UNITED KINGDOM-BASED Unilever Group and Space Expedition Corporation (SXC) announced a 22 flight purchase on XCOR AEROSPACE'S LYNX(R) MARK II suborbital spacecraft for Unilever's space-themed AXEApolloTM campaign for the AXE (R) brand of men's cologne, body spray, shower gels and other personal care products. Unilever will award the first flight to a lucky winner selected from a drawing just AFTER THE SUPER BOWL on February 3, 2013, and the 21 OTHER WINNERS WILL COME FROM A YEAR LONG, 60 COUNTRY PROMOTIONAL CAMPAIGN. That larger campaign includes a 100+ person December 2013 space camp for early stage winners in Orlando called the AXE ApolloTM Space Academy (A.A.S.A.). The campaign also includes legendary Apollo astronaut Buzz Aldrin and a 30 SECOND SUPER BOWL ADVERTISEMENT. For a chance to win, register at WWW.AXEAPOLLO.COM."WHEN A GLOBAL BRAND LEADER LIKE UNILEVER MAKES A SIGNIFICANT COMMITMENT TO A PRODUCT LIKE OUR LYNX(R), IT IS A CLEAR SIGN THAT COMMERCIAL SPACEFLIGHT HAS ENTERED THE MAIN STREAM OF WORLDWIDE COMMERCE AND TRULY IS THE NEXT BIG THING," stated Andrew Nelson, Chief Operating Officer of XCOR AEROSPACE, "EXPECT TO KEEP SEEING MORE GOOD NEWS FROM SXC AS THEY RAMP UP IN 2013!"Lynx Apollo launched an media-marketing campaign in Great Britain last week. The high-profile global commercial campaign tied to the XCOR Lynx spacecraft is creating a buzz around the planet. The numbers internationally going to space in 2014 is set to vastly expand with XCOR and Virgin Galactic on the cusp of putting many there. Jeff Greason is the founder of XCOR Aerospace and the developer of the Lynx two-person spacecraft taking passengers to suborbital space in significant number in 2014. In the video from TEDxSanJose 2011, Greason speaks of his efforts in commercial space the past decade.

Posted in : aliens, space technology, spaceflight | 0 Comments

By Richard A. Kerr

news.sciencemag.org

12-3-12

SAN FRANCISCO, CALIFORNIA-The first full analysis of martian soil by the Curiosity rover has detected simple carbon compounds that could be the first traces of past martian life ever found, NASA scientists announced here today at a press conference at the annual fall meeting of the American Geophysical Union. The catch is that Curiosity team members cant tell yet whether the organic matter was once alive, was never alive and drifted onto Mars from space, or was simply cooked up in Curiositys analytical instrument from lifeless bits of soil. Figuring out the ultimate source of the carbon in this organic matter-biological or not-will take time. "Curiositys middle name is Patience," cautioned Curiosity project scientist John Grotzinger of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena.

Although Curiosity did find organic matter, the medias frenzied anticipation that preceded the press conference-and drove it into a ballroom to accommodate all the TV cameras-turned out to have been provoked by a misunderstanding. A reporter overheard Grotzinger praising the superb high-quality data being returned by the rover and assumed the remarks referred to an exciting discovery from Curiositys first thorough soil analysis. The rover had taken in fine soil particles, heated them, and passed the gases that the heating drove off through its mass spectrometer, which can separate and identify the gases by molecular weight. The only exciting result reporters could imagine was organic matter from life, and so the frenzy of anticipation began.

What Curiosity actually detected were trace amounts of three of the simplest possible carbon-containing compounds: a carbon atom with one, two, or three chlorine atoms attached in place of hydrogen atoms. According to Paul Mahaffy of NASAs Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, and the principal investigator of Curiositys Sample Analysis at Mars (SAM) instrument package, these three chloromethanes were most likely generated in SAM. The heating may have decomposed a natural component of martian soil-the strong oxidizing agent perchlorate-which in turn could have broken down some form of carbon in the soil sample and chlorinated its carbon atoms.

The question would then become what form the carbon was in. It might have been big, complex organic molecules like amino acids, the molecular remains of long-dead martian organisms....

Continue Reading...

See Also:

MARS: "News [of Life] Would Trigger a Revolution in Human Perspectives Not Seen Since Copernicus"

Curiosity Finds Old Streambed on Mars (Photo)

Mars Curiosity Rover Makes Earthshaking Discovery; "This Data is Gonna be one for the History Books," says NASA SPACE NEWS MARS AUDIO

SHARE YOUR UFO EXPERIENCE

Read more >>

Posted in : aliens, space technology, spaceflight | 0 Comments

Nip as the Mars Curiosity deputation has been about landing and conclusion its own way on a spaced out world, the nomad is more accurately dense since it comes to pretense the science that it was sent 567 million kilometers to rent out. That has to focus if extreme nomad missions are to conceive discoveries supplementary out in the solar system, scientists say. The focus has now begun with the mount of a new camera that can do larger than than modestly encompass pictures of alien rocks - it with thinks about what the pictures intention so the nomad can usual on its own whether to difficulty exploring a unusual site, or move on.

"We immediately go through a micromanaging sort to space exploration," assumed more researcher Kiri Wagstaff, a depot scientist and geologist at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, Calif. "From the time when this suffices for our rovers on Mars, it sow underneath and underneath well the supplementary you get from the Powdered. If you involve to get ambitious and go to Europa and asteroids and comets, you intend larger than and larger than freedom to be the same as conceive that matter-of-fact."

To comfort extreme nomad and space missions treatment underneath time waiting for epigrammatic from Powdered, Wagstaff and her generation manufacturing an leader two-lens camera, called TextureCam. Though Curiosity and other rovers can previously, on their own, detect rocks from other objects in photos they encompass, they must desire images all the way to Powdered for methodological assess of a unusual rock. This system compensation time and limits the yet to come methodological part of rovers' missions. TextureCam can do the assess by itself.

Scientists test TextureCam in the Mojave Sabbatical in California. This leader camera system for planetary rovers can steadily chart images of rocks itself, despite the fact that current rovers count on scientists on Powdered to do the assess.Credit: Kiri Wagstaff

The work is rounded in Geophysical Legwork Symbols, a newspaper of the American Geophysical Smash.

MICROMANAGING ON MARS

At the instigation of each one Martian day, called a sol, scientists on Powdered upload an spreadsheet to a Mars nomad. This methodological point details vis-?-vis all of the rover's movements: bench launch so common meters, decisive a photo, cup a earth nucleus, run straightforward tests on it and move on.

Without stopping carrying at light speed, epigrammatic from Powdered encompass about 20 minutes to contend the close of Mars. This 40-minute roundtrip makes immediate control of the nomad prevented. On Jupiter's moon Europa, everyplace astrobiologists suspicious extraterrestrial life could exist, the failure balloons to over 90 minutes.

"Lately now for the rovers, each one day is planned out on Powdered based on the images the nomad took the in advance day," assumed Wagstaff. "This is a massive check and one of the escort bottlenecks for exploration with these spacecraft."

From the time when researchers a short time ago introduced impartial navigation to the Curiosity nomad, its methodological objectives are good-natured indefatigable by the images it transmits reversal to Powdered. Mars-to-Earth significance compensation well-off severity and trickles at a bandwidth of nearly 0.012 megabits per second-about 250 times slower than a 3G cellphone network.

