Re: SPACE - random thread about space stuff
Posted: Tue Jun 30, 2020 4:01 pm
SpaceX preparing to launch third GPS Block III satellite. Launch time is now 4:10 pm EDT, pushed back 15 minutes due to winds aloft.
That is not dead which can eternal lie, and with strange aeons bring us some web forums whereupon we can gather
http://www.octopusoverlords.com/forum/
Whats with all the towers around the launch tower?jztemple2 wrote: ↑Tue Jun 30, 2020 4:01 pm SpaceX preparing to launch third GPS Block III satellite. Launch time is now 4:10 pm EDT, pushed back 15 minutes due to winds aloft.
Lightning protection. I believe they are composite construction with wires wrapped around them.Daehawk wrote: ↑Tue Jun 30, 2020 4:27 pmWhats with all the towers around the launch tower?jztemple2 wrote: ↑Tue Jun 30, 2020 4:01 pm SpaceX preparing to launch third GPS Block III satellite. Launch time is now 4:10 pm EDT, pushed back 15 minutes due to winds aloft.
I don't see a space elevator ever happening. Assuming you could possible create a fiber strong enough to reach from the surface to space, just the possibility of it being broken by a stray meteor, aircraft or mechanical mishap would entail adding so many backups and contingencies as to make it economically unfeasible. It would be much easier to use large deceleration structures to allow big pieces of space rock to survive reentry.
The first images from ESA/NASA’s Solar Orbiter are now available to the public, including the closest pictures ever taken of the Sun.
Solar Orbiter is an international collaboration between the European Space Agency, or ESA, and NASA, to study our closest star, the Sun. Launched on Feb. 9, 2020 (EST), the spacecraft completed its first close pass of the Sun in mid-June.
“These unprecedented pictures of the Sun are the closest we have ever obtained,” said Holly Gilbert, NASA project scientist for the mission at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. “These amazing images will help scientists piece together the Sun’s atmospheric layers, which is important for understanding how it drives space weather near the Earth and throughout the solar system.”
“We didn’t expect such great results so early,” said Daniel Müller, ESA’s Solar Orbiter project scientist. “These images show that Solar Orbiter is off to an excellent start.”
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Principal investigator David Berghmans, an astrophysicist at the Royal Observatory of Belgium in Brussels, points out what he calls “campfires” dotting the Sun in EUI’s images.
“The campfires we are talking about here are the little nephews of solar flares, at least a million, perhaps a billion times smaller,” Berghmans said. “When looking at the new high resolution EUI images, they are literally everywhere we look.”
It’s not yet clear what these campfires are or how they correspond to solar brightenings observed by other spacecraft. But it’s possible they are mini-explosions known as nanoflares – tiny but ubiquitous sparks theorized to help heat the Sun's outer atmosphere, or corona, to its temperature 300 times hotter than the solar surface.
To know for sure, scientists need a more precise measurement of the campfires' temperature. Fortunately, the Spectral Imaging of the Coronal Environment, or SPICE instrument, also on Solar Orbiter, does just that.
NASA has announced a new target launch date for the James Webb Space Telescope after it was delayed — yet again — due to the coronavirus pandemic and some technical challenges. The agency moved the target date from March 2021 to October 31st, 2021 based on “recently completed schedule risk assessment of the remaining integration and test activities...” Of course, it remains to be seen whether the Hubble successor will actually be blasting off to outer space by October next year.
James Webb was originally scheduled for a 2018 launch, which got moved to May 2020 and then again to March 2021 due to its complex construction needs and a series of technical issues. It wasn’t even until April this year that NASA was able to put its enormous mirror to the test for the first time. There’s also this continued uncertainty around the pandemic, which could still cause further delays.
To prepare for two of its astronauts marking a new milestone in space, NASA has decided to rewrite the records for many of its historic missions, including the first moon landing.
