What's new

US Space Program - a thread

Tremendous. The way it flames out at the end as they shut it down is great. Besides all the water they're running above it and under it to control the flame, is that liquid nitrogen they're using to cool it down?

No idea but they must have to special case it since it isn't being cooled down by moving in the atmosphere.

8:20 of burn time is insane. Even the Falcon Heavy engines don't run for much more than 3 minutes. Have to give those Space Shuttle engines some thumbs up for taking such extreme abuse for so long without failing. Even the SaturnV F1 engines fired for only 2.5 minutes.
 
.
Watch NASA release 450,000 gallons of water in 1 minute

That is a lot of water.

NASA calls it the "Ignition Overpressure Protection and Sound Suppression water deluge system" and it is truly a sight to behold.

Just watch it in action:


In just over a minute the system releases roughly 450,000 gallons of water, sending it 100 feet into the air. The goal: reduce the extreme amount of heat and energy generated by a rocket launch.

For reference, that's not too far off the amount of water required to fill an Olympic-sized swimming pool.

This test was conducted Oct. 15 at Kennedy Space Center's Launch Pad 39B in Florida in preparation for Exploration Mission-1, which is set to launch in June 2020. It will be the first uncrewed flight of the Space Launch System, a huge rocket arrangement NASA has been working for over a decade, set to be the most powerful booster ever built. Source
 
.
.007 arcseconds stability...

8wcteYq.jpg
 
.
Spacewalking Astronauts Install Parking Spot for Private Spaceships at Space Station

https://www.space.com/spacewalkers-install-new-commerical-docking-port.html

znnKi6baBFw6HGS8cAvceg-320-80.jpg

Astronauts Nick Hague and Andrew Morgan install IDA-3 outside the International Space Station on Wednesday, August

Two NASA astronauts stepped outside the International Space Station Wednesday (Aug. 21) to install a new docking port for incoming commercial crew spacecraft during the fifth spacewalk from the station this year.


Nick Hague and Andrew Morgan began their 6 hour and 32 minute spacewalk at 8:27 a.m. EDT (12:27 GMT), exiting from the U.S.-built Quest airlock after switching their spacesuits over to battery power.


The pair installed the International Docking Adapter-3 (IDA-3) to the space-facing side of the station's Harmony connecting module. IDA-3 will serve as a second docking port at the space station for incoming commercial spacecraft built by Boeing and SpaceX. NASA has tapped Boeing's Starliner capsule and SpaceX's Crew Dragon spacecraft to ferry astronauts to and from the space station in the future.


The spacewalk marked Morgan's first time venturing outside the space station, while Hague has already performed two spacewalks earlier this year to assist in replacing some of the station's solar array batteries. During Wednesday's excursion, Hague was the first one out, followed by Morgan a few minutes later as the station soared over the Atlantic Ocean.

Hague's mother was watching the action from Earth at NASA's Mission Control center at the Johnson Space Center in Houston. She apparently cooked up some special treats for the flight controllers on the ground who assisted the astronauts on their spacewalk.

"I heard she was busy in the kitchen yesterday," Hague radioed Mission Control while routing cables outside the station. "I'm glad you guys enjoyed, and I'm jealous." NASA did not disclose in spacewalk commentary what dishes Hague's mother prepared.

Hague and Morgan expected to have some difficulty in wrangling the docking adapters cables, which have been baking in the sun on the station's exterior since their delivery five years ago. But those fears, it seemed, were unfounded. The astronauts installed the cables with ease, even finishing ahead of schedule.

The only trouble the spacewalkers experienced occurred as they stowed a bulky thermal cover for their tools. As spacecraft communicator Mike Barratt, also an astronaut, in Mission Control put it: "It's like beating a big hostile marshmallow."

After installing the docking port, Hague and Morgan went on to install two vital reflectors on the IDA-3, which will serve as a docking aid for visiting spacecraft, providing visual cues for those incoming vehicles.

Hague and Morgan also got an extra hand from Canada's Dextre, a two-armed robot that was launched in 2008.

bmc4UsUu5hQ9V9pZaTrUzb-650-80.png




Spacewalkers Nick Hague and Andrew Morgan, both NASA astronauts, install cables for a new docking port for the International Space Station during a spacewalk on Aug. 21, 2019.

(Image credit: NASA TV)
In addition to Hague and Morgan, the station's six-person Expedition 60 crew includes NASA astronaut Christina Koch, Russian cosmonauts Alexey Ovchinin and Alexander Skvortsov and European Space Agency astronaut Luca Parmitano. Ovchinin commands the Expedition 60 mission.

The crew is also tending to scientific research on board such as rodent experiments and stem cell differentiation. NASA's plan to use commercial spacecraft such as SpaceX's Crew Dragon and Boeing's Starliner will bolster scientific research and technology development to advance the agency's future missions to the moon and Mars, NASA officials said in a in a statement.

