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World Largest Heat Shield Attached to NASA's Orion Crew Capsule for Crucial Fall 2014 T... - 0 views

  • technicians at the Kennedy Space Center (KSC) in Florida have attached the world’s largest heat shield to a pathfinding version of NASA’s Orion crew capsule
  • test flight later this Fall on a crucial mission dubbed Exploration Flight Test-1 (EFT-1)
  • One of the primary goals of NASA’s eagerly anticipated Orion EFT-1 uncrewed test flight is to test the efficacy of the heat shield in protecting the vehicle – and future human astronauts
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  • A trio of parachutes will then unfurl to slow it down for a splashdown in the Pacific Ocean
  • Orion is NASA’s next generation human rated vehicle now under development to replace the now retired space shuttle
  • “The Orion heat shield is the largest of its kind ever built. Its wider than the Apollo and Mars Science Lab heat shields,” Todd Sullivan
  • heat shield senior manager
  • The heat shield measures 16.5 feet in diameter
  • It is constructed from a single seamless piece of Avcoat ablator
  • The ablative material will wear away as it heats up during the capsules atmospheric re-entry thereby preventing the 4000 degree F heat from being transferred to the rest of the capsule
  • The Delta IV Heavy is the only rocket with sufficient thrust to launch the Orion EFT-1 capsule and its attached upper stage to its intended orbit of 3600 miles altitude above Earth
  • 15 times higher than the International Space Station (ISS) and farther than any human spacecraft has journeyed in 40 years
  • At the conclusion of the two-orbit, four- hour EFT-1 flight, the detached Orion capsule plunges back and re-enters the Earth’s atmosphere at 20,000 MPH (32,000 kilometers per hour).
  • “That’s about 80% of the reentry speed experienced by the Apollo capsule after returning from the Apollo moon landing missions,” Scott Wilson, NASA’s Orion Manager of Production Operations
  • The big reason to get to those high speeds during EFT-1 is to be able to test out the thermal protection system
  • Numerous sensors and instrumentation have been specially installed on the EFT-1 heat shield and the back shell tiles to collect measurements of things like temperatures, pressures and stresses during the extreme conditions of atmospheric reentry
  • data gathered during the
  • flight will aid in confirming. or refuting, design decisions and computer models as the program moves forward to the first flight
  • in late 2017 on the EM-1 mission and more human crewed missions thereafter
Mars Base

Orion Crew Capsule Targeted for 2014 Leap to High Orbit - 0 views

  • highest leap in human spaceflight in nearly 4 decades when an unmanned Orion crew capsule blasts off from Cape Canaveral, Fla., on a high stakes, high altitude test flight in early 2014.
  • narrated animation (see below) released by NASA depicts the planned 2014 launch of the Orion spacecraft on the Exploration Flight Test-1 (EFT-1) mission to the highest altitude orbit reached by a spaceship intended for humans since the Apollo Moon landing Era.
  • launch atop a Delta 4 Heavy booster rocket
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  • capsule will then separate from the upper stage, re-enter Earth’s atmosphere at a speed exceeding 20,000 MPH
  • trio of huge parachutes and splashdown in the Pacific Ocean off the west coast of California.
  • altitude 15 times higher than the International Space Station (ISS) circling in low orbit some 250 miles above Earth and provide highly valuable in-flight engineering data that will be crucial for continued development of the spaceship.
  • Lockheed Martin is nearing completion of the initial assembly of the Orion EFT-1 capsule
  • first integrated launch of an uncrewed Orion is scheduled for 2017 on the first flight of NASA’s new heavy lift rocket
Mars Base

New Deep Space Capsule Passes NASA Chief's Inspection NASA & Orion Multipurpose Crew Ve... - 0 views

  • engineers have completed a suite of structural, acoustic and vibration tests on key components of the spaceship
  • Orion Multi-Purpose Crew Vehicle
  • stacked hardware stretching 53 feet (16 meters)
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  • unmanned 2014 EFT-1 mission will blast Orion into space aboard a Delta 4-Heavy rocket. The capsule will orbit Earth twice while climbing to an altitude of several thousand miles, then rocket back in a high-speed plunge to validate its heat shield and other systems.
  • Artist's rendering of the Multi-Purpose Crew Vehicle on a deep space mission.CREDIT: NASA
  • Acoustic testing
  • recent acoustic testing of the Orion crew module/launch abort system structure involved hundreds of sensors planted throughout the hardware.
  • subjected it to the flight environment
  • chamber gets up to 150 decibels…like a rifle shot right next to your ear. It's pretty loud. All that sound…it's like a really loud rock concert
  • Huge heat shield
  • underside of Orion's crew module is the heat shield
  • measuring 16.5 feet (5 m) in diameter
  • Thermal Protection System advances heritage materials from the NASA's space shuttle and Apollo programs to create a next-generation system that can withstand the extreme environments of piloted deep space missions.
Mars Base