As history records, Apollo 11 crew members Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin performed the first-ever moonwalk on July 20, 1969, 51 years ago Monday. The astronauts' 2-hour, 31-minute and 40-second outing to explore the lunar surface was recorded by newspapers, historians, authors and by NASA, itself, as the mission's only extravehicular activity, or EVA, the technical term for spacewalks.
But with a recent press release, NASA effectively added a second EVA to the first moonwalkers' credit — and the agency did not stop there. It has now changed its log books to add an additional EVA to the second, third, fourth and fifth moon landings and increased the count for the sixth and last Apollo lunar landing by two.
This was not a mistake, a NASA spokesperson said. "The EVA office triple checked their stats." Rather, the change was made on purpose, though what that reason was was not explained.
"[The] definition of an EVA with a crew member exposed to vacuum evolved throughout the years and definitions changed somewhat regarding the semantics of what constituted an EVA for history," the official at Johnson Space Center in Houston told collectSPACE...
In other words, when Buzz stepped out to take a leak, that was an EVA.jztemple2 wrote: ↑Mon Jul 20, 2020 11:33 pm This is interesting, NASA jettisons Apollo moon landing stats to reach 300th American spacewalk
To prepare for two of its astronauts marking a new milestone in space, NASA has decided to rewrite the records for many of its historic missions, including the first moon landing.
As history records, Apollo 11 crew members Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin performed the first-ever moonwalk on July 20, 1969, 51 years ago Monday. The astronauts' 2-hour, 31-minute and 40-second outing to explore the lunar surface was recorded by newspapers, historians, authors and by NASA, itself, as the mission's only extravehicular activity, or EVA, the technical term for spacewalks.
But with a recent press release, NASA effectively added a second EVA to the first moonwalkers' credit — and the agency did not stop there. It has now changed its log books to add an additional EVA to the second, third, fourth and fifth moon landings and increased the count for the sixth and last Apollo lunar landing by two.
This was not a mistake, a NASA spokesperson said. "The EVA office triple checked their stats." Rather, the change was made on purpose, though what that reason was was not explained.
"[The] definition of an EVA with a crew member exposed to vacuum evolved throughout the years and definitions changed somewhat regarding the semantics of what constituted an EVA for history," the official at Johnson Space Center in Houston told collectSPACE...
It's unfortunate that I have to think this way, but this smells like political involvement. LIke a higher up decision to put out something positive that the administration can point to so as to distract from the depressing news about the pandemic.Kraken wrote: ↑Tue Jul 21, 2020 12:49 amIn other words, when Buzz stepped out to take a leak, that was an EVA.jztemple2 wrote: ↑Mon Jul 20, 2020 11:33 pm This is interesting, NASA jettisons Apollo moon landing stats to reach 300th American spacewalk
To prepare for two of its astronauts marking a new milestone in space, NASA has decided to rewrite the records for many of its historic missions, including the first moon landing.
As history records, Apollo 11 crew members Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin performed the first-ever moonwalk on July 20, 1969, 51 years ago Monday. The astronauts' 2-hour, 31-minute and 40-second outing to explore the lunar surface was recorded by newspapers, historians, authors and by NASA, itself, as the mission's only extravehicular activity, or EVA, the technical term for spacewalks.
But with a recent press release, NASA effectively added a second EVA to the first moonwalkers' credit — and the agency did not stop there. It has now changed its log books to add an additional EVA to the second, third, fourth and fifth moon landings and increased the count for the sixth and last Apollo lunar landing by two.
This was not a mistake, a NASA spokesperson said. "The EVA office triple checked their stats." Rather, the change was made on purpose, though what that reason was was not explained.
"[The] definition of an EVA with a crew member exposed to vacuum evolved throughout the years and definitions changed somewhat regarding the semantics of what constituted an EVA for history," the official at Johnson Space Center in Houston told collectSPACE...
