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Mars Base

Spectacular Liftoff Thrusts China's First Rover 'Yutu' to the Moon - 0 views

www.universetoday.com/...s-first-rover-yutu-to-the-moon

scibyte111 ChineseSpaceProgram

shared by Mars Base on 02 Dec 13 - No Cached
  • China successfully launched its first ever lunar rover bound for the Moon’s surface aboard a Long March rocket
  • at 1:30 a.m. Beijing local time, Dec. 2, 2013 (12:30 p.m. EST, Dec. 1) from the Xichang Satellite Launch Center in southwest China.
  • The name for the ‘Yutu’ rover – which translates as ‘Jack Rabbit’ – was chosen after a special naming contest involving a worldwide poll and voting to select the best name
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  • ‘Yutu’ stems from a Chinese fairy tale, in which the goddess Chang’e flew off to the moon taking her little pet Jade rabbit with her.
  • The Chang’e 3 lander will fire thrusters to enter lunar orbit on Dec. 6.
  • It is due to make a powered descent to the lunar surface on Dec. 14, firing thrusters at an altitude of 15 km (9 mi) for touchdown in a preselected area called the Bay of Rainbows or Sinus Iridum region.
  • If successful, the Chang’e 3 mission will mark the first soft landing on the Moon since the Soviet Union’s unmanned Luna 24 sample return vehicle landed nearly four decades ago back in 1976.
  • Jack Rabbit measures 150 centimeters high and weighs approximately 120 kilograms
  • The rover and lander are equipped with multiple cameras, spectrometers, an optical telescope, radar and other sensors to investigate the lunar surface and composition
  • The rover is expected to continue operating for at least three months
  • The next step will be an unmanned lunar sample return mission, perhaps around 2020
Mars Base

India's First Mars Probe 'MOM' Blasts Free of Earth Joining MAVEN in Race to Red Planet - 0 views

www.universetoday.com/...ng-maven-in-race-to-red-planet

scibyte111 India-MarsOrbiterMission

shared by Mars Base on 02 Dec 13 - No Cached
  • India’s first ever Mars probe ‘MOM’ successfully fired its main engine
  • Dec. 1)
  • to begin her nearly yearlong momentous voyage to the Red Planet.
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  • Indian space engineers initiated the 440 Newton liquid fueled engine firing precisely as planned at 00:49 hrs (IST) on Sunday, Dec. 1, 2013 during a critical nail-biting burn lasting some 22 minutes
  • MOM is nicknamed ‘Mangalyaan’ – which in Hindi means ‘Mars craft
Mars Base

Comet ISON faded again | Human World | EarthSky - 0 views

earthsky.org/...n-might-be-spectacular-in-2013

scibyte111 CometISON

shared by Mars Base on 01 Dec 13 - No Cached
  • NOVEMBER 29, 2013.
  • Comet ISON rounded the sun yesterday at 18:45 UTC/ 1:45 p.m. EST, and appeared to be disintegrating
  • Then yesterday evening the comet started appearing brighter again
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  • NOVEMBER 30, 2013
Mars Base

Remnants Suggest Comet ISON Still Going: Scientific American - 0 views

www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm

scibyte111 CometISON

shared by Mars Base on 01 Dec 13 - No Cached
  • as ISON got closer to the star
  • Analyses of light captured by NASA’s twin STEREO spacecraft seemed to show the comet growing dimmer
  • Next, pictures from NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory, which should have captured ISON on its closest approach to the Sun, showed absolutely nothing
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  • Then the European–US Solar and Heliospheric Observatory spotted a faint glimmer on the other side of the Sun, on a trajectory where ISON would have been expected to appear
  • ISON is probably the most observed comet ever
Mars Base

ScienceShot: Comet ISON Could Be No More | Science/AAAS | News - 0 views

news.sciencemag.org/...ot-comet-ison-could-be-no-more

scibyte111 CometISON

shared by Mars Base on 28 Nov 13 - No Cached
  • ISON was
  • on course to swing by the sun less than one solar diameter above the sun’s searing surface on 28 November, Thanksgiving Day in the United States
Mars Base