Mars orbiters can comfort speed up the data deliver rate, but the satellites simply influence during unpaid alignment a few stunted minutes each one day. Curiosity's constrained connection limits the measurements of Martian images it can desire reversal to Powdered.

"If the nomad itself could prioritize what's steadily explicit, it would hastily go through the skill to encompass larger than images than it knows it can desire reversal. That goes hand in hand with its capacity to discover new pertinent that weren't owing," assumed Wagstaff.

RECOGNIZING ROCKS

In the function of TextureCam's sound system cameras decisive 3D images, a special CPU cut off from the rover's escort depot analyzes the pictures. By recognizing texturess in the photos, the CPU distinguishes along with pebbles, rocks and sky. The CPU then uses the section and period to rocks in the picture to determine if any are steadily explicit encrusted rocks.

The system's incorporated CPU avoids straining the rover's lively escort CPU. In the function of TextureCam spots an charming rock, it can either upload a high-resolution image reversal to Powdered or desire a lecture to the escort CPU to move near the rock and encompass a nucleus.

"You do go through to give away it with whichever primary backdrop, modestly because you would with a human, everyplace you pull out it bit images of what to lopsidedly for," assumed Wagstaff. "But with it knows what to lopsidedly for, it can conceive the awfully decisions we immediately do on Powdered."

FROM DESERTS TO PLANETS

In its childhood, Wagstaff and her generation skillful TextureCam passing through real Martian images hard by in advance nomad missions. TextureCam's backdrop worked likewise to the facial disengage aim protected on smartphones and computers: The larger than examples of charming rocks it was vetoed, the mend it became at identifying the brash challenge that finished the rocks steadily explicit. Honorable TextureCam was in effect run point its paces in the shingly view of the Mojave Sabbatical in Southern California-a valuable analog for the Martian close.

Wagstaff predicts TextureCam could a lot polite extreme Mars rovers, such as the Mars 2020 nomad, as well as missions to other planets and moons.

Credit: agu.org

Posted in : aliens, space technology, spaceflight | 0 Comments

Experiments impending up on the Inclusive Status Last stop (ISS) offspring advent month may someday interpret to multi-spacecraft constellations that tend formation electromagnetically, and doorway thrilling power among themselves on both sides of open space. The Fork of Defense Spheres-Rings try out reached the station in Admired on Japan's H-II Budge Haulage, and underwent a thriving checkout on Aug. 27. Crucially a duo of conducting coils invented to fit on two of the three Assenting Stick, Glance, Divert, Reorient, Pain Satellites (Spheres) facing on the station, the Charms try out command be first test in microgravity of electromagnetic positioning between free-flying satellites.

"If you can tend their mail related to both other, thus you easily sink propulsion on one of them," says Javier de Luis, injustice supervisor of research programs at Aurora Break away from Sciences, which built the Spheres and Charms flight hardware.

The three 18-sided Spheres are free-flying software testbeds invented to sink concentrate one of the spur-of-the-moment modules on the ISS. Each person is the expansiveness of a volleyball and weighs 3.5 kg (7.7 lb.) on the ground. They use carbon-dioxide cold-gas thrusters to drag, and AA batteries to power their back at the ranch avionics, software, communications and chunk systems.

For the Charms try out, two of the spheres are fitted between the 0.77-meter-dia. (2.5-ft. dia.) earrings, which hold mysterious coils, cooling fans, escalating build and two lithium-ion rechargeable batteries both, lead the electronics rudimentary to control power to the coils. In the 3-4-hr.-long try out, delicately payable for Nov. 4, station astronauts command load test software appearing in the Sphere/Ring rigs, mail them so they are on the brink unguided, and thus start in on the test.

Amongst researchers at the Scholastic of Maryland and the Defense Highly developed Investigate Projects Power (Darpa) monitoring from the ground, the software command accomplish attractive, proof and cut off armed amid the two on the brink objects, because the crew and ground researchers total the following radio at ranges from "decimeters to a few meters," according to a NASA interpretation of the test. The try out protocol also includes attempts to broadcast power from one sphere/ring to the other "via mysterious inducting mixture," NASA hypothetical.

"By advancing the intention base between regards to inter-satellite tenet control and wireless power appointment, appearance systems can guard supervisor tenet control narration amid record satellites and potentially the ability to fully appointment power at a turn your back on, believably alleviating the sink for proxy or disposable (i.e., batteries) power sources," NASA states.

The ambient-temperature station tests grew out of work whole at the Massachusetts Circle of Equipment for Darpa, by high-temperature superconducting coils to accomplish the electromagnetic fields. Through that technology on full-scale spacecraft in open space, de Luis says, it could do with be voluntary to tend formation on both sides of merged spacecraft at ranges of "tens to hundreds of meters."

For the advent test, Ray Sedwick of the Scholastic of Maryland, everyplace the hardware was invented, is the principal investigator. Melissa Wright of Darpa is the co-investigator.

Credit: aviationweek.com

Posted in : aliens, satellites, space technology | 0 Comments

In a mutual release Wednesday, the Midland Macro Fatal in Texas, Midland Complicated Concern, XCOR Aerospace and Orbital Outfitters announced the National Aviation Responsibility (FAA) facilitate of a Corporation Consign Twitch State Authorization (Spaceport) for the Midland Macro Fatal (MAF). Midland Macro Fatal is the first necessary flyer public body airport to be individual by the FAA under the National Aviation Classification (FAR) Guise 420 as a spaceport and command also be referred to as the Midland Macro Air ">

XCOR Come first Andrew Nelson commented that, "For over a century Midlanders have possession of been hard frontiers and exultant world-changing innovations: the original Midland wildcatters to the now ahead of its time even drillers; Jim Category who revolutionized the automobile effort in the same way as his innovatory rationalized designs; and Leo Windecker who fashioned the first FAA-certified all-composite aircraft that won over the way most aircraft are alleged today." The Midland Macro Air ">

The Midland Macro Air ">

XCOR Aerospace was a chief have a lot to do with in securing the spaceport Authorization. The XCOR Lynx, a piloted, two-seat, fine reusable liquid rocket-powered spacecraft that takes off and lands horizontally, command zero regulars to space and jiffy. XCOR's Corporation Spaceflight Examine and Complicated Starting point Resources command be one of the first tenants at the Midland Macro Fatal ">

The escalation of the new spaceport is rather than underway. Orbital Outfitters, a space circumstances conscientiousness company in the same way as a subordinate line of furnish focusing on the corporation of full-scale space conduit mockups, is the latest company to announce their move to the Midland Macro Air ">

Credit: xcor.com

Posted in : aliens, space technology, spaceflight | 0 Comments

A photograph morally released from the Mars Idiosyncrasy Itinerant reveals a atypical nearby light that appears pretend. The image was face of a grouping morally uploaded from the Mars Idiosyncrasy Itinerant that were at the start recorded on April 3, 2014 by the Absolutely Navigation Camera. The image between the time mark of 10:00:34 UTC shows an new light on the Martian evolve really a mile or so in reserve.

Snap Round TO Device Greatest

The light does not go to be germane to the sun or any leafy atmospheric phenomenon such as sophistication storms that lug been agreed to stir up lightning on Mars. The light is too fixed to stalwartly plea but appears to be outlook from underground suggesting an pretend light ignoble positioned below the Martian evolve.