I was just about to post about that! Space.com had an article about the deepfake, Apollo 11 'disaster' video project highlights growing danger of deepfake tech
Spooky, I tell you!You can watch Nixon reading these words, which were penned by speechwriter William Safire, in this dramatic and disturbing video. The most disturbing thing about it, of course, is that it's a fake, and a very convincing one.
I don't think is was a nefarious as something to distract us from the pandemic, but I do think it was something so that the upcoming spacewalk will garner more media attention, hence more funding. As noted in The Right Stuff, "No bucks, no Buck Rogers"raydude wrote: ↑Tue Jul 21, 2020 7:09 amIt's unfortunate that I have to think this way, but this smells like political involvement. LIke a higher up decision to put out something positive that the administration can point to so as to distract from the depressing news about the pandemic.Kraken wrote: ↑Tue Jul 21, 2020 12:49 amIn other words, when Buzz stepped out to take a leak, that was an EVA.jztemple2 wrote: ↑Mon Jul 20, 2020 11:33 pm This is interesting, NASA jettisons Apollo moon landing stats to reach 300th American spacewalk
To prepare for two of its astronauts marking a new milestone in space, NASA has decided to rewrite the records for many of its historic missions, including the first moon landing.
As history records, Apollo 11 crew members Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin performed the first-ever moonwalk on July 20, 1969, 51 years ago Monday. The astronauts' 2-hour, 31-minute and 40-second outing to explore the lunar surface was recorded by newspapers, historians, authors and by NASA, itself, as the mission's only extravehicular activity, or EVA, the technical term for spacewalks.
But with a recent press release, NASA effectively added a second EVA to the first moonwalkers' credit — and the agency did not stop there. It has now changed its log books to add an additional EVA to the second, third, fourth and fifth moon landings and increased the count for the sixth and last Apollo lunar landing by two.
This was not a mistake, a NASA spokesperson said. "The EVA office triple checked their stats." Rather, the change was made on purpose, though what that reason was was not explained.
"[The] definition of an EVA with a crew member exposed to vacuum evolved throughout the years and definitions changed somewhat regarding the semantics of what constituted an EVA for history," the official at Johnson Space Center in Houston told collectSPACE...
Seventy years ago, on July 24, 1950, the very first rocket blasted off from Brevard County, further ushering in America's quest for reaching for the stars. But there was a period of time when Brevard's Space Coast might have never come to be. At 9:28 a-m, July 24th, 1950, a V-2 rocket known as Bumper 8 lifted off the newly completed Launch Complex 3 at Long Range Proving Ground Base on Cape Canaveral. It was a history-making moment that set the tone for an area that would become the premiere launch area of the United States and Florida. "Some 60 feet tall, about 5-1/2 feet in diameter, with fins on it," according to John Hilliard, a volunteer with Sands Space History Center at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station whose family moved to the area in 1953. "Basically the bottle rocket of today's technology." Despite just a 2-minute, 200-mile downrange flight, Bumper 8 cemented itself in space lore, with the first launch from the Atlantic coast.
It was not the first such launch attempt, though. Previous Bumpers were tested in White Sands, New Mexico. The government wanted to find a new missile range for testing in California, but the Mexican government wouldn't permit flight ground stations in its country. "So U.S. space pioneers went to the second choice, which is here [Brevard County]," Hilliard said. Had that move not happened, the Cape would have lost seven decades of Space Coast launches. So as crewed missions resume, continue exploring the universe with probes, and land rovers on places like Mars, Floridians can look back to Bumper 8's history-making flight so many years ago. That flight and others came after World War II, when the United States captured German V-2 missiles and some of the original V-2 team members, leading to the development of America’s own rockets into the high tech ones of today.
As NASA recently warned, the light pollution caused by the boom in satellites is indeed “wreaking havoc” on astrophotography. Photographer Daniel López tried to shoot a telephoto timelapse of Comet NEOWISE this week but was thwarted by SpaceX’s Starlink satellites.