SOHO shows new images of Comet ISON - 0 views

phys.org/...11-soho-images-comet-ison.html

scibyte111 CometISON

shared by Mars Base on 28 Nov 13 - No Cached
  • scientists have been watching through many observatories to see if the comet has already broken up under the intense heat and gravitational forces of the sun
  • The comet is too far away to discern how many pieces it is in, so instead researchers carefully measure how bright it is,
  • Less light can sometimes mean that more of the material has boiled off and disappeared, perhaps pointing to a disintegrated comet
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  • a disintegrating comet sometimes gives off more light, at least temporarily, so researchers look at the comet's pattern of behavior over the previous few days to work out what it may be doing.
  • At times observations have suggested ISON was getting dimmer and might already be in pieces
  • over Nov. 26-27, 2013, the comet once again brightened. In the early hours of Nov. 27, the comet appeared in the view of the European Space Agency/NASA mission the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory in the Large Angle and Spectrometric Coronagraph instrument
  • If the comet has already broken up, it should disintegrate completely as it makes its slingshot around the sun
  • This would provide a great opportunity for scientists to see the insides of the comet, and better understand its composition
Mars Base

SpaceX Aborts Thanksgiving Rocket Launch Due to Engine Trouble | Space.com - 0 views

www.space.com/hanksgiving-rocket-launch.html

scibyte111 SpaceX

shared by Mars Base on 01 Dec 13 - No Cached
  • SpaceX's Falcon 9 rocket fired its engines and was moments away from liftoff from Cape Canaveral
  • but the commercial booster aborted the launch after computers detected the engines were too slow building up thrust.
  • Engineers raced to understand and resolve the problem, but they could not get comfortable enough to attempt the launch again
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  • Officials had not announced a new target launch date
  • SpaceX was targeting liftoff of the 22-story rocket at 5:39 p.m. EST (2239 GMT) Thursday, aiming to achieve the first Thanksgiving Day launch from Florida's Space Coast since 1959
  • The launch was pushed back to Thursday after multiple technical problems thwarted an initial launch attempt Monday
  • The rocket's mission is to place the SES 8 television broadcasting satellite into orbit
  • e highest altitude ever achieved by a SpaceX launch.
  • the flight is critical to SpaceX's future in the commercial launch market, in which it competes against stalwart launch vehicles from Europe and Russia to haul large telecommunications satellites into orbit.
  • The Falcon 9 pressurized its propellant tanks, switched to internal power and ignited its nine Merlin 1D first stage engines a few seconds before the appointed launch time
  • the Falcon 9's computer-controlled countdown sequencer recognized a problem and called off the launch
  • As engineers continued to study the problem, SpaceX elected to restart the countdown to preserve a chance to launch Thursday
  • Ultimately, however, SpaceX said they could not get comfortable with the issue in time and ordered another hold with less than a minute left in the day's second countdown.
Mars Base

India's MOM Mars Probe Images Earth's Children Prior to Nail Biting Red Planet Insertion - 0 views

www.universetoday.com/...il-biting-red-planet-insertion

scibyte111 India-MarsOrbiterMission

shared by Mars Base on 28 Nov 13 - No Cached
  • First ever image of Earth Taken by Mars Color Camera aboard India’s Mars Orbiter Mission
  • age is focused on the Indian subcontinent and captured from an altitude of 70,000 kilometers. Credit: ISRO
  • image was taken on Nov. 20 at around 1350 hrs (IST) from a height of almost 70,000 km above earth and has a spatial resolution of 3.5 km, said ISRO
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  • The image also gives a rather good approximation of what MOM’s color camera will actually see
  • since the probe will enter a similarly highly elliptical orbit around Mars
Mars Base

A Sunny Outlook for NASA Kepler's Second Light | NASA - 0 views

www.nasa.gov/...-for-nasa-keplers-second-light

scibyte110 scibyte111 Kepler

shared by Mars Base on 26 Nov 13 - No Cached
  • A repurposed Kepler Space telescope may soon start searching the sky again.
  • A new mission concept, dubbed K2, would continue Kepler's search for other worlds, and introduce new opportunities to observe star clusters, young and old stars, active galaxies and supernovae
  • In May, the Kepler spacecraft lost the second of four gyroscope-like reaction wheels, which are used to precisely point the spacecraft, ending new data collection for the original mission
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  • required three functioning wheels to maintain the precision pointing necessary to detect the signal of small Earth-sized exoplanets
  • With the failure of a second reaction wheel, the spacecraft can no longer precisely point at the mission's original field of view. The culprit is none other than our own sun
  • pushes the spacecraft around
  • the pressure exerted when the photons of sunlight strike the spacecraft
  • Without a third wheel to help counteract the solar pressure, the spacecraft's ultra-precise pointing capability cannot be controlled in all directions.
  • Kepler mission and Ball Aerospace engineers have developed an innovative way of recovering pointing stability by maneuvering the spacecraft so that the solar pressure is evenly distributed across the surfaces of the spacecraft
  • To achieve this level of stability, the orientation of the spacecraft must be nearly parallel to its orbital path around the sun
  • This technique of using the sun as the 'third wheel' to control pointing is currently being tested on the spacecraft and early results are already coming i
  • During a pointing performance test in late October, a full frame image of the space telescope's full field of view was captured showing part of the constellation Sagittarius
  • Photons of light from a distant star field were collected over a 30-minute period and produced an image quality within five percent of the primary mission image quality
  • Additional testing is underway to demonstrate the ability to maintain this level of pointing control for days and weeks.
  • The K2 mission concept has been presented to NASA Headquarters
  • A decision to proceed to the 2014 Senior Review – a biannual assessment of operating missions – and propose for budget to fly K2 is expected by the end of 2013
  • For four years, the space telescope simultaneously and continuously monitored the brightness of more than 150,000 stars, recording a measurement every 30 minutes.
Mars Base

