NASA’s expensive Mars exploration Curiosity rover is finally doing what it was created to do: rove. Following a successful wheel test, the probe moved forward. Photo Gallery: Curiosity Rover Makes First Tracks on Mars article tells that Curiosity beamed back some incredible images of its tracks, which tell scientists that the soil is firm, great for mobility, and won’t cause the rover to sink much. Curiosity also pulled out its big scientific guns, firing a laser beam at several rocks in the vicinity.
Yes, the Mars rover cost $2bn – but it’s far from a waste of money. Landing Curiosity on Mars was Way Harder and Way Less Expensive than the Olympics. Curiosity rover is about the size of a small SUV and weighs almost 900 kg. It uses scoops, cameras, drills, a powerful rock-vaporizing infrared laser, and 75 kilograms of scientific instruments to perform its investigation. Curiosity is very much based on commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) technology. Wind River’s VxWorks real-time operating system serves as the software platform for all functionality. Seeing the successful commencement of the Curiosity mission – powered by COTS – is certainly a cause for celebration amongst engineers.
Plan Make Your Own LEGO Curiosity Rover for fun? Stephen Pakbaz designed a custom Curiosity Mars Science Laboratory Rover set, complete with PDF build instructions and parts lists. LEGO Cusoo pages have another model of the Mars Science Laboratory rover, named Curiosity designed by a Mechanical Engineer who worked on the actual Curiosity. A LEGO Digital Designer model and step-by-step .pdf instructions of the Curiosity rover are now freely available.
Rovio sticks some Martian action into Angry Birds Space and has released the following funny advertisement video that features Curiosity rover and Angry Birds.
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Tomi Engdahl says:
We’re building an interplanetary internet
Prepare yourself for cosmic lag
https://medium.com/looking-up/394ce472fa22
The very first conception of what would eventually become the internet may have been a series of memos written by an MIT computer scientist named J.C.R. Licklider in August 1962. In them, he described a “galactic network”, where anyone could access data and programs from any location in the universe.
Licklider went on to become the first head of the computer research program at DARPA, where he convinced his successors of the importance of networking. The result of their work is what you’re staring at right now — a network where anyone can access data and programs from any location in the world.
But so far the internet has been mostly limited to the surface of Earth. Realising Licklider’s vision of expanding that network into the heavens is difficult for several reasons.
The first is lag. On Earth, the distances we communicate over are pretty small, galactically speaking. Our signals travel at the speed of light, meaning they can get from Britain to Australia in 50 milliseconds. But to get to our nearest planetary neighbour, Mars, it takes between three and twenty-two minutes depending on the orbits of both planets.
In fact, the way that the internet is currently built — over TCP links — won’t really function at all with those delays.
Instead, researchers are working on different kinds of delay-tolerant networks. Traditional networks work by establishing a route and then sending the data down it. Delay-tolerant networks take a more forgiving approach, storing data at points along the way and then sending it onward when a connection can be established to the next node.
Another challenge for network nodes stationed off-world will be timekeeping. Most space missions need some form of clock to know when to communicate with Earth. When an Earth-link can’t be set up, the various nodes of the interplanetary internet will need some way of synchronising their time.
Right now, all spacecraft clocks are coordinated from Earth using the Deep Space Network’s three overlapping antennas in California, Spain and Australia
An interplanetary internet could be used to relieve the stress on that network by allowing our distant spacecraft to get some information, like time signals, off their neighbours rather than having to constantly call back to Earth.
Cerf, in his role as Google’s chief internet evangelist, is working with NASA to develop the delay-tolerant networks that are required for deep space communications, and test them with existing spacecraft.
His team has already successfully used these protocols to transmit dozens of space images to and from NASA’s Epoxi spacecraft, which is en route to a comet and currently about 20,000,000 miles from Earth, without issues.
In Cerf’s talk at TEDxMidAtlantic in 2011, he tells the story of how NASA’s 2004 Martian rovers, Opportunity and Spirit, were originally intended to transmit directly back to Earth from the surface of Mars at 1996 modem speeds. However, when the radios were turned on, they overheated so they had to be used less intensely — reducing speeds further.
rover also had an X-band radio,
The engineers reprogrammed both the rovers and the orbiter to accept data from the rover and then re-transmit it back to Earth in a system known as Electra. This increased transfer speeds four times to 128kbps
When the Phoenix lander arrived at Mars’ north polar region in 2008, it was unable to contact Earth directly in any configuration, so it joined this network to send data back to Earth. Curiosity followed suit in 2011
Today, speeds on the Electra network have been boosted to more than 1,000 kbps, and work continues on the protocols.
