All posts tagged: NASAs

The biggest discoveries of Voyagers — NASA’s most distant explorers

The biggest discoveries of Voyagers — NASA’s most distant explorers

Published by skeptic

In 1977, NASA loaded two spacecraft, each the size of a Honda Civic, into a rocket and sent them off on a five-year mission to explore our solar system’s outer planets. Named Voyager 1 and Voyager 2, these twin craft were designed to fly past Jupiter, Saturn, Neptune and Uranus on their way out of our solar system. Along their journeys, they would send data and images to Earth. And just in case these craft ran into another intelligent species, each also carried a gold-plated record that contained information and sounds representing humanity. Thanks to their sturdy technology and smart engineering, these spacecraft are now nearing their 50th birthdays. And they more than met their goals. For more than five years now, both craft have been sailing beyond our solar system. Still at work, these most distant explorers are now bringing back to Earth details of previously uncharted interstellar space. What they’ve seen along the way has transformed what we know about our solar system. Tending to these aged spacecraft and watching what they discover …

Elon Musk Calls Out NASA’s Moon Ambitions: ‘We’re Going Straight to Mars’

Elon Musk Calls Out NASA’s Moon Ambitions: ‘We’re Going Straight to Mars’

Published by skeptic

Although SpaceX founder Elon Musk is known for outspokenness and controversial comments on his social media site X, he has been relatively restrained when it comes to US space policy in recent years. For example, he has rarely criticized NASA or its overall goal to return humans to the moon through the Artemis program. Rather, Musk, who has long preferred Mars as a destination for humans, has more or less been a team player when it comes to the space agency’s lunar-focused plans. This is understandable from a financial perspective, as SpaceX has contracts worth billions of dollars to not only build a Human Landing System as part of the Artemis program but also to supply food, cargo, and other logistics services to a planned Lunar Gateway in orbit around the moon. But privately, Musk has been critical of NASA’s plans, suggesting that the Artemis Program has been moving too slowly and is too reliant on contractors who seek cost-plus government contracts and are less interested in delivering results. Silent on Policy No Longer During …

Trump may cancel Nasa’s powerful SLS Moon rocket – here’s what that would mean for Elon Musk and the future of space travel

Trump may cancel Nasa’s powerful SLS Moon rocket – here’s what that would mean for Elon Musk and the future of space travel

Published by skeptic

Since Donald Trump’s recent electoral victory, rumours and speculation have circulated that Nasa’s giant Moon rocket, the Space Launch System (SLS), could be under threat. The rocket is one of several key elements needed for the US space agency’s Artemis programme, which aims to return humans to the Moon for the first time since 1972. For the first lunar landing mission, called Artemis III, the SLS will launch four astronauts on Nasa’s Orion crew capsule. Orion will then travel to the Moon. Once in lunar orbit, Orion will dock with Elon Musk’s Starship vehicle (which has been launched separately). Two astronauts will float into Starship, which undocks from Orion and travels down to the lunar surface. After walking on the Moon, the two astronauts return to lunar orbit in Starship, which docks with Orion. The two moonwalkers rejoin their crewmates and go home on Orion, leaving Starship in orbit around the Moon. The US space journalist Eric Berger recently posted on X: “To be clear we are far from anything being settled, but based on …

NASA’s rocket engine fireplace sets the holiday mood

NASA’s rocket engine fireplace sets the holiday mood

Published by skeptic

Chestnuts roasting on a rocket engine fire…. Set a the holiday mood with NASA’s Rocket Engine Fireplace. While a typical wood-burning fire heats up to about 600 degrees, an RS-25 engine burns up to 6,000 degrees. And this fireplace is made of four RS-25 engines and a pair of rocket boosters from the SLS (Space Launch System) rocket, so you’ll be extremely toasty. The SLS rocket launched Artemis I on its 1.2 million-mile journey around the Moon on November 16, 2022. Grab a glass of eggnog and a plate of cookies, and curl up to be launched to a state of coziness. Source link

The Download: Uncertainty over NASA’s moon rocket, and what’s next for nuclear

The Download: Uncertainty over NASA’s moon rocket, and what’s next for nuclear

Published by skeptic

2 The FTC is probing MicrosoftIt’s a wide-ranging antitrust investigation into its cloud computing, AI and security arms. (NYT $)+ The FTC has been preparing for this for a full year. (WP $)+ It’s notable it’s been signed off in the Biden administration’s dying days. (The Information $)+ Meanwhile, Google is hoping to have its recent antitrust ruling thrown out. (Bloomberg $) 3 RFK’s ‘Make America Healthy Again’ movement is in troubleJust days into the project, cracks are already beginning to show. (FT $)+ The MAGA policy agenda is extremely skeptical of actual scientific evidence. (NYT $)+ America’s opioid crisis probably played a role in Trump’s reelection. (New Yorker $) 4 TikTok is blocking beauty filters for teenagersBut the restrictions aren’t exactly difficult to circumvent. (The Guardian)+ Filters will be required to specify the nature of the tweaks they make, too. (The Verge)+ The fight for “Instagram face.” (MIT Technology Review) 5 Who is applying to join Elon Musk’s DOGE?Everyone from students to tech CEOs, apparently. (Forbes $)+ The division is highly likely to clash …

What NASA’s mission to Jupiter moon can – and can’t – achieve | Science & Tech News

What NASA’s mission to Jupiter moon can – and can’t – achieve | Science & Tech News