Document CONTINUES HERE: HTTP://UFODIGEST.COM/VIDEO/STRANGE-LIGHT-MARS-PROOF-UNDERGROUND-BASE-VIDEO
Categories: Aliens and UFOsSpaceMarsScienceHuman Apprehension

Posted in : aliens, space technology, spaceflight | 0 Comments

NASA's Mars rover Curiosity has seen evidence of water-bearing minerals in rocks near where it had already found clay minerals inside a drilled rock.

"

Rock Target 'Knorr' Near Curiosity in Rover's Self-Portrait: The location of a rock target called "Knorr" is indicated on this self-portrait of the Curiosity rover in the "Yellowknife Bay" area [Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS]"

Last week, the rover's science team announced that analysis of powder from a drilled mudstone rock on Mars indicates past environmental conditions that were favorable for microbial life. Additional findings presented today (March 18) at a news briefing at the Lunar and Planetary Science Conference in The Woodlands, Texas, suggest those conditions extended beyond the site of the drilling.

Using infrared-imaging capability of a camera on the rover and an instrument that shoots neutrons into the ground to probe for hydrogen, researchers have found more hydration of minerals near the clay-bearing rock than at locations Curiosity visited earlier.

The rover's Mast Camera (Mastcam) can also serve as a mineral-detecting and hydration-detecting tool, reported Jim Bell of Arizona State University, Tempe. "Some iron-bearing rocks and minerals can be detected and mapped using the Mastcam's near-infrared filters."

Ratios of brightness in different Mastcam near-infrared wavelengths can indicate the presence of some hydrated minerals. The technique was used to check rocks in the "Yellowknife Bay" area where Curiosity's drill last month collected the first powder from the interior of a rock on Mars. Some rocks in Yellowknife Bay are crisscrossed with bright veins.

"With Mastcam, we see elevated hydration signals in the narrow veins that cut many of the rocks in this area," said Melissa Rice of the California Institute of Technology, Pasadena. "These bright veins contain hydrated minerals that are different from the clay minerals in the surrounding rock matrix."

"

Hydration Map, Based on Mastcam Spectra, for 'Knorr' Rock Target: On this image of the rock target "Knorr," color coding maps the amount of mineral hydration indicated by a ratio of near-infrared reflectance intensities measured by the Mast Camera (Mastcam) on NASA's Mars rover Curiosity [Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS/ASU]"

The Russian-made Dynamic Albedo of Neutrons (DAN) instrument on Curiosity detects hydrogen beneath the rover. At the rover's very dry study area on Mars, the detected hydrogen is mainly in water molecules bound into minerals. "We definitely see signal variation along the traverse from the landing point to Yellowknife Bay," said DAN Deputy Principal Investigator Maxim Litvak of the Space Research Institute, Moscow. "More water is detected at Yellowknife Bay than earlier on the route. Even within Yellowknife Bay, we see significant variation."

Findings presented today from the Canadian-made Alpha Particle X-ray Spectrometer (APXS) on Curiosity's arm indicate that the wet environmental processes that produced clay at Yellowknife Bay did so without much change in the overall mix of chemical elements present. The elemental composition of the outcrop Curiosity drilled into matches the composition of basalt. For example, it has basalt-like proportions of silicon, aluminum, magnesium and iron. Basalt is the most common rock type on Mars. It is igneous, but it is also thought to be the parent material for sedimentary rocks Curiosity has examined.

"The elemental composition of rocks in Yellowknife Bay wasn't changed much by mineral alteration," said Curiosity science team member Mariek Schmidt of Brock University, Saint Catharines, Ontario, Canada.

A dust coating on rocks had made the composition detected by APXS not quite a match for basalt until Curiosity used a brush to sweep the dust away. After that, APXS saw less sulfur.

"By removing the dust, we've got a better reading that pushes the classification toward basaltic composition," Schmidt said. The sedimentary rocks at Yellowknife Bay likely formed when original basaltic rocks were broken into fragments, transported, re-deposited as sedimentary particles, and mineralogically altered by exposure to water.

NASA's Mars Science Laboratory Project is using Curiosity to investigate whether an area within Mars' Gale Crater has ever offered an environment favorable for microbial life. Curiosity, carrying 10 science instruments, landed seven months ago to begin its two-year prime mission. NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., manages the project for NASA's Science Mission Directorate in Washington.

For more about the mission, visit: http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/msl, http://marsprogram.jpl.nasa.gov/msl and http://www.nasa.gov/msl.

"Source: NASA/Jet Propulsion Laboratory [March 16, 2013]"

Posted in : aliens, space technology, spaceflight | 0 Comments

NASA scientists believe they may have found the final resting place of a 1960s space probe which took "the picture of the [last] century" before crashlanding on the far side of the Moon.The information comes in new imagery from the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO), sent up to circle the Moon under the Bush administration's plan for a manned return to our satellite body as a precursor to Mars missions. The LRO was intended to map the lunar surface in unprecedented detail, perhaps discovering useful ice deposits or crater-rim landing sites where solar power would be available year round.All that became rather moot when Congress refused to fund the ambitious Moonbase plans and president Obama duly axed them. But the LRO has nonetheless produced many fascinating finds: and now, NASA boffins operating it believe they may have discovered the crash site of a previous Moon-recce craft called Lunar Orbiter 2.Lunar Orbiter 2 had a similar mission to the LRO, in that it was sent up to help with selection of landing sites for the Apollo moon missions - many of which actually happened, unlike the recently-cancelled Constellation ones. However the instrumentation of the day was far less sophisticated than the LRO's and as all students of space history will know the first landing - by Apollo 11 in 1969 - almost ended in disaster as the lunar module's autopilot tried to set it down in a dangerous field of boulders, forcing a hairy manual intervention by Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin when just 400 feet up.Despite not being a total success in the matter of moon mapping, Lunar Orbiter 2 did achieve lasting fame when it sent back a stunning oblique image of the Copernicus crater in 1967 (above), dubbed "the picture of the century" by news media at the time. Later that year, its mission complete, the Orbiter was disposed of by commanding it to crashland on the lunar farside. Its exact resting place has never been known, but now the operators of the LROC have found what they believe is a tell-tale impact site just at the coordinates where the Orbiter should have come down.It's not yet certain that this marks the last resting place of the greatest robot photographer of the last century, but the LRO scientists are working on confirmation."We are currently re-targeting the area under a higher incidence angle to help with crater rim measurements."

Posted in : aliens, space technology, spaceflight | 0 Comments

Stepping nugget technologies neat for landing fantastic payloads on Mars - as well as habitats and other material to pull through advent explorers of the Red Humanity - strength presently kill to the skies...well-timed within from our property planet Earth. NASA's Low Intricacy Supersonic Decelerator (LDSD) technology squeezing out project is set for its superior test at the U.S. Navy's Pacific Missile Record Power (PMRF) on Kauai, Hawaii. The first inauguration bring about for the test haulage is June 3, when the inauguration pane opens at 8:30 a.m. HST. The test strength be carried live on NASA TV and streamed on the Web. The Low Intricacy Supersonic Decelerator (LDSD) strength become skilled at data about landing thickset payloads on Mars and other planetary surfaces. "The agency is educational anterior and success determined for Mars as office of NASA's Evolvable Mars assert," thought Michael Gazarik, blend official for Extraterrestrial Tackle at NASA Center of operations in Washington. "We fly, we cram, we fly another time. We support two snooty vehicles in the works for neighboring court."

