SPACE - random thread about space stuff

[Daehawk]

I saw 2 meteors. Just bright streaks. Last night my sister says she saw a low slow one. Said it kinda wobbles as it flew over and left a smoke trail. She said it appeared very low.

[Max Peck]

APL's Parker Solar Probe launched on Sunday*. Folks at the Lab are pretty excited about it.

* Coincidentally also my birthday so that was cool.

Coincidentally? Really? I think we know now why the launch was delayed by a day...

[wonderpug]

Conceptually it seems like it'd be super easy to get to the sun, what with its massive gravity pulling the whole solar system together, but I read an interesting article a bit ago talking about how it's a lot harder than you would think. With a trip to Mars or Venus or whatever, you just have to adjust your orbital velocity a bit to match the destination. With a trip to the sun, you need to negate almost the entire orbital velocity of the earth.

[Isgrimnur]

[coopasonic]

Kerbal experience tells me I can burn retrograde at the apoapsis and bring my periapsis down to the sun pretty easily.

Before KSP I didn't know what most of those words meant and my wife doesn't think video games are good for the kids!

With a trip to the sun, you need to negate almost the entire orbital velocity of the earth.

Of course I never tried to crash into the sun so I am not sure how much Δv that would take.

[Daehawk]

That guy that stole that plane in Seattle claimed to have learned to fly on PC flight sims. Wont be long before someone steals a rocket and crashes into the sun or Mars.

[LordMortis]

Kerbal experience tells me I can burn retrograde at the apoapsis and bring my periapsis down to the sun pretty easily.

Before KSP I didn't know what most of those words meant and my wife doesn't think video games are good for the kids!

With a trip to the sun, you need to negate almost the entire orbital velocity of the earth.

Of course I never tried to crash into the sun so I am not sure how much Δv that would take.

Looked at that graphic and thought KSP, then I thought of you and how much I suck at that game and how that looks more like me attempting to orbit Mercury from Earth and failing then it look like someone successfully attempting to orbit the sun and succeeding.

I remember all of those words from KSP, but they never sunk in... Probably part of me sucking. I was just beginning to learn what Δ Delta really meant and then they took another step for even more realistic and I decided trying to control designs to control orbit and landing and trying to do in space builds and scienc was just more than I could both grasp and achieve with dexterity.

I did love me about 30 hours of Scott Manly videos and seeing the stuff you accomplished though. I kid you not. I watched at least 30 hours of Scott Manly playing KSP, and learned and forgot a whole lot of stuff.

[wonderpug]

Kerbal experience tells me I can burn retrograde at the apoapsis and bring my periapsis down to the sun pretty easily.

Before KSP I didn't know what most of those words meant and my wife doesn't think video games are good for the kids!

With a trip to the sun, you need to negate almost the entire orbital velocity of the earth.

Of course I never tried to crash into the sun so I am not sure how much Δv that would take.

A lot, apparently!

[Daehawk]

I watch a lot of Scott stuff not just Kerbal.

But you are nowhere in the ballpark of bad when compared to me. I never got to space even. I had too much fun simply building and watching wild types of rockets launch....over and over. When I finally decided to actually try I never got to space....over and over. Explosions, rockets falling back to the ground, spinning out of control, running out of fuel.....if it could go bad then it did.

I went back to just designing neat rockets. Was the same thing in the one you build airplanes...think it was calling Simple Planes or something. Very fun to design and test....actually play..not so much.

Looking back its weird I had SO much fun with Buzz Aldrins Race Into Space. I think because PCs were new to me and the games were so diversified in types then. And BARIS is much different than Kerbal. I need to find my old game box and check it out.

[coopasonic]

Kerbal experience tells me I can burn retrograde at the apoapsis and bring my periapsis down to the sun pretty easily.

Before KSP I didn't know what most of those words meant and my wife doesn't think video games are good for the kids!

With a trip to the sun, you need to negate almost the entire orbital velocity of the earth.

Of course I never tried to crash into the sun so I am not sure how much Δv that would take.

A lot, apparently!

Challenge... accepted.

Guess who is reinstalling KSP when he gets home? Luckily I have a save game with pretty much all tech and practically unlimited funds available.