Tomi says:
Chinese Lunar Probe Lands Successfully
http://science.slashdot.org/story/13/12/14/1827222/chinese-lunar-probe-lands-successfully
“China’s Chang’e 3 moon probe made its intended landing earlier today, setting down softly in the moon’s Sinus Iridum, as reported by Reuters.”
Tomi Engdahl says:
China puts photocopier on the moon
Jade Rabbit takes giant hop for all humankind, casts odd-looking shadow
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/12/16/china_puts_photocopier_on_the_moon/
China’s Jade Rabbit (Yutu) moon rover is on Luna’s surface and ready to roll.
China’s National Space Administration, as the outfit’s website hasn’t had meaningful updates since 2009, so we’re reliant on state media service Xinhua for the news that the Chang’e-3 lander touched down safely and Jade Rabbit is now rolling about Luna’s inhospitable surface.
Tomi Engdahl says:
China’s Jade Rabbit Moon rover sends back first photos
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-25393826
The first robot to land on the Moon in nearly 40 years, China’s Jade Rabbit rover, has begun sending back photos, with shots of its lunar lander.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Billion Star Surveyor ‘Gaia’ Lifts Off
http://science.slashdot.org/story/13/12/20/0317217/billion-star-surveyor-gaia-lifts-off
“BBC Reports: ‘Europe has launched the Gaia satellite — one of the most ambitious space missions in history.”
“Gaia is going to map the precise positions and distances to more than a billion stars. This should give us the first realistic picture of how our Milky Way galaxy is constructed.”
Tomi Engdahl says:
Gaia ‘billion-star surveyor’ lifts off
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-25426424
Europe has launched the Gaia satellite – one of the most ambitious space missions in history.
The 740m-euro (£620m) observatory lifted off from the Sinnamary complex in French Guiana at 06:12 local time (09:12 GMT).
Gaia is going to map the precise positions and distances to more than a billion stars.
Gaia’s remarkable sensitivity will lead also to the detection of many thousands of previously unseen objects, including new planets and asteroids.
Continue reading the main story
“Start Quote
It will allow us, for the first time ever, to walk through the Milky Way – to say where everything is, to say what everything is”
Prof Gerry Gilmore Cambridge University
Separation from the Soyuz upper-stage was confirmed just before 10:00 GMT.
The satellite is now travelling out to an observing station some 1.5 million km from the Earth on its nightside – a journey that will take about a month to complete.
Gaia has been in development for more than 20 years.
Gaia will use this ultra-stable and supersensitive optical equipment to pinpoint its sample of stars with extraordinary confidence.
By repeatedly viewing its targets over five years, it should get to know the brightest stars’ coordinates down to an error of just seven micro-arcseconds.
“This angle is equivalent to the size of a euro coin on the Moon as seen from Earth,”
And because Gaia will track anything that passes across its camera detector, it is likely also to see a colossal number of objects that have hitherto gone unrecorded
By the end of the decade, the Gaia archive of processed data is expected to exceed 1 Petabyte (1 million Gigabytes), equivalent to about 200,000 DVDs of information.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Rough Roving: Curiosity’s Wheel Damage ‘Accelerated’http://science.slashdot.org/story/13/12/21/004231/rough-roving-curiositys-wheel-damage-accelerated
“Despite the assurances that the holes seen in Mars rover Curiosity’s wheels were just a part of the mission, there seems to be increasing concern for the wheels’ worsening condition after the one-ton robot rolled over some craggy terrain.”
Tomi Engdahl says:
China: The Next Space Superpower
http://spectrum.ieee.org/aerospace/space-flight/china-the-next-space-superpower
A lunar rover, a crewed space station, and new rockets top China’s space agenda
Throughout the weeklong conference, Chinese officials spoke proudly of developing their lunar exploration program, building a heavy-lift rocket, constructing a spaceport, and planning an orbital space station. As 2014 dawns, China has the most active and ambitious space program in the world.
“They are having launches, and in the United States we’re in gridlock,” says Joan Johnson-Freese, a professor at the U.S. Naval War College, in Newport, R.I. “The Chinese will have a rover onthe moon, and we’re still developing PowerPoints for programs that don’t get approved by Congress.” That rover is rolling over the regolith right now.
“We are developing a space industry with Chinese characteristics,”
Johnson-Freese put it more bluntly: “In terms of technology, are the Chinese at a peer level or more advanced than us? No, absolutely not. What they have that we don’t is political will.”
