Tag: space.com

PREVIOUS | NEXT

Hurricane Joaquin over the Bahamas at 1:55 p.m. EDT (1755 GMT) on Oct. 1, 2015. This visible image was captured by NASA’s Aqua satellite. Credit: NASA Goddard MODIS Rapid Response Team

Hurricane Joaquin, a Category 4 storm that is currently battering the central Bahamas, appears to be replacing its eye, according to weather forecasters.

New satellite views of the intense hurricane appear to show the storm’s eye obscured, which could indicate that a new eye is forming around the old one, NASA said. This process, known as eyewall replacement, occurs naturally in powerful tropical cyclones. (Tropical cyclones that form in the Atlantic or eastern Pacific are called hurricanes, while those that form in the western Pacific and southeastern Indian Ocean are dubbed typhoons.)

During eyewall-replacement cycles, a new outer eyewall — a swirling mass of clouds that rotates around the center of a storm — forms. This eventually cuts off inflow to the existing eye and replaces it altogether. Such an event typically weakens a hurricane, but the replacement can also blow hurricane-force winds over a more sprawling area, according to NASA. [Hurricanes from Above: See Images of Nature’s Biggest Storms]

The agency’s Aqua satellite snapped photos of Hurricane Joaquin over the Bahamas yesterday (Oct. 1), with the storm’s eye clearly visible. However, when the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s GOES-East satellite passed over the area 12 hours later, clouds appeared to cover the eye, NASA officials said.

Hurricane Joaquin is currently churning over the Bahamas, delivering heavy rainfall and maximum sustained winds of approximately 130 mph (209 km/h) to the area. But over the next 24 hours, “some fluctuations in intensity are possible due to eyewall-replacement cycles,” the National Hurricane Center said in an update posted today (Oct. 2) at 11 a.m. EDT.

The storm is slowly drifting northwest and is expected to accelerate its northward movement tomorrow (Oct. 3), away from the Bahamas. Early forecasts showed the hurricane possibly making landfall along the U.S. East Coast, but models now indicate the storm’s track has shifted eastward and the hurricane will likely not hit any part of the U.S. mainland.

Still, even though the storm is expected to head out to sea, heavy rain and flooding are predicted for a wide swath of the Southeast and mid-Atlantic, according to the National Weather Service. The agency’s flood outlook predicts that as much as 12 inches (30 centimeters) of rain could fall over parts of Georgia and South Carolina.

The latest forecasts can be accessed on the National Hurricane Center’s website.

Follow Denise Chow on Twitter @denisechow. Follow Live Science @livescience, Facebook & Google+. Original article on Live Science.

An Atlas V 421 rocket launched the Morelos-3 mission for Mexico’s Secretaria de Comunicaciones y Transportes (Ministry of Communications and Transportation) on Oct. 2, 2015, from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, Florida. Credit: United Launch Alliance

A United Launch Alliance (ULA) Atlas V rocket blasted a communications satellite into orbit today (Oct. 2), marking the 100th consecutive successful liftoff for the company.

ULA, a joint venture of aerospace giants Boeing and Lockheed Martin, now has a 100 percent success rate on 100 rocket launches since its formation in 2006.

“Congratulations to the entire team, including our many mission partners, on this unprecedented achievement,” Jim Sponnick, ULA vice president for Atlas and Delta programs, said in a statement.  

The Atlas V rocket launched from Florida’s Cape Canaveral Air Force Station at 6:28 a.m. EDT (1028 GMT) today, carrying the Morelos-3 satellite for Mexico’s Ministry of Communications and Transportation. Morelos-3 is joining the Mexsat satellite constellation, which helps serve Mexico’s national security needs and provides communications to rural zones, ULA representatives said.

ULA currently operates the Atlas V, Delta IV, Delta IV Heavy and Delta II rockets, which have rich heritages that stretch back more than half a century. For example, the first flights of the Delta rocket family took place in 1960, and in February 1962, an Atlas LV-3B booster launched John Glenn on the United States’ first crewed orbital flight.

