Skip to main content

Home/ SciByte/ Group items tagged debris

Rss Feed Group items tagged

Filter: All | Bookmarks | Topics Simple Middle
Mars Base

Did a Piece of Mir Really Land in Massachusetts? - 0 views

www.universetoday.com/...r-really-land-in-massachusetts

scibyte99

shared by Mars Base on 20 Jun 13 - No Cached
  • What at first glance was a simple “Man finds space rock” story morphed into an extraordinary claim
  • Phil Green of Amesbury, Massachusetts.
  • was searching the local riverbed for arrowheads when he came across the
  • ...18 more annotations...
  • black pitted rock immediately struck him as something bizarre
  • didn’t register as metallic to his metal detector, but Mr. Green kept it in his backyard for about five years until it was noticed by a friend
  • Green told local reporters that the rock was sent off for analysis, only to be returned to him just a few weeks ago
  • The media quickly ran with the “Man finds a piece of Mir” story
  • The analysis
  • stated that the vitreous material “shows a composition similar to that used in ballast by the Soviet space program starting in the mid-1980s
  • There are
  • problems with
  • Mir reentered in 2001, six years before the 2007
  • Mir ended its career in the “so-called spacecraft cemetery of the southern Pacific Ocean
  • possibility of a reentry of a Progress resupply vehicle being a potential source, or perhaps an unrelated Russian space vehicle.
  • problem of the certification
  • Several articles state that the piece of debris coming from Mir was “confirmed by NASA.”
  • NASA Chief Scientist for Orbital Debris
  • that no such NASA validation exists
  • NASA Orbital Debris Program Office has not been presented with any claim regarding debris from the Mir space station
  • it is not possible for debris from the Mir reentry to have landed in the U.S.”
  • the find does look like something interesting. The pitting and the melted fusion crust are all reminiscent of reentry
Mars Base

Cleaning up Earth's orbit: A Swiss satellite to tackle space debris - 0 views

actu.epfl.ch/...orbit-a-swiss-satellite-to-tac

scibyte34 satellite debris

shared by Mars Base on 17 Feb 12 - No Cached
  • Mars Base on 17 Feb 12
     
    Swiss satellite to tackle space debris
Mars Base

Swiss satellite to tackle space debris (w/ video) - 0 views

www.physorg.com/...llite-tackle-space-debris.html

scibyte34 satellite debris

shared by Mars Base on 17 Feb 12 - No Cached
  • Swiss Space Center at EPFL is announcing today the launch of CleanSpace One, a project to develop and build the first installment of a family of satellites specially designed to clean up space debris.
  • NASA keeps close tabs on at least 16,000 of these objects that are larger than 10 cm in diameter
  • After its launch, the cleanup satellite will have to adjust its trajectory in order to match its target’s orbital plane
  • ...1 more annotation...
  • When it gets within range of its target, which will be traveling at 28,000 km/h at an altitude of 630-750 km
Mars Base

Recent Satellite Crashes Bring Space Junk Problem Into Public Eye | Space Junk & Orbita... - 0 views