Mars Science Laboratory: Curiosity Resumes Science After Analysis of Voltage Issue - 0 views

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

scibyte110 Curiosity

shared by Mars Base on 26 Nov 13 - No Cached
  • Activities over the weekend included use of Curiosity's robotic arm to deliver portions of powdered rock to a laboratory inside the rover
  • The powder has been stored in the arm since the rover collected it by drilling into the target rock "Cumberland" six months ago
  • Several portions of the powder have already been analyzed. The laboratory has flexibility for examining duplicate samples in different ways
  • ...12 more annotations...
  • The decision to resume science activities resulted from the success of work to diagnose the likely root cause of a Nov. 17 change in voltage
  • made a list of potential causes, and then determined which we could cross off the list, one by one
  • Science operations were suspended for six days while this analysis took priority
  • The likely cause is an internal short in Curiosity's power source, the Multi-Mission Radioisotope Thermoelectric Generator
  • this short does not affect operation of the power source or the rover
  • Similar generators on other spacecraft, including NASA's Cassini at Saturn, have experienced shorts with no loss of capability
  • Testing of another Multi-Mission Radioisotope Thermoelectric Generator over many years found no loss of capability in the presence of these types of internal shorts
  • early Nov. 23
  • that the rover had returned to its pre-Nov. 17 voltage level. This reversal is consistent with their diagnosis of an internal short in the generator on Nov. 17, and the voltage could change again
  • analysis work to determine the cause of the voltage change gained an advantage from an automated response by the rover's onboard software when it detected the voltage change
  • The rover stepped up the rate at which it recorded electrical variables, to eight times per second from the usual once per minute, and transmitted that engineering data in its next communication with Earth
  • In subsequent days, the rover performed diagnostic activities commanded by the team, such as powering on some backup hardware to rule out the possibility of short circuits in certain sensors
Mars Base

Mars Science Laboratory: Rover Team Working to Diagnose Electrical Issue - 0 views

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

scibyte110 Curiosity

shared by Mars Base on 26 Nov 13 - No Cached
  • Science observations by NASA's Mars rover Curiosity have been suspended for a few days while engineers run tests to check possible causes of a voltage change detected on Nov. 17
  • "The vehicle is safe and stable, fully capable of operating in its present condition, but we are taking the precaution of investigating what may be a soft short," said Mars Science Laboratory Project Manager
  • The team detected a change in the voltage difference between the chassis and the 32-volt power bus that distributes electricity to systems throughout the rover
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  • A "soft" short is a leak through something that's partially conductive of electricity, rather than a hard short such as one electrical wire contacting another
  • A soft short can cause such a voltage change
  • The rover's electrical system is designed with the flexibility to work properly throughout that range and more -- a design feature called "floating bus."
  • Curiosity had already experienced one soft short on landing day in August 2012
  • The level had been about 11 volts since landing day, and is now about 4 volts
  • That one was related to explosive-release devices used for deployments shortly before and after the landing
  • It lowered the bus-to-chassis voltage from about 16 volts to about 11 volts but has not affected subsequent rover operations
  • Soft shorts reduce the level of robustness for tolerating other shorts in the future, and they can indicate a possible problem in whichever component is the site of the short
  • Operations planned for Curiosity for the next few days are designed to check some of the possible root causes for the voltage change
  • Analysis so far has determined that the change appeared intermittently three times during the hours before it became persistent
  • The electrical issue did not cause the rover to enter a safe-mode status, in which most activities automatically cease pending further instructions, and there is no indication the issue is related to a computer reboot that triggered a "safe-mode" earlier this month
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