ULA launches payloads for many organizations, though the U.S. Department of Defense and NASA are notable repeat customers.

In December 2014, for instance, a Delta IV Heavy rocket launched NASA’s Orion capsule on the spacecraft’s first test flight, an uncrewed mission called Exploration Flight Test 1. And Atlas V rockets lofted the agency’s Solar Dynamics Observatory (in 2010), Juno Jupiter probe (2011), Mars rover Curiosity (2011) and MAVEN (Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution) Mars orbiter (2013), among others.

ULA is also developing a partially reusable rocket called Vulcan, which company representatives hope will eventually replace the Delta and Atlas rockets. Vulcan could begin flying by 2019.

Next up on ULA’s manifest is the NROL-55 mission for the U.S. National Reconnaissance Office (NRO). An Atlas V will launch the NROL-55 satellite, along with 13 tiny cubesats (four from NASA and nine from the NRO), from California’s Vandenberg Air Force Base on Oct. 8.

Follow Mike Wall on Twitter @michaeldwall and Google+. Follow us @Spacedotcom, Facebook or Google+. Originally published on Space.com.

Not all of the NASA hardware shown in the movie “The Martian” is fictional: astronaut Mark Watney (Matt Damon) uses a historic NASA spacecraft. Credit: 20th Century Fox via collectSPACE.com

A historic NASA spacecraft makes more than just a cameo appearance in “The Martian,” the new Ridley Scott movie about an astronaut stranded on Mars.

The 20th Century Fox film, which opened in U.S. theaters on Friday (Oct. 2), follows NASA’s third crewed mission to land on the Red Planet in 2035. By the movie’s timeline, Ares 3 crew member Mark Watney (Matt Damon) walks on Mars 23 years after the space agency’s most recent real-life “martian,” the robotic rover Curiosity, arrived to search for environments habitable to supporting past and present life.

But it’s not Curiosity that is in “The Martian.” (Spoiler alert: the following contains plot details from the movie.) [“The Martian” and NASA: Full Coverage]

Rather, it is NASA’s first Mars rover, and more specifically its three-petal lander, that Watney uses to contact Earth.

Mars Pathfinder and its small, six-wheeled Sojourner rover touched down on Mars on July 4, 1997. For almost three months, the lander beamed back billions of bits of data, including tens of thousands of images, before it fell silent. The science gathered by the lander and rover suggested that Mars was warm and wet in its past, a finding that was confirmed by later NASA missions, including Curiosity.

In “The Martian,” Watney sets out to retrieve Pathfinder to use its radio and camera to re-establish communications with NASA after his own habitat’s antenna is destroyed in a dust storm. The filmmakers consulted with engineers at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) before recreating the probe for the film.

“They were helpful with drawings and technical information about how that worked and the components, which we had to replicate,” described production designer Arthur Max in a video released by the studio. “We have a fully practical working Pathfinder, which we use throughout the movie.”

Ready for its close-up

“[It] looked pretty good to me,” said Donna Shirley, who in 1997 was NASA’s Mars Exploration program manager. [“The Martian”: A Movie and Book Review]

collectSPACE.com asked Shirley and Rob Manning, who was Pathfinder’s chief engineer, to help fact check the movie’s version of the spacecraft that they designed and helped to oversee on Mars.

“It looks like they got close,” said Manning. (Both he and Shirley had yet to view “The Martian,” but commented for this article based on studio-released stills and descriptions shared by collectSPACE.)

There were some differences in the details. For example, the film’s version of the Pathfinder lander is equipped with LED status lights.

“Nope, no LEDs,” Manning confirmed. “That would have been cool. We did talk about that possibility back then but LEDs were hard to qualify for the Mars environment.”

And then there’s how Pathfinder first appears in the movie when Watney arrives at its landing site — the lander and rover are completely buried in the sand. Thirty-eight years later, would the lander be covered?

“While we don’t have many decades of observation of the dust storm conditions, we can say from observations at the landing sites and observations so far that it is unlikely at the relatively short time scale between 1997 and 2035 that a significant fall out of dust could accumulate in such a short time,” said Manning. “However it’s not impossible.”

