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Mars Base

Spaceflight Now | Atlas Launch Report | Mars Science Laboratory begins cruise to red pl... - 0 views

www.spaceflightnow.com/...av028

scibyte23 Curiosity

shared by Mars Base on 28 Nov 11 - No Cached
  • The mission got underway on time at 10:02 a.m. EST (GMT-5)
  • from launch complex 41 at the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station
  • Atlas 5 blasted off with nearly 2 million pounds of thrust
  • ...12 more annotations...
  • Equipped with four solid-fuel strap-on boosters for additional power, the 1.2-million-pound
  • Four-and-a-half minutes after takeoff, the first stage dropped away
  • hydrogen-fueled RL10 engine at the base of the Centaur second stage ignited
  • parking orbit 11-and-a-half minutes after launch.
  • Telemetry from the rocket was spotty during a 20-minute coast to the Mars departure point
  • Earth-escape velocity of 22,500 mph
  • Mars Science Laboratory and its solar-powered interplanetary cruise stage separated from the Centaur
  • During the eight-and-a-half-month cruise to Mars
  • test the rover's instruments
  • adjust the craft's trajectory
  • tweak the control software
  • Curiosity will reach the red planet on Aug. 5
Mars Base

[Zenit] Launch of Phobos-Grunt Spacecraft & Yinghuo-1 Space Probe - YouTube - 0 views

www.youtube.com/watch

scibyte23 Phobos-Grunt

shared by Mars Base on 28 Nov 11 - No Cached
  • Mars Base on 28 Nov 11
     
    Launch Video
Mars Base

collectSPACE - news - "NASA's Curiosity rover flying to Mars with Obama's, others' auto... - 0 views

www.collectspace.com/...news-112611a.html

Curiosity scibyte23

shared by Mars Base on 28 Nov 11 - No Cached
  • on the rover's deck
  • is a plaque inscribed with the signatures of President Barack Obama and Vice President Joe Biden, in addition to other administration and NASA leaders
  • continues a more than 40-year tradition of sending presidential plaques on planetary missions
  • ...13 more annotations...
  • Elsewhere on the rover is the autograph of the 14-year-old girl from Kansas who gave Curiosity its name
  • millions of digital signatures from members of the public who signed up through NASA
  • NASA's Mars program leaders round out the autographs on the plate
  • It's on the rover in the front left corner
  • it will be visible and that at some point will be photographed on Mars by Curiosity's camera-topped mast
  • "When we made the request to the White House for permission to launch, we took this along with us and said, 'Oh by the way, if you sign this we will stick it on the rover.'"
  • Clara Ma, who won NASA's naming contest with the suggestion of "Curiosity," signed the rover in 2009
  • As part of her prize, she was invited to the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California, where in June 2009 she donned a "bunny suit" to step into a clean room and sign her name on the rover
  • Silicon chips attached to Curiosity's deck bear the digital signatures of people who submitted their names through NASA's website for going to Mars aboard the rover. Each chip is about the size of a dime
  • More than 1.24 million names were submitted online
  • etched into silicon using an electron-beam machine used for fabricating micro-devices at JPL
  • more than 20,000 visitors to locations of work on the rover at JPL and Kennedy Space Center wrote their names on pages, which were scanned and reproduced at microscopic scale on another chip
  • As Curiosity drives over the martian terrain, the groves in each wheel will form a string of 'dash' and 'dot' imprints — morse code that will spell out "J-P-L."
Mars Base

Data beamed from Russia Mars probe deciphered - 0 views

www.marsdaily.com/...Mars_probe_deciphered_999.html

Phobos-Grunt scibyte23

shared by Mars Base on 28 Nov 11 - No Cached
  • Nov 25
  • Russian specialists have deciphered telemetry data received
  • have yet to find out the cause of its erratic behavior
  • ...1 more annotation...
  • telemetric data from the spacecraft could help identify the causes of the failure and make adjustments for future interplanetary missions
Mars Base

Short Sharp Science: Phobos-Grunt could be rerouted to visit an asteroid - 0 views

www.newscientist.com/...os-mission-phones-home-as.html

scibyte23 Phobos-Grunt

shared by Mars Base on 28 Nov 11 - No Cached
  • missed the window of opportunity for its flight to Mars
  • the probe could still be used in another research mission
  • Phobos-Grunt mission scientist Alexander Zakharov said that if the spacecraft is fully operational, the best scientific mission for it would be to study a near-earth asteroid.
Mars Base

Venerable Voyager 2 Spacecraft Gets a Tune-up 14 billion Kilometers From Earth - 0 views

www.universetoday.com/...-billion-kilometers-from-earth

scibyte23

shared by Mars Base on 17 Nov 11 - No Cached
  • engineers at JPL sent commands across 14 billion kilometers (9 billion miles) out to Voyager 2
  • enabling it to switch to the backup set of thrusters that controls the roll of the spacecraft
  • This will reduce the amount of power that the 34-year-old probe needs to operate,
  • ...11 more annotations...
  • hopefully — the power to operate for at least another decade
  • The move was a little risky
  • backup roll thrusters were previously unused
  • been idle and out in the harsh environment of space for 32 years
  • Voyager 2 will save about 11.8 watts of electric power by turning off the heater that kept the hydrazine fuel to the primary thrusters warm
  • Voyager 1 and 2 are each equipped with six sets, or pairs, of thrusters to control the pitch, yaw and roll motions of the spacecraft. With this latest command, both spacecraft are now using all three sets of their backup thrusters
  • The primary roll thrusters now turned off fired more than 318,000 times. Voyager 1 changed to the backup for this same component after 353,000 pulses in 2004
  • energy generated by Voyager 2′s Plutonium 238 nuclear power source continues to decline, and is now down to about 270 watts from the 470 watts being produced when the spacecraft launched in 1977
  • at the rate of decay, the Voyager spacecraft won’t have sufficient electric power to its instruments sometime by the mid-2020′s.
  • Using solar power for a spacecraft traveling beyond Jupiter is impractical
  • This latest tune-up will hopefully get Voyager 2 a little farther while she’s still able to communicate with Earth
Mars Base

Consolation Prize for Phobos-Grunt? Experts Consider Possibilities for Sending Spacecra... - 0 views

www.universetoday.com/...spacecraft-to-moon-or-asteroid

scibyte23 Phobos-Grunt

shared by Mars Base on 19 Nov 11 - No Cached
  • Phobos-Grunt could be sent to orbit the Moon
  • or may be even an asteroid
  • Theoretically, Grunt’s lander could set down on any celestial body with a gravitational force similar to that of Phobos
  • ...3 more annotations...
  • If any such asteroid candidate exists
  • return capsule back to Earth might be utilized to deliver a sample of the asteroid
  • November 18
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