Astronomy and space exploration

Interview with David Pares, Space Warp Dynamics' guy. He seems nice and I like how he explains things:

The show may be a little off-putting because of that proUFO/paranormal looks/stench, but still...

I would like this project to get a lot of support and investment, to see what they can really achieve.
 
Hyperdetailed article about Mercury exploration and the next mission:
The BepiColombo mission will image Mercury like never before
A world of both fire and ice, Mercury excites and confounds scientists. The BepiColombo probe, launching on October 20, aims to make sense of this mysterious world.
http://astronomy.com/magazine/news/...-mission-will-image-mercury-like-never-before

Another one:
BepiColombo Launches This Weekend to Crack Mysteries of Mercury — and Beyond
Mercury is a tiny, shrinking greyish ball of metal, an unassuming neighbor that's easy to overlook — but don't laugh off the possibility that the little world could rewrite our understanding of our own solar system as well as those all around us.

Scientists haven't visited the innermost planet since 2015, but that will change with a mission launching this week: BepiColombo, a joint project between the European Space Agency (ESA) and Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA). BepiColombo will launch from Kourou, French Guiana, at 9:45 p.m. EDT Oct. 19 (0145 GMT Oct. 20) on an Ariane 5 rocket; you can watch the launch live at Space.com courtesy of ESA.
https://www.space.com/42176-mercury-mission-bepicolombo-launch-science.html
 
Bepi has been a long old slog. I knew people who were working on it, and that must be the best part of 20 years ago. It kind of became a standing joke "will Bepi ever fly?". I'm pretty sure it came close to being cancelled, maybe more than once.

Good to see it on top of a rocket at last. I hope it survives the next seven years.
 
BepiColombo's launch:

:)

An article about the peculiar mechanism that will make the robotic arm of the lander in NASA's InSide mission work:
How NASA Mars Lander's 'Steampunk' Claw Will Work (Video)

It sounds like something from a 19th-century sci-fi novel: A Mars robot with a metallic five-fingered claw that's actuated by the melting of wax.

But that robot is very real: It's NASA's InSight Mars lander, which launched toward the Red Planet in early May and is scheduled to touch down on Nov. 26.
https://www.space.com/42188-mars-insight-lander-robotic-arm-claw.html

BTW and as you can read, the lander will arrive soon! :D
 
More BepiColombo stuff:
Welcome to Space! BepiColombo Spacecraft Headed to Mercury Snap 1st Photo
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This is the first image captured in space by the European-Japanese BepiColombo mission to Mercury. It was taken by a monitoring camera on BepiColombo’s Mercury Transfer Module (MTM) on Oct. 20, 2018, the day after the mission launched on its long voyage to Mercury. The photo shows one of BepiColombo’s extended solar arrays (right) and an insulation-wrapped sun sensor on the MTM (left).
Credit: ESA/BepiColombo/MTM – CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO
A newly launched mission to Mercury has beamed home its first photo from space.

The European-Japanese BepiColombo mission captured a selfie showing an extended solar array and an insulation-wrapped sun sensor on Saturday (Oct. 20), a day after lifting off from Kourou, French Guiana.
https://www.space.com/42206-bepicolombo-mercury-mission-first-photo.html

BepiColombo's Path: Why Does It Take So Long to Get to Mercury?
The European and Japanese space agencies launched their first mission to Mercury yesterday (Oct. 19, Oct. 20 GMT), but now, the mission's engineers and admirers have to endure a seven-year wait before the project's sciencebegins in earnest.

The BepiColombo mission has such a long cruise time because it's actually really difficult to successfully orbit our tiniest planetary neighbor. It's so difficult that it took until 1985 before an engineer figured out any way to make the orbital trajectories work out properly.

The problem arises because Mercury is so small and so close to the sun. That means it orbits the sun incredibly quickly, and a spacecraft hoping to visit the innermost planet has to travel pedal-to-the-metal in order to catch up to the swift world. But there's a big catch: The sun's gravity will pull the spacecraft so strongly toward the star that a craft like BepiColombo actually needs to brake throughout its cruise to avoid getting tugged off course. [BepiColombo in Pictures: A Mercury Mission by Europe and Japan]
https://www.space.com/42205-why-its-hard-to-get-to-mercury-for-bepicolombo.html
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And now let's remember that we sent a probe to Titan: :D
Touchdown on Titan: How we landed a probe on another planet's moon
In 2005, the Huygens probe pierced the shroud of Saturn's moon Titan to reveal a surprisingly Earth-like world.
By Korey Haynes | Published: Friday, October 19, 2018

The Huygens probe became — and thus far remains — the most distant human-made landing craft when it touched down on Titan’s surface in 2005.
NASA
When the Huygens probe dropped into Titan’s atmosphere January 14, 2005, no one knew what to expect. Would it splash down into a methane ocean? Sink into a tar pit? Crash into sharp rocks or tumble off a ravine? And, most importantly, what manner of world lurked beneath Titan’s thick shroud of haze and clouds?