Powering up Pathfinder

Appearance aside, “The Martian” relies on how Pathfinder was designed in order to allow Watney to trade messages with Mission Control. After moving the lander to the Ares 3 hab, the astronaut sets about rebooting the probe.

“There was no accessible power plug or power connector other than the solar panel connectors” Manning said. “The power to the lander while cruising to Mars would come in through the top of the lander, [but] that becomes unusable on Mars because the lander opens up relays to prevent those wires from shorting during landing and while on [the surface].”

Even if Pathfinder had a spare port by which to plug in an external power source, as is shown in the film, it may not have done much good.

“Remember, we think Pathfinder died because something inside it broke,” Manning explained.

After about its 40th day (sol) on Mars, the lander’s battery no longer held a charge, so from that point forward, it shut off before sunset and woke up with the sun.

“At night, without a battery, it got really chilly inside the lander, and we think that the electronics got too cold and something inside broke,” Manning said. “If someone came along and put 30 volts on the lander’s solar array cables that went into the lander, [Pathfinder] would probably not wake up.”

“On the other hand, there were failure mode possibilities where a solid external 30 volts supply may have been able to overcome the fault and the lander computer might have booted,” he added.

Composite self-portrait of NASA’s Mars Pathfinder on the Red Planet. The center of the image consists of a museum model.
Credit: NASA/JPL

Smile for the camera

To communicate with NASA, Watney manually points the lander’s high gain antenna towards Earth (something only possible if he unbolted it first, Manning said) and then sets up three signs around the Pathfinder in view of its mast-mounted revolving camera. On the middle sign, he writes a question (“Are you receiving me?”) and on either side are signs that read “Yes” and “No.” [Surviving “The Martian”: How to Not Die on Mars]

To respond, NASA sends a signal to point the camera at the “Yes” sign.

“This was quite a good idea,” said Manning. [The] camera could be aimed within a degree or so in both azimuth and elevation.”

In order to allow more complex questions, Watney figures out he can arrange even more signs at intervals around the lander so NASA can spell out its replies using ASCII in hexadecimal code. The flight controllers catch on and the camera pivots between the signs in quick fashion.

Manning thought this too would be possible, although at a slower pace (minutes rather than seconds) than is shown in the film.

Ultimately, NASA conveys the instructions to Watney on how to reprogram Pathfinder such that it can be plugged into the astronaut’s rover, enabling longer text messages to be transmitted. Unlike the problem of the missing power port, establishing the comm connection might be feasible.

“There is a spare RS-422 [serial interface] port directly into the flight computer that we used to give us access to the flight software and low level commands while it was still here on Earth,” noted Manning.

Continue reading at collectSPACE about Mars Pathfinder’s fate in real life and how it may compare to “The Martian.”

Follow collectSPACE.com on Facebook and on Twitter at @collectSPACE. Copyright 2015 collectSPACE.com. All rights reserved.

Ariane 5 lifts off with Sky Muster and ARSAT-2 satellites from Europe’s spaceport on Sept. 30, 2015. Credit: Arianespace

PARIS — Europe’s Ariane 5 heavy-lift rocket on Sept. 30 placed telecommunications satellites for Australia and Argentina into geostationary transfer orbit in the vehicle’s 68th consecutive success.

The satellites — the first of two Sky Muster Ka-band broadband satellites for Australia’s NBN Co. and the Arsat-2 Ku- and C-band telecommunications satellite for Arsat of Argentina — were both reported by their owners to be healthy in orbit and sending signals.

The launch was an illustration of the widening diversity of commercial telecommunications platforms. Sky Muster, built by SSL of Palo Alto, California, weighed 6,440 kilograms at launch and is equipped with the equivalent of 202 Ka-band transponders operating through 101 spot beams.

It is designed to deliver 16.4 kilowatts of power to its payload toward the end of its operational life, estimated at more than 15 years. It will operate from 140 degrees east.