Wednesday's spacewalk brings Hague's total time outside the space station to 19 hours and 59 minutes across three spacewalks. Morgan ended the day with 6 hours and 32 minutes of spacewalking time as it was his career first.

"Welcome to the club, you did a brilliant job," Barratt congratulated Morgan as he stepped back into the station.

Morgan apparently enjoyed his first walk in space.

"It's a special thing we get to do, and it's an honor to be part of such a stellar team," Morgan said
 
.
https://www.wjsu.org/post/meet-nuclear-powered-self-driving-drone-nasa-sending-moon-saturn#stream/0

Meet The Nuclear-Powered Self-Driving Drone NASA Is Sending To A Moon Of Saturn


  • NASA's Dragonfly mission will hop across Saturn's moon Titan, taking samples and photos.
    JOHNS HOPKINS APL

On the face of it, NASA's newest probe sounds incredible. Known as Dragonfly, it is a dual-rotor quadcopter (technically an octocopter, even more technically an X8 octocopter); it's roughly the size of a compact car; it's completely autonomous; it's nuclear powered; and it will hover above the surface of Saturn's moon Titan.

But Elizabeth Turtle, the mission's principle investigator at the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory, insists that this is actually a pretty tame space probe, as these things go.

"There's not a lot of new technology," she says.

Quadcopters (even X8 octocopters) are for sale on Amazon these days. Self-driving technology is coming along quickly. Nuclear power is harder to come by, but the team plans to use the same kind of system that runs NASA's Curiosity rover on Mars. Everything that's going into Dragonfly is already being used somewhere else.

Which is not to say that the idea of a nuclear-powered drone flying around a moon of Saturn doesn't sound kind of crazy.

"Almost everyone who gets exposed to Dragonfly has a similar thought process. The first time you see it, you think: 'You gotta be kidding, that's crazy,' " says Doug Adams, the mission's spacecraft systems engineer. But, he says, "eventually, you come to realize that this is a highly executable mission."

NASA reached that conclusion when, after a lot of careful study, it gave Dragonfly the green light earlier this summer. "This revolutionary mission would have been unthinkable just a few short years ago," NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine said when the roughly $1 billion project was selected in June. "A great nation does great things."

For Shannon MacKenzie, a postdoc on the mission, there's no destination that could be greater than Titan. The largest moon of Saturn, it has dunes, mountains, gullies and even rivers and lakes — though on Titan, it's so cold the lakes are filled with liquid methane, not water.

"It is this complete package," she says. "It's this really unique place in the solar system where all of these different processes are coming together in a very Earthlike way."


The NASA space probe Cassini used infrared light to peer through Titan's hazy atmosphere and take rough measurements of its surface.
NASA/JPL/UNIVERSITY OF ARIZONA
Turtle says these features are part of what made Titan a target. It also appears that the surface is covered in organic molecules. The climate is probably too harsh for those molecules to make the shift into life, but Turtle thinks Titan could provide clues about how the building blocks of life started on Earth.

"All of these materials have been basically doing chemistry experiments for us," she says. "What we want to be able to do is go pick up the results of those experiments to understand the same kinds of steps that were taken here on Earth toward life."

Titan has one more feature that's worth noting: Although its mainly nitrogen atmosphere is denser than Earth's, its gravity is far lower. That makes it the perfect place to take to the skies.

"The conditions on Titan make it easier to fly there than on Earth," says Peter Bedini, the Dragonfly project manager. A drone is actually a much better way to explore such a world than a wheeled rover.

Dragonfly will launch from Earth in 2026 and arrive on Titan in 2034. After it enters the atmosphere, it will literally drop from the back of the capsule that brought it and fly down to a set of sandy dunes on the surface. From there, it will make a series of "hops" over two years, sampling the ground and sending back data and photos.



Adams is confident Dragonfly will be able to safely buzz across Titan's terrain. Because it can take nearly an hour-and-a-half for a signal to reach Titan from Earth, it will have to fly autonomously. But, he says, there's not a lot to run into: "We make the joke if we hit a tree, then we win because we found a tree on Titan," he says.

Adams plans to leverage a lot of technology from the recent drone revolution here on Earth. Radars, motors and software can all be used, or relatively easily adapted, for Dragonfly.

There is one thing he can't bring, however: "We don't actually have a map. There's no GPS; there's no magnetic field even to orient yourself," he says. He says the drone will navigate by continuously photographing the landscape, creating its own "map" as it goes.

For now, the Dragonfly team is still working with drones here on Earth to figure out how to build systems and software the probe will eventually need. But Turtle says they have time before the 2026 launch. "There's a lot to do between now and then," says Turtle. But she adds, it's all very doable.

Copyright 2019 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.
DAVID GREENE, HOST:

Earlier this summer, NASA announced that it would fund an ambitious new mission to send a quadcopter-style drone to a moon of Saturn. This drone will leave earth in 2026, but work has already begun on it.

NPR's Geoff Brumfiel has been visiting with the team of scientists behind this mission.