China’s space program differs from those of other nations in part because of the nation’s political structure: A single-party government with a bevy of strong state-owned enterprises can get a lot done. And the Chinese government has committed fully to its space program, seeing it as a way to win global prestige. While China is just now meeting milestones that the United States and the former Soviet Union passed decades ago, the Chinese government’s unflagging support means that its program is quickly catching up.
China launched its first orbital space lab, a small module called Tiangong-1 (the name means “heavenly palace”), in 2011. There followed a cautious series of spacecraft rendezvous: An uncrewed craft docked that year, and there was one crewed mission in both 2012 and 2013, with short stays aboard the lab. The next step will be the launch of Tiangong-2, another space lab, in 2015, followed by the construction of a full-scale space station, due for completion around 2020.
The Chinese expect to finish their space station around the time that the International Space Station runs out of funding, and they hope to fill the void.
Tomi Engdahl says:
10 Years of Beautiful Mars Art From the Spirit and Opportunity Rovers
http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2014/01/mars-art-rovers-photos/
For two twin robots, a decade of exploration on Mars has brought incredible discoveries and scientific insight. But the Spirit and Opportunity rovers have also spent 10 years capturing the desolate beauty and splendor of the Red Planet.
Tomi Engdahl says:
International Space Station Mission Extended To 2024
http://science.slashdot.org/story/14/01/09/1343228/international-space-station-mission-extended-to-2024
“Obama Administration has approved an extension of the International Space Station until at least 2024. We are hopeful and optimistic that our ISS partners will join this extension effort”
Tomi Engdahl says:
Chinese Moon rover, lander duo wake up after two-week snooze
Sends back first lunar pictures of Earth in over 40 years
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/01/14/chinese_moon_mission_wakes_up_after_two_week_nap/
The Beijing Aerospace Control Center (BACC) has reported that its lunar rover and lander have reawakened after being powered down for two weeks.
“During the lunar night, the lander and the rover were in a power-off condition and the communication with Earth was also cut off,”
Tomi Engdahl says:
NASA’s Opportunity rover celebrates decade on Mars with a FILTHY selfie
Shatner gatecrashes press conference to ask about MYSTERY DONUT ROCK
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/01/23/nasa_celebrates_opportunitys_first_decade_on_mars_with_a_selfie/
Tomi Engdahl says:
Mars Rover Opportunity Finds Life-Friendly Niche
Jan 23, 2014 02:00 PM ET // by Irene Klotz
http://news.discovery.com/space/mars-rover-opportunity-finds-life-friendly-niche-140123.htm
Gale Crater, the region being explored by NASA’s Curiosity rover, isn’t the only place on Mars where ancient microbes may have thrived.
Play Video
Water Found on Mars … FOR REAL!
The Mars rover Curiosity just found out that Martian soil is 2 percent water! Anthony tells us what that means for the age-old question of whether life once existed on Mars and what it means for future human colonists on the red planet.
NASA/JPL-Caltech
New evidence from NASA’s senior robotic Mars scout, Opportunity, shows life-friendly water once mixed with telltale, clay-bearing rocks that now lie on the broken rim of Endeavour Crater, an ancient 14-mile wide basin on the other side of the planet from Gale.
“If I were to go Mars early in time and wanted to do a well, I’d do it there,” planetary scientist Ray Arvidson, with Washington University in St. Louis, told Discovery News.
“It’s like drinking water,” he said, as opposed to the “acidic goo” Opportunity found at a previous site.
“This would have been a niche for whatever life at the time existed,” Arvidson said.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Look Into the Futuristic Labs Where Satellites Are Born
http://www.wired.com/design/2014/01/glimpse-futuristic-labs-satellites-assembled/
Tomi Engdahl says:
Yutu rover Suffers Significant Setback at Start of 2nd Lunar Night
by Ken Kremer on January 26, 2014
China’s maiden moon rover ‘Yutu’ has just suffered a significant mechanical setback right at the start of her 2nd lunar night, according to an official announcement from Chinese space officials made public this weekend.