www.space.com/shes-public-consciousness.html

scibyte29 satellite crash multimedia

shared by Mars Base on 13 Jan 12 - No Cached
  • 12 January 2012
  • news that a failed Russian Mars probe will come crashing back to Earth in the next few days
  • public perception that the sky is falling —
  • ...14 more annotations...
  • huge pieces of space junk could rain down on us at any moment.
  • Phobos-Grunt spacecraft
  • re-enter the atmosphere sometime between Saturday and Monday (Jan. 14 to Jan. 16).
  • the third uncontrolled satellite re-entry in four months
  • claims are handled on a case-by-case basis, you might be surprised to learn damage from satellite debris, aka space junk, likely would be covered under most insurance policies
  • Farmers Insurance, aired a commercial during this winter's college football bowl games offering similar assurances to its current and potential customers.
  • Experts predict that Russia's failed Mars probe Phobos-Grunt will crash back to Earth in mid-January 2012. This artist's concept shows fuel burning from a ruptured fuel tank as the spacecraft re-enters the atmosphere.CREDIT: Michael Carroll
  • NASA estimates that our planet's orbital debris cloud contains more than 500,000 pieces larger than a marble and more than 20,000 at least as big as a softball
  • space junk poses little threat to people on the ground. Most pieces of falling satellites burn up the atmosphere
  • the bits that make it through are likely to land harmlessly in the ocean or on uninhabited land
  • To date, nobody is known to have been injured by a chunk of falling debris.
  • poses a real threat to the craft that orbit and observe our planet and provide navigation and telecommunications services
  • 2009, for example, the Iridium 33 communications satellite was destroyed when it slammed into a defunct Russian satellite.
  • This computer illustration depicts the density of space junk around Earth in low-Earth orbit.CREDIT: ESA
Mars Base

Should This Alien World Even Exist? This Young Disk Could Challenge Planet-Formation Th... - 0 views

www.universetoday.com/...enge-planet-formation-theories

scibyte98 exoplanet

shared by Mars Base on 14 Jun 13 - No Cached
  • gap in the cloud? That could be a planet being born some 176 light-years away from Earth
  • small planet, only 6 to 28 times Earth’s mass.
  • This alien world, if we can confirm it, shouldn’t be there according to conventional planet-forming theory
  • ...20 more annotations...
  • The gap in the image above — taken by the Hubble Space Telescope — probably arose when a planet under construction swept through the dust and debris in its orbit
  • That’s not much of a surprise (at first blush) given what we think we know about planet formation
  • You start with a cloud of debris and gas swirling around a star, then gradually the bits and pieces start colliding, sticking together and growing bigger into small rocks, bigger ones and eventually, planets or gas giant planet cores
  • this planet is a heck of a long way from its star, TW Hydrae, about twice Pluto’s distance from the sun
  • Given that alien systems’ age, that world shouldn’t have formed so quickly.
  • Astronomers believe that Jupiter took about 10 million years to form at its distance away from the sun
  • This planet near TW Hydrae should take 200 times longer to form because the alien world is moving slower, and has less debris to pick up
  • because TW Hydrae‘s system is believed to be only 8 million years old.
  • TW Hydrae is only 55 percent as massive as our sun
  • astronomers are seriously investigating other theories
  • One alternative brought up in the press release: perhaps part of the disc collapsed due to gravitational instability
  • If that is the case, a planet could come to be in only a few thousand years, instead of several million
  • add to planet formation theories as to how you can actually form a planet very far out
  • If we can actually confirm that there’s a planet there, we can connect its characteristics to measurements of the gap properties
  • direct collapse” theory, though: astronomers believe it takes a bunch of matter that is one to two times more massive than Jupiter before a collapse can occur to form a planet
  • this world is no more than 28 times the mass of Earth, as best as we can figure
  • Jupiter itself is 318 times more massive than Earth
  • There are also intriguing results about the gap
  • dust grains in this system, orbiting nearby the gap, are still smaller than the size of a grain of sand
  • Astronomers plan to use ALMA and the James Webb Space Telescope, which should launch in 2018, to get a better look
Mars Base

Robot Space 'Gas Attendant' Could Salvage Old Satellites by 2015 | Satellite Refueling ... - 0 views