GEOFF BRUMFIEL, BYLINE: This drone will head to a moon called Titan. And the first thing to know about Titan is that it's cool - like literally, it's really cold.

ELIZABETH TURTLE: It's 94 Kelvin and negative 290 Fahrenheit.

BRUMFIEL: Zibi Turtle is head of the mission, which is being run out of the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory. Turtle - it should come as no surprise - also thinks Titan's figuratively cool.

TURTLE: Titan is a really fascinating world. It's the largest moon of Saturn. It's the only satellite in the solar system that has a dense atmosphere. In fact, its atmosphere is denser than Earth's atmosphere

BRUMFIEL: And there's more Earthlike things about it. Titan has dunes, mountains, gullies, even rivers and lakes. Though, on Titan, it's so cold the lakes are filled with liquid methane, not water. Think of it as a little, frigid Earthlette (ph) floating around the outer solar system. And that's what has Turtle and her teams so interested.

Like Earth, Titan is home to a lot of different kinds of organic molecules. The climate's probably too harsh for those molecules to turn into life. But Turtle thinks Titan could provide clues to how life started here on Earth.

TURTLE: All of these materials have been basically doing chemistry experiments for us. And so what we want to be able to do is go pick up the results of those experiments to understand, you know, the same kinds of steps that were taken here on Earth toward life.

BRUMFIEL: But look, I haven't told you the coolest thing about Titan yet.

TURTLE: If you had a good way to keep warm and some oxygen with you to breath and put wings on, you'd be able to fly.

BRUMFIEL: What - you mean, like, flapping?

TURTLE: Exactly. A human being would be able to fly on Titan. It's that much easier to fly on Titan than it is on Earth.

BRUMFIEL: Titan's dense atmosphere and low gravity make getting off the ground a cinch. And that's why Turtle's plan is to explore with a drone rather than a rover. Down the hall from her office in a conference room, there's a giant quadcopter.

Wow.

TURTLE: Sweet. I didn't know we had that - the larger one...

BRUMFIEL: This is fantastic. Look at this thing. Hi.

TURTLE: Before I forget...

DOUG ADAMS: Hey. I'm Doug Adams.

BRUMFIEL: Doug Adams is one of the lead engineers on the project. The drone he's showing me takes up the whole table. And it's only a fraction of the size of what they have in mind.

Oh, that's quarter scale?

ADAMS: That's quarter scale.

TURTLE: That's quarter scale.

BRUMFIEL: Oh...

TURTLE: Yeah.

BRUMFIEL: ...This thing's big.

TURTLE: It is.

BRUMFIEL: The real drone, known as Dragonfly, will be roughly the size of a compact car. Titan's distance from Earth means that nobody can fly Dragonfly by remote control. It'll have to be completely autonomous. And there's no way to recharge it, which - if you've ever owned a drone - you know needs to happen a lot. And at this point, you may be thinking what I was thinking - really?

ADAMS: Almost everyone that gets exposed to Dragonfly has a similar thought process. The first time you see it, you think, you've got to be kidding. That's crazy.

BRUMFIEL: But Adams says the mission really is possible using technology we use all the time on Earth. Quadcopter-style drones, for example, are all over the place. This one's just a little bigger. Self-driving technology is increasingly common - and bonus, it should be easy on Titan because there aren't any obstacles.

ADAMS: We make the joke, if we hit a tree then we win - right? - because, you know, we found a tree on Titan.

BRUMFIEL: Recharging is a problem, but they've got a solution for that, too - a nuclear battery. NASA actually already uses one on its Mars rover. Turtle says, as ambitious as Dragonfly sounds, it's just a bunch of old tech bolted together.

TURTLE: One of the strategies that lowers risk for a mission is to use proven technology (laughter).

BRUMFIEL: Yeah. But, I mean, you're building a nuclear-powered, self-driving drone for a moon of Saturn...

TURTLE: (Laughter).

BRUMFIEL: ...So it is something new, isn't it? I mean, let's not...

ADAMS: It is...

BRUMFIEL: ...Not understate that.

ADAMS: So we won't understate that. However, as Zibi pointed out, the secret is to limit the miracles, right? We're assembling as many technologies that are already existing as possible and limiting what we have to do.

BRUMFIEL: Even Dragonfly's scientific instruments that it will use to take samples and send data back to Earth have been tested on other missions. In fact, what Adams is most worried about is something we all have at our fingertips here on Earth that he can't take to Titan.

ADAMS: We don't actually have a map. There's no GPS. There's no magnetic field even to orient yourself.

BRUMFIEL: The biggest challenge facing Dragonfly is how to find its way around. Then again, any good explorer should get a little lost, right?

Geoff Brumfiel, NPR News.
 