Read more: http://www.universetoday.com/108576/yutu-rover-suffers-significant-setback-at-start-of-2nd-lunar-night/#ixzz2rc6wV0ZP
Tomi Engdahl says:
NASA pondering two public contests to build small space exploration satellites
http://www.networkworld.com/community/blog/nasa-pondering-two-public-contests-build-small-space-exploration-satellites
NASA challenges aimed at space communications and propulsion
Tomi Engdahl says:
NASA is now accepting applications from companies that want to mine the moon
http://www.theverge.com/2014/2/9/5395684/nasa-begins-hunt-for-private-companies-to-mine-the-moon-catalyst
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NASA is now working with private companies to take the first steps in exploring the moon for valuable resources like helium 3 and rare earth metals.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Inside the Google Earth satellite factory
http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20140211-inside-the-google-earth-sat-lab
Google Earth has given us a new way of looking at our cities and neighbourhoods – from space. Richard Hollingham visits the satellite factory building to see what’s coming next.
Ball Aerospace in Boulder, Colorado is building WorldView-3 for commercial satellite operator DigitalGlobe. It is the latest in a series of spacecraft designed to beam back high-resolution pictures of our planet, images that most of us will eventually see on Google Maps or Google Earth.
Tomi Engdahl says:
‘The Mystery of the Martian Doughnut’ solved by NASA sleuths
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/02/15/nasa_solves_the_mystery_of_the_martian_doughnut/
NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory says it has solved the mystery of a doughnut-shaped rock that appeared in front of its Opportunity Mars rover in January.
“Once we moved Opportunity a short distance, after inspecting Pinnacle Island, we could see directly uphill an overturned rock that has the same unusual appearance,”
“We drove over it.”
Tomi Engdahl says:
Mars Rover Opportunity Faces New Threat: Budget Ax
http://news.discovery.com/space/mars-rover-opportunity-faces-new-threat-budget-ax-140312.htm
NASA’s baseline budget for the year beginning Oct. 1 pulls the plug on the 10-year-old Mars rover Opportunity, newly released details of the agency’s fiscal 2015 spending plan show.
The plan, which requires Congressional approval, also anticipates ending the orbiting Mars Odyssey mission on Sept. 30, 2016.
“There are pressures all over the place,”
Tomi Engdahl says:
NASA: Vote now to put FLASHY LIGHTS on future spacesuits
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/03/26/nasa_z2_spacesuit_design_comp/
NASA is retiring its current spacesuit, the Z-1, in favour of the Z-2 model which is “approaching a final flight-capable design”. And it wants you to decide what it should look like.
Basically, NASA is very keen to have these suits light up, but you can help decide how naff the light-up egg-pod suit will look.
The NASA Z-2 Suit
http://jscfeatures.jsc.nasa.gov/z2/
Tomi Engdahl says:
Europe Lofts First Copernicus Environmental Satellite
http://www.esa.int/Our_Activities/Observing_the_Earth/Copernicus/Sentinel-1/Europe_lofts_first_Copernicus_environmental_satellite
“Sentinel-1A opens a new page in the implementation of Copernicus, the second EU flagship space initiative, after the Galileo positioning system,” said Jean-Jacques Dordain, Director General of ESA.
Equipped with a powerful ‘synthetic aperture radar’, it will ensure continuity with the European Envisat satellite, which stopped working in 2012 after 10 years of service. The technology is based on a long heritage of radar satellites, starting with ERS-1 23 years ago.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Wanna Build a Rocket? NASA’s About to Give Away a Mountain of Its Code
http://www.wired.com/2014/04/nasa-guidebook/
Forty years after Apollo 11 landed on the moon, NASA open sourced the software code that ran the guidance systems on the lunar module.
By that time, the code was little more than a novelty. But in recent years, the space agency has built all sorts of other software that is still on the cutting edge.
Tomi Engdahl says:
The Hackers Who Recovered NASA’s Lost Lunar Photos
http://www.wired.com/2014/04/lost-lunar-photos-recovered-by-great-feats-of-hackerdom-developed-at-a-mcdonalds/
These self-described techno-archaeologists have been on a mission to recover and digitize forgotten photos taken in the ‘60s by a quintet of scuttled lunar satellites.
The Lunar Orbiter Image Recovery Project has since 2007 brought some 2,000 pictures back from 1,500 analog data tapes. They contain the first high-resolution photographs ever taken from behind the lunar horizon, including the first photo of an earthrise (first slide above). Thanks to the technical savvy and DIY engineering of the team at LOIRP, it’s being seen at a higher resolution than was ever previously possible.
“We’re reaching back to a capability that existed but couldn’t be touched back when it was created,” says Keith Cowing, co-lead and founding member at LOIRP. “It’s like having a DVD in 1966, you can’t play it. We had resolution of the earth of about a kilometer [per pixel]. This is an image taken a quarter of a fucking million miles away in 1966. The Beatles were warming up to play Shea Stadium at the moment it was being taken.”
