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Spacecraft

RESEARCH WATCH

Eureka! NASA strikes water on lunar surface

By Darren Quick

19:16 November 17, 2009 PST

The ejecta plume about 20 seconds after the LCROSS impact (Images: NASA)

Scientists have long speculated about the source of significant quantities of hydrogen that have been observed at the moon's lunar poles, and just a few months ago NASA announced that water molecules were indeed present, but in relatively small amounts. Now the Lunar CRater Observing and Sensing Satellite (LCROSS) that was employed to shed some more light on the presence of water on the moon, looks like it has done just that with preliminary data indicating the mission successfully uncovered water in a permanently-shadowed crater. Read More

SCIENCE AND EDUCATION

NASA IBEX spacecraft shows where we sit in the galaxy

By Jeff Salton

01:26 October 16, 2009 PDT

NASA's Interstallar Boundary Explorer (IBEX) has sent back data to scientists who were abl...

Move over Google Maps, NASA's Interstellar Boundary Explorer (IBEX) spacecraft has given scientists the tools to construct the first comprehensive sky map of our solar system and where it resides in the Milky Way galaxy. NASA says the new view will change the way researchers study the interaction between our galaxy and sun. Read More

AERO GIZMO

Pentagon looking for someone to pick up the trash in space

By Michael Mulcahy

18:05 October 8, 2009 PDT

The dangers of space junk aren't limited to space - occasionally it falls out of the sky, ...

The Soviet Union launched the very first earth-orbiting satellite in 1957, and the world looked on in awe as Sputnik flashed through the sky. Fifty years later, you’d be lucky to see anything. The U.S. Space Surveillance Network says there are almost 20,000 man-made objects in orbit, ninety-four percent of which are non-functional debris. And that’s not counting the hundreds of thousands of bits of junk too small to track. Little wonder the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) has put out a call for someone – anyone – to come up with a way to effectively remove orbital debris. Read More

AERO GIZMO

What, exactly, makes a rocket fuel environmentally friendly?

By Darren Quick

22:52 October 7, 2009 PDT

The research team from Purdue University holding a rocket launched earlier this year using...

Automobiles aren’t the only vehicles turning to more environmentally friendly fuel sources. As we reported recently, NASA are testing a new type of rocket propellant made of a mixture of water and “nanoscale aluminum” powder they claim could provide a cleaner way to launch rockets, power long-distance space missions and generate hydrogen for fuel cells. A number of readers wondered, not unreasonably, what qualifies a rocket fuel as eco-friendly. We now have a few more answers. Read More

RESEARCH WATCH

Femtoseconds lasers will help formation flying in space

By Dario Borghino

14:26 October 6, 2009 PDT

The X-Ray Observatory set for launch after 2020 might be the spacecrafts to use femtosecon...

Theoretical work commissioned to the National Physical Laboratory (NPL) by the European Space Agency has recently concluded that lasers capable of generating extremely short pulses — known as "femtosecond comb lasers" — could be of great help in measuring the distance between two or more spacecraft to an accuracy of just a few microns, an essential component to formation flying space missions scheduled for the next decades. Read More

SCIENCE AND EDUCATION

Water found on the moon – what will it mean for the future?

By Jude Garvey

22:18 September 24, 2009 PDT

Data from three space missions has shown that water molecules exist on the moon's surface
...

Newspapers and websites around the world are buzzing with the news that water and hydroxyl (hydrogen and oxygen) molecules have been found in the polar regions of the moon. NASA announced yesterday that instruments aboard three separate spacecraft revealed that water molecules were present, although in relatively small amounts. It was also discovered that hydroxyl also existed in the lunar soil. Although the amount of water found is small, it is exciting in terms of potential for the possibilities of establishing a lunar base and even for creating spacecraft fuel. Read More

TELECOMMUNICATIONS

LRO - a giant leap for data transfer from the moon

By Jeff Salton

22:52 August 27, 2009 PDT

NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter hitches a ride with an Atlas V/Centaur rocket from Cap...