www.space.com/ation-satellite-refueling.html

scibyte34 satellite

shared by Mars Base on 17 Feb 12 - No Cached
  • middle of the decade
  • possible to salvage satellites that run out of fuel or suffer minor malfunctions in orbit
  • Canada-based aerospace firm
  • ...16 more annotations...
  • designing a spacecraft that will serve as an orbiting gas station and mechanic.
  • will be able to top off satellites' fuel tanks
  • perform minor repairs as needed
  • first servicing satellite could be ready to go by 2015 or 2016
  • Currently, most satellites last only as long as their stores of onboard propellant allow
  • When a spacecraft runs out of fuel, it essentially turns into a very expensive piece of space junk, adding to the massive cloud of debris already clogging Earth orbit.
  • servicing spacecraft would be controlled from the ground
  • could operate with varying degrees of autonomy
  • when the SIS spacecraft itself runs low on fuel, a separately launched "tanker" would replenish its supply of propellant, allowing the vehicle to continue servicing satellites far into the future.
  • MDA thought it found that customer last year.
  • However, the two companies announced last month that the deal is off
  • I guess we were not able to meet those datelines for the original plan, due to various factors
  • isn't the only business or organization working to develop satellite-servicing technology
  • Aerospace firm Vivisat, for example, is designing a spacecraft called the Mission Extension Vehicle, which would dock to satellites and provide propulsion and attitude control.
  • The U.S. military's Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency has started a program called Phoenix, which seeks to recycle still-functioning pieces of defunct satellites and incorporate them into new space systems for low cost.
  • 16 February 2012
Mars Base

Mars Express Reveals Possible Martian Glaciers - 0 views

www.universetoday.com/...eals-possible-martian-glaciers

scibyte24

shared by Mars Base on 03 Dec 11 - No Cached
  • , one of the greatest needs future astronauts will face is water
  • Mars Express has imaged an area on the red planet which may yield large quantities of sub-surface ice
  • Extending from the northeastern portion of the Elysium volcanic province to the northern lowlands
  • ...14 more annotations...
  • spanning latitudes from roughly 30°N to 50°N, the Phlegra Montes
  • gently rolling series of hills that have been probed by radar
  • surmised these low mountain ranges are not volcanic in origin, but created through tectonic forces and may conceal a copious supply of frozen water
  • high resolution stereo imaging from ESA’s Mars Express orbiter, we’re able to detect a feature called ‘lobate debris aprons’.
  • it’s a normal feature for mountains found around these latitudes
  • Earlier studies of the debris aprons show the material has slid down the mountain slopes with time – a feature shared with Earth’s glaciers
  • scientists surmise this region may be a type of Martian glacier
  • also been confirmed by radar on NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter
  • lobate debris aprons could indeed signal the presence of ice – perhaps only 20 meter below the surface
  • , nearby impact craters also show signs of recent glaciation
  • ridges formed inside these ancient holes from snowfall, and then slid down the slopes
  • With time, it compacted to form a glacier structure
  • A one time, Mars’ polar axis was quite different than it is today
  • it created different climatic conditions and mid-latitude glaciers may have developed at different times over the last several hundred million years
Mars Base

Full Titanic site mapped for 1st time - 0 views

www.physorg.com/...-03-full-titanic-site-1st.html

scibyte37 Titantic

shared by Mars Base on 09 Mar 12 - No Cached
  • April 10, 1912 file photo, the Luxury liner Titanic departs Southampton, England
  • Researchers have pieced together what's believed to be the first comprehensive map of the entire 3-by-5-mile Titanic debris field
  • Marks on the muddy ocean bottom suggest, for instance, that the stern rotated like a helicopter blade as the ship sank, rather than plunging straight down
  • ...16 more annotations...
  • sonar imaging and more than 100,000 photos taken from underwater robots to create the map
  • Explorers of the Titanic
  • have known for more than 25 years where the bow and stern landed
  • previous maps of the floor around the wreckage were incomplete
  • mapping took place in the summer of 2010 during an expedition to the Titanic led by RMS Titanic Inc., the legal custodian of the wreck
  • joined by other groups, as well as the cable History channel
  • Details on the new findings
  • are not being revealed yet
  • the network will air them in a two-hour documentary on April 15, exactly 100 years after the Titanic sank
  • high-resolution photos - 130,000 of them in all
  • self-controlled robots known
  • along the ocean bottom day and night
  • moving at a little more than 3 miles per hour as they traversed back and forth in a grid along the bottom
  • photos were stitched together on a computer to provide a detailed photo mosaic of the debris
  • layout of the wreck site and where the pieces landed provide new clues on exactly what happened
  • Computer simulations will re-enact the sinking in reverse, bringing the wreckage debris back to the surface and reassembled
Mars Base