Tomi Engdahl says:
Listening To A Swarm Of Satellites In Orbit
http://hackaday.com/2014/05/04/listening-to-a-swarm-of-satellites-in-orbit/
A few months ago, we heard of a Kickstarter with an amazing goal: give everyone with $300 burning a hole in their pocket their very own satellite orbiting Earth. Time passes, the mothership has been launched, and in just a few short hours, over a hundred of these personal femtosatellites will be released into low Earth orbit.
The Kicksat consists of a 3U cubesat that was recently launched aboard the SpaceX CRS-3 mission to the International Space Station. Inside this cubesat are over one hundred satellites called Sprites, loaded up with solar cells, magnetometers, a microcontroller and a radio to communicate with ground stations below.
You can check out the current location of the orbiting Kicksat mothership on the project website
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Tomi Engdahl says:
$25 satellite swarm looks like going down in flames
Radiation cooks 100-strong fleet of crowdfunded ‘KickSat Sprites’
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/05/06/25_satellite_swarm_looks_like_going_down_in_flames/
Bad news for lovers of amateur space exploration: a crowdfunded project that managed to send aloft 100 tiny satellites looks like failing.
The project in question is the KickSat, which kicked off back in 2011 with the promise to create 100 satellites, each about the size of a pair of postage stamps and dubbed ‘Sprites’, and to launch them from a mothership dubbed “KickSat”.
The mission plan then called for a 16-day wait before KickStat opened its doors and ejected the Sprites into space. That event was due to take place on May 4th, but sadly something went wrong on the mothership.
Manchester reports “a hard reset of the ‘watchdog’ microcontroller on KickSat” restarted the countdown on April 30th. That’s bad news because by May 16th it is expected that KickSat will re-enter the atmosphere, with dire consequences, and before the Sprites can be released.
Manchester says “the likely culprit was radiation” rather than a buggy system.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Skycorp will try to awaken NASA’s 1978 sleeping satellite
http://www.cnet.com/news/skycorp-attempts-to-wake-nasas-1978-sleeping-satellite/
NASA signs a first-of-its-kind deal to let citizen scientists try to reactivate a long-retired spacecraft that’s passing Earth this summer.
In 1978, a then-state-of-the-art spacecraft was launched by NASA and the European Space Agency and tasked to study the solar wind — a stream of plasma and other particles released from the sun that can reach speeds up to 500 miles per second.
For six years it beamed back information about the solar wind using an S-band frequency (part of the microwave band of electromagnetic waves) about once every 40 minutes. Then, in 1984, it got a name change and a new mission.
The craft was ordered to shut down in 1997, but in 2008 the international Deep Space Network made contact with ISEE-3 and discovered that it was still operational.
Using that knowledge, along with the fact that the satellite will be passing by Earth at its closest point in almost 30 years this August, a cash-strapped NASA has signed a contract with private space-exploration company Skycorp to do what it couldn’t with its own budget: attempt to revive and redirect ISEE-3.
And what exactly is that mission?
Skycorp plans to make contact with ISEE-3, put it back into its original orbit, and get it back to monitoring the solar wind. To fund the efforts, Skycorp raised an initial $125,000 on crowdfunding platform RocketHub and is now seeking a stretch goal of $25,000 more.
“As we developed the software, hardware, and procedures needed to contact and command the ISEE-3 spacecraft, it became clear to us that getting additional information on the precise location of the spacecraft was of great value,”
Tomi Engdahl says:
Talking To ISEE-3
http://hackaday.com/2014/05/29/talking-to-isee-3/
ISEE-3, the plucky interplanetary spacecraft fueled by the dreams of thousands of crowdfunding backers and hydrazine is now transmitting data to Earth.
Where all radio contact with ISEE-3 this year has only been a carrier frequency, the folks at the reboot project have successfully commanded ISSE via the huge Arecibo telescope to transmit data back to Earth. Usable data are now being received at 512 bits/second at ground stations in Germany, Kentucky, and California, surely being looked over by the ISEE reboot project engineers.
Simply transmitting the commands to put the data multiplexers into their engineering telemetry mode was no small task
Tomi Engdahl says:
Proposed SpaceX Spaceport Passes Its Final Federal Environmental Review:
Proposed rocket launch site near Brownsville clears hurdle
http://www.themonitor.com/news/local/proposed-rocket-launch-site-near-brownsville-clears-hurdle/article_2c101992-e773-11e3-a6c9-0017a43b2370.html
Building and operating a private rocket launch site along the coast in the southernmost tip of Texas is unlikely to jeopardize the existence of protected animal species and create few unavoidable impacts, according to a final federal environmental review.