.
https://www.space.com/mars-lake-salty-curiosity-rover.html

Ancient Lake on Mars Turned Salty for a Spell, Curiosity Rover Finds

7L6qtX4kPFHfx5vQCSv6qE-320-80.jpg

This September 2016 self-portrait of NASA's Curiosity Mars rover shows the vehicle in the scenic Murray Buttes area on lower Mount Sharp

NASA's Curiosity Mars rover may have just captured a snapshot of the Red Planet's long-ago Great Drying.


Curiosity has detected relatively high levels of sulfate salts in the rocks of Gale Crater, a new study reports. Gale hosted a lake-and-stream system in the ancient past, and the newfound salts were likely concentrated by evaporation during a period of low water levels, researchers said.


This period may have been part of a normal cyclical fluctuation, a regular climatic change perhaps driven by recurring shifts in Mars' axial tilt or orbital parameters. "Alternatively, a drier Gale lake might be a sign of long-term, secular global drying of Mars, posited based on orbital observations," the scientists wrote in the new study, which was published online today (Oct. 7) in the journal Nature Geoscience.


Mars was once a relatively warm and wet world, complete with rivers and lakes and, most researchers believe, an ocean covering a large swath of the planet's northern hemisphere.


But things began to change around 4.2 billion years ago. Mars lost its global magnetic field, which had protected the planet's atmosphere from the solar wind, the stream of charged particles flowing continuously from the sun.


As a result, Mars lost the vast majority of its air to space by about 3.7 billion years ago, causing the planet to become much colder and drier. Today, Mars' air is just 1% as dense as Earth's atmosphere at sea level. (Luckily for us, Earth still has its global magnetic field.)




missing-image.svg




This NASA animation shows salty ponds and streams that scientists think may have been left behind as Gale Crater, home of the Curiosity rover, dried out over time. The crater's floor is seen at bottom of this image, with a central peak at left..


The Curiosity rover is helping scientists better understand the Red Planet's history, including its dramatic transformation.


The car-size rover landed inside the 96-mile-wide (154 kilometers) Gale Crater in August 2012, tasked primarily with assessing the area's past habitability. Curiosity quickly found lots of evidence of long-ago liquid water. Indeed, the mission team has determined that Gale's floor is an ancient lake bed, and that the area could have supported Earth-like life for long stretches — perhaps hundreds of millions of years at a time — in the ancient past.


In September 2014, Curiosity reached the base of Mount Sharp, the bizarre, 3.4-mile-high (5.5 km) mountain that rises from Gale's center. The rover has been climbing the mountain's foothills ever since, examining younger and younger sediments as it goes. And that brings us to the new study.


The researchers analyzed measurements Curiosity made while exploring the upper Murray Formation, an assemblage of exposed sedimentary rock near Mount Sharp's base thought to be 3.3 billion to 3.7 billion years old.


They found that these rocks are strongly enriched in sulfate salts — much more so than the deposits Curiosity had previously examined on the crater floor. (Those older rocks indicated an aqueous environment with water so fresh it was probably drinkable, mission team members have said.)


"Bulk enrichments" of calcium sulfate are widespread through about 500 feet (150 m) of the Murray Formation, the new study reports, while nuggets of high magnesium sulfate concentration speckle a thinner section of rock layers.


These salts were probably deposited along the margins of the Gale Crater basin, where the water was shallow. The deposits may trace back to multiple ponds on the fringes of the central lake, the researchers said.


Still, these salty ponds may have been habitable, the researchers added, noting that hypersaline lakes here on Earth teem with life. Indeed, the nature of the detected salts is intriguing from an astrobiological point of view.


"Sulfur is a basic element for life," study lead author William Rapin, a planetary scientist at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, told Space.com. "And we show that there was sulfate available in the water."


It's possible that the Gale Crater lake system was drying out for good around the time these salty deposits were laid down, Rapin said.


"Maybe habitable environments had started to become niche," he said. "Maybe large regions of Mars were already too arid."


But there's also that other possibility — that Mars was in a temporary dry spell but would become wet again when its axis of rotation, or its orbital eccentricity, changed.


Curiosity's work could soon help solve this mystery. Mars orbiters have detected sulfate salts higher up on Mount Sharp. Curiosity is making its way toward those deposits and should start encountering them in the next year or two, if all goes according to plan, Rapin said. (The newfound salt deposits were not spotted by Mars orbiters.)


What the rover finds there, and along the way, should help researchers piece together the evolution of the Gale Crater lake system, he added.


"We know we're going to have an answer — maybe a big answer — about what happened next, including with the sulfate deposits, in the years to come," Rapin said
 
.
https://arstechnica.com/science/201...-late-this-year-crew-flight-soon-after/?amp=1

It looks like SpaceX is now prioritizing Crew Dragon—which is great for NASA

On Tuesday, SpaceX founder Elon Musk offered updates on progress with the Crew Dragon spacecraft the company is building for NASA. The new information suggests that Musk is now prioritizing the program to ready Dragon to fly astronauts Doug Hurley and Bob Behnken to the International Space Station.