[Max Peck]

Water ice 'detected on Moon's surface'

Scientists say they have definitive evidence for water-ice on the surface of the Moon.

The ice deposits are found at both the north and south poles, and are likely to be ancient in origin.

The result comes from an instrument on India's Chandrayaan-1 spacecraft, which explored the Moon between 2008 and 2009.

Details of the work have been published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).

The distribution of the ice deposits is patchy. At the lunar south pole, most of the ice is concentrated in craters. At the northern pole, the water-ice is both more sparse and more widely spread.

The Moon Mineralogy Mapper (M3) instrument aboard Chandrayaan identified three specific signatures of water-ice at the lunar surface.

M3 not only picked up the reflective properties one would expect from ice, but was able to directly measure the distinctive way its molecules absorb infrared light. This meant that it could differentiate between liquid water and vapour and solid ice.

[Kraken]

Last week there was a minor air leak on the ISS. The crew isolated it to a Russian module and patched the hole. Ho-hum, life in orbit goes on. Probably a micrometeor.

Now the Russians say that the hole was drilled. They are investigating whether it was an accident on the ground that was hastily patched, or if a cosmonaut did it on board to get an early ride home.

[Isgrimnur]

Space madness!

[Paingod]

Space madness!

[Moliere]

I didn't bother to search so this might be a double post about the Parker Solar Probe.

[Bakhtosh]

https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2018-09- ... torm-looms
National Solar Observatory Mysteriously Closed As Geomagnetic Storm Looms

The National Solar Observatory in Sunspot, New Mexico has been closed since last Thursday.

ABC-7 Monday spoke with Shari Lifson, who is with AURA, the company that co-manages the Observatory with NMSU.

• “The Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy who manages the facility is addressing a security issue at this time. We have decided to vacate the facility at this time as precautionary measure. It was our decision to evacuate the facility.”

Lifson told ABC 7 there is no time-table for the Observatory to be re-opened.

ABC-7 also reached out to the FBI, but did not hear back from the federal agency in time for deadline. The FBI did speak with local law enforcement about the length of the observatory closure.

• “The FBI is refusing to tell us what’s going on. We’ve got people up there (at Sunspot) that requested us to standby while they evacuate it. Nobody would really elaborate on any of the circumstances as to why.
• The FBI were up there. What their purpose was nobody will say. But for the FBI to get involved that quick and be so secretive about it, there was a lot of stuff going on up there.
• There was a Blackhawk helicopter, a bunch of people around antennas and work crews on towers but nobody would tell us anything.”

The FBI did not tell Sheriff House the reason for the closure. Sheriff Benny House did tell ABC 7 that his local law enforcement did not have anything to do with either the observatory closure.

For the conspiracy-minded, Sunspot is a mere 130 miles from Roswell, New Mexico, and about 90 miles from the White Sands Missile Range. Established in 1958, the observatory predates the unincorporated area in the Sacramento Mountains that was named for it.

[Daehawk]

Worst case what would one place see that another would not during a magnetic storm?

[Zaxxon]

pleasebeTrumppleasebeTrumppleasebeTrumppleasebeTrumppleasebeTrumppleasebeTrumppleasebeTrumppleasebeTrump

[DD*]

https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2018-09- ... torm-looms
National Solar Observatory Mysteriously Closed As Geomagnetic Storm Looms

The National Solar Observatory in Sunspot, New Mexico has been closed since last Thursday.

ABC-7 Monday spoke with Shari Lifson, who is with AURA, the company that co-manages the Observatory with NMSU.

• “The Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy who manages the facility is addressing a security issue at this time. We have decided to vacate the facility at this time as precautionary measure. It was our decision to evacuate the facility.”

Lifson told ABC 7 there is no time-table for the Observatory to be re-opened.

ABC-7 also reached out to the FBI, but did not hear back from the federal agency in time for deadline. The FBI did speak with local law enforcement about the length of the observatory closure.