The Federal Aviation Administration released the environmental impact statement for California-based SpaceX on Thursday. It does not guarantee that the FAA would issue launch licenses there, but it is an essential step in that direction.
Tomi Engdahl says:
This Is the Richest, Most Colorful Picture of the Universe Ever
http://mashable.com/2014/06/03/this-is-the-most-rich-colorful-picture-of-the-universe-ever/
The Hubble telescope may be on its last legs — it’s expected to cease functioning sometime between 2014 and 2020 — but for now, the trusty 24-year old orbital camera is still sending back scenes of unsurpassing beauty in the heavens. Such as this picture NASA released Tuesday, a photograph 11 years in the making
Tomi Engdahl says:
Dangers Loom for 36-Year-Old ISEE-3 Space Probe
http://mashable.com/2014/06/03/isee-spacecraft-navigation/
On April 7, 1986, NASA scientist Bob Farquhar sent final instructions to the International Comet Explorer (ICE), a half-ton probe that had made its way 54 million miles from Earth. It had passed through the tail of Halley’s Comet only a few days before, and now the mission’s flight director told the satellite to go on a long journey. ICE would fall into an Earth-like orbit around the sun, tour empty space, and eventually catch up to Earth in 2014.
The years have passed, the day is almost here, and only one of Farquhar’s predictions came true: He did wait around, and now he is helping to revive ISEE-3.
He’s doing it in lieu of NASA, which ended transmissions with the craft in 1998 and threw out its documentation. A group of unaffiliated scientists, engineers, and fans have revived the satellite themselves, relying on donated radio-telescopes and their own archival work to figure out how the probe works.
they made two-way contact with the almost 36-year-old spacecraft, and they’ve declared themselves “in control” of it as it rapidly approaches its home.
Now that the reboot mission is in control of the ISEE-3, here’s what they must do to keep it alive.
Tomi Engdahl says:
NASA Beams Hi-Def Video From Space Via Laser
http://science.slashdot.org/story/14/06/08/1231246/nasa-beams-hi-def-video-from-space-via-laser
“NASA successfully beamed a high-definition video 260 miles from the International Space Station to Earth Thursday using a new laser communications instrument.”
“175-megabit communication for the Optical Payload for Lasercomm Science (OPALS)”
Tomi Engdahl says:
Exclusive look at SpaceX’s new Dragon V2: first ‘private’ spacecraft that will carry humans into space
Elon Musk’s company reveals spaceship of the future
http://www.electronicproducts.com/Electromechanical_Components/Motors_and_Controllers/Exclusive_look_at_SpaceX_s_new_Dragon_V2_first_private_spacecraft_that_will_carry_humans_into_space.aspx
To much pomp and circumstance, SpaceX founder Elon Musk unveiled the latest iteration of his Dragon spacecraft, the Dragon V2, which has been specially designed to carry up to seven astronauts (four seated in the front, three in the back) into space.
Tomi Engdahl says:
NASA forming $3M satellite communication, propulsion competition
http://www.networkworld.com/article/2362523/security0/nasa-forming-3m-satellite-communication-propulsion-competition.html
Credit: NASA
NASA says cubesat challenge will contribute to opening deep space exploration
NASA took the next step in forming a large-scale, $3 million competition to build advanced propulsion and communications technologies for small, inexpensive satellite systems known as cubesats.
The Cubesat Lunar Challenge will be broken up into two areas: propulsion and communication while in orbit around the moon.
The cube-shaped satellites are typically about four inches long, have a volume of about one quart and weigh about 3 pounds, NASA said.
Centennial Challenges typically dare public, academic and private partnerships to come up with a unique solution to a very tough problem, usually with prize money attached for the winner.
Currently cubesat communications technology has been limited to low-bandwidth data communications in near-Earth orbits. Cubesats often use low power / low-gain communications subsystems, unique protocols, or amateur radio wavelengths not suitable for advanced science missions in the remote distances of deep space, NASA said.
Tomi Engdahl says:
NASA Launching Satellite To Track Carbon
http://science.slashdot.org/story/14/06/30/1154256/nasa-launching-satellite-to-track-carbon
A NASA satellite being prepared for launch early on Tuesday is expected to reveal details about where carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas tied to climate change, is being released into Earth’s atmosphere on a global scale.