Published by skeptic

Ever since the Galileo spacecraft flew by Jupiter’s icy moons in 1989, scientists interested in life beyond our planet have been desperate to go back. Europa Clipper, which blasted off from Kennedy Space Center at Cape Canaveral, is doing just that. Galileo found clear evidence that while Ganymede, Calisto and Europa have barren frozen surfaces, beneath them likely lie vast oceans of water. And, as far as any astrobiologist knows, where there’s water there’s a chance of life. Kept liquid by Jupiter’s huge tidal forces, Europa’s ocean may be the Solar System’s largest. Image: Artist’s illustration of the Europa Clipper spacecraft over the Europa moon, with Jupiter in the background. Pic: NASA/JPL-Caltech via AP Up to 100 miles deep, containing twice the volume of water in all Earth’s oceans, this ocean makes it a prime candidate for exploration. After a six-year, 1.8 billion-mile journey, Europa Clipper – the largest planetary science mission ever launched by NASA – will spend four years orbiting Jupiter making flybys of its icy moon. It will use nine instruments to …

NASA’s Lunar Rover Prototype Looks Like If a Tractor and a Golf Cart Had a Baby

NASA’s Lunar Rover Prototype Looks Like If a Tractor and a Golf Cart Had a Baby

Published by José

Get in loser. Keep Roving In preparation for the first crewed lunar mission in half a century, NASA is prototyping a new Moon rover — and it looks like some pretty distinctly Earth-bound vehicles. Announced in a NASA press release, the new Ground Test Unit (GTU) is currently in development at the agency’s Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas. As photos of the prototype in action show, it’s already been taken for a joyride by some big names: astronaut Kate Rubins, the first person to ever sequence DNA in space, and Apollo 17 pilot-turned-senator Harrison “Jack” Schmitt. Those photos also show that the lunar terrain vehicle (LTV) looks, for some reason, a lot like a mix between a tractor and a golf cart — and the agency didn’t mention why, exactly, it was built to look that way. Private Partnership Though there’s little explanation about those visual references, NASA did explain how this LTV prototype, which will never be sent to the Moon, was built. Earlier this year, the American space agency contracted three private …

NASA’s Mars Sample Return mission has a shaky future

NASA’s Mars Sample Return mission has a shaky future

Published by skeptic

This article was originally featured on The Conversation. A critical NASA mission in the search for life beyond Earth, Mars Sample Return, is in trouble. Its budget has ballooned from US$5 billion to over $11 billion, and the sample return date may slip from the end of this decade to 2040. The mission would be the first to try to return rock samples from Mars to Earth so scientists can analyze them for signs of past life. NASA Administrator Bill Nelson said during a press conference on April 15, 2024, that the mission as currently conceived is too expensive and too slow. NASA gave private companies a month to submit proposals for bringing the samples back in a quicker and more affordable way. As an astronomer who studies cosmology and has written a book about early missions to Mars, I’ve been watching the sample return saga play out. Mars is the nearest and best place to search for life beyond Earth, and if this ambitious NASA mission unraveled, scientists would lose their chance to learn much more about the red planet. The habitability of Mars …

Scientist Warns That NASA’s Voyager Probes Are “Dodging Bullets Out There”

Scientist Warns That NASA’s Voyager Probes Are “Dodging Bullets Out There”

Published by skeptic

Cosmic rays are beating up our spacecrafts, the scientist explains. Friendly Fire A scientist who’s been working on NASA’s Voyager mission for more than half a century has helped shepherd the iconic spacecraft all the way to interstellar space — and now, he says that the probes are straight-up catching strays. In an interview with Mashable, Alan Cummings, a cosmic ray physicist at NASA and Caltech’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory who’s been on the probes’ missions from the very start, explained that Voyagers 1 and 2 are in greater danger than ever now that they’ve left the Sun’s protective bubble. Last week, NASA was mighty relieved when Voyager 1 regained contact with Earth after a whopping five months incommunicado. It took Herculean engineering ingenuity to make that happen, and as Cummings notes, scientists still aren’t sure what the exact problem was. “We don’t know everything,” the scientist said. “But I do think galactic cosmic rays are the guilty party here for most of these problems.” Ray Gun While Voyager 1’s five-month quiet spell was unusually long, it was …

Nasa’s planned mission to retrieve rocks from Mars is in trouble – but it’s a vital step to sending humans to the red planet

Nasa’s planned mission to retrieve rocks from Mars is in trouble – but it’s a vital step to sending humans to the red planet

Published by skeptic

Nasa recently asked the scientific community to help come up with innovative ideas for ways to carry out its Mars Sample Return (MSR) mission. This was in response to a report by an independent board that deemed that its US$11 billion (£8.7 billion) price tag was too expensive and its 2040 timeline too far in the future. In brief, the ambitious plan was to collect rock samples cached inside containers by Nasa’s Perseverance rover and deliver them to laboratories on Earth. Perseverance has been exploring Mars’ Jezero Crater, thought to have once hosted an ancient lake, since 2021. The mission would deliver the samples by sending a lander that carries a rocket (Nasa’s Sample Retrieval Lander) down to the surface of Mars. Perseverance would then deliver the cached rock samples to the lander, with small drone helicopters delivered on the lander as a back up. Perseverance’s samples would then be launched into Mars’ orbit using the lander’s rocket. A spacecraft already in Martian orbit, the Earth Return Orbiter, would then intercept these samples and deliver …