• “The FBI is refusing to tell us what’s going on. We’ve got people up there (at Sunspot) that requested us to standby while they evacuate it. Nobody would really elaborate on any of the circumstances as to why.
• The FBI were up there. What their purpose was nobody will say. But for the FBI to get involved that quick and be so secretive about it, there was a lot of stuff going on up there.
• There was a Blackhawk helicopter, a bunch of people around antennas and work crews on towers but nobody would tell us anything.”

The FBI did not tell Sheriff House the reason for the closure. Sheriff Benny House did tell ABC 7 that his local law enforcement did not have anything to do with either the observatory closure.

For the conspiracy-minded, Sunspot is a mere 130 miles from Roswell, New Mexico, and about 90 miles from the White Sands Missile Range. Established in 1958, the observatory predates the unincorporated area in the Sacramento Mountains that was named for it.

I heard there were big problems in the southwest region.

[LawBeefaroni]

Worst case what would one place see that another would not during a magnetic storm?

Not much.

The observatory's main mission, since being retrofitted in early 2017, has been to detect signs of intelligent life in Washington DC, specifically in the White House and on Capitol Hill.

[Holman]

Ranking the possibilities...

(1) The military is testing something that the observatory might inadvertently record,
(2) an employee was engaging in shenanigans with a foreign power,
(3) someone mailed them anthrax or worse,
(4) hackers compromised the site in some new and devious way,
.
.
.
.
.
(9,172) Jodie Foster has heard from the aliens.

[The Meal]

https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2018-09- ... torm-looms
National Solar Observatory Mysteriously Closed As Geomagnetic Storm Looms

The National Solar Observatory in Sunspot, New Mexico has been closed since last Thursday.

Kiddie porn.

[wonderpug]

Well damn. I'm just going to mind-bleach myself and go back to imagining it was an alien coverup.

[Max Peck]

First 'exomoon' may have been found

Astronomers have announced the possible discovery of the first known moon outside our Solar System.

This "exomoon" is not like any in our cosmic neighbourhood: it's the size of Neptune and orbits a planet the size of Jupiter - but with 10 times the mass.

The object was spotted in data from Nasa's Kepler spacecraft, and later observed using the Hubble telescope.

Astronomers David Kipping and Alex Teachey have published their results in Science Advances journal.

But they say that further observations are needed to understand the distant planetary system.

"We've tried our best to rule out other possibilities such as spacecraft anomalies, other planets in the system or stellar activity, but we're unable to find any other single hypothesis which can explain all of the data we have," said Dr Kipping, from Columbia University in New York.

[Max Peck]

Hubble telescope hit by mechanical failure

The Hubble Space Telescope is operating with only essential functions after it lost one of the gyroscopes needed to point the spacecraft.

The observatory, described as one of the most important scientific instruments ever created, was placed in "safe mode" over the weekend, while scientists try to fix the problem.

Hubble had been operating with four of its six gyroscopes when one of them failed on Friday.

The telescope was launched in 1990.

After the gyro failure at the weekend, controllers tried to switch on a different one, but that was found to be malfunctioning. That leaves Hubble with only two fully functional gyros.

At any given time, Hubble needs three of its gyroscopes to work for optimal efficiency.

[Isgrimnur]

They've replaced gyros on previous service missions. Just put together a shuttle lau.... DAMN IT!

[Max Peck]

Astronauts escape malfunctioning Soyuz rocket

A US astronaut and a Russian cosmonaut were forced to make an emergency landing after their Russian Soyuz rocket malfunctioned en route to the International Space Station (ISS).

Shortly after taking off from Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan, Nick Hague and Alexey Ovchinin reported a problem with the rocket's booster.

The men were forced into a "ballistic descent", with their capsule landing a few hundred miles north of Baikonur.

They have been picked up by rescuers.

"The search and recovery teams have reached the Soyuz spacecraft landing site and report that the two crew members... are in good condition and are out of the capsule," US space agency Nasa said.

Russia said it was suspending any further manned flights, and an investigation into what went wrong had begun.

[Daehawk]

4000+ mph failure......7g ballistic re entry......landed 200 miles away.....and they are all smiles. Damn science you scary.

[Kraken]

They've replaced gyros on previous service missions. Just put together a shuttle lau.... DAMN IT!

