Posts tagged nasa
Meteor impact on the Moon bright enough to see with the naked eye.
The impact of a 40kg meteor on the Moon on March 17 was bright enough to see from Earth without a telescope, according to NASA, who captured the impact through a Moon-monitoring telescope.
Now NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter will try and search out the impact crater, which could be up to 20 metres wide.
Autonomous NASA rover released on Greenland ice sheet.
GROVER, which stands for both Greenland Rover and Goddard Remotely Operated Vehicle for Exploration and Research, is an autonomous, solar-operated robot that carries a ground-penetrating radar to examine the layers of Greenland’s ice sheet. Its findings will help scientists understand how the massive ice sheet gains and loses ice.
The robot’s tests on the ice began on May 8, defying winds of up to 23 mph (37 kph) and temperatures as low as minus 22 F (minus 30 C). The tests will continue through June 8. Its trial in Greenland will also serve as a test of using rovers in harsh polar regions to gather data.
Opportunity breaks NASA’s distance record.
The Mars rover Opportunity has clocked up 22.22 miles since arriving on Mars, breaking NASA’s previous record for distance covered on another planet which was previously set in 1972 when two astronauts drove 22.21 miles on the surface of the Moon.
The international record is still held by the Russians, however. In 1973 the then Soviet Union’s remote-controlled Lunokhod 2 rover traveled 23 miles (37 kilometers) on the surface of the Moon.
Oh grow up, Mars rovers.
The tracks shown are from both the Spirit and Opportunity rovers, in this image released by NASA.
Photo: NASA’s Sounding Rockets Launch from the Marshall Islands
Red and white vapor clouds filled the skies over the Marshall Islands as part of NASA’s Equatorial Vortex Experiment (EVEX). The red cloud was formed by the release of lithium vapor and the white tracer clouds were formed by the release of trimethyl aluminum (TMA). These clouds allowed scientists on the ground from various locations in the Marshall Islands to observe the neutral winds in the ionosphere.
The EVEX was successfully conducted during the early morning hours on May 7 from Roi Namur, Republic of the Marshall Islands. A NASA Terrier-Oriole sounding rocket was launched at 3:39 a.m. EDT and was followed by a launch of Terrier-Improved Malemute sounding rocket 90 seconds later. Preliminary indications are that both rockets released their vapor clouds of lithium or trimethyl aluminum, which were observed from various locations in the area, and all science instruments on the rockets worked as planned.
Check out NASA’s ‘In-Space Propulsion Systems Roadmap’.
NASA have released their roadmap for in-space propulsion out to 2030 and beyond. The document (pdf) describes propulsion methods for travel in space only, beginning after the launch vehicle leaves Earth’s atmosphere.
Included in the roadmap is a crewed orbit of Mars in 2029, with a manned Mars surface mission not until the late 2030’s.
Rapid inner solar system missions with flexible launch dates are difficult, requiring propulsion systems that are beyond today’s current state of the art. The logistics, and therefore the total system mass required to support sustained human exploration beyond Earth to destinations such as the Moon, Mars or Near Earth Objects, are daunting unless more efficient in-space propulsion technologies are developed and fielded.
NASA invites you to send a haiku to Mars.
NASA is inviting members of the public to submit their names and a personal message online for a DVD to be carried aboard a spacecraft that will study the Martian upper atmosphere.
The DVD will be in NASA’s Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution (MAVEN) spacecraft, which is scheduled for launch in November. The DVD is part of the mission’s Going to Mars Campaign coordinated at the University of Colorado at Boulder’s Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics.
The DVD will carry every name submitted. The public also is encouraged to submit a message in the form of a three-line poem, or haiku. However, only three haikus will be selected. The deadline for all submissions is July 1. An online public vote to determine the top three messages to be placed on the DVD will begin July 15.
Submit your entry here.
Image: Mars in 3D
Left and right eyes of the Navigation Camera (Navcam) in NASA’s Curiosity Mars rover took the dozens of images combined into this stereo scene of the rover and its surroundings. The component images were taken during the 166th, 168th and 169th Martian days, or sols, of Curiosity’s work on Mars (Jan. 23, 25 and 26, 2013).
The scene appears three dimensional when viewed through red-blue glasses with the red lens on the left. It spans 360 degrees, with Mount Sharp on the southern horizon.
Photo: First Shuttle Launch
The Space Shuttle Columbia, pictured on April 12, 1981, at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida.
The shuttle was humankind’s first re-usable spacecraft. The orbiter would launch like a rocket and land like a plane. The two solid rocket boosters that helped push them into space would also be re-used, after being recovered in the ocean. Only the massive external fuel tank would burn up as it fell back to Earth. It was all known as the Space Transportation System.
Space station proposed for quantum communications test.
A new paper published in the New Journal of Physics proposes adapting the camera on the international space station for the first space-based quantum optics test.
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