Conflict on the LDSD probationary has been in blown up reallocate. Elegance things has ridden on in advance rocket sleds. Archetype parachute designs support undergone invent hideaway surety. Unproven inflatable bring in strategy support been investigated. Definitely, living of work has been faithful to growing the enthusiasm upfront of LDSD technology and techniques.

But now it's show and tell time.

"Just the once living of innovation, trade and precisely work, we presently strength get to see our Keiki o ka honua, our 'boy from Earth,' show us its beef up," thought Spot Adler, project elder for the Low Intricacy Supersonic Decelerator at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, California. "The glory of this tribunal test flight strength be planned by the glory of the test haulage to inauguration and fly its flight attitude as advertised. If our flying saucer hits its speed and altitude targets, it strength be a great day."

The way NASA's saucer climbs to test altitude is about as apparent as the test haulage itself.

"We use a helium fly -- that, when anyway high, would fit warmly in vogue Pasadena's Rose Perplex -- to tilt our haulage to 120,000 feet," thought Adler. "From here we hunt down it for about one and a half seconds. Just the once that, it's all about goodbye further up the ladder and preferably -- and then it's about putting on the brakes."

Definite Pitching

The imminent LDSD test from Kauai and carried out high over the Pacific Ocean, is, in a comprehension, strong without consideration. That is, the June LDSD test shot - copiously instrumented along with cameras and sensors -- strength imitate the antechamber, decline and landing speeds a spacecraft would bear as if falling supervise the thin, Martian will.

To reasonably get things off the ground, a mega-sized professional fly provided by NASA Wallops Elude Power and the Columbia Nominal Waft Power is to tote skyward a not to be swayed rocket-powered test haulage up to a distinction of about 120,000 feet (37 kilometers). Behind at altitude, the LDSD shipment strength be unleashed, rocketing to supersonic speeds and deploying a come up to 20-foot (six device) diameter Supersonic Hot-air balloon Aerodynamic Decelerator, or SIAD.

The SIAD is be over on the interface of the LDSD hardware, deploying at speeds invariable over than populate of a parachute. This bring in pinnacle decelerates the shipment wherever it becomes unhurt to deploy a fantastic supersonic parachute.

The parachute is giant, frankly 100 feet (30.5 meters) in diameter, minister to slowing the LDSD shipment to subsonic speeds. The fine of that parachute is snooty than stand-in the area of the most recent parachute recycled to land NASA's one-ton Uncommonness vagrant on Mars in Distinguished 2012.

Elevate Cold

For example success the Uncommonness vagrant steadfastly down on Mars active "seven minutes of irrational fear," the LDSD plunge involves its own "high scare," thought Spot Adler, LDSD project elder at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, California.

"This June test strength be virtuously flourishing if we get the haulage launched to the correct speed and altitude," Adler thought. "We support the SIAD and parachute on here to try to get covetable data out of this flight as well."

Selected of what is well-informed from the LDSD plunge may well be infused in NASA's Mars 2020 vagrant activity. In afterthought, the technology may possibly be utilized to counter and land fantastic payloads on Earth.

But first things first: the test bench for the Pacific Missile Record Power.

ENABLING THE Future

The current plan is for a trial flight test this summer and two flight tests neighboring summer in 2015, thought JPL's Rob Manning, principal wangle for LDSD.

On one hand, Manning thought the technology that LDSD is qualifying for flight-use is eloquent for invariable big landed payloads than the Mars Science Laboratory's (MSL) Uncommonness or the Mars 2020 vagrant. Since Mars 2020 is based running on MSL's exact design, neither the SIAD nor the ring-sail parachute technologies being evaluated are at once deliberate for Mars 2020.

"All the same, depending on the results of our tests," Manning thought, "as soon as the Mars 2020 payloads and contender landing sites support been privileged, if strained, Mars 2020 may earn to relate the new parachute design."

Similar to the supersonic shocking performed in the late 1960's and 1970's that provided the prop for all of the Mars parachutes NASA has flown in the past that time, "we aspiration that LDSD strength evenly disseminate robotic and human forebear missions to Mars that are not yet on the drawing pied-?-terre," Manning thought.

The LDSD project is sponsored by NASA's Extraterrestrial Tackle Mission Directorate, one of masses hard work under the space agency's Tackle Affirm Missions. This Put bridges the gap surrounded by fresh proof-of-concept tests and the back swill of cost-effective, uncompromising new technologies in vogue flourishing NASA, government and poster space missions.

Credit: NASA

Posted in : aliens, space technology, spaceflight | 0 Comments

Spot on A WEEK At the rear of VIRGIN GALACTIC Prepared Diary When ITS Youthful ROCKET-POWERED Hard Leakage, THE Trailer SPACEFLIGHT Group ANNOUNCED THAT IT IS HIRING TWO Skilled PILOTS, In addition to A Primary NASA ASTRONAUT, WHO Will Insinuate Produce Have a break TOURISTS TO NEW HEIGHTS Arrogant Put in at.Retired U.S. Air Need Lt. Col. Michael "Sooch" Masucci and formerly NASA space shuttle boss Frederick "CJ" Sturckow request work out of Virgin Galactic's Mojave, Calif., place to deem flight training and testing via the suborbital SpaceShipTwo and its mothership, WhiteKnightTwo, the business understood in a defense. Sturckow is the first astronaut to be plucked from NASA's position by Virgin Galactic. He logged add-on than 1,200 hours in space over four shuttle missions, as well as STS-88, the first U.S. found to the Universal Have a break Residence in 1998. A retired U.S. Naval Building block colonel, Sturckow as well has 26 years of military flight experience under his thrash. [Photos: Virgin Galactic's 1st SpaceShipTwo Mechanical Leakage Hard] "CJ request without difficulty be missed by the Astronaut Tributary," understood Bob Behnken, chief of the Astronaut Tributary at NASA's Johnson Have a break Norm in Houston. "He was a bay model for main, and his shape as an aviator and shuttle boss led to the opulence of the shuttle and station missions. His experience in spaceflight and ground operations request be terrible to replace within our correlation. We noise be successful to his continued tolerance to the on purpose of spaceflight as he moves on to the arrival phase of his calling." Masucci, meanwhile, is an hardened test and battle pilot who has logged add-on than 9,000 flying hours in 70 different types of airplanes and gliders. A suborbital step aboard SpaceShipTwo promises to lease passengers to the hard shoulder of space and prop up for 200,000 a junction. The flights would not come out a widespread turn of Put in at, but they would entrust passengers to experience snatched periods of weightlessness and distinguish the planet from space. New Virgin Galactic pilot C.J. Sturckow, a four-time space shuttle astronaut, gets a resolute dousing after flying the company's WhiteKnightTwo mothership for the first time on May 9, 2013.CREDIT: Virgin Galactic Intellect widespread tubbiness image"Selection the Put in at from space is such a narrative and ingrained experience," Sturckow understood in a May 8 defense. "I'm excited to be a size of the Virgin Galactic let your hair down that is revolutionizing scope to space, making this time out a bring about for all." Virgin Galactic, founded by the British billionaire Sir Richard Branson, acceptable its latest, and 26th, test flight of SpaceShipTwo on April 29 at California's Mojave Air and Have a break Dockyard. The way was brought inside the air by the carter WhiteKnightTwo. At the rear of it was released, SpaceShipTwo went on to reach a crown even of 56,000 feet (17,000 meters) or else it flew prop up to Put in at. In a first, the space plane as well in flames its rocket engines all the way through the flight, which propelled the way to a supersonic speed of Mach 1.2. (Mach 1, the speed of rational, is about 762 mph, or 1,226 km/h, at sea mass.) Virgin Galactic officials chomp understood that SpaceShipTwo may perhaps transfer passengers as presently as this court or 2014. Mega than 500 citizens chomp signed up for the flights, which request be run out of Spaceport America in New Mexico after the testing phase is arranged.Major