Arsat-2, the showcase product in Argentina’s growing space-development program, was built by the government-owned INVAP — with the payload provided by Thales Alenia Space of France and Italy — and weighed 2,977 kilograms at launch. It carries 26 Ku-band and 10 C-band transponders and is designed to provide 4.6 kilowatts of power at the end of its 15-year life. Arsat-2 will operate from 81 degrees west. [Satellite Quiz: Test Your Space Smarts]

In a move that the superstitious would have disapproved — and there are more superstitious space-industry personnel than one might expect — Arsat contracted with the Arianespace launch consortium before the launch Arsat-2 launch to launch Arsat-3 in 2019.

The contract includes options for two other Arsat launches between 2020 and 2023.

Ariane 5 payload fairing and Ariane 5 payload fairing and Arsat-2 satellite..
Credit: Arianespace

Argentine officials have said they are determined not to lose access to geostationary orbital slots available to them. Under international regulations, orbital slot reservations expire if they are unused for several years and are then available to others.

The first Arsat satellite, Arsat-1, was launched aboard an Ariane 5 in October 2014.

Arsat Chief Executive Matias Bianchi said after the launch that decisions by successive Argentine governments to invest in a domestic space technology base have resulted in Argentina’s becoming independent in satellite production even as it secures long-term access to orbital real estate.

Bianchi said 30 percent of Arsat-2 had been booked before the launch.

Australia’s satellite broadband program, managed by NBN Co. Ltd. as part of a diversified broadband access network including microwave and terrestrial distribution, is perhaps the most ambitious satellite broadband policy ever enacted.

Befitting its ambition — two satellites, 10 gateway Earth stations, each with 13-meter-diameter dishes for a total capital investment of $1.2 billion — the satellite piece of the network has been more controversial politically than any other telecommunications satellite effort.

Election campaigns featured arguments over the wisdom of offering what was sometimes called a “gold-plated service.”

Australia’s total population is about 23.5 million. The satellite network is designed to reach 200,000 homes and small businesses in Australia’s vast rural areas beyond the reach of terrestrial links.

Rural broadband-access programs are common in many regions, but because of Australia’s size, the investment required to guarantee service to the most remote locations works out to about $6,000 per home. Installation of the dish antenna at each residence is eligible for a subsidy that is included in the overall program budget.

NBN Chairman Ziggy Switkowski, who attended the launch at Europe’s Guiana Space Center, on the northeast coast of South America, said the $1.2 billion expense delivered a program that is on schedule and on budget. The second Sky Muster satellite is scheduled for launch in late 2016.

NBN is offering customers in areas eligible for satellite links — to assure the capacity is available for the intended users, NBN has produced detailed maps of who will be allowed to receive it — two packages. One offers downlinks at 12 megabits per second and a 1-megabit-per-second uplink, while the other offers 25 megabits-per-second downlinks and uplinks at 5 megabits per second.

This story was provided by SpaceNews, dedicated to covering all aspects of the space industry.

An artist’s impression of the Neptune-size planet HAT-P-11b as it crosses in front of its star. Astronomers found water in the atmosphere of the exoplanet. Similar studies may reveal oxygen in the air of other worlds. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

Although scientists have long considered oxygen a sign that life exists on an alien planet, new research suggests the element could be produced without it.

Oxygen may function as a sign of life on Earth, but that’s not necessarily the case for planets around other stars. The new research shows that the interaction of titanium oxide with water could produce oxygen in the atmosphere of an exoplanet without the involvement of living organisms.

“Although oxygen is still one of the possible biomarkers, it becomes necessary to look for new biomarkers besides oxygen,” Norio Narita, of the National Institutes of Natural Science in Japan, said in a statement. Narita studied the role of titanium oxide, or titania, in the formation of oxygen in the atmosphere of a planet.  [10 Exoplanets That Could Host Alien Life]

Oxygen does not equal life

In recent years, scientists have begun using instruments such as NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope to investigate the atmosphere of planets beyond the solar system. The upcoming launch of the James Webb Space Telescope will enable even further study of these worlds. In addition to characterizing the air on these worlds, scientists also hope to one day find evidence of life.

