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Mars Base

Kepler Explorer app puts distant planets at your fingertips - 0 views

www.physorg.com/...lorer-app-distant-planets.html

scibyte41 Kepler app

shared by Mars Base on 04 Apr 12 - No Cached
  • Kepler Explorer app puts distant planets at your fingertips
  • Kepler Explorer challenges users to design a planet that matches the Kepler data
  • Armchair explorers of the cosmos can now have at their fingertips the nearly 2,000 distant planetary systems discovered by NASA's Kepler Mission
  • ...19 more annotations...
  • innovative app for iPads and iPhones
  • available for free
  • brought together faculty and students in astrophysics, art, and technology for a summer institute last year
  • team quickly settled on the idea to create an app, and also developed it into an exhibit that provides additional information and shows the app's output on a large screen
  • scheduled for long-term installation in the Lick Observatory visitors gallery later this month
  • Kepler Explorer starts with drop-down menus listing all the Kepler-discovered planetary systems, plus our own solar system
  • selected system is displayed in a view that shows the planet or planets in their orbits around the host star
  • Shown in real time the planets look motionless, but moving a slider increases the speed until the planets zip around their star
  • lets users zoom in and move around the system, and tapping on an individual planet brings it up for further exploration. Another view shows the relative sizes of the individual planets compared to their host star
  • when viewing individual planets
  • The user can manipulate the composition of the planet and its atmosphere and see which mixtures of components (iron, rock, water, and hydrogen) are consistent with Kepler's observations
  • represents graphically the type of in-depth analysis that Fortney does for the Kepler Mission
  • the app allows anyone to explore the properties of many different planets very quickly
  • only measures the radius of a planet, or how big it is. In most cases, the mass of the planet is unknown
  • there may be different combinations of components that result in a planet of a given size
  • 's interactive graphics show how this works
  • sliders for different components and how they are partitioned in the core and the atmosphere, and as you move the sliders the image of the planet grows and shrinks, based on hundreds of calculations
  • the app tells you when the size of your planet matches the observations
  • calculations involved took hours of computer time, but the results are stored in tables so the app can use them on the fly.
Mars Base

Space Exploration By Robot Swarm - 0 views

www.universetoday.com/...ace-exploration-by-robot-swarm

scibyte47 robot space exploration AsteroidMining

shared by Mars Base on 16 May 12 - No Cached
  • one researcher from Stanford University is suggesting we unleash a swarm of rover/spacecraft hybrids that can explore en masse.
  • been developing a concept under NASA’s Innovative Advanced Concepts (NIAC) Program that would see small spherical robots deployed to small worlds, such as Mars’ moons Phobos and Deimos, where they would take advantage of low gravity to explore — literally —  in leaps and bounds.
  • similar to what NASA has done in the past with the Mars rovers, except multiplied in the number of spacecraft (and reduced in cost.)
  • ...5 more annotations...
  • were one spacecraft to fail the entire mission wouldn’t be compromised
  • robots would be deployed from a “mother” spacecraft and spring into action upon landing, tumbling
  • hybrid rovers could also help prepare for future, more in-depth exploration.
  • exploration of small bodies would help unravel the origin of the solar system and its early evolution
  • evaluate the resource potential of small bodies in view of future human missions beyond Earth.”
Mars Base

International Cometary Explorer - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia - 0 views