How is it that my cell phone still loses connection in the city and my laptop barely gets the Internet in the mountains, yet NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) can keep in touch with Earth from 238,800 miles away, 24 hours a day? Additionally, LRO can transmit 461GB of data per day (the equivalent amount of information found in a huge library), sending this information at a rate of up to 100Mb/s, while my so-called high-speed Internet service struggles to provide about 1-3Mb/s. Obviously, it’s not what you know but who you know! Read More

SCIENCE AND EDUCATION

NASA confirms building blocks of life found on comets

By Paul Lester

18:40 August 19, 2009 PDT

Artist’s conception of Stardust flying through gas and dust from comet Wild 2 (Image...

Fresh evidence has been revealed to support the theory that life on Earth began in space. NASA’s Stardust probe, a specially-designed comet ‘chaser’, successfully collected particles shed from Comet Wild 2 in 2004, and NASA scientists have since confirmed for the first time that amino acids can indeed be found on these extraterrestrial bodies. Read More

SCIENCE AND EDUCATION

The search for ice on the moon heats up

By Jeff Salton

19:58 August 2, 2009 PDT

An artist's impression of the LRO spacecraft taking hi-res images of the moon's surface (I...

Special sensing technology developed by Raytheon for the US Navy's miniaturized radio frequency system is aboard NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO), one of two spacecraft hoping to find photographic evidence that the polar regions of the moon contain ice. Until now, man hasn’t been able to confirm if there is ice on the moon because it is thought to exist only in permanently dark patches, or poles, on the lunar landscape – which means we haven’t been able to take detailed photos yet. NASA in particular is interested in determining the extent to which lunar ice exists, if at all, as the agency prepares for future manned exploration and possible habitation on the moon. Read More

AERO GIZMO

Virgin Galactic and the start of the Commercial Space Race

By Loz Blain

04:41 July 6, 2009 PDT

The new space race is about to take-off

Space - it's the final frontier of human exploration, a mysterious eternity of distance, all around us and yet so tantalizingly out of reach. In its dark recesses hide the secrets of extraterrestrial life, planets yet to be explored, and it's reasonable to assume, some sort of future home for the human race once we're finished stuffing this planet up. Although mankind has been fascinated with space since we first saw the twinkling of night-time stars, it's only in the last half century that we have developed spaceships that allow us to take both ourselves and our equipment and technology outside the Earth's atmosphere. While the exhilaration of early space exploration seems to have faded in the public imagination over the past three decades, the scene is now set for a whole new space race. Loz Blain looks at where the 21st Century space Odyssey will take us and how we'll get there. Listen to the Podcast or Read More

GOOD THINKING

Space sail to take out the trash

By Darren Quick

12:47 April 26, 2009 PDT

The space sail for an Ariane 5 launcher (pictured), for example, would is conical with a s...

We’ve recently examined the danger posed to future space missions by the ever increasing collection of space junk orbiting the Earth. Now a plan by a pair of space engineers to use a sail to take out the trash – or rather, bring it back to Earth – may help to stop future space missions adding to the problem of space junk. Read More

AERO GIZMO

Charles Simonyi makes second tourist trip to outer space

By David Greig

20:59 March 30, 2009 PDT

2005 Space Adventure Ltd client Greg Olsen's captured this view from space view from space

Dr Charles Simonyi has made history by becoming the first person to leave Earth for a second time as a space tourist. Space Adventures, Ltd., the only company that currently provides space missions for tourists, has just announced that their orbital client and his crew have successfully arrived at the International Space Station (ISS) after launching onboard the Soyuz TMA-14 spacecraft from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan on March 26. Read More

SCIENCE AND EDUCATION

Planet seeking Kepler Spacecraft readies for launch

By Kyle Sherer

16:56 February 25, 2009 PST

Artist's impression of Kepler Spacecraft

On March 5, NASA will launch the largest camera ever sent into space in an attempt to find the holy grail of astronomy: an Earth-like planet. The $591 million Kepler craft will orbit the sun for at least 3.5 years, using an unprecedented 0.95-meter diameter Schmidt telescope packing an array of 42 CCDs, each with 2200x1024 pixels, to scan over 100,000 stars in the Cygnus-Lyra region of the galaxy. The craft is seeking planets in the “goldilocks” zone – not too close to the sun, and not too far – but the scope of the project means that no matter what scientists find, our understanding of the universe will be greatly enhanced. Read More

 
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