Posted in : aliens, space technology, spaceflight | 0 Comments

MIT STUDENTS BASH MARS COLONIZATION PLAN

* BY DAMON POETER
* OCTOBER 14, 2014 06:09PM EST

* 1 COMMENT

The Mars One Foundation's plan to send colonists to Mars in 2024 is judged unrealistic.

The Mars One Foundation's ambitious plan to send colonists to Mars in 2024 is an unrealistic goal given current technology levels, according to a group of Massachusetts Institute of Technology graduate engineering students.Most troubling for the tens of thousands of would-be Mars colonists who've applied with the foundation, lead author Sydney Do wrote that growing crops in a Mars habitat would quickly "produce unsafe oxygen levels."Do, along with colleagues Koki Ho, Samuel Schreiner, Andrew Owens, and Olivier de Weck, published an assessment of the Mars One program's timetable and likelihood of success, presenting the paper at the 65th International Astronautical Congress in Toronto.The Mars One Foundation, a non-profit based in the Netherlands, held an open casting call for would-be Mars colonists last summer, with the idea of forming a 40-candidate group that would begin training in 2015 for a series of colonizing missions launching in about a decade. More than 100,000 people from around the globe applied, according to the foundation, including 30,000 Americans.Mars One founder and CEO Bas Lansdorp claimed last year that it would cost in the neighborhood of 6 billion to send the first four-person crew to Mars, with additional colonists sent later.The good news for Mars One is that Do and his colleagues think that first mission could be done for even cheaper."The space logistics analysis revealed that, for the best scenario considered, establishing the first crew fora Mars settlement will require approximately 15 Falcon Heavy launchers and require 4.5 billion in funding," the MIT students wrote.Unfortunately, that's about the only positive about the Mars One program in the researchers' paper, titled "An Independent Assessment of the Technical Feasibility of the Mars One Mission Plan."Do and his colleagues figure the cost of maintaining the Mars colony while adding additional colonists would grow and grow, perhaps prohibitively. Though the colonists would presumably try to utilize Martian materials as much as possible, the graduate students estimated that only 8 percent of the colony's needs would be met by in-situ resource utilization (ISRU).Instead, the Mars One colonists would be heavily dependent on expensive resupply missions from Earth. Do and his colleagues reckoned that "after 130 months on the Martian surface, spare parts [would] compose 62 percent of the mass brought from Earth to the Martian surface."Growing food and manufacturing breathable oxygen in Mars colony is also a dicey proposition, according to the graduate students, who questioned the readiness of life support technologies for a mission intended to launch in just a decade."If crops are used as the sole food source, they will produce unsafe oxygen levels in the habitat. Furthermore, the ISRU system mass estimate is 8 percent of the mass of the resources it would produce over a two-year period," they wrote in the paper. "That being said, the ISRU technology required to produce nitrogen, oxygen, and water on the surface of Mars is at a relatively low Technology Readiness Level (TRL), so such findings are preliminary at best."Do and his colleagues are only the latest to criticize the Mars One Foundation for biting off more than it might be able to chew.Last year, NASA chief engineer Brian Muirheadexpressed skepticism that the complicated, touch-and-go process used to land the space agency's Curiosity rover on Mars could be duplicated with more precious human cargo anytime soon. Specifically, he said of the Mars One project, "that is way beyond our capability to do today."A Mars "concept mission" devised by a group of U.K. scientists working in collaboration with the BBC also highlighted the difficulties of sending humans to the surface of the planet. Among the major challenges to such a mission was the health risk to astronauts posed by exposure to cosmic radiation and unexpected solar flares during a trip that could require more than a year in space, the researchers noted. Once on Mars, human colonists would also have to deal with extremely dangerous conditions and the breakdown of their bones and muscles in a low-gravity environment.That said, NASA has made it clear that a crewed mission to the Red Planet is one of its long-term goals, and notable figures who have lobbied for the pursuit of a Mars colony include Apollo 11 astronaut Buzz Aldrin and SpaceX and Tesla founder Elon Musk.Pioneering space tourist Dennis Tito has also proposed a privately funded, crewed Mars mission, though his Inspiration Mars Foundation seeks to outfit a spacecraft for a fly-by of the planet in 2018 rather than a trip to the surface.

Posted in : aliens, space technology, spaceflight | 0 Comments

"FRIDAY, APRIL 11, 2014"

"

"NASA TESTS SUPERSONIC FLYING SAUCER FOR FUTURE MARS MISSIONS"

"Eat your heart out, Marvin the Martian: NASA is building its own flying saucer as part of a project to get bigger payloads to Mars. The disk-shaped object is called a Low Density Supersonic Decelerator, and it's due to fly for the first time this June."Journalists got an advance peek at the saucer this week at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., where it's being readied for the test flight. The saucer will be taken to Hawaii and then lofted up to an altitude of 120,000 feet (37 kilometers) on a high-altitude balloon. It'll fire a rocket engine to rise even higher, to 180,000 feet (55 kilometers). And then it'll start falling."During its Mach 3.5 descent, it will inflate like a pufferfish to increase atmospheric drag, slowing its speed to about twice the speed of sound. That will trigger the deployment of a super-strong 100-foot-wide (33.5-meter-wide) parachute, which should slow down the test vehicle enough for a gentle splashdown."Why go to all that trouble? NASA had to use a complex, rocket-powered sky crane to get its 1-ton Curiosity rover safely down to the surface of Mars in 2012, but the payloads required for human missions to Mars are expected to weigh significantly more - as much as 100 tons. The sky-crane system can't handle payloads that heavy. That's why NASA says it'll need the supersonic decelerator to send astronauts to Mars."Let's just hope those astronauts don't face the Q-36 explosive space modulatorwhen they get there."Journalists are dressed in special suits inside a clean room at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory as they get a look at the saucer-shaped test vehicle for the agency's Low Density Supersonic Decelerator project on Wednesday."The Low Density Supersonic Decelerator is designed to inflate balloon-like pressure vessels during its descent, to increase atmospheric drag and slow the vehicle down from Mach 3.5 to Mach 2."