en.wikipedia.org/...nternational_Cometary_Explorer

scibyte132 ISEE-3

shared by Mars Base on 25 May 14 - No Cached
  • Original mission: International Sun/Earth Explorer 3 (ISEE-3)
  • to investigate solar-terrestrial relationships at the outermost boundaries of the Earth's magnetosphere
  • to examine in detail the structure of the solar wind near the Earth and the shock wave that forms the interface between the solar wind and Earth's magnetosphere
  • ...38 more annotations...
  • investigate motions of and mechanisms operating in the plasma sheets
  • continue the investigation of cosmic rays and solar flare emissions in the interplanetary region near 1 AU
  • Second mission: International Cometary Explorer
  • On June 10, 1982, after completing its original mission, ISEE-3 was repurposed. It was renamed the International Cometary Explorer (ICE)
  • The primary scientific objective of ICE was to study the interaction between the solar wind and a cometary atmosphere
  • a series of lunar orbits over the next 15 months. Its last and closest pass over the Moon, on December 22, 1983, was a mere 119.4 km above the Moon's surface. By the beginning of 1984, ICE was in heliocentric orbit
  • Giacobini-Zinner encounter
  • on a trajectory intercepting that of Comet Giacobini-Zinner.
  • On 11 September 1985, the craft passed through the plasma tail of Comet Giacobini-Zinner
  • ICE carried no cameras. It instead carried instruments for measurements of energetic particles, waves, plasmas, and fields
  • Halley encounter
  • transited between the Sun and Comet Halley in late March 1986, when other spacecraft
  • were in the vicinity of Comet Halley
  • ICE flew through the tail
  • Heliospheric mission
  • mission was approved by NASA in 1991
  • consisting of investigations of coronal mass ejections in coordination with ground-based observations
  • End of mission
  • On May 5, 1997, NASA ended the ICE mission, and ordered the probe shut down, with only a carrier signal left operating
  • Further contact
  • In 1999, NASA made brief contact with ICE to verify its carrier signal. On September 18, 2008
  • NASA, with the help of KinetX, located ICE using the Deep Space Network after discovering that it had not been powered off after the 1999 contact
  • status check revealed that all but one of its 13 experiments were still functioning, and it still has enough propellant
  • Reboot effort
  • A team webpage said, "We intend to contact the ISEE-3 (International Sun-Earth Explorer) spacecraft, command it to fire its engine and enter an orbit near Earth, and then resume its original mission...If we are successful we intend to facilitate the sharing and interpretation of all of the new data ISEE-3 sends back via crowd sourcing."
  • Sometime after NASA's interest in the ICE waned
  • A team of engineers, programmers, and scientists
  • realized that the spacecraft might be steered to pass close to another comet
  • began to study the feasibility and challenges involved
  • On May 15, 2014, the project reached its crowdfunding goal
  • which will cover the costs of writing the software to communicate with the probe, searching through the NASA archives for the information needed to control the spacecraft, and buying time on the dish antennas
  • The project then set a 'stretch' goal of $150,000
  • The project members are working on deadline: if they get the spacecraft to change its orbit by late May or early June 2014, it can use the Moon's gravity to get back into a useful halo orbit.
  • Earlier in 2014, officials with the Goddard Space Flight Center had said that the Deep Space Network equipment necessary to transmit signals to the spacecraft had been decommissioned in 1999, and that replacing it was not economically feasible
  • oject members obtained the needed hardware (power amplifier, modulator/demodulator[12]), and installed it on the 305-meter Arecibo dish antenna on May 19, 2014
  • Although NASA is not funding the project, it made advisors available and gave approval to try to establish contact
  • On May 21, 2014, NASA announced that it had signed a Non-Reimbursable Space Act Agreement with the ISEE-3 Reboot Project
  • "This is the first time NASA has worked such an agreement for use of a spacecraft the agency is no longer using or ever planned to use again," officials said
Mars Base

Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia - 0 views

en.wikipedia.org/...son_Microwave_Anisotropy_Probe

scibyte88 WMAP

shared by Mars Base on 31 Mar 13 - No Cached
  • a spacecraft which measures differences in the temperature of the Big Bang's remnant radiant heat – the Cosmic Microwave Background Radiation – across the full sky
  • The WMAP spacecraft was launched on June 30, 2001,
  • The WMAP mission succeeds the COBE space mission and was the second medium-class (MIDEX) spacecraft of the Explorer program.
  • ...15 more annotations...
  • WMAP's measurements played the key role in establishing the current Standard Model of Cosmology
  • WMAP data are very well fit by a universe that is dominated by dark energy in the form of a cosmological constant
  • The anisotropies then are used to measure the universe's geometry, content, and evolution; and to test the Big Bang model, and the cosmic inflation theory
  • he map contains 3,145,728 pixels, and uses the HEALPix scheme to pixelize the sphere
  • The telescope's primary reflecting mirrors are a pair
  • that focus the signal onto a pair of
  • secondary reflecting mirrors.
  • shaped for optimal performance: a carbon fibre shell upon a Korex core, thinly-coated with aluminium and silicon oxide.
  • The secondary reflectors transmit the signals to the corrugated feedhorns that sit on a focal plane array box beneath the primary reflectors
  • The receivers are polarization-sensitive differential radiometers measuring the difference between two telescope beams.
  • To avoid collecting Milky Way galaxy foreground signals, the WMAP uses five discrete radio frequency bands
  • The WMAP's trajectory and orbit
  • The WMAP observes in five frequencies, permitting the measurement and subtraction of foreground contamination (from the Milky Way
  • Foreground contamination is removed in several ways
  • First, subtract extant emission maps from the WMAP's measurements; second, use the components' known, spectral values to identify them; third, simultaneously fit the position and spectra data of the foreground emission, using extra data sets
Mars Base