The Orbiting Carbon Observatory-2, or OCO-2 for short, will be able to take an ultra-detailed look at most of the Earth’s surface to identify places responsible for producing or absorbing the greenhouse gas
Tomi Engdahl says:
India has put into orbit five foreign satellites, including one built by France two from Canada and one each from Singapore and Germany. The PSLV (Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle) has so far successfully launched 67 satellites, including 40 foreign ones, into space
launch was cheaper than Hollywood film Gravity.
Source: http://science.slashdot.org/story/14/07/02/0316259/india-launches-five-foreign-satellites
Tomi Engdahl says:
Science project phones home
http://edn.com/electronics-blogs/diy-zone/4430467/Science-project-phones-home-
Ardusat, the Kickstarter-funded, Arduino-powered, open-source science satellites
Amateur radio enthusiasts have been building their own communication satellites since the 1960s2, but Ardusat’s extensive use of open-source technologies and commercially-available components puts a new twist on DIY space programs. The tiny spacecraft’s structure and power subsystems are based on the CubeSat standard3, an open-source specification created in 1999 which defines a standard platform for low-cost space research.
One of the biggest advantages that CubeSat offers to would-be rocket scientists is that there are now several vendors offering commercially-available, off-the-shelf mechanical and electronic components for nearly every CubeSat structure and subsystem. For some applications, it’s possible to build a simple, but complete CubeSat for $10-$15,000.
Ardusat is based on the simplest variant of the CubeSat (a one-liter cube (10 cm/side) with a total mass to no more than 1.33 kilograms) but its electronics are far from basic. Besides a sophisticated solar power and battery subsystem, it has a radiation-hardened flight computer, a digital transceiver, and an attitude control system which includes a 3-axis accelerometer/gyro platform and a horizon sensor. Ardusat can also “point” itself using a set of electromagnetic coils which interact with the Earth’s magnetic fields much the way a compass needle does.
The spacecraft’s experiments are managed by a custom board manufactured by Freetronics
The controller board also has a master controller (similar to the ATmega2561-based Arduino Mega) which controls and monitors up to 16 payload subsystems
Each of the board’s 16 payload controllers have their own ATmega328P and are functionally compatible with the Nano boards you buy from Arduino or SparkFun. Once aboard Ardusat, each payload controller behaves exactly like any Earth-bound Arduino compatible board.
Open-source technology made it easy for the Ardusat team to modify Arduino’s baseline IDE and create a downloadable software development kit which allows subscribers to design the command sequences they’ll use to conduct their experiments.
Tomi Engdahl says:
NASA Approves Production of Most Powerful Rocket Ever
http://science.slashdot.org/story/14/07/05/0037252/nasa-approves-production-of-most-powerful-rocket-ever
Boeing, prime contractor on the rocket, announced on Wednesday that it had completed a critical design review and finalized a $US2.8-billion contract with NASA.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Blighty in SPAAAACE: Brit-built satellite films the Earth
Fully British bird snaps sweeping vista of our spinning blue marble
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/08/12/techdemosat_earth_video/
An experiment-filled Brit satellite has released a minute-long video of planet Earth – the first images of our home world captured by an entirely UK-built spacecraft.
The TechDemoSat-1, made by Surrey Satellite Technology (SSTL), filmed the short sequence moments after separating from the Fregat upper stage of its Soyuz-2 launcher, following its launch in early July.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Two years on, Curiosity’s still in the same crater
Good science, though
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/08/06/two_years_on_curiositys_still_in_the_same_crater/
Its wheels are eroding and its (parody) Twitter account is grumpy, but the Mars Curiosity Rover has celebrated two years in space.
Since then, we’ve had Curiosity selfies, speculation (damped down by NASA) that it had found organic compounds, sing Happy Birthday to itself for its first anniversary, turned up lakebed clay, sent buckets of photos home, and begun a three-kilometre trek towards Mount Sharp.
NASA is now laying the groundwork for a new rover in 2020.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Entire South Korean Space Programme Shuts Down As Sole Astronaut Quits
http://science.slashdot.org/story/14/08/13/229247/entire-south-korean-space-programme-shuts-down-as-sole-astronaut-quits
The entire South Korean space program has been forced to shut down after its only astronaut resigned for personal reasons.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Wheel Damage Adding Up Quickly For Mars Rover Curiosity
http://science.slashdot.org/story/14/08/20/0228247/wheel-damage-adding-up-quickly-for-mars-rover-curiosity
“The tears result from fatigue. You know how if you bend a metal paper clip back and forth repeatedly, it eventually snaps? Well, when the wheels are driving over a very hard rock surface — one with no sand — the thin skin of the wheels repeatedly bends. The wheels were designed to bend quite a lot, and return to their original shape. But the repeated bending and straightening is fatiguing the skin, causing it to fracture in a brittle way.”