On Earth, plants release oxygen into the air through photosynthesis. If a planet beyond the solar system was found to contain oxygen in its atmosphere, scientists reasoned, that oxygen would have formed as a byproduct of life.

Narita and his team decided to study the role of stellar radiation around stars similar to the sun. They found that, if enough of the mineral titania lay on the surface of a planet, it could dissolve in liquid water, producing oxygen in the atmosphere.

Titania is a naturally occurring substance present in meteorites and on Earth’s moon. It forms as dust outflows around evolving low- and medium-mass stars, and through supernovae, and is thought to be common in exoplanet systems. The amount of titania on the surface of a planet or moon would vary based on the number of impacts each body received.

According to the research, an Earth-like planet orbiting a sunlike star would need only enough titania to cover about 0.05 percent of the planet’s surface to create the same amount of oxygen as in Earth’s atmosphere. Planets that had oceans and orbited dimmer stars would need to have only about 3 percent of the surface covered with titania for similar results.

For comparison, the researchers estimated that the area with active titania on the surface of the Earth is much less than 97 square miles (250 square kilometers), or about 0.0000005 percent of the surface.

The research was published online in September in the journal Scientific Reports.

Follow us @Spacedotcom, Facebook and Google+. Original article on Space.com.

The beloved German folk festival known as Oktoberfest wraps up this weekend (at least in Munich), so we decided to get in on the celebration and taste-test a beer made with yeast that’s been to space.

In 2014, the Oregon-based Ninkasi Brewing Co. sent vials of brewer’s yeast on a rocket to more than 70 miles (112 kilometers) above the Earth. The yeast returned unharmed and ready for brewing. The final product is an imperial stout called Ground Control, which has now been taste-tested and approved by members of the Space.com staff (check out the video).

Ground Control is available to the public, but if you can’t find it in your area, we have a long list of cosmic-themed beers to make your Oktoberfest a little more out-of-this-world. [Cheers! Moon-Inspired Cocktails]

Ground Control and other space beers

Earlier this year, representatives from Ninkasi Brewing Co. spoke with Space.com about the nearly two-year-long quest to make a beer with yeast that had flown to space.

The first time the brewery tried to send the yeast skyward, the payload made it all the way through its journey safely, but it landed in a remote location and couldn’t be recovered for almost four weeks, leaving the yeast unfit for brewing. However, a second launch led to a quick and successful recovery of the space yeast, and a delicious final product.

The Ground Control stout is also brewed with hazelnuts, star anise and cocoa nibs. It’s rich like an imperial stout should be, incredibly velvety with none of the bite found in some stouts, and full of flavor. In fact, it’s a great beer for new stout drinkers.

Ninkasi isn’t the only brewery to try putting a little space in their beer. In 2013, Dogfish Head made a limited-run beer that was brewed with dust from lunar meteorites(yes, pieces of the moon that had crashed into the Earth), which were steeped in the drink like tea.

“These certified moon jewels are made up primarily of minerals and salts, helping the yeast-induced fermentation process and lending this traditional German style a subtle but complex earthiness,” according to the brewery’s website.

Dubbed “Celest-jewel-ale,” this spacey beverage also came with a custom spacesuit beer koozie made by ILC Dover — the contractor that made the actual Apollo astronaut spacesuits.

Space-themed beers

For a cosmic-themed Oktoberfest celebration, beer drinkers might also consider some space-themed brews. There are the widely distributed classics like Blue Moon and Corona.

When you throw in beers from smaller breweries, there are really too many options to mention. If you live in the Southeast region of the United States, definitely check out the spaceflight-inspired beers by the Huntsville, Alabama-based brewery Straight to Ale, including its Monkeynaut IPA, made in honor of Miss Baker, the first monkey sent to space by NASA who returned alive.

You could also pick up a beer made with galaxy hops, a variety native to Australia. There this White Galaxy IPA by Anchorage Brewing Co. Other beers brewed with galaxy hops include Hill Farmstead Double Galaxy, Half Acre Double Galactic Daisy Cutter, and Pipeworks Galaxy Unicorn.