Asteroid Mining is Possible for $2.6 Billion | How to Mine Asteroids | Space.com - 0 views

www.space.com/-mining-feasibility-study.html

sciByte44 Asteroid AsteroidMining

shared by Mars Base on 25 Apr 12 - No Cached
  • mining asteroids
  • new company Planetary Resources, Inc. plans to do
  • The in-depth study of the feasibility of asteroid mining was prepared for the Keck Institute for Space Studies (KISS) at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena.
  • ...17 more annotations...
  • Planetary Resources is still years away from actually snatching up an asteroid and staking a cosmic claim
  • What the study did was show that, for the first time in history, this was now feasible using technology available in this decade
  • it appears feasible to identify, capture and return close to Earth an entire asteroid that is roughly 23 feet (7 meters) wide. This so-called near-Earth asteroid (NEA) would weigh in the neighborhood of 500 tons
  • According to the study
  • Placing a 500-ton asteroid in high lunar orbit would provide a unique, meaningful and affordable destination for astronaut crews in the next decade
  • This disruptive capability would have a positive impact on a wide range of the nation’s human space exploration interests. It would provide a high-value target in cislunar space that would require a human presence to take full advantage of this new resource.
  • Such a venture represents a new synergy between robotic and human missions in which robotic spacecraft retrieve significant quantities of valuable resources for exploitation by astronaut crews to enable human exploration farther out into the solar system.
  • Water or other material extracted from a captured volatile-rich near-Earth asteroid could be used to provide affordable spacecraft shielding against galactic cosmic rays. The extracted water could also be used for propellant to transport a shielded habitat.
  • This undertaking could jump-start an entire in situ resource utilization industry. The availability of a multi-hundred-ton asteroid in lunar orbit could also stimulate the expansion of international cooperation in space as agencies come together to determine how to sample and process raw material from an asteroid.
  • may someday have to deflect a much larger near-Earth object
  • the idea of exploiting the natural resources of asteroids dates back over 100 years.
  • the feasibility of this retrieval concept is made possible by three key developments.
  • Firstly, the ability to discover and characterize an adequate number of sufficiently small near-Earth asteroids for mining.
  • Secondly, there is evolving ability to implement sufficiently powerful solar electric propulsion systems to enable transportation of the captured asteroid.
  • Lastly, the proposed human presence in cislunar space in the 2020s both enables exploration and exploitation of the returned near-Earth asteroid.
  • NASA's findings are put in the public domain, as in the earlier cases of communication, weather and navigation satellites, for use by competing commercial enterprises
  • companies can then work to generate revenues — and pay taxes — while lowering the cost of access to resources for the good of all
Mars Base

Exciting New 'Enceladus Explorer' Mission Proposed to Search for Life - 0 views

www.universetoday.com/...on-proposed-to-search-for-life

scibyte36

shared by Mars Base on 01 Mar 12 - No Cached
  • project sponsored by the German Aerospace Center, Enceladus Explorer, was launched on February 22, 2012, in an attempt to answer the question of whether there could be life on (or rather, inside) Enceladus. The project lays the groundwork for a new, ambitious mission being proposed for some time in the future
Mars Base