This is a critical time for NASA, which is exploring the possibility of buying additional Russian Soyuz seats for missions to the International Space Station in mid- or late-2020. This may not be possible, due to political concerns as well as long lead-time needed to manufacture additional Soyuz vehicles. NASA's only other option is extending crew missions on the orbiting laboratory. Paramount to the agency is keeping at least one US crew member on the station in addition to its Russian complement.

Musk shared the new information on Twitter Tuesday in reply to a tweet by this reporter, which noted that "full panic" has ensued at NASA headquarters as the agency seeks to buy seats, possibly extend crew missions, and begin flying commercial crew missions.

In-flight abort
Before it flies a crewed mission, SpaceX must demonstrate the in-flight abort capabilities of the Dragon spacecraft. During a rocket failure, the spacecraft's Super Draco thrusters are designed to fire quickly to pull the spacecraft away from an exploding booster. This upcoming test took on added importance after the explosion of a Crew Dragon spacecraft during thruster tests in April.

Since that time, however, both SpaceX and NASA officials have said they understand the cause of that accident, and the company has begun to implement changes to prevent it from occurring again.

On Tuesday, Musk said both the Falcon 9 rocket and Crew Dragon vehicle that will be used for the in-flight abort test have been shipped to Cape Canaveral, Florida. The hardware must still be configured for the test flight, but he estimated that it will occur toward the end of November or early December.

Parachutes
The other key technical issue that SpaceX must address is its parachute system. The company has experienced a couple of failures during the dozens of drop tests it has performed with its four-parachute system. The company is seeking to balance the robustness of the parachute system while keeping its overall mass down.

"We had to reallocate some resources to speed this up & received great support from Airborne, our parachute supplier," Musk said on Twitter. "I was at their Irvine factory with the SpaceX team on Sat and Sun. We’re focusing on the advanced Mk3 chute, which provides highest safety factor for astronauts."

Despite all of the technical work ahead, Musk said he expected both the rocket and Crew Dragon spacecraft for the first crewed mission to arrive in Florida at the company's launch facilities within about 10 weeks. Within that time frame, he said testing on hardware should also be completed.

If this is the case, the ball would move to NASA's court to review all of the company's paperwork and procedures and sign off on a crewed mission. One source said it was possible this could be done in time to support a flight early in the spring of 2020—but no one is offering launch guarantees at this point.
 
.
https://www.space.com/nasa-tests-mars-2020-rover-descent-stage.html
NASA Tests Mars 2020 Rover's Sky Crane Landing Tech

xNUc4eMLndwHZdffJngXad-320-80.jpg

A crane lifted the rocket-powered descent stage away from the Mars 2020 rover in a successful separation test at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, in September 2019.
(Image: © NASA/JPL-Caltech)

NASA's Mars 2020 rover mission has checked off another milestone with a successful separation test of the descent stage that will deliver the six-wheeled robot to the surface of the Red Planet.

The test, which took place at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, California, on Sept. 28, involved using a crane to lift the large, rocket-powered descent stage away from the rover.

"Firing the pyrotechnic devices that held the rover and descent stage together and then doing the post-test inspection of the two vehicles was an all-day affair," Ryan van Schilifgaarde, a support engineer for Mars 2020 assembly at JPL, said in a statement from NASA.

The Mars 2020 rover is scheduled to launch on a United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket in July 2020 from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida. The spacecraft will land inside the Red Planet's Jezero Crater on Feb. 18, 2021, where it will search for signs of habitable environments and evidence of past microbial life.

If all goes according to plan, the Mars 2020 rover will be the first spacecraft in the history of planetary exploration with the ability to accurately retarget its point of touchdown during the landing sequence, according to the statement.

"With this test behind us, the rover and descent stage go their separate ways for a while," van Schilifgaarde said in the statement. "Next time they are attached will be at the Cape next spring during final assembly."

However, before the Mars 2020 rover and descent stage ship off to Cape Canaveral, engineers at JPL will continue to test the rover's computers and mechanical systems under Mars-like conditions. A Surface Thermal Test, for example, will simulate the atmospheric temperatures and pressures the rover will encounter on Mars.

 
.
https://www.extremetech.com/extreme/299797-nasa-releases-3d-mapping-data-from-the-moon
NASA Releases 3D Mapping Data From the Moon

3d-moon-640x353.jpg


You can’t take a trip to the real moon, at least not right now. You might be able to visit the surface virtually before long, though. NASA has released a visual data set that it calls the “CGI Moon Kit,” which will allow designers to create authentic moonscapes in games and other types of media. The kit is, of course, completely free to download.

The data for the Moon Kit comes from NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO), which has been in orbit of the moon since 2009. Its original mission was just one year, but it’s still going strong. During its time studying the moon, the LRO has produced a 3D map of almost the entire surface — 98.2 percent of it, to be exact. The only parts of the moon not covered are the polar areas in deep shadow.