DARPA Seeks Ideas to Recycle Space Junk Into New Satellites | Space Junk & Orbital Debr... - 0 views

www.space.com/ycling-phoenix-satellites.html

scibyte34 satellites debris

shared by Mars Base on 17 Feb 12 - No Cached
  • : 20 October 2011
  • United States Department of Defense is looking for ways to repurpose space junk
  • started a program called Phoenix, which seeks to recycle still-functioning pieces of defunct satellites and incorporate them into new space systems on the cheap
  • ...4 more annotations...
  • snag still-working antennas from the many retired and dead satellites in geosynchronous orbit — about 22,000 miles (35,406 kilometers) above Earth — and attach them to smaller "satlets," or nanosatellites, launched from Earth.
  • tender vehicle would cruise over to a satlet, pluck it out of its housing and ferry it to the appropriate defunct satellite. The tender would then switch the antenna over from the retired satellite to the satlet, creating a "new," and relatively cheap, satellite using previously useless space junk.
  • Satellites in GEO are not designed to be disassembled or repaired, so it's not a matter of simply removing some nuts and bolts
  • requires new remote imaging and robotics technology and special tools to grip, cut, and modify complex systems
Mars Base

Astronomers discover planet that shouldn't be there - 0 views

phys.org/...tronomers-planet-shouldnt.html

scibyte112 exoplanet

shared by Mars Base on 06 Dec 13 - No Cached
  • An international team of astronomers
  • has discovered the most distantly orbiting planet found to date around a single, sun-like star
  • 11 times Jupiter's mass and orbiting its star at 650 times the average Earth-Sun distance
  • ...34 more annotations...
  • HD 106906 b
  • throws a wrench in planet formation theories
  • no model of either planet or star formation fully explains what we see
  • It is thought that planets close to their stars, like Earth, coalesce from small asteroid-like bodies born in the primordial disk of dust and gas that surrounds a forming star
  • this process acts too slowly to grow giant planets far from their star
  • Another proposed mechanism is that giant planets can form from a fast, direct collapse of disk material
  • primordial disks rarely contain enough mass in their outer reaches to allow a planet like HD 106906 b to form
  • Several alternative hypotheses have been put forward, including formation like a mini binary star system
  • binary star system can be formed when two adjacent clumps of gas collapse more or less independently to form stars, and these stars are close enough to each other to exert a mutual gravitation attraction and bind them together in an orb
  • It is possible that in the case of the HD 106906 system the star and planet collapsed independently from clumps of gas, but for some reason the planet's progenitor clump was starved for material and never grew large enough to ignite and become a star
  • one problem with this scenario is that the mass ratio of the two stars in a binary system is typically no more than 10-to-1.
  • the mass ratio is more than 100-to-1,
  • extreme mass ratio is not predicted from binary star formation theories – just like planet formation theory predicts that we cannot form planets so far from the host star
  • is also of
  • interest because researchers can still detect the remnant "debris disk" of material left over from planet and star formation.
  • potential to help us disentangle the various formation models
  • Future observations of the planet's orbital motion and the primary star's debris disk may help answer that question
  • At only 13 million years old, this young planet still glows from the residual heat of its formation
  • Because at 2,700 Fahrenheit (about 1,500 degrees Celsius) the planet is much cooler than its host star
  • it emits most of its energy as infrared rather than visible light
  • Earth
  • formed 4.5 billion years ago
  • about 350 times older than HD 106906 b.
  • Direct imaging observations require exquisitely sharp images, akin to those delivered by the Hubble Space Telescope
  • To reach this resolution from the ground requires a technology called Adaptive Optics, or AO
  • The team used the new Magellan Adaptive Optics (MagAO) system and Clio2 thermal infrared camera
  • mounted on the 6.5 meter-diameter Magellan telescope in the Atacama Desert in Chile to take the discovery image
  • MagAO was able to utilize its special Adaptive Secondary Mirror
  • 585 actuators, each moving 1,000 times a second, to remove the blurring of the atmosphere
  • optimized for thermal infrared wavelengths, where giant planets are brightest compared to their host stars
  • planets are most easily imaged at these wavelengths
  • The team was able to confirm that the planet is moving together with its host star by examining Hubble Space Telescope data taken eight years prior for another research program
  • This planet discovery is particularly exciting because it is in orbit so far from its parent star. This leads to many
  • questions about its formation history and composition
Mars Base