China's Yutu Moon Rover Unable to Properly Maneuver Solar Panels - 0 views

www.universetoday.com/...properly-maneuver-solar-panels

scibyte122 scibyte123 ChineseSpaceProgram-Yutu

shared by Mars Base on 04 Mar 14 - No Cached
  • The serious technical malfunction
  • of China’s Yutu moon rover
  • has been identified as an inability to properly maneuver the life giving solar panels
  • ...12 more annotations...
  • “Yutu suffered a control circuit malfunction in its driving unit,” according to a newly published report on March 1 by the state owned Xinhua news agency.
  • prevented Yutu from entering the second dormancy as planned
  • A functioning control circuit is required to lower the rovers mast
  • They must be folded down into a warmed electronics box to shield them from the damaging effects of the Moon’s nightfall when temperatures plunge dramatically to below minus 180 Celsius, or minus 292 degrees Fahrenheit.
  • The panel driving unit also helps maneuver the panels into position to efficiently point to the sun to maximize the electrical output
  • Chinese space engineers engaged in troubleshooting to try and identify and rectify the technical problems in a race against time to find a solution before the start of Lunar Night 3.
  • The 140 kilogram rover was unable to move during Lunar Day 3 due to the mechanical glitches.
  • “Yutu only carried out fixed point observations during its third lunar day
  • it did complete some limited scientific observations. And fortunately the ground penetrating radar, panoramic and infrared imaging equipment all functioned normally.
  • Yutu and the companion Chang’e-3 lander have again gone into sleep mode during Lunar Night 3 on Feb. 22 and Feb 23 respectively, local Beijing time.
  • the issue with the control circuit malfunction in its driving unit remains unresolved and a still threatens the outlook for Yutu’s future exploration.
  • Yutu is now nearing its planned 3 month long life expectancy
Mars Base

Curiosity Demonstrates New Capability to Scan 360 Degrees for Life Giving Water - and i... - 0 views

www.universetoday.com/...giving-water-and-is-widespread

scibyte87 Curiosity

shared by Mars Base on 19 Mar 13 - No Cached
  • The science team guiding NASA’s Curiosity Mars Science Lab (MSL) rover have demonstrated a new capability that significantly enhances the robots capability to scan her surroundings for signs of life giving water
  • from a distance
  • the rover appears to have found that evidence for water at the Gale Crater landing site is also more widespread than prior indications.
  • ...14 more annotations...
  • Mastcam cameras
  • can now also be used as a mineral-detecting and hydration-detecting tool to search 360 degrees around every spot she explores for the ingredients required for habitability and precursors to life
  • Some iron-bearing rocks and minerals can be detected and mapped using the Mastcam’s near-infrared filters
  • scientists used the filter wheels on the Mastcam cameras to run an experiment by taking measurements in different wavelength’s
  • a rock target called ‘Knorr’ in the Yellowknife Bay area were Curiosity is now exploring
  • Researchers found that near-infrared wavelengths on Mastcam can be used as a new analytical technique to detect the presence of some but not all types of hydrated minerals
  • The first use of the Mastcam 34 mm camera to find water was at the rock target called “Knorr.”
  • see elevated hydration signals in the narrow veins that cut many of the rocks in this area
  • These bright veins contain hydrated minerals that are different from the clay minerals in the surrounding rock matrix
  • Mastcam thus serves as an early detective for water without having to drive up to every spot of interest, saving precious time and effort
  • But Mastcam has some limits
  • It is not sensitive to the hydrated phyllosilicates found in the drilling sample at John Klein
  • Mastcam can use the hydration mapping technique to look for targets related to water that correspond to hydrated minerals
  • Yellowknife Bay basin possesses a significant amount of phyllosilicate clay minerals; indicating an environment where Martian microbes could once have thrived in the distant past.
Mars Base

Mars Science Laboratory: Data From NASA Rover's Voyage To Mars Aids Planning - 0 views

mars.jpl.nasa.gov/...index.cfm

scibyte96 Curiosity

shared by Mars Base on 03 Jun 13 - No Cached
  • Curiosity's Radiation Assessment Detector (RAD) is the first instrument to measure the radiation environment during a Mars cruise mission from inside a spacecraft that is similar to potential human exploration spacecraft
  • The findings,
  • indicate radiation exposure for human explorers could exceed NASA's career limit for astronauts if current propulsion systems are used.
  • ...8 more annotations...
  • Two forms of radiation pose potential health risks to astronauts in deep space. One is galactic cosmic rays (GCRs), particles caused by supernova explosions and other high-energy events outside the solar system. The other is solar energetic particles (SEPs) associated with solar flares and coronal mass ejections from the sun
  • NASA has established a three percent increased risk of fatal cancer as an acceptable career limit for its astronauts currently operating in low-Earth orbit
  • The RAD data showed
  • Only about three percent of the radiation dose was associated with solar particles because of a relatively quiet solar cycle and the shielding provided by the spacecraft
  • In terms of accumulated dose, it's like getting a whole-body CT scan once every five or six days
  • Current spacecraft shield much more effectively against SEPs than GCRs. To protect against the comparatively low energy of typical SEPs, astronauts might need to move into havens with extra shielding on a spacecraft or on the Martian surface, or employ other countermeasures
  • GCRs tend to be highly energetic, highly penetrating particles that are not stopped by the modest shielding provided by a typical spacecraft.
  • RAD data collected during Curiosity's science mission will continue to inform plans to protect astronauts as NASA designs future missions to Mars in the coming decades.
Mars Base