The Moon Kit comes from NASA designer Ernie Wright, who works in the Scientific Visualization Studio at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center. Wright initially created the Moon Kit as a tool for the Scientific Visualization Studio, but he received so many requests for the data that he decided to make the data set available to all designers publicly.

You can download the Moon Kit from the Scientific Visualization Studio website right now. It comes as a pair of uncompressed TIFF files. One file is a composite of over 100,000 photos taken by the orbiter’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter Camera (LROC). The largest size option, which is what most designers will want, clocks in at almost 500 megabytes. This is essentially a texture map of the moon.



The second TIFF file is what’s known as a displacement map. It contains data from the Lunar Orbiter Laser Altimeter instrument (LOLA), which tells you about the elevation of features on the moon. The largest version shows 64 pixels per degree, and clocks in at just shy of 1 GB.

In 3D animation software, you can wrap both images around a spherical shell to create a very accurate model of the moon. The color file tells the program how the terrain should look, and the displacement map tells it how the surface is shaped. However, this isn’t a ready-made 3D version of the moon you can explore — it’ll take some serious 3D design work to make it into something tangible. In the coming years, we may see simulations of the lunar surface that are more accurate than anything that came before.



 
.
https://www.space.com/nasas-tess-sp...ets-and-is-poised-to-find-thousands-more.html

NASA's TESS Spacecraft is Finding Hundreds of Exoplanets — And is Poised to Find Thousands More

L86BkGCYdbcLBjwWRNimtc-320-80.jpg

This artist's impression shows a view of the planet Proxima b orbiting the red dwarf star Proxima Centauri, the closest star to the solar system.
(Image: © M. Kornmesser/ESO)

Within just 50 light-years from Earth, there are about 1,560 stars, likely orbited by several thousand planets. About a thousand of these extrasolar planets – known as exoplanets – may be rocky and have a composition similar to Earth's. Some may even harbor life. Over 99% of these alien worlds remain undiscovered — but this is about to change.


With NASA's new exoplanet-hunter space telescope TESS, the all-sky search is on for possibly habitable planets close to our solar system. TESS — orbiting Earth every 13.7 days — and ground-based telescopes are poised to find hundreds of planets over the next few years. This could transform astronomers' understanding of alien worlds around us and provide targets to scan with next-generation telescopes for signatures of life. In just over a year, TESS has identified more than 1,200 planetary candidates, 29 of which astronomers have already confirmed as planets. Given TESS's unique ability to simultaneously search tens of thousands of stars for planets, the mission is expected to yield over 10,000 new worlds.


These are exciting times for astronomers and, especially, for those of us exploring exoplanets. We are members of the planet-hunting Project EDEN, which also supports TESS's work. We use telescopes on the ground and in space to find exoplanets to understand their properties and potential for harboring life.



Undiscovered worlds all around us
Worlds around us await discovery. Take, for example, Proxima Centauri, an unassuming, faint red star, invisible without a telescope. It is one of over a hundred billion or so such stars within our galaxy, unremarkable except for its status as our next-door neighbor. Orbiting Proxima is a fascinating but mysterious world, called Proxmia b, discovered only in 2016.


Scientists know surprisingly little about Proxima b. Astronomers name the first planet discovered in a system "b". This planet has never been seen with human eyes or by a telescope. But we know it exists due to its gravitational pull on its host star, which makes the star wobble ever so slightly. This slight wobble was found in measurements collected by a large, international group of astronomers from data taken with multiple ground-based telescopes. Proxima b very likely has a rocky composition similar to Earth's, but higher mass. It receives about the same amount of heat as Earth receives from the Sun.


And that is what makes this planet so exciting: It lies in the "habitable" zone and just might have properties similar to Earth's, like a surface, liquid water, and — who knows? — maybe even an atmosphere bearing the telltale chemical signs of life.


NASA's TESS mission launched in April 2018 to hunt for other broadly Earth-sized planets, but with a different method. TESS is looking for rare dimming events that happen when planets pass in front of their host stars, blocking some starlight. These transit events indicate not only the presence of the planets, but also their sizes and orbits.



Finding a new transiting exoplanet is a big deal for astronomers like us because, unlike those found through stellar wobbles, worlds seen transiting can be studied further to determine their densities and atmospheric compositions.




missing-image.svg



By measuring the depth of the dip in brightness and knowing the size of the star, scientists can determine the size or radius of the planet.

(Image credit: NASA Ames)


Red dwarf suns
For us, the most exciting exoplanets are the smallest ones, which TESS can detect when they orbit small stars called red dwarfs – stars with masses less than half the mass of our Sun.


Each of these systems is unique. For example, LP 791-18 is a red dwarf star 86 light-years from Earth around which TESS found two worlds. The first is a "super-Earth," a planet larger than Earth but probably still mostly rocky, and the second is a "mini-Neptune," a planet smaller than Neptune but gas- and ice-rich. Neither of these planets have counterparts in our solar system.