Buddhist statue, discovered by Nazi expedition, is made of meteorite, new study reveals - 0 views

phys.org/...ue-nazi-meteorite-reveals.html

scibyte65 meteorite

shared by Mars Base on 27 Sep 12 - No Cached
  • a 1,000 year-old ancient Buddhist statue which was first recovered by a Nazi expedition in 1938 has been analysed by scientists and has been found to be carved from a meteorite
  • statue, known as the Iron Man, weighs 10kg and is believed to represent a stylistic hybrid between the Buddhist and pre-Buddhist Bon culture
  • discovered in 1938 by an expedition of German scientists
  • ...10 more annotations...
  • expedition was supported by Nazi SS Chief Heinrich Himmler and the entire expeditionary team were believed to have been SS members.
  • unknown how the statue was discovered
  • believed that the large swastika carved into the centre of the figure may have encouraged the team to take it back to Germany
  • only became available for study following an auction in 2007.
  • first team to study the origins of the statue
  • The team was able to classify it as an ataxite
  • a rare class of iron meteorite with high contents of nickel.
  • statue was chiseled from a fragment of the Chinga meteorite which crashed into the border areas between Mongolia and Siberia about 15,000 years ago
  • first debris was officially discovered in 1913 by gold prospectors
  • believe that this individual meteorite fragment was collected many centuries before
Mars Base

DARPA Wants Amateur Help Tracking Space Junk | Space.com - 0 views

www.space.com/k-darpa-amateur-astronomy.html

scibyte72 Darpa

shared by Mars Base on 21 Nov 12 - No Cached
  • The U.S. military is launching a far-out neighborhood watch. But instead of warding off burglars, these  amateur watchdogs are tracking orbital debris and possible satellite collisions in Earth orbit.
  • The sky-monitoring project, called SpaceView, is a Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) program that enrolls the talents of amateur astronomers
  • SpaceView should provide more diverse data from different geographic locations
  • ...5 more annotations...
  • SpaceView is envisioned as a long-term partnership. This could potentially include time-sharing on telescopes, upgraded hardware at the astronomer’s site or financial compensation
  • SpaceView hopes to engage amateur astronomers by purchasing remote access to an already in-use telescope or by providing a telescope to selected astronomers
  • Telescopes used for astrophotography, asteroid hunting or simply high-quality astronomy are well suited for SpaceView’s needs
  • this new program provides the means to upgrade a skywatcher’s site to a state-of-the-art fully automated obser
  • in late 2013, the process will start to select the first dozen members of the project
Mars Base