Could the Next Planetary Rover Come from Canada? - 0 views

www.universetoday.com/...anetary-rover-come-from-canada

scibyte70 rover

shared by Mars Base on 29 Oct 12 - No Cached
  • Canadian Space Agency is well known for its robotics but they’ve recently expanded from robotic arms to building prototypes for five new rovers, designed for future lunar and Mars missions
  • range from microrovers to full-sized science missions and range in size from 30 kg up to 900 kg.
  • the Lunar Exploration Light Rover, is designed to carry a scientific payload and can be fitted with a robotic arm. It has a range of 15 km, can be operated remotely, or can be used to carry astronauts across a planetary surface.
  • ...14 more annotations...
  • two Micro-Rover prototypes, at 40 kg and 30 kg., are designed to be operated in conjunction with larger rovers, and can be tethered to them and lowered into otherwise inaccessible areas.
  • On the Moon, permanently shadowed craters provide many interesting areas to find water and other volatiles
  • craters have steep slopes making it difficult and risky for a large rover
  • sending a micro-rover tethered to its mother one gives us the ability to explore the bottom of these craters with a minimum risk.
  • they are very slow so it is more efficient to have them on a larger rover to cover long distance and deploy them when needed.
  • The micro-rovers can also be used to work alongside astronauts, to gain access to small spaces like caves
  • e rovers should be mission-ready by about 2020, and NASA is already interested.
  • designs are intended to fit in with those types of activities.
  • NASA has an experiment under consideration that entails digging up soil on the Moon and making hydrogen and oxygen out of it
  • Canadarm was a fixture on the Space Shuttles and made it possible to do things like deploying satellites like the Hubble Space Telescope
  • instrumental in building the International Space Station
  • CSA also built the huge Canadarm 2 and Dextre, the highly dexterous dual-armed robot, both of which reside on the International Space Station
  • CSA contributed a robotic arm and other equipment to Curiosity
  • e CSA doesn’t anticipate any other rover designs, these 5 prototypes could be focused “on more specific applications such as in-situ resource utilization or science,
Mars Base

Opportunity rover rolling again after fifth Mars winter - 0 views

phys.org/...rtunity-rover-mars-winter.html

scibyte46 mars opportunity rover

shared by Mars Base on 10 May 12 - No Cached
  • NASA's Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity drove about 12 feet (3.67 meters) on May 8, 2012, after spending 19 weeks working in one place while solar power was too low for driving during the Martian winter.
  • While at Greeley Haven for the past 19 weeks, Opportunity used the spectrometers and microscopic imager on its robotic arm to inspect more than a dozen targets within reach on the outcrop
  • Radio Doppler signals from the stationary rover during the winter months served an investigation of the interior of Mars by providing precise information about the planet's rotation
  • ...13 more annotations...
  • Opportunity will look back with its panoramic camera to acquire multi-filter imaging of the surface targets it studied on Greeley Haven.
  • rover team will also check that the power supply still looks sufficient with the rover at a reduced tilt.
  • first drive since Dec. 26, 2011, took the rover about 12 feet (3.67 meters) northwest and downhill on Tuesday, May 8.
  • exploring the Meridiani region of Mars since landing in January 2004
  • arrived at the Cape York section of the rim of Endeavour Crater in August 2011
  • studying rock and soil targets on Cape York since then.
  • next goal is a few meters farther north on Cape York, at a bright-looking patch of what may be dust
  • haven't been able to see much dust in Meridiani
  • Endeavour Crater offers Opportunity a setting for plenty of productive
  • crater is 14 miles (22 kilometers) in diameter
  • Unless wind removes some dust from Opportunity's solar array, allowing more sunlight to reach the solar cells, the rover will need to work during the next few weeks at locations with no southward slope
  • kept a northward tilt of about 15 degrees in recent months at its winter haven
  • favorably angled toward the winter sun low in the northern sky
Mars Base

