This image shows the HR 8799 planets with starlight optically suppressed and data processing conducted to remove residual starlight. The star is at the center of the blackened circle in the image. The four spots indicated with the letters b through e are the planets. This is a composite image using 30 wavelengths of light and was obtained over a period of 1.25 hours on June 14 and 15, 2012. Image Credit: Project 1640
Gone are the days of being able to count the number of known planets on your fingers. Today, there are more than 800 confirmed exoplanets—planets that orbit stars beyond our sun—and more than 2,700 other candidates. What are these exotic planets made of? Unfortunately, you cannot stack them in a jar like marbles and take a closer look. Instead, researchers are coming up with advanced techniques for probing the planets’ makeup.
Continue reading Sifting Through the Atmospheres of Far-off Worlds
Surrounded by Soviet cosmonauts Musa Manarov, Sergei Krikalev, and Viktor Afanasyev, the first Briton in space enjoys the weightless environment. Helen Sharman’s flight was mired in controversy, as well as political and financial difficulty, from the outset and was seen by many as little more than a publicity stunt. Photo Credit: Joachim Becker/SpaceFacts.de
Few British space enthusiasts can possibly forget the famous plethora of posters, newspaper advertisements, and radio and television announcements which materialised nationwide throughout the summer of 1989. Astronaut Wanted, they crowed, No Experience Necessary. It was typically indicative of the understated humour of an island kingdom whose imperial history, wealth, and technological prowess in the 19th and 20th centuries had given way to a surprising dearth of activity in the human space flight sphere. Although the United Kingdom had become the sixth nation to launch a homegrown satellite into the heavens—tiny “Prospero,” atop a Black Arrow rocket from Woomera, South Australia, in October 1971—its aspirations in space exploration almost exclusively focused upon unmanned research, with particular emphasis upon the Earth sciences. During the course of the 1980s, despite the formation of the British National Space Centre (BNSC), the Conservative government of Margaret Thatcher virtually gutted any chance of a human space programme.
Continue reading ‘No Experience Necessary’: The Story of Project Juno (Part 1)
Astronaut Pete Conrad leads fellow Skylab 2 astronauts Paul Weitz and Joe Kerwin into the crew transfer van at Kennedy Space Center on the morning of May 25, 1973. The flight of the first manned crew to Skylab had been delayed 10 days while NASA and contractor officials developed plans and equipment for repairing the Skylab space station after it was damaged during its launch on May 14, 1973.
In this computer simulation, the sheer amount of orbital debris becomes apparent—as does the need to find a way to prevent it. Image Credit: NASA
There’s a lot of junk up there. Around 20,000 bits and pieces of satellites and old rocket parts, bigger than 5 cm (2 inches) across, are floating around in orbits less than 2,000 km high—and that’s just the stuff that can be tracked from Earth. It’s estimated that there’s another half a million unwanted items, up to 1 cm across, orbiting in regions where there’s a danger of collision with active spacecraft. Even an object as small as a dime, traveling at a relative speed of several thousand kilometers per hour, could knock out a valuable functioning satellite or pose a threat to astronauts in low-Earth orbit.
Continue reading Countering the Threat Posed by Orbital Debris
Tonight’s launch is the second launch in just eight days for United Launch Alliance. The Delta IV 5,4 medium launch vehicle lifted off from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station’s Space Launch Complex 37 at 8:27 p.m. EDT. Photo Credit:Jeffrey J. Soulliere
CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla — Barely eight days after it boosted an Atlas V aloft with the GPS IIF-4 satellite, United Launch Alliance (ULA) has successfully returned its workhorse Delta IV rocket to flight, following a lengthy hiatus. Launch took place at 8:27 p.m. EDT Friday May 24, from Space Launch Complex 37 (SLC-37) at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, Fla., precisely on the opening of a 32-minute “window”. The Delta IV lofted the U.S. Air Force’s fifth Wideband Global Satcom (WGS-5), which is expected to provide a “quantum leap” in military communications capability. It will provide deployed U.S. and allied forces with unprecedented access to bandwidth-intensive applications – such as video streaming, teleconferencing, real-time data transmission and high-resolution imaging – as well as supporting the next generation of unmanned aerial vehicles.
Continue reading WGS-5 Launch Marks Delta IV’s Triumphant Return to Flight
It turns out that the moons of the outer solar system are shaping up to be some of the most dynamic destinations in terms of planetary exploration. Image Credit: NASA / JPL
Far from the warm inner regions of the solar system, in orbit around the great gas giants are moons full of surprises. One has a riot of active volcanoes and a surface that is red, yellow, and brown because its blanket of sulfur compounds. Another has a thick atmosphere of nitrogen and lakes of methane. At least one has a deep watery underground ocean. There is even talk of life on some of these remote, icy satellites, and scientists would love to send out probes to target them.
Project Mercury astronaut Scott Carpenter relaxes aboard the recovery helicopter following his 5-hour trip aboard the Aurora 7 spacecraft. Carpenter became the second American to orbit the earth on May 24, 1962. Recovery took a bit longer than planned after Carpenter overshot the planned landing target by 290 miles.
CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla — The launch of a United Launch Alliance (ULA) Delta IV medium rocket carrying the Wideband Global SATCOM (WGS-5) satellite for the U.S. Air Force was scrubbed today due to a problem with the ground support system helium pressurization line (this according to representatives at ULA). The launch has been rescheduled to take place Friday, May 24 at 8:27 p.m. EDT. Engineers will have 30 minutes to get the Delta IV off the pad before the launch window closes. Weather conditions tomorrow are improved, providing an 80 percent chance of favorable conditions for launch.
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Hubble Space Telescope, as seen from the Shuttle Atlantis during the fourth servicing mission in May 2009. Photo Credit: NASA
The atmosphere is a problem for astronomers for two big reasons: it’s turbulent, so it smears out the light from cosmic objects, and it blocks out huge swathes of the electromagnetic spectrum. To see the universe in extreme clarity and observe in regions of the spectrum such as the far ultraviolet, X-rays, and gamma-rays, instruments have to be lofted into space.
India’s Mars Orbiter Mission plan. Image Credit: ISRO.
The India Space Research Organisation, ISRO, is preparing for the launch of its Mars Orbiter Mission by November 2013, which will see the Mangalyaan Mars probe lift off from ISRO’s launch site at Sriharikota, on the east coast of the India mainland. ISRO’s primary goal for the mission is simply to prove its technological capability to achieve Mars orbit, which would make it the fourth space agency to achieve such a feat after NASA, Roscosmos, and the European Space Agency.
Continue reading India’s Mars Orbiter Mission Primed and Ready
This image shows a cutting-edge solar-electric propulsion thruster in development at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., that uses xenon ions for propulsion. An earlier version of this solar-electric propulsion engine has been flying on NASA's Dawn mission to the asteroid belt. This engine is being considered as part of the Asteroid Initiative, a proposal to robotically capture a small near-Earth asteroid and redirect it safely to a stable orbit in the Earth-moon system where astronauts can visit and explore it. This image was taken through a porthole in a vacuum chamber at JPL where the ion engine is being tested. Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech Read More