With all major pre-launch preparations complete, United Launch Alliance stands ready to launch NASA’s latest mission to Mars: the Perseverance rover and accompanying Ingenuity helicopter.
Liftoff of the third of our world’s three missions to Mars during the current interplanetary transfer window is targeted for Thursday, 30 July 2020 in a two hour launch window that opens at 07:50 EDT and closes at 09:50 EDT (11:50–13:50 UTC).
UPDATE: Graphic...Just over 45 years since the last American astronaut splashed down in the ocean, NASA and its partner SpaceX are set to land astronauts in the sea again on Aug. 2.
The agency announced last week that SpaceX's Demo-2 commercial crew mission, carrying NASA astronauts Doug Hurley and Bob Behnken, is set to return to Earth, splashing down in the ocean near Florida in one of seven designated landing sites. The mission is expected to land at 2:42 p.m. EDT (1842 GMT), as long as the weather and technical systems co-operate, NASA said in a statement.
Coverage will be streaming on NASA Television, with the astronauts landing in one of these locations: off the coasts of Pensacola, Tampa, Tallahassee, Panama City, Cape Canaveral, Daytona or Jacksonville, NASA said in the same statement. The return time for the astronauts will take between six and 30 hours, depending on the exact undocking and splashdown zones chosen. For now, NASA and SpaceX expect to undock Crew Dragon from the International Space Station at 7:34 p.m. EDT (2334 GMT) on Aug. 1.
NASA is celebrating the launch of its most advanced Mars rover ever today (July 30), even as engineers tackle a glitch that left the spacecraft in a protective "safe mode" shortly after liftoff.
The Mars 2020 Perseverance rover launched toward the Red Planet at 7:50 a.m. EDT (1150 GMT), riding an Atlas V rocket into space from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida. The rover experienced minor communications and temperature glitches after launch, but the issues aren't expected to harm the mission as a whole, NASA officials said.
"It was an amazing launch, right on time," NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine said during a post-launch news conference. "I think we're in great shape. It was a great day for NASA."
Shortly after the conference, NASA confirmed that Perseverance slipped into "safe mode" due to an unexpected temperature difference.
"Data indicate the spacecraft had entered a state known as safe mode, likely because a part of the spacecraft was a little colder than expected while Mars 2020 was in Earth's shadow," NASA officials said in a statement. "All temperatures are now nominal and the spacecraft is out of Earth's shadow."
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The first astronauts to fly in SpaceX's Crew Dragon spacecraft are on their way back to Earth from the International Space Station.
NASA astronauts Bob Behnken and Doug Hurley, who spent about two months at the space station following the historic launch of the Demo-2 mission on May 30, climbed aboard their Crew Dragon spacecraft today (Aug. 1) and began their 19-hour trip home with a smooth undocking at 7:35 p.m. EDT (2335 GMT). Both craft were sailing nearly 270 miles (430 kilometers) above Johannesburg, South Africa at the time.
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The Crew Dragon spacecraft, called Endeavour, should splash down off the coast of Pensacola, Florida on Sunday at approximately 2:41 p.m. EDT (1841 GMT). But that landing site is not set in stone; NASA and SpaceX have selected seven different possible splashdown sites for the crew's return, with four sites located in the Gulf of Mexico and three off of Florida's east coast.
The ground teams select the splashdown site based on the local weather conditions and other factors, like the amount of time it will take Crew Dragon to reach the area and the time of day that a splashdown might occur. According to a NASA fact sheet, the teams will "prioritize locations which require the shortest amount of time between undocking and splashdown based on orbital mechanics, and splashdown opportunities that occur in daylight hours."
About six hours before splashdown — and five hours before the spacecraft conducts a deorbit burn that will send it plummeting through the atmosphere — NASA and SpaceX will decide whether the weather is acceptable for a water landing. You can watch the landing live here on Space.com, courtesy of NASA TV.