For landings on Mars or the Moon, mission scientists plotted out landing sites with meticulous care. Telescopes and orbiters scanned the ground, imaging dangerous terrain and safe zones, and flight engineers pored over their maps and planned accordingly.

But Titan was a mystery. Aside from a brief pass by Voyager 1, little was known about Saturn’s largest moon. What the Huygens descent probe would find was anyone’s guess. Huygens had to be prepared for anything.
http://astronomy.com/magazine/news/...how-we-landed-a-probe-on-another-planets-moon
 
Mars: Oxygen-rich, life-supporting liquid water?
Model describing conditions under which oxygenated water could exist on Mars challenges traditional beliefs about planet's habitability
A team led by scientists at Caltech and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), which Caltech manages for NASA, has calculated that if liquid water exists on Mars, it could -- under specific conditions -- contain more oxygen than previously thought possible. According to the model, the levels could even theoretically exceed the threshold needed to support simple aerobic life.
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/10/181022171911.htm

Extraterrestrial Life Could Be Purple

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Extraterrestrial life may use purple pigments to harvest energy.
Credit: iStock/Getty Images Plus
Alien life might be purple.

That's the conclusion of a new research paper that suggests that the first life on Earth might have had a lavender hue. In the International Journal of Astrobiology, microbiologist Shiladitya DasSarma of the University of Maryland School of Medicine and postdoctoral researcher Edward Schwieterman at the University of California, Riverside, argue that before green plants started harnessing the power of the sun for energy, tiny purple organisms figured out a way to do the same.

Alien life could be thriving in the same way, DasSarma said.
https://www.space.com/42214-purple-alien-life.html
 
I'll always love NASA's conceptual mission, HAVOC:
NASA Wants to Send Humans to Venus, to Live in Airships Floating on Clouds

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There are plans to cause HAVOC on Venus.
Credit: Advanced Concepts Lab at NASA Langley Research Center
Popular science fiction of the early 20th century depicted Venus as some kind of wonderland of pleasantly warm temperatures, forests, swamps and even dinosaurs. In 1950, the Hayden Planetarium at the American Natural History Museum were soliciting reservations for the first space tourism mission, well before the modern era of Blue Origins, SpaceX and Virgin Galactic. All you had to do was supply your address and tick the box for your preferred destination, which included Venus.

Today, Venus is unlikely to be a dream destination for aspiring space tourists. As revealed by numerous missions in the last few decades, rather than being a paradise, the planet is a hellish world of infernal temperatures, a corrosive toxic atmosphere and crushing pressures at the surface. Despite this, NASA is currently working on a conceptual manned mission to Venus, named the High Altitude Venus Operational Concept —(HAVOC).
https://www.space.com/42162-nasa-humans-to-venus.html

...even though I don't think that will happen anytime soon.

I think it's amazing to know that there's another place in our Solar System where we could just be there, out, without a spacesuit to protect us agains vacuum and radiation! :)
 
I would love another mission to venus whens the last time they went 1976 IIRC and sent back those wonderful greenish photo's the most amazing otherworld photo's ever, better than anything taken on mars. with todays tech we could maybe even make a rover that could survive there a few days
 
with todays tech we could maybe even make a rover that could survive there a few days

Mebbe. AFAIK the problem is that the heat cooks the electronics. Building mechanical stuff that can work at a sustained 450C might be do-able with modern techniques, electronics I'm not so sure.

Anybody here have any insights?
 
I would love another mission to venus whens the last time they went 1976 IIRC and sent back those wonderful greenish photo's the most amazing otherworld photo's ever, better than anything taken on mars. with todays tech we could maybe even make a rover that could survive there a few days

Mebbe. AFAIK the problem is that the heat cooks the electronics. Building mechanical stuff that can work at a sustained 450C might be do-able with modern techniques, electronics I'm not so sure.

Anybody here have any insights?