Curiosity's Robotic Arm Camera Snaps 1st Night Images - 0 views

  • This image of a Martian rock illuminated by white-light LEDs (light emitting diodes) is part of the first set of nighttime images taken by the Mars Hand Lens Imager (MAHLI) camera at the end of the robotic arm of NASA’s Mars rover Curiosity
  • image was taken on Jan. 22, 2013, after dark on Sol 165. It covers an area about 1.3 inches by 1 inch (3.4 by 2.5 centimeters
  • The Mars Hand Lens Imager (MAHLI) camera is located on the tool turret at the end of Curiosity’s 7 foot (2.1 m) long robotic arm
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  • Curiosity’s high resolution robotic arm camera has just snapped the 1st set of night time images of a Martian rock of the now 5 1/2 month long mission – using illumination from ultraviolet and white light emitting LED’s.
  • the close-up images of a rock target named “Sayunei” on Jan. 22 (Sol 165), located near the front-left wheel after the rover had driven over and scuffed the area to break up rocks in an effort to try and expose fresh material, free of obscuring dust
  • image of a Martian rock illuminated by ultraviolet LEDs
  • is part of the first set of nighttime images taken by the MAHLI camera on the robotic arm.
  • It covers an area about 1.3 inches by 1 inch (3.4 by 2.5 centimeters).
  • The purpose of acquiring observations under ultraviolet illumination was to look for fluorescent minerals
  • If something looked green, yellow, orange or red under the ultraviolet illumination, that’d be a more clear-cut indicator of fluorescence
Mars Base

Help Track the Effects of Light Pollution with GLOBE at Night - 0 views

  • GLOBE at Night is a citizen-science project to raise awareness of the impact of light pollution by inviting citizen-scientists to make naked-eye observations of the night sky in your area.
  • Participating in GLOBE at Night requires only five easy steps
  • Find your latitude and longitude
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  • Find Orion, Leo or Crux by going outside more than an hour after sunset (about 8-10pm local time).
  • Match your nighttime sky to one of the provided magnitude charts.
  • Report your observation.
  • Compare your observation to thousands around the world
  • You can also use the new web application data submission process
  • People in 115 countries have contributed over 75,000 measurements during the past six years
Mars Base

Runaway Planets Tossed From Galaxy at Fraction of Speed of Light | Space.com - 1 views

  • Planets in tight orbits around stars that get ejected from our galaxy may actually themselves be tossed out of the Milky Way at blisteringly fast speeds of up to 30 million miles per hour, or a fraction of the speed of light, a new study finds.
  • would be some of the fastest objects in the galaxy, aside from photons
  • In terms of large, solid objects, they would be the fastest. It would take them 10 seconds or so to cross the diameter of the Earth
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  • In 2005, astronomers found evidence of a runaway star that was flying out of the Milky Way galaxy at a speed of 1.5 million mph (2.4 million kph).
  • part of a double-star system that wandered too close to the supermassive black hole
  • In the seven years since, 16 of these hypervelocity stars have been found
  • typical runaway planet would likely dash outward at 7 to 10 million mph (11.3 to 16.1 million kph), but given the right circumstances, a small fraction could have their speeds boosted to up to 30 million mph (48.3 million kph).
  • hypervelocity planets will escape the Milky Way and travel through interstellar space
  • a civilization on such a planet, they would have a very exciting journe
  • Once the planet exits from the local group of galaxies, it will be accelerated away by cosmic expansion. So, within 10 billion years, it would go from the center of the galaxy to all the way to the edge of the observable universe
  • planet that tightly orbits a runaway star will cross in front and cause its brightness to dim slightly in what astronomers call a "transit
  • To hitch a ride on a hypervelocity star, a planet would have to be locked in a tight orbit, which ups the odds of witnessing a transit to around 50 percent
  • first time someone is talking about searching for planets around hypervelocity stars
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