Among astronomers' current favorites of the new broadly Earth-sized planets is LHS 3884b, a scorching "hot Earth" that orbits its sun so quickly that on it you could celebrate your birthday every 11 hours.




missing-image.svg



Artist's impression of an exoplanet transiting a red dwarf star.

(Image credit: L. Calçada/ESO)


No Earth-like worlds yet


But how Earth-like are Earth-sized planets? The promise of finding nearby worlds for detailed studies is already paying off. A team of astronomers observed the hot super-Earth LHS 3884b with the Hubble Space Telescope and found the planet to be a horrible vacation spot, without even an atmosphere. It is just a bare rock with temperatures ranging from over 700 C (1300 Fahrenheit) at noon to near absolute zero (-460 Fahrenheit) at midnight.


The TESS mission was initially funded for two years. But the spacecraft is in excellent shape and NASA recently extended the mission through 2022, doubling the time TESS will have to scan nearby, bright stars for transits.


However, finding exoplanets around the coolest stars — those with temperatures less than about 2700 C (4900 F) — will still be a challenge due to their extreme faintness. Since ultracool dwarfs provide our best opportunity to find and study exoplanets with sizes and temperatures similar to Earth's, other focused planet searches are picking up where TESS leaves off.




missing-image.svg



Illustration of TESS, NASA's Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite

(Image credit: NASA Goddard Space Flight Center)


The worlds TESS can’t find
In May 2016, a Belgian-led group announced the discovery of a planetary system around the ultracool dwarf they christened TRAPPIST-1. The discovery of the seven transiting Earth-sized exoplanets in the TRAPPIST-1 system was groundbreaking.


It also demonstrated how small telescopes — relative to the powerful behemoths of our age — can still make transformational discoveries. With patience and persistence, the TRAPPIST telescope scanned nearby faint, red dwarf stars from its high-mountain perch in the Atacama desert for small, telltale dips in their brightnesses. Eventually, it spotted transits in the data for the red dwarf TRAPPIST-1, which — although just 41 light-years away — is too faint for TESS's four 10-cm (4-inch) diameter lenses. Its Earth-sized worlds would have remained undiscovered had the TRAPPIST team's larger telescope not found them.


Two projects have upped up the game in the search for exo-Earth candidates around nearby red dwarfs. The SPECULOOS teaminstalled four robotic telescopes – also in the Atacama desert – and one in the Northern Hemisphere. Our Exoearth Discovery and Exploration Network – Project EDEN – uses nine telescopes in Arizona, Italy, Spain and Taiwan to observe red dwarf stars continuously.


The SPECULOOS and EDEN telescopes are much larger than TESS's small lenses and can find planets around stars too faint for TESS to study, including some of the transiting Earth-sized planets closest to us.




missing-image.svg



This artist's concept shows what the TRAPPIST-1 planetary system may look like, based on available data about the planets' diameters, masses and distances from the host star, as of February 2018.

(Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech)


The decade of new worlds
The next decade is likely to be remembered as the time when we opened our eyes to the incredible diversity of other worlds. TESS is likely to find between 10,000 and 15,000 exoplanet candidates by 2025. By 2030, the European Space Agency's GAIA and PLATOmissions are expected to find another 20,000-35,000 planets. GAIA will look for stellar wobbles introduced by planets, while PLATO will search for planetary transits as TESS does.


However, even among the thousands of planets that will soon be found, the exoplanets closest to our solar system will remain special. Many of these worlds can be studied in great detail – including the search for signs of life. Discoveries of the nearest worlds also represent major steps in humanity's progress in exploring the universe we live in. After mapping our own planet and then the solar system, we now turn to nearby planetary systems. Perhaps one day Proxima b or another nearby world astronomers have yet to find will be the target for interstellar probes, like Project Starshot, or even crewed starships. But first we've got to put these worlds on the map.
 
. .
Would be great to see ourselves setting foot on the moon again, but I think we should also attempt Mars.
 
. .
Future Imagery Architecture

Future Imagery Architecture (FIA) was a program to design a new generation of optical and radar imaging US reconnaissance satellites for the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO). In 2005 NRO director Donald Kerr recommended the project's termination, and the optical component of the program was finally cancelled in September 2005 by Director of National Intelligence John Negroponte. FIA has been called by The New York Times "perhaps the most spectacular and expensive failure in the 50-year history of American spy satellite projects." Despite the optical component's cancellation, the radar component, known as Topaz, has continued, with five satellites in orbit as of 2018.

History

In 1999 the development contract for FIA was awarded to a Boeing team, which underbid Lockheed Martin's competing proposal by about US$1 billion (inflation adjusted US$ 1.53 billion in 2019). By 2005, an estimated US$10 billion had been spent by the US government on FIA, including Boeing's accumulated cost overrun of US$4 to 5 billion, and it was estimated to have an accumulated cost of US$25 billion over the ensuing twenty years. In September 2005 the contract for the electro-optical satellites was shifted to Lockheed Martin because of the cost overruns and delays of the delivery date. Lockheed was asked to restart production of KH-11 Kennen satellite system with new upgrades. The contract for the imaging radar satellite remained with Boeing. In September 2010 NRO director Bruce Carlson stated that while most NRO "(...) programs are operating on schedule and on cost (...)", one program is "(...) 700 percent over in schedule and 300 percent over in budget".