Self-Propelled Floating Robot Navigates an Arizona Lake | Space Exploration | Space.com - 0 views

www.space.com/ot-navigates-arizona-lake.html

scibyte39 robot MarMedia

shared by Mars Base on 21 Mar 12 - No Cached
  • floating robot made to land on a lake, propel itself around and gather data about the water and atmosphere as it goes
  • built it for future lake-landing missions to one of Saturn's moons, Titan.
  • could also be used for science and military missions on Earth,
  • ...12 more annotations...
  • weighs about 100 pounds,
  • In the video, the robot turns some circles and navigates on the lake's surface.
  • can carry 150 pounds' worth of sensing equipment
  • can be controlled from anywhere around the world using an Internet connection
  • working on making the craft more autonomous
  • wants to create data-gathering robots that have a sense of curiosity
  • investigate certain places, learn from what they find and use that information to decide what to explore next. 
  • an improved version
  • could help officials survey the cleanup of dangerously polluted water in munitions dumps and mines
  • also could help ocean scientists gather data about currents and pollution.
  • For a mission to Titan
  • NASA is interested in rovers that can land on liquid rather than on solid ground
Mars Base

Veteran Space Station Crew to Launch Into Orbit Tonight | Space.com - 0 views

www.space.com/launch-into-orbit-tonight.html

scibyte54 iss

shared by Mars Base on 14 Jul 12 - No Cached
  • July 14
  • NASA astronaut Sunita Williams, Russian cosmonaut Yuri Malenchenko, and Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency spaceflyer Akihiko Hoshide 
  • part of the space station's Expedition 32 mission, and is due to stay for about four months.
  • ...10 more annotations...
  • Three veteran space travelers from three different countries are gearing up to launch toward the International Space Station
  • will join the three spaceflyers already living on the space station: commander Gennady Padalka of Russia, his cosmonaut colleague Sergei Revin, and NASA astronaut Joe Acaba, who have all been in space since May.
  • Malenchenko: Malenchenko, 50, is a colonel in the Russian Air Force and will command the Soyuz spacecraft for Russia's Federal Space Agency. He is making his third trip
  • first long-duration spaceflight aboard Russia's Mir space station.
  • Sunita Williams: Williams, 46, hails from Needham, Mass., and is a U.S. Navy captain making her second long-duration spaceflight
  • Williams currently holds the world record for most spacewalks by a woman (four) and the most time in space by a female astronaut (195 days
  • Akhiko Hoshide: Hoshide, 44, is an astronaut with the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency and is making his second spaceflight
  • Hoshide first flew to the space station in 2008
  • to deliver Japan's huge Kibo laboratory module to the International Space Station.
  • Through the remainder of this year, 200 experiments will be performed
Mars Base

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

www.space.com/cv-spacecraft-exploration.html

scibyte29 NASA Orion capsule multimedia

shared by Mars Base on 13 Jan 12 - No Cached
  • 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)
  • ...10 more annotations...
  • 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

areo.info: PanCam true color images from Spirit and Opportunity Mars Exploration Rovers - 1 views

areo.info/mer

scibyte58 Curiosity

shared by Mars Base on 09 Aug 12 - No Cached
  • Every Martian day (Sol) new raw images are downloaded
  • raw images are black & white images, each taken through a colored glass (filter) by the Panoramic Camera on the Rover
  • using 3 filters, each one only letting pass red, green and blue light, a true color image can be created
  • ...16 more annotations...
  • in principle the same as every common photo or video camera creates color images
  • Rover Panoramic Camera differs from normal digital cameras by having filters with smaller bandwidth resulting in images with appear as having too much color saturation. To counteract this effect a special but simple processing
  • combining the black & white images from two filters a visual effect is created as the image would have been taken through one filter with wider bandwidth
  • is a good approximation to
  • Rover Panoramic Camera contains more than only red, green and blue filters there are more combinations available to create color images
  • images created with these additional filters (L2, L3 and L7) show slightly different colorizations as L2 and L3 pass only light of near infrared wavelengths and L7 pass only violet light
  • MER2RGB-process described above the overall colors approximate true colors sufficiently. That means, the soil looks still "Earth-like" and the sky is still blue to white.
  • How precise the true colors are reproduced
  • a 100% precise reproduction is not possible as the human visual system can only be approximated by technical devices
  • some scientist claim, that it is impossible to recreate the Martian colors
  • on Mars the same Sun is shining as on Earth with just reduced intensity by 40% and the same optical and physical laws are valid
  • Color is not always 100% correct, but the general colorization is represented so we can get the impression how it would look like on that location when viewing it with our own eyes
  • controversy about
  • colorization since the first color image was taken by the Viking Lander in 1976
  • color calibration problem seems to be unsolvable
  • from Spirit and Opportuniy Mars Exploration Rover
Mars Base