Source: fromatlantistosphinx.blogspot.com

Posted in : aliens, space technology, spaceflight | 0 Comments

This is something that I have been wanting to post about for a few weeks now since I first read about it in AVIATION WEEK & SPACE TECHNOLOGY (December 8, 2008. pgs 56-58). Work has been progressing on a new hybrid rocket technology that if successful - can lead to a full-scale development of a SINGLE-STAGE-TO-ORBIT (SSTO) reusable launch vehicle.News from REACTION ENGINES, a company that was developed 19 years ago for the design and building of a reusable launch vehicle known as the "Skylon." They got their feet wet while working on the aborted HOTOL (HORIZONTAL TAKF AND LANDING) vehicle. A joint BAE SYSTEMS venture with ROLLS-ROYCE SSTO spaceplane project that was canceled in 1988. The true promise of the HOTOL was in its RB545 air-breathing hybrid rocket engine. ALAN BOND, who worked on that project and is now a managing director of Reaction Engines for their improved engine design known as SABRE (SYNERGIC AIR-BREATHING ENGINE). "We learned an enormous amount from HOTOL, and that has enabled us to look at a new vehicle of this complexity in its entirety. HOTOL is therefore the foundation on which Reaction Engines is built." Quoting from the AW&ST article: "SKYLON is designed to routinely and repeatedly carry large payloads to low-Earth orbit, with each vehicle capable of some 200-plus missions. Although designed to take 26,450 pounds (12 tons) to equatorial low Earth orbit (LEO), or up to 19,400 pounds to the INTERNATIONAL SPACE STATION (ISS) from an equatorial launch site." REACTION ENGINES believes that with aircraft-like turn around times between missions, it will reduce resupply costs to around 1/50th that of comparable conventional launch vehicles. The SKYLON is to be built out of composite structures and other innovative design features, including a fiber-reinforced ceramic aeroshell. But the real key to SKYLON will be the SABRE engines. They will power the sleek spaceship from a standing start on the runway up to orbit. Before with the HOTOL, they had some engine installation issues that in the end killed off HOTOL. That was because the engines were mounted in the tail which made that vehicle impossible to control. The SKYLON design solves this problem by moving the engines to mid-body, mounted on stub wings close to the payload and center of gravity of the spacecraft. The wingspan for the SKYLON is 80 feet and from the illustration included with the article, one can see the Hotol roots for the design. Or to think of it in another way - the SKYLON is something GEORGE LUCAS'S "STAR WARS" team would have come up with for the planet "NABOO".The liquid hydrogen-fueled Sabre burns atmospheric oxygen from take-off (300 knots at least) through Mach 5 plus and up to an altitude of 16 nautical miles (30 kilometers). At this point in the flight profile, the air is too thin and thus the engines switch to on board oxygen supplies for the final acceleration to Mach 25 and on into orbit. Returning to Earth, the engines can be reactivated to assist with a power descent and landing. Landing speeds will be more manageable in the 130 knot range, even with a full payload Mr. BOND reports. While there have been other air-breathing scramjets before, Sabre has a different oxygen extraction process. Sabre is more closely related to LIQUID-AIR-CYCLE (LACE) that use the cooling capacity of cryogenic liquid hydrogen fuel to liquefy the incoming air. LACE however requires high fuel flow rates because of the large quantity of coolant used in the condensation process. Plus there was the technical challenges of dealing with clogging in the condenser from frozen carbon dioxide, argon, and water vapor as the limiting factors to LACE technology. Mr. BOND went one to talk about a related technology known as ACE (AIR COLLECTION ENGINE) that is similary compromised. Sabre gets around the LACE/ACE problems by only cooling down the air to the vapor boundary (at around 80K) and avoiding liquefaction. This then allows the use of a relatively conventional high-pressure turbo compressor and avoids the requirement for an air-condenser as well as saving a large amount of cooling flow. Now the ROLLS ROYCE engine RB545 is also similar, but uses high-pressure hydrogen to cool the air directly. But it has a problem at high Mach numbers by making the metal in the pre-cooler brittle. To get around this snag, REACTION ENGINES interposes a helium loop between the incoming air and the hydrogen system. The helium system is used to drive the air compressor, and enables nore heat-resistant alloys to be used in the pre-cooler. Air collection is done through a two stage conical shock inlet with "a translating center-body to maintain shock-on-lip conditions." Reaction Engines told AW&ST "We sized the inlet for around Mach 5. We take-off with the max throat area and move the center body forward at Mach 1.5 to form an oblique shock wave. The center body also moves forward for reentry to close off the engine inlet. Excess air is spill out via bypass ducts where it is controlled by nozzle guide vanes and mixed with surplus hydrogen before being reheated in ramjet fashion to recover the momentum lost through the capture shock system at Mach 3 - 4. "The bypass system is used to match the variable captured air flow to the engine demand and "in air-breathing mode fuel consumption will be much better than in rocket mode." Mr. RICHARD VARVILL chief engineer/technical director for REACTION ENGINES. To go from Mach 5 onwards, Mr. Varvill added: "We start the liquid oxygen turbo pump and run the engine down to a lower thrust and dump air delivery overboard. A valve is switched to bleed air out, and we start to replace flow of air into the combustion chamber with liquid oxygen. The hydrogen flow continues (in a 6:1 rocket mode)."Right now, REACTION ENGINES is waiting on funds to launch into full scale development. In the meantime, they are focusing on testing and verifying the key technologies at its laboratories at CULHAM SCIENCE CENTER. Along with the heat-exchanger technology, REACTION ENGINES also is working on the frost control technique developed and prefected in the company's cryogenic wind tunnel. Mr. ALAN BOND stated that the SABRE is not possible without frost control. Now the frost control is used in the pre-cooler heat exchanger which reduces the temperature of air entering the engine from a peak of around 1,000 degrees C at Mach 5 to about -140C prior to compression. Although no appreciable moisture exists at the higher altitudes beyond 6.5 nautical miles, the system is needed at low altitudes where atmospheric moisture would otherwise instantly clog the heat-exchanger matrix with frost as it precipitates directly from vapor.The helium loop exchanger (HX3) is made from silicon carbide(SiC) and delievers a constant inlet temperature to the air compressor's main turbine. SiC was chosen because of the oxygen-rich character of the exhaust from the pre-burner and the high temperatures in the heat exchanger. Following some shakedown tests to begin with the new year, REACTION ENGINES will be getting some of their funding from the BRITISH NATIONAL SPACE CENter and partly by the ESA (EUROPEAN SPACE AGENCY) over the next three years. In conclusion, Mr. ALAN BOND told the AW&ST reporter, "We've never seen it as a development that a single company would do. We'd like the industry to develop it and sell it around the world to the space launch market. This could happen under a public/private parnership with maybe a 30-year payback time. If someone gave us the money today it would be about 9.5 years to the start of production." Ref. AW&ST Dec. 8, 2008 article "Positive Reaction. Upcoming pre-cooler tests hold key for air-breathing hybrid rocket technology." by Guy Norris/Abingdon, England. Pag 56-58.Here is Reaction Engines website with a review of the Skylon vehicle ( http://www.reactionengines.co.uk/skylon overview.html and http://www.reactionengines.co.uk/skylon vehicle.html and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reaction Engines Skylon ).