Plastic Wrapped Shuttle Atlantis Slated for Grand Public Unveiling in June - 0 views

www.universetoday.com/...grand-public-unveiling-in-june

scibyte86 shuttle

shared by Mars Base on 09 Mar 13 - No Cached
  • Space Shuttle Atlantis
  • will be unveiled to the public in June 2013
  • The plastic wrap is protecting the orbiter from construction debris and will be unfurled in May
  • ...6 more annotations...
  • Then the payload bay doors will be carefully opened and the Canadian built remote manipulator system (RMS) — or robotic arm — will be installed and extended
  • new 90,000-square-foot home
  • mounted high on steel pedestals – tilted at exactly 43.21 degrees – simulating the outlook as though she was ‘in flight’ orbiting Earth and approaching the International Space Station (ISS).
  • Atlantis rises some 30 feet off the ground
  • nose soars 26.5 feet above ground the portside wingtip sits only 7.5 feet from the floor. The wing tip top soars 87 feet from the ground
  • sitting right beside Atlantis will be a co-orbiting, high fidelity full scale replica of NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope
Mars Base

Astronomers Watch as a Black Hole Eats a Rogue Planet - 0 views

www.universetoday.com/...black-hole-eats-a-rogue-planet

scibyte89 BlackHole

shared by Mars Base on 03 Apr 13 - No Cached
  • Astronomers using the Integral space observatory were able to watch as the planet was eaten by a black hole that had been inactive for decades
  • The observation was
  • from a galaxy that has been quiet for at least 20–30 years
  • ...14 more annotations...
  • the event is a preview of a similar feeding event that is expected to take place with the black hole at the center of our own Milky Way Galaxy
  • galaxy NGC 4845, 47 million light-years away
  • Astronomers were using Integral to study a different galaxy when they noticed a bright X-ray flare coming from another location in the same wide field-of-view
  • the origin was confirmed as NGC 4845, a galaxy never before detected at high energies
  • the emission was traced from its maximum in January 2011, when the galaxy brightened by a factor of a thousand, and then as it subsided over the course of the year
  • By analyzing the characteristics of the flare, the astronomers could determine that the emission came from a halo of material around the galaxy’s central black hole as it tore apart and fed on an object of 14–30 Jupiter masses, and so the astronomers say the object was either a super-Jupiter or a brown dwarf
  • This object appears to have been ‘wandering,’ which would fit the description of recent studies
  • The black hole in the center of NGC 4845 is estimated to have a mass of around 300,000 times that of our own Sun
  • This is the first time where we have seen the disruption of a substellar object by a black hole
  • estimate that only its external layers were eaten by the black hole, amounting to about 10% of the object’s total mass, and that a denser core has been left orbiting the black hole
  • The flaring event in NGC 4845 might be similar to what is expected to happen with the supermassive black hole at the center of our own Milky Way Galaxy
  • these events will tell astronomers more about what happens to the demise of different types of objects as they encounter black holes of varying sizes
  • Estimates are that events like these may be detectable every few years in galaxies around us
  • the emission brightened and decayed shows there was a delay of 2–3 months between the object being disrupted and the heating of the debris in the vicinity of the black hole.
Mars Base

Bigelow Inflatable Module Will be Added to Space Station - 0 views

www.universetoday.com/...will-be-added-to-space-station

scibyte77 BigelowAerospace

shared by Mars Base on 12 Jan 13 - No Cached
  • The next addition to the International Space Station will likely be an inflatable module from Bigelow Aerospace
  • NASA announced today they have awarded a $17.8 million contract to Bigelow to provide a new module for the ISS
  • This would be the first privately built module to be added to the space station
  • ...5 more annotations...
  • previous reports have indicated the inflatable module would be used for adding additional storage and workspace, and the module would be certified to remain on-orbit for two years
  • In 2006 Bigelow launched their Genesis I inflatable test module into orbit and according to their website, it is still functioning and “continuing to produce invaluable images, videos and data for Bigelow Aerospace
  • A second Genesis module was launched in 2007 and it, too, is still functioning in orbit.
  • even though the outer shell of their module is soft, as opposed to the rigid outer shell of current modules at the ISS, Bigelow’s inflatable modules are more resistant to micrometeoroid or orbital debris strikes
  • uses multiple layers of Vectran, a material which is twice as strong as Kevlar
1 - 20 of 38 Next ›
Showing 20▼ items per page