10 Amazing Things NASA's Huge Mars Rover Can Do | NASA, Mars Science Laboratory & Curio... - 0 views

www.space.com/s-rover-curiosity-science.html

scibyte22 Curiosity

shared by Mars Base on 20 Nov 11 - No Cached
  • Mast Camera (MastCam)
  • capture high-resolution color pictures and video of the Martian landscape, which scientists will study and laypeople will gawk at
  • Mars Hand Lens Imager (MAHLI)
  • ...43 more annotations...
  • will function much like a high-powered magnifying glass
  • instrument will take color pictures of features as tiny as 12.5 microns — smaller than the width of a human hair
  • MAHLI sits on the end of Curiosity's five-jointed, 7-foot (2.1-meter) robotic arm
  • Mars Descent Imager (MARDI)
  • small camera located on Curiosity's main body, will record video of the rover's descent to the Martian surface
  • will click on a mile or two above the ground, as soon as Curiosity jettisons its heat shield. The instrument will then take video at five frames per second until the rover touches down. The footage will help the MSL team plan Curiosity's Red Planet rovings, and it should also provide information about the geological context of the landing site, the 100-mile-wide
  • Sample Analysis at Mars (SAM)
  • makes up about half of the rover's science payload.
  • a suite of three separate instruments — a mass spectrometer, a gas chromatograph and a laser spectrometer
  • will search for carbon-containing compounds, the building blocks of life as we know it
  • look for other elements associated with life on Earth, such as hydrogen, oxygen and nitrogen
  • The rover's robotic arm will drop samples into SAM via an inlet on the rover's exterior
  • Chemistry and Mineralogy (CheMin)
  • CheMin will identify different types of minerals on Mars and quantify their abundance
  • will help scientists better understand past environmental conditions on the Red Planet
  • CheMin has an inlet on Curiosity's exterior to accept samples delivered by the rover's robotic arm
  • will shine a fine X-ray beam through the sample, identifying minerals' crystalline structures based on how the X-rays diffract
  • Chemistry and Camera (ChemCam)
  • This instrument will fire a laser at Martian rocks from up to 30 feet (9 meters) away and analyze the composition of the vaporized bits
  • help the mission team determine from afar whether or not they want to send the rover over to investigate a particular landform
  • The laser sits on Curiosity's mast, along with a camera and a small telescope
  • Three spectrographs sit in the rover's body, connected to the mast components by fiber optics
  • spectrographs will analyze the light emitted by excited electrons in the vaporized rock samples
  • Alpha Particle X-Ray Spectrometer (APXS)
  • sits at the end of Curiosity's arm, will measure the abundances of various chemical elements in Martian rocks and dirt
  • APXS will shoot out X-rays and helium nuclei. This barrage will knock electrons in the sample out of their orbits, causing a release of X-rays. Scientists will be able to identify elements based on the characteristic energies of these emitted X-rays
  • Dynamic Albedo of Neutrons (DAN)
  • located near the back of Curiosity's main body, will help the rover search for ice and water-logged minerals beneath the Martian surface
  • The instrument will fire beams of neutrons at the ground, then note the speed at which these particles travel when they bounce back. Hydrogen atoms tend to slow neutrons down, so an abundance of sluggish neutrons would signal underground water or ice
  • should be able to map out water concentrations as low as 0.1 percent at depths up to 6 feet (2 m).
  • Radiation Assessment Detector (RAD)
  • instrument will measure and identify high-energy radiation of all types on the Red Planet, from fast-moving protons to gamma rays
  • designed specifically to help prepare for future human exploration of Mars
  • will allow scientists to determine just how much radiation an astronaut would be exposed to on Mars
  • Rover Environmental Monitoring Station (REMS)
  • partway up Curiosity's mast, is a Martian weather station
  • measure atmospheric pressure, humidity, wind speed and direction, air temperature, ground temperature and ultraviolet radiation.
  • integrated into daily and seasonal reports
  • MSL Entry, Descent and Landing Instrumentation (MEDLI)
  • MEDLI isn't one of Curiosity's 10 instruments
  • will measure the temperatures and pressures the heat shield experiences as the MSL spacecraft streaks through the Martian sky
  • will tell engineers how well the heat shield, and their models of the spacecraft's trajectory, performed
  • data to improve designs for future Mars-bound spacecraft
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