André Kupiers guides the Canada robotic arm in to mate with the Dragon.
ISS capture of SpaceX’s Dragon is confirmed, becoming the first private vessel to dock with the space station.
(Source: nasa.gov)
SpaceX’s is Dragon about to dock with ISS. Watch here.
In a few minutes, history will be made
and you can watch it on NASA TV right now.
NASA aims for human rendezvous at Mars in 2033
It would be the most precious cargo since the Apollo astronauts returned Moon rocks to Earth. In 2033, humans would arrive in Mars orbit in order to pick up and return to Earth a canister containing the hopes and dreams of Mars scientists: a small collection of Mars rocks that would have been previously collected and put into orbit.
An internal NASA study group, tasked with replanning the agency’s beleaguered Mars programme, revealed on Tuesday that it was using this working scenario and date as a goal. The group has been tasked with finding ways of getting the human and robotic sides of NASA to work together more. In return for supplemental funds from the human programme and the technology office, the robotic science missions might, for instance, include experiments useful for the human programme, such as radiation detectors or optical communication demonstrations.
While the administration of President Barack Obama has said before that it would like to put humans in the vicinity of Mars by the early 2030s, this is the first articulation I’ve seen of a specific, shared date for the key goal of both the human and robotic sides. Orlando Figueroa, a former NASA official leading the study group, presented the working plans on Wednesday to a newly convened committeeof the National Academies responsible for astrobiology and planetary science.
Some of the committee members weren’t too thrilled to be wedded to the human programme. Some pointed out that the technological challenges in getting people to Mars are much greater — and much more expensive — than sending a robot. Such a long mission not only requires new rocketry to get there, but also new materials that would shield astronauts from the intense radiation that exists outside the comfortable environment of the Earth and its magnetosphere. Figueroa says that a robotic retrieval mission could be sent instead in 2033.
Figueroa also mentioned four possible scientific pathways that could define the new Mars programme. My distillation of them are as follows:
1) Proceed, as quickly as the budget allows, with the existing plans for the first stage of a Mars sample return mission: sending a rover to a specific site to identify and cache intriguing samples that would later be lifted into orbit and returned.
2) Do surface science at as many as three sites — increasing the time before samples are returned but increasing the probability that one of the sites has preserved life.
3) Shift away from the singled-minded focus on sample return and perform more generalized Mars “system science”, which could include atmospheric and interior investigations.
4) Consider the possibility that the Curiosity rover, due to land at Gale Crater in August, makes a breakthrough discovery that motivates an intense and immediate follow-up study.
Figueroa’s group is supposed to submit its final report to NASA later this summer.
Photo: This computer-generated view depicts part of Mars at the boundary between darkness and daylight, with an area including Gale Crater beginning to catch morning light.
SpaceX rocket makes history with space station flyby
The flyby gave SpaceX’s Dragon capsule an opportunity to test its navigation and communications instruments.
Today at 3:44 AM eastern, SpaceX launched successfully to become the first commercial company in history to attempt to visit the International Space Station. This marks the third consecutive Falcon 9 launch success and the fifth straight launch success for SpaceX.
For more information on the mission, check out the info in the SpaceX press kit. For those on Twitter, be sure to follow @elonmusk for live updates from mission control.
The Andromeda Galaxy in Ultraviolet Light
Looking like a bright star streaking up into a black sky, a rocket took off before dawn today from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida carrying an unmanned capsule filled with food, clothes, and other supplies for astronauts on the international space station.
But this robotic cargo ship doesn’t belong to NASA. Instead, it’s owned by a company called SpaceX, which made history by launching the first ever private spacecraft on a mission to the station.
SpaceX has a $1.6 billion cargo-delivery contract with NASA, which is turning routine flights to the station over to industry so that the veteran space agency can start to focus on more ambitious exploration efforts. (NPR)
Photo: Historic @SpaceX #DragonLaunch to ISS. @NASA on Twitpic
Seconds ago, the SpaceX launch aborted after a failed ignition. Unfortunately they had a near instantaneous launch window, so this means that the mission is a no-go for today.
That’s a shame.
Superflares Found on Sun-like Stars
There is no explanation for how flares more than 1 million times more powerful than solar flares are occurring.
Scientists have found superflares more than 1 million times more powerful than flares generated by the sun occurring on sun-like stars being studied by NASA’s Kepler space telescope.
The finding, culled from 120 days of observations of 83,000 stars, is the first to detail how often and how energetic flares on other stars can be.
The discovery, however, raises a question about how the massive outbursts, believed to be caused by complex magnetic interactions, can physically occur.
Breathtaking View of Earth by Russian Satellite
Think of it as an amped up version of the iconic “Blue Marble” image. A new photo of Earth from space highlights the striking beauty and intensely rich colors of our home planet.
The photo was taken by a Russian weather satellite, called Elektro-L No.1, which flies in a geostationary orbit more than 22,000 miles (35,700 kilometers) above the Earth’s equator.
The Soyuz TMA-04M rocket launches from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan on Tuesday, May 15, 2012 carrying Expedition 31 Soyuz Commander Gennady Padalka, NASA Flight Engineer Joseph Acaba and Flight Engineer Sergei Revin to the International Space Station.
Huygens Landing on Titan
[On Jan. 14, 2005], ESA’s Huygens probe descended to the surface of Titan, Saturn’s largest moon. Today planetary scientists from around the world have gathered in Barcelona to discuss the legacy of Huygens and to consider future Titan exploration missions.
This movie, built with data collected during ESA Huygens’ mission at Titan on 14 January 2005, shows the operation of the DISR camera during its descent up to touch-down. The almost 4-hour long operation of DISR is shown in less than five minutes - 40 times the actual speed up to landing and 100 times the actual speed thereafter (for a complete description click here:http://esamultimedia.esa.int/images/cassini_huygens/PDF/DISR_movie_integral_c… ).The first part of the movie shows how Titan looked to DISR as it acquired more and more images during the probe’s descent. Each DISR image has a small field of view, and dozens of images were made into mosaics of the whole scene.
The scientists analysed Huygens’ speed, direction of motion, rotation and swinging during descent. The DISR movie includes sidebar graphics that show:
(Lower left corner) Huygens’ trajectory views from the south, a scale bar for comparison to the height of Mount Everest, colored arrows that point to the sun and to the Cassini orbiter.
(Top left corner) A close-up view of the Huygens probe highlighting large and unexpected parachute movements, and a scale bar for comparison to human height.
(Lower right corner) A compass that shows the changing direction of view as Huygens rotates, along with the relative positions of the sun and Cassini.
(Upper right corner) A clock that shows Universal Time for Jan. 14, 2005 (Universal Time is two hours earlier with respect to Central European Summer Time). Above the clock, events are listed in Mission Time, which starts with the deployment of the first of the three parachutes.
Sounds from a left speaker trace Huygens’ motion, with tones changing with rotational speed and the tilt of the parachute. There also are clicks that clock the rotational counter, as well as sounds for the probe’s heat shield hitting Titan’s atmosphere, parachute deployments, heat shield release, jettison of the DISR cover and touch-down.
Sounds from a right speaker go with DISR activity. There’s a continuous tone that represents the strength of Huygens’ signal to Cassini. Then there are 13 different chimes - one for each of DISR’s 13 different science parts - that keep time with flashing-white-dot exposure counters.
During its descent, DISR took 3500 exposures.
Video by Erich Karkoschka, University of Arizona, USA.
Credits: ESA/NASA/JPL/University of Arizona
Still confused? Reddit breaks it down.
(Source: youtube.com)