Tomi Engdahl says:
Curiosity wheel damage: The problem and solutions
http://www.planetary.org/blogs/emily-lakdawalla/2014/08190630-curiosity-wheel-damage.html
Tomi Engdahl says:
The launch of the Soyuz rocket carrying the fifth and sixth Galileo satellites from Europe’s Spaceport in Kourou, French Guiana has been postponed due to unfavourable weather conditions over the Guiana Space Centre.
http://www.esa.int/Our_Activities/Navigation/The_future_-_Galileo/Launching_Galileo/Galileo_launch_-_live
Tomi Engdahl says:
2 Galileo Satellites Launched To Wrong Orbit
http://beta.slashdot.org/story/206291
As reported by the BBC, two satellites meant to form part of the EU’s Galileo global positioning network have been launched into a wrong, lower orbit, and it is unclear whether they can be salvaged.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Software Error Caused Soyuz/Galileo Failure
http://science.slashdot.org/story/14/08/28/2216219/software-error-caused-soyuzgalileo-failure
An investigation into the recent failed Soyuz launch of the EU’s Galileo satellites has found that the Russian Fregat upper stage fired correctly, but its software was programmed for the wrong orbit. From the article: “The failure of the European Union’s Galileo satellites to reach their intended orbital position was likely caused by software errors in the Fregat-MT rocket’s upper-stage, Russian newspaper Izvestia reported Thursday.”
Tomi Engdahl says:
NASA to reformat Opportunity rover’s memory from 125 million miles away
Interplanetary admins will back up data and get to work
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/08/30/nasa_to_reformat_opportunity_rovers_memory_from_125_meeellion_miles_away/
IT administrators at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory are preparing to perform an interplanetary remote wipe and reboot on its Martian Opportunity rover after the decade-old explorer began to get a bit senile.
Opportunity’s computer systems are powered by a powered by a radiation-hardened IBM 20 MHz RAD6000 RISC processor and it stores data to upload to Earth on 256 MB of flash memory. Individual cells in each section of its flash memory have now been overwritten so many times that Opportunity is resetting itself dozens of times a month.
“Worn-out cells in the flash memory are the leading suspect in causing these resets,” said JPL’s John Callas, project manager for NASA’s Mars Exploration Rover Project.
“The flash reformatting is a low-risk process, as critical sequences and flight software are stored elsewhere in other non-volatile memory on the rover.”
The team plans to upload all the data stored in Opportunity’s memory banks for backup on Earth. A reformatting command will then be sent to the rover early next month, which will clear healthy circuits and identify the duff ones to be avoided in the future.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Newly Discovered Asteroid To Pass Within Geostationary Orbit Sunday
http://science.slashdot.org/story/14/09/05/1257223/newly-discovered-asteroid-to-pass-within-geostationary-orbit-sunday
A newly found asteroid the size of a house will give earth a close flyby this weekend. It will pass just below satellites in geostationary orbit, and above New Zealand around 14:18 EDT / 18:18 GMT / 06:18 NZST this coming Sunday
Tomi Engdahl says:
Newfound Asteroid Will Give Earth Super-Close Shave on Sunday
http://www.space.com/27026-asteroid-2014-rc-earth-flyby-sunday.html?cmpid=514630_20140904_31027966
Earth is about to have a close encounter with a house-sized asteroid on Sunday (Sept. 7), when a space rock discovered just days ago will zoom by our planet at a range closer than some satellites. But have no fear, NASA says the asteroid won’t hit Earth.
The asteroid 2014 RC will safely buzz Earth at 2:18 p.m. EDT (1818 GMT) on Sunday. At that time, the asteroid will pass over New Zealand and fly just inside the orbits of the geosynchronous communications and weather satellites orbiting Earth about 22,000 miles (36,000 kilometers) above the planet’s surface, according to a NASA statement. During its close pass, 2014 RC will be about 21,126 miles (34,000 km) from Earth’s surface. That’s about 10 times closer to the Earth than the moon.
“Asteroid 2014 RC was initially discovered on the night of August 31″
The asteroid will be very dim when it passes by Earth. Observers on the ground won’t be able to catch sight of it with the naked eye
At its close approach, the 60-foot (20 meters) asteroid will fly about 25,000 miles (40,000 km) from the center of Earth.