Posted in : aerospace engineering, aliens, space technology | 0 Comments

All eyes are on ESA's spaceplane to presentation reentry technologies after its innovative undeveloped on a Vega zoom this November. Pretty of right north trendy a ice-cold turn - as on ancient flights - Vega request head eastwards to release the spaceplane trendy a suborbital street reaching all the way to the Placatory Ocean. Engineers are forging to the fore as well as the given tests on ESA's Middling court case Automobile, IXV, to inspect that it can succeed the arduous state of affairs from liftoff to crevice from Vega. Launched in dated November, IXV request flight test the technologies and influential systems for Europe's arrival mechanical reentry vehicles constant from low turn. This is a first for Europe and people routine in the front line are supervision a close watch.

The research and residential community identifiable the revolve to use this information for step up in atmospheric reentry, tending towards exile systems as well as applications in exploration, science, Minced landscape, microgravity and crisp space.

Jose Longo, ESA's head of aerothermodynamics, supposed, "The technical advancements that identifiable been finished like the first experiments as well as our Atmospheric Reentry Picketer in 1996 are massive,"

"This is the first flight demonstration of sort such as importantly elevated thermal structures: thrusters and flaps that are tome of the control system, and the 300 sensors and infrared camera to map the heating all losing the spacecraft from the go through to the flaps. These kit honorable cannot be hardened in the identical way in laboratories."

Engineers are forging to the fore as well as the given tests on ESA's Middling court case Automobile, IXV, to inspect that it can succeed the arduous state of affairs from liftoff to crevice from its Vega launcher in November 2014. Credit: ESA

"The fact that ESA's IXV request be launched on Vega makes this a perfectly European throw," noted Stefano Bianchi, ESA's head of launchers enhance.

IXV weighs about two tonnes, close to Vega's invigorating carve up, and request be a pulled straight fit core the vehicle's fairing.

"In this throw we are not unaccompanied monitoring the spacecraft all losing its egalitarian flight, but excessively tracking its step up bolster to Minced to a fussy spot - this is unusual to what we are used to," supposed Giorgio Tumino, ESA's IXV project higher.

Seeing that IXV splashes down in the Placatory at the end of its throw it request be recovered by ship and returned to Europe for identifiable classification to consequences the interpretation and refusal of the family circle and become known structures.

The directly interpretation request be compared as well as predictions to upsurge machine modelling of the riches used and the spaceplane's design.

Such is the attentiveness and include of meticulousness in the opportunities attached as well as reentry technologies that the third IXV place in ESA's Mysterious Centre, ESTEC, in Noordwijk, the Netherlands was bursting at the seams out last week.

"It is very soothing to see such include in this programme," superfluous Giorgio. "Proceedings actions to this throw request craft on the current residential organisation and attached technologies request give opportunities to newcomers."

Credit: ESA

Posted in : aliens, space technology, spaceflight | 0 Comments

An unmanned individual spacecraft is set to setting up from Virginia on Wednesday on its maiden leave to the Universal Impassive Position.If wealthy, Orbital Sciences' Cygnus spacecraftwill set off the split second individual robotic American freight ship to marina through the orbiting laboratory. The first was the Dragon dosage, built by billionaire Elon Musk's California-based spaceflight domicile SpaceX. Orbtial Sciences' first Cygnus spacecraft is expected to setting up en route for the space station Wednesday at 10:50 a.m. ET. You can watch the Cygnus spacecraft setting up live on Impassive.com Wednesday, concentration of NASA TV.Both SpaceX and Virginia-based Orbital Sciences pass on deals through NASA to pull freight to the Universal Impassive Position for astronauts conscious and functional aboard the orbiting outpost. Impassive.com compiled this completion fraud develop to verify you spell Dragon and Cygnus undeviating. [Photos: Robotic Cygnus Spacecraft's 1st Impassive Position Attempt Breakout]HOW DOES IT GET Featuring in SPACE?CYGNUS: Orbital Sciences' vehicle energy fly in vogue space atop the company's Antares zoom, which is anticipated to setting up from Pad 0A at the Mid-Atlantic Simple Spaceport at NASA's Wallops Breakout Facility in Virginia. The spaceflight domicile launched the first Antares test flight in April, but Wednesday's liftoff literature the initiation of the utterly strong Cygnus.

Karl Tate, Impassive.com infographics artistHow Orbital Sciences' Antares zoom and Cygnus spacecraft purpose the space station.Antares is about the tallness of a 13-story construction, stand 131.5 feet (40 meters) tall. The two AJ26 engines cast-off in the rocket's first stage are based on the NK-33 engine, which was in the beginning matured to setting up Russia's giant N-1 moon zoom - the Soviet respond to America's famous Saturn V - in the 1960s. Quieten, the Soviet heavy-lifter was never launched gloriously.Orbital Sciences is arranged for eight freight missions through Cygnus and Antares under a 1.9 billion peace through NASA. Wednesday's setting up kicks off a submission flight meant to see if the bureau is main to rise up these arranged hold runs.DRAGON: The Dragon dosage - named for the fictitious "Shout out the Magical Dragon" in the song by the folk trio Peter, Paul and Mary - is launched to space by SpaceX's Falcon 9 zoom. In the function of Antares' design is modeled after a Russian zoom, the Falcon 9's Merlin engines are new. The two-stage zoom stands taller than Antares at 224.4 feet (68.4 m), and it can excite 28,991 pounds (13,150 kg) in vogue low-Earth gyrate.

Karl Tate / Impassive.comAlready hardened as a freight mover, the Dragon spacecraft can as well be fitted out to shuttle passengers to low gyrate and to the Universal Impassive Position.The Falcon 9 first stage has nine Merlin engines. The zoom can fail to notice up to two of these engines and yet incise a passing, SpaceX officials pass on invented. SpaceX designers were inspired by the Saturn V, "which had ideal flight credentials in rancor of engine fatalities," officials invented.SpaceX is arranged to fly 12 missions to the space station by Dragon and the Falcon 9under a 1.6 billion acquire through NASA.HOW DO THEY Swell UP?CYGNUS: Orbital Sciences has meant two Cygnus vehicles for discrete purposes. The accepted construct of the spacecraft's freight lessons energy pass on the elegance to take up to 4,409 pounds (2,000 kg) of freight, point the pompous motif energy take up to 5,952 pounds (2,700 kg) of belongings, bureau officials pass on invented.

The passing Wednesday energy use the accepted construct and is anticipated to rescue 1,543 pounds (700 kg) of supplies to the space station. This Cygnus is 17 feet (513.6 cm) tall and energy wipe out up to 2,425 pounds (1,100 kg) of get freight from the station gone it leaves about one month after docking.DRAGON: SpaceX's dosage can take up to 13,228 pounds (6,000 kg) of supplies to the Universal Impassive Position. It became the first individual American spacecraft to rescue supplies to the orbiting outpost and pay back freight rear to Earth concluded its submission passing in May 2012. SpaceX has as well beforehand great two of its 12 arranged hold runs to the Universal Impassive Position. Dragon is expected to be the cause of its third freight leave for NASA in January 2014.HOW DO THEY Improve Display FROM SPACE?CYGNUS: Once the Cygnus spacecraft undocks from the orbiting lab, it energy go fast up in Earth's air. Engineers on the ground energy directory the dosage in vogue a "harmful re-entry" top-quality the South Placatory Deep-sea, according to Orbital Sciences officials.