Over the last year, Bell’s Brewery, located in Kalamazoo, Michigan, has slowly released its Planet Series of beers, inspired by Gustav Holst’s composition “The Planets.” The beer series includes seven brews, one for each planet in the music series, which did not include Earth. The music series, which was written around 1914, did not include Pluto, which was discovered in 1930. Demonstrating a wonderful sense of humor, Bell’s Brewery put out a video in which its employees read some of the comments the company received when it released its Uranus brew.  

A great resource for finding space-themed beers in your area is the website beeradvocate.com — simply enter space-related words or phrases in the search bar. For example, check out these links for lists of beers with “space,” “black hole” “galaxy,” “sun,” “cosmic,” “nebula” or “orion” in their names. Some of our favorites include Space Cake by Clown Shoes brewery, Tart Side of the Moon by Brewery Vivant, Northern Lights IPA by Starr Hill Brewery, and Space Dust by Elysian Brewing Co. There also Klingon Ale from Garrison Brewing, and quite a few spacey-brews from Cosmic Ales.

We hope you find a great space brew to ring in Oktoberfest.

Follow Calla Cofield @callacofield. Follow us @Spacedotcom, Facebook and Google+. Original article on Space.com.

NASA wants the world to know that putting boots on Mars is not just a sci-fi dream.

The space agency has been helping promote the new film “The Martian,” which hits theaters across the United States today (Oct. 2), as a way to publicize its own plans to send astronauts to the Red Planet in the 2030s. 

Setting up a crewed outpost on Mars is NASA’s chief long-term goal in the realm of human spaceflight. Indeed, the space agency’s operational robotic Mars craft — the Opportunity and Curiosity rovers, and the orbiters Mars Odyssey, Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) and MAVEN (Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution) — can be seen as scouts for the human pioneers to come, NASA officials say. [5 Manned Mission to Mars Ideas] 

“The evolution of a Martian starts with our science — starts with our ground-truth that we get from our rovers — and it builds up to human exploration,” Jim Green, director of NASA’s Planetary Science division, said Thursday (Oct. 1) at Kennedy Space Center in Florida, during an event focusing on “The Martian” and the space agency’s Red Planet plans.

Making it happen

NASA is working on a number of different fronts to make a crewed Mars mission happen, Green said.

For example, the agency and its partners are currently conducting an unprecedented yearlong mission aboard the International Space Station (ISS). (Crewmembers generally stay aboard the orbiting lab for 5 to 6 months.)

Researchers are monitoring how NASA astronaut Scott Kelly and cosmonaut Mikhail Kornienko respond physiologically and psychologically to their extended time off Earth, in an effort to help prepare future pioneers for the long journey to Mars and back.

Furthermore, astronauts recently grew lettuce aboard the ISS — and ate it as well — as part of an experiment called “Veggie.” The long-term goal of such projects is to make voyaging astronauts less dependent on Earth.

NASA is also developing a crew capsule called Orion and the Space Launch System (SLS) megarocket to help get astronauts to, and from, distant destinations such as Mars. Orion aced its first uncrewed test flight last December, and the SLS is scheduled to make its maiden voyage in 2018.

Technological development is ongoing in other key areas as well. For instance, reseachers are working to improve solar-electric propulsion systems, which use energy from the sun to strip electrons off gas molecules, then send these ions streaming out the back of a spacecraft to generate thrust.

“These are going to be huge ion engines that will allow us to haul tens of tons of material back and forth to Mars,” Green said.

Much of this heavy gear — which will consist of human habitat modules and other infrastructure — must make it down to the Martian surface. That’s a tall order, since the 1-ton Curiosity rover maxed out NASA’s “sky crane” landing system. [How to Land on Mars: Martian Tech Explained (Infographic)]

So NASA is developing new tech, such as inflatable “decelerators” and an enormous supersonic parachute, to help get hefty payloads down safely and softly on the Red Planet. NASA has tested a prototype of this system twice during balloon-aided flights off Hawaii; the decelerator worked perfectly, but the parachute tore both times.