It turned out to be easier than that. All they had to do was turn it off and turn it back on again.

Spoiler:

They wiggled it, too.

[Isgrimnur]

Nice.

[raydude]

Remember in Armageddon how the shuttles said "F%CK IT!" and flew through the debris field?
We're not doing that for OSIRIS-REx

[Daehawk]

Must make sense because when I saw the movie I was WHAAaat? Why not just skip that area lol.

[Isgrimnur]

Must make sense because when I saw the movie I was WHAAaat? Why not just skip that area lol.

Travelling through hyperspace ain't like dusting crops, boy.

[Max Peck]

NASA's Dawn Mission to Asteroid Belt Comes to End

NASA's Dawn spacecraft has gone silent, ending a historic mission that studied time capsules from the solar system's earliest chapter.

Dawn missed scheduled communications sessions with NASA's Deep Space Network on Wednesday, Oct. 31, and Thursday, Nov. 1. After the flight team eliminated other possible causes for the missed communications, mission managers concluded that the spacecraft finally ran out of hydrazine, the fuel that enables the spacecraft to control its pointing. Dawn can no longer keep its antennae trained on Earth to communicate with mission control or turn its solar panels to the Sun to recharge.

The Dawn spacecraft launched 11 years ago to visit the two largest objects in the main asteroid belt. Currently, it's in orbit around the dwarf planet Ceres, where it will remain for decades.

[Kraken]

It's kind of a sad ending. Dawn's solar panels will repeatedly catch just enough sunlight for the craft to keep trying and failing to reboot, potentially for the next 20-50 years. Kind of like robotic Alzheimers.

[Daehawk]

https://www.techspot.com/news/77271-elo ... -mars.html

Elon Musk's Tesla Roadster just floated past Mars

You might remember how, back in February, Elon Musk’s SpaceX launched its Falcon Heavy rocket for the first time, carrying with it a cherry red Tesla Roadster and a dummy driver named "Starman.” Now, almost nine months later, the vehicle has made its way past Mars’ orbit.

On Saturday, SpaceX shared the Roadster’s current location in a tweet, showing it had moved beyond the red planet and is on course to loop around back toward earth. It’s expected to cross our planet’s orbit in August 2019.






They dont plan to recapture it do they?

[Kraken]

It's been my desktop wallpaper ever since it launched. I'm partial to red roadsters with dummies behind the wheel.

In other news, a couple of Harvard astronomers say that Oumuamua (pronounced "Yo Mama") might be an alien spacecraft. No, really.

After examining the images, another international research team discovered that 'Oumuamua had increased in velocity, rather than slowing down as expected. The most likely explanation, they claimed, was that 'Oumuamua was venting material from its surface due to solar heating (aka. outgassing). The release of this material, which is consistent with how a comet behaves, would give 'Oumuamua the steady push it needed to achieve this boost in velocity.

To this, Bialy and Loeb offer a counter-explanation. If 'Oumuamua were in fact a comet, why then did it not experience outgassing when it was closest to our sun? In addition, they cite other research that showed that if outgassing were responsible for the acceleration, it would have also caused a rapid evolution in 'Oumuamua's spin (which was not observed).

Basically, Bialy and Loeb consider the possibility that 'Oumuamua could in fact be a light sail, a form of spacecraft that relies on radiation pressure to generate propulsion – similar to what Breakthrough Starshot is working on. Similar to what is planned for Starshot, this light sail may been sent from another civilization to study our solar system and look for signs of life. As Prof. Loeb explained to Universe Today via email:

"We explain the excess acceleration of `Oumuamua away from the sun as the result of the force that the sunlight exerts on its surface. For this force to explain measured excess acceleration, the object needs to be extremely thin, of order a fraction of a millimeter in thickness but tens of meters in size. This makes the object lightweight for its surface area and allows it to act as a light-sail. Its origin could be either natural (in the interstellar medium or proto-planetary disks) or artificial (as a probe sent for a reconnaissance mission into the inner region of the solar system)."

[Isgrimnur]

With that kind of press release, I hope they have tenure.

[Daehawk]

[Holman]

This is cool.



I've never seen a "launch visibility map" before.