The exact scope and mission of FIA are classified, although the head of the NRO said in 2001 that the project would focus on creating smaller and lighter satellites. Some industry experts believe that a key objective is to make the satellites more difficult to attack, possibly by placing them in higher orbits. Because of the large size of the program, as well as number of workers involved, some experts have compared it to the 1940s Manhattan Project.

In 2012 NRO donated two sophisticated but unneeded space telescopes, reportedly built for FIA, to NASA for use in astronomy.

Launches

The first operational FIA Radar satellite, USA-215 or NROL-41, was launched on 21 September 2010. It is in a retrograde 1100 x 1105 km orbit inclined by 123 degrees, an orbital configuration indicating it is an SAR satellite. On 3 April 2012, a second satellite, USA-234 or NROL-25, was launched into a similar orbit.

The earlier USA-193 satellite, launched in 2006, is believed to have been a technology demonstration satellite intended to test and develop systems for the FIA radar programme. However, it failed immediately after launch, and was subsequently destroyed by a missile.


Spacecraft

USA-215 | COSPAR ID 2010-046A | SATCAT No. 37162 | launched on 21 September 2010, 04:03:30 UTC

USA-234 | COSPAR ID 2012-014A | SATCAT No. 38109 | launched on 3 April 2012, 23:12:57 UTC

USA-247 | COSPAR ID 2013-072A | SATCAT No. 39462 | launched on 6 December 2013, 07:14:30 UTC

USA-267 | COSPAR ID 2016-010A | SATCAT No. 41334 | launched on 10 February 2016, 11:40:32 UTC

USA-281 | COSPAR ID 2018-005A | SATCAT No. 43145 | launched on 12 January 2018, 22:10 UTC


Successor program

USA-224, launched on 20 January 2011, is believed to be the first of the large post-FIA optical reconnaissance satellites built by Lockheed.

The failed FIA program is to be succeeded by the Next Generation Electro-Optical (NGEO) program. NGEO is intended as a lower-risk modular system, which is capable of being modified incrementally over its lifetime.


Topaz 5 (FIA-Radar 5, USA 281, NROL 47)

A Delta IV rocket launched the classified NROL-47 satellite from Vandenberg in California on January 12, 2018. The satellite is believed to be the 5th member of the Topaz (FIA Radar) project, radar satellites operating in 1100km altitude, 123 degree inclined retrograde orbits.


Orbit of NROL-47 FIA Radar 5 (USA 281, Topaz-5) : 1,048 x 1,057 km - 106.00° - Period: 106.24 min

Two Line Element Set (TLE):

USA 281
1 43145U 18005A 20143.99356618 0.00000000 00000-0 00000-0 0 01
2 43145 106.0035 64.3610 0001873 219.9859 140.0141 13.48020027 04

This behemoth was caught on camera as it was cruising in the same frames near the Chinese SIGINT Yaogan-25A/B/C triplet.

Evolving at the same altitude, the Topaz 5's Magnitude was brighter, due to its much bigger size!

616c5e7ca5025c4378752e79b0bd7d7b3871f7b2.jpg

http://archive.is/jm9Va/616c5e7ca5025c4378752e79b0bd7d7b3871f7b2.jpg ; https://archive.is/jm9Va/bbd398954a844b06d9ea3d7b299fa2f2d781e17f/scr.png ; http://web.archive.org/web/20200529210541/https://i.imgur.com/lS3mWJV.jpg
1. Topaz 5 (FIA-Radar 5, USA 281, NROL 47) predited pass.

Image of Topaz 5 (FIA-Radar 5, USA 281, NROL 47) caught on camera a couple of nights ago, and calibrated with astrometry.net:

4270869

http://archive.vn/W0ilw/13c196bbca1729c1cbf33ec4beff160edc037a29.jpg ; https://archive.vn/W0ilw/e7826a321612437d5f0fd4b3141f3e9d7fd485e5/scr.png ; http://web.archive.org/web/20200529210938/http://nova.astrometry.net/annotated_full/4270869 ; http://nova.astrometry.net/user_images/3705363#annotated ; nova.astrometry.net/annotated_full/4270869
2. Topaz 5 (FIA-Radar 5, USA 281, NROL 47) caught on camera.


6e323515d66ee30841cae4a9a7318d3b72b3e685.gif

ae4ffdaeb02c2ea160fb33e41686a846f36755ca.gif

022c2d783cdf337beef335add6afdbf99880963d.png
4b7f704c1b6a7a2291742bd3986353bc70cc2569.png
 
Last edited:
. .

Latest posts

Back
Top Bottom