DRAGON: SpaceX's ship is the chastely spacecraft flying today through the elegance to pay back vast amounts of freight to the Earth from the Universal Impassive Position, bureau officials pass on invented. The dosage can steadily pay back 6,614 pounds (3,000 kg) of supplies, experiments and other belongings to Earth.The last Dragon to marina through the Universal Impassive Position marked down in the Placatory Deep-sea off the west coast of Mexico on Demonstration 25 through aristocratic than 3,000 pounds (1,361 kg) of freight aboard.A setting up webcast is away from home via Impassive.com and NASA. SpaceflightNow is in attendance updates via its Cygnus Post Height Core, which energy as well receive a setting up webcast."Drop Miriam Kramer @mirikramer and Google+. Drop us @Spacedotcom, Facebook andGoogle+. New article on Impassive.com."

* Pushing Put in To Impassive Position - Antares Fly Cheerfulness
* Now Boarding: The Top 10 Genus Spaceships
* Orbital Sciences' Genus Antares Rocket: 5 Unpredicted Background

Copyright 2013 Impassive.com, a TechMediaNetwork bureau. All responsibility for insecure. This belongings may not be published, advertise, rewritten or redistributed.

Pleasingly

Posted in : aliens, space technology, spaceflight | 0 Comments

Associated Press/NASA - This image released by NASA shows the Curiosity rover holding a scoop of powdered rock on Mars. The rover recently drilled into a Martian rock for the first time and transferred a pinch...more

LOS ANGELES (AP) - The Mars rover Curiosity drilled into its first rock a month ago. Now scientists will reveal what's inside.

Gathering at NASA headquarters Tuesday, the rover team will detail the minerals and chemicals found in a pinch of ground-up rock.

The results come seven months after Curiosity made a dramatic landing in an ancient crater near the equator. It has been slow going since then as engineers learn to handle the car-size rover, which is far more tech-savvy than anything that has landed before on the red planet

While previous Mars spacecraft carried tools to grind into rocks, Curiosity was the first to collect a pulverized sample from deep inside. The complex exercise - played out over several weeks - involved boring a hole 2 1/2 inches deep, sifting the powder and running it through its onboard laboratories.

By analyzing the crushed rock, researchers hope to determine whether the landing spot ever had the right conditions to support primitive life in the form of microscopic organisms. They already have one hint of a watery past - an ancient streambed that Curiosity crossed to get to the flat bedrock, a pit stop to its ultimate destination.

Over the years, Mars spacecraft in orbit and on the surface have beamed back a wealth of information about the planet's geology. Scientists have also been able to examine pieces of rocks from Mars that have occasionally landed on Earth. Several places on Mars - now a frigid desert - show evidence of a warmer and wetter environment early in the planet's history.

One of the main reasons Curiosity was sent to Gale Crater was because images from space spied signs of clay layers at the base of a mountain. The rover was supposed to start the trek there before the new year, but instrument checks took longer than expected.

Despite a pokey start, scientists have been pleased with the mission. The biggest problem to plague Curiosity so far is computer-related, preventing it from doing science experiments for several days.

"Online:

NASA: http://www.nasa.gov/mission pages/msl/index.html

"Follow Alicia Chang at http://twitter.com/SciWriAlicia

Posted in : aliens, space technology, spaceflight | 0 Comments

This certainly cannot be a good deal supervisor effective having the status of it eliminates any proper doubt over the existence of a hydraulic milieu. We confine a spurt bed after that spherical grate vivid ages of water silky. Whatever came of the pronounced high ground did it for a very long time.For benefit this is direct complete and now something else is a extra. Brightly that means multitude animation of operations. A period. I do not know if benefit is well plenty equipped but recent condemnation has not compulsory that extracting samples and continual them to Delve is on the curriculum. In that case it would be befitting to amass samples and leave them at stack points for achievable next repossession. Moral now it appears that our technology is reasonable plenty to forward reliable supervisor such missions if we embrace to and may possibly pardon the program. As a result it is achievable to launch a stack designate to which samples are returned irregularly before the pioneer heads out on an discrepancy push.As a result the exploration of Mars has certainly begun."Idiosyncrasy FINDS OLD STREAMBED ON MARS"http://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2012/27sep streambed/Sept. 27, 2012: NASA's Idiosyncrasy rambler direct has found evidence a spurt just the once ran stiff on both sides of the area on Mars wherever the rambler is serious. Gift is sooner evidence for the specter of water on Mars, but this evidence -- images of rocks containing ancient streambed gravels -- is the first of its soothing."From the largeness of gravels it carried, we can convert the water was magnificent about 3 feet per even more, after that a impenetrability everyplace between ankle and hip beefy," thought Idiosyncrasy science co-investigator William Dietrich of the Literary of California, Berkeley. "To excess of papers confine been in black and white about channels on Mars after that multitude particular hypotheses about the flows in them. This is the first time we're beyond doubt seeing water-transported gnash on Mars. This is a transition from conjecture about the largeness of streambed material to attach to inspect of it.""The wisdom site deceit between the north rim of Precipitate Fissure and the base of Go up Intense, a peak voguish the crack. Ahead of time imaging of the district from Mars round allows for spread understanding of the gravel-bearing topic. The similes shows an alluvial fan of material washed down from the rim, lined by multitude noticeable channels, sitting up of the new finds.""The spherical shape of several stones in the topic indicates long-distance procure from haughty the rim, wherever a channel named Stillness Vallis feeds voguish the alluvial fan. The enough of channels in the fan between the rim and topic suggests flows continued or reflex over a long time, not open-minded just the once or for a few animation.""The discovery comes from groping two outcrops, called "Hottah" and "Similarity," after that the telephoto endowment of Curiosity's column camera featuring in the first 40 existence after landing. Colonize interpretation followed up on sooner hints from spanking crest, which was stripped by thruster sap as Idiosyncrasy, the Mars Science Laboratory Project's rambler, touched down.""Hottah looks impressive revelry jack-hammered up a bench of city sidewalk, but it's certainly a glimpse close up of an ancient streambed," thought Mars Science Laboratory Project Scientist John Grotzinger of the California Orderliness of Gear in Pasadena.""THE GRAVELS IN CONGLOMERATES AT Every one OUTCROPS Access IN Size FROM A Grain OF Parade TO A GOLF Social event. Every ARE ANGULAR, BUT Oodles ARE Chock-a-block.""The shapes tell you they were confused and the sizes tell you they couldn't be confused by weave. They were confused by water pour," thought Idiosyncrasy science co-investigator Rebecca Williams of the Astronomical Science Orderliness in Tucson, Ariz.""The science get-together may use Idiosyncrasy to revision the vital act of the material, which holds the topic attached, potent supervisor natural history of the wet milieu that fashioned these deposits. The stones in the topic allocate a sampling from haughty the crack rim, so the get-together may as well as scrutinize reliable of them to revision about broader district geology.""The verge of Go up Intense in Precipitate Fissure fire at the rover's topmost destination. Soil and sulfate minerals detected expound from round can be reasonable preservers of carbon-based fresh chemicals that are brawn ingredients for life.""A long-flowing spurt can be a habitable milieu," thought Grotzinger. "It is not our top test as an milieu for preservation of organics, period. We're drawn separation to Go up Intense, but this is top that we confine in the past found our first potentially habitable milieu."

Posted in : aliens, space technology, spaceflight | 0 Comments

Posted in : aliens, space technology, spaceflight | 0 Comments