AFAIK, it's not currently possible. The most plausible option I heard about was last year and it consisted in a mechanical solution:
A Clockwork Rover for Venus

AREE is a clockwork rover inspired by mechanical computers. A JPL team is studying how this kind of rover could explore extreme environments, like the surface of Venus.
Credits: NASA/JPL-Caltech

AREE is a clockwork rover inspired by mechanical computers. A JPL team is studying how this kind of rover could explore extreme environments, like the surface of Venus.
Credits: NASA/JPL-Caltech


A good watch can take a beating and keep on ticking. With the right parts, can a rover do the same on a planet like Venus?

A concept inspired by clockwork computers and World War I tanks could one day help us find out. The design is being explored at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California.
https://www.nasa.gov/feature/jpl/a-clockwork-rover-for-venus
 
I imagine it would be possible, just not what we do. Designing one off electronics that are going to be super low performance as well just seems like an insanely expensive undertaking. Entirely new process would need to be developed.
 
The planet-hunting Kepler space telescope is dead
The spacecraft’s mission is officially over after 9½ years
BY
LISA GROSSMAN
5:11PM, OCTOBER 30, 2018
103018_LG_kepler_feat.jpg



KEPLER'S CURTAIN CALL NASA’s Kepler space telescope, shown in this artist’s illustration, found thousands of planets orbiting other stars. Its mission has now ended after 9½ years, the agency announced on October 30.


NASA’s premier planet-hunting space telescope is out of gas.

The Kepler space telescope can no longer search for planets orbiting other stars, ending the 9½-year mission, officials from the agency announced in a news conference on October 30.
https://www.sciencenews.org/article/planet-hunting-kepler-space-telescope-dead?tgt=nr

New devices could help turn atmospheric CO2 into useful supplies
These electrochemical cells might also one day make deep-space missions easier
BY
MARIA TEMMING
6:00AM, OCTOBER 30, 2018
102518_MT_recycling-carbon-monoxide_feat.jpg



CHEMICAL RECAST New electrochemical cells could transform the chemical components of carbon dioxide pollution into useful compounds for manufacturing and space exploration.

New chemical-recycling devices might help combat climate change by making good use of heat-trapping gas produced by burning fossil fuels.

These electrochemical cells convert carbon monoxide into useful compounds much more efficiently than their predecessors, researchers report online October 25 in Joule. If combined with existing technology that harvests carbon monoxide from carbon dioxide, the devices could help transform CO2 captured from pollution sources, like power plant flue gas stacks. That could reduce the warming effect of carbon emissions and produce chemical supplies for manufacturing and space travel.
https://www.sciencenews.org/article...p-turn-atmospheric-co2-useful-supplies?tgt=nr

Just thinking about what could be done with the CO2 in Mars or... Venus.
 
The Mars Society's Robert Zubrin Has a 'Moon Direct' Plan to Drive a Lunar Economy
By Samantha Mathewson, Space.com Contributor | November 1, 2018 12:00pm ET
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An artist's illustration of Lockheed Martin's crewed lunar lander, which is designed to let astronauts spend two weeks at a time on the moon's surface.
Credit: Lockheed Martin
Founder of the Mars Society Robert Zubrin, who has long sought to push humanity toward missions to the Red Planet, has a new idea to send astronauts to the moon faster and cheaper than NASA can. Those travelers would then mine the lunar surface to kick-start a cosmic economy.

The Moon Direct plan, which Zubrin laid out in today's edition (Oct. 31) of the journal The New Atlantis, aims to send astronauts directly to the moon, rather than making a pit stop at NASA's planned Lunar Orbital Platform-Gateway. That space station would orbit the moon and serve as an outpost for crewed missions to the moon, Mars and deep space.
https://www.space.com/42303-robert-zubrin-moon-direct-lunar-colonization.html
 
Moon Direct is a much more interesting idea than the luna gateway. Hopefully some form of it gains more traction than Mars Direct!

Probably not. He needs a better pork allocation appendix.
 
Do any of you guys have an idea why is not possible to perform a smooth, slower reentry to the Earth's atmosphere, so that the burning issue was not an issue anymore?

I read some of it here:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atmospheric_entry

It basically says that it's not practical to use retrorockets because of a fuel limitation, but I'm highly surprised that there's zero current research on this.
 
Because orbital velocity is really really fast.
Min orbital velocity is about 25,000km/h.

Why try to slow down with a huge amount of fuel thats extremely expensive to get into space when you can just use drag/friction to bleed it off on the way down nearly for free?

The only way to really do a slow reentry would be a Space Elevator but even if possible to build who wants to sit in a car/pod for a 'slow' 36,000km journey down from geostatiionary orbit?
 
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