Robotic Red Planet explorers

The science work being done by Red Planet robots feeds into the crewed effort as well. For example, data and images gathered by MRO have allowed researchers to determine that the dark streaks that appear on steep Martian slopes during warm weather are caused by liquid water — a resource that future pioneers might be able to exploit.

“We’re developing the science tools now — the continually orbiting and roving on Mars — to be able to get us the information to know what Mars is really like,” Green said.

NASA’s next Mars rover, which is scheduled to launch in 2020, will continue to build up the knowledge base, while also making concerted strides toward human exploration.

One of the Mars 2020 rover’s instruments is a technology demonstration designed to generate oxygen from carbon dioxide in the Red Planet’s atmosphere. Another instrument, a ground-penetrating radar, is capable of discovering subsurface aquifers of liquid water, if any exist in the landing zone, Green said.

The path to Mars

NASA is not planning to make the big leap directly from low Earth orbit, where the ISS circles, all the way to Mars. Rather, the agency first aims to test technologies and gain deep-space experience in the “proving ground” of Earth-moon space.

One proving-ground project is the Asteroid Redirect Mission, which involves plucking a boulder off a near-Earth asteroid with a robotic probe and towing the chunk of space rock to lunar orbit for future visitation by astronauts.

NASA plans to accomplish this — the robotic and crewed aspects (which will employ Orion and the SLS) — by 2025.

And the first crewed Mars mission may land not on the Red Planet but on one of its two tiny moons, Phobos and Deimos. Such a strategy would prove out the technologies required to get to Mars orbit, and also dilute the risks and costs of a crewed Red Planet campaign, advocates say.

So some of the steps along the path to Mars still need to be worked out. But the ultimate destination — the Martian surface — is not in doubt, NASA officials say.

“[Putting] boots on Mars is possibly the most exciting thing humans will ever do,” NASA chief Charles Bolden said last month during an event at NASA Headquarters in Washington, D.C. that detailed NASA’s crewed Mars plans.

“We have been engaged in getting to Mars — getting humans to Mars — for at least 40 years, beginning with the first precursors,” he added. “I have no doubt that we can accomplish what we have set our minds to do.”

Follow Mike Wall on Twitter @michaeldwall and Google+. Follow us @Spacedotcom, Facebook or Google+. Originally published on Space.com.

Movies adapted from successful books don’t always capture the magic of the original text — and the calculation- and science-heavy story of “The Martian” seems a particularly tough customer — but the upcoming film does a surprisingly good job conjuring the book’s spirit. The new movie, opening Friday, trades some of the book’s nonstop danger for glorious Martian vistas and more NASA at work, and I’m not complaining.

As a quick note, this article doesn’t spoil major plot points but does discuss the major themes of the book and movie.

The movie “The Martian,” is based on Andy Weir’s book of the same name, and tells the story of an astronaut who is accidentally left behind on Mars and must struggle to survive. When watching “The Martian,” all I could think was that the movie version of protagonist Mark Watney had it easy. Sure, almost everything he does goes sideways and presents a new challenge for him to ponder, calculate and build his way out of. But there are a lot of major problems presented in the book that movie-Watney doesn’t encounter while stranded on Mars, and several complicated, clever solutions he never has to devise. [Watch: How to Kill (or Save) a Martian – Author Andy Weir Knows!]

Then again, having it easier than book-Watney leaves plenty of room for death-defying exploits, and “The Martian” movie still manages to capture the feel of the book, while making the characters within NASA more vivid and focusing even more on what makes space travel compelling.

Weir’s novel about an astronaut’s fight to stay alive alone on Mars started as a series of chapters posted one by one on his website before he self-published the whole sequence in 2011. In 2014, Crown Publishing released a physical book, and just a year later, 20th Century Fox is releasing a movie. (In fact, the two deals were struck within a week of each other.)

The heart of the novel, and of the new movie, is Watney’s log entries, in which he describes the projects he undertakes and conveys his thoughts as he endures his time on the Red Planet. In the movie, the logs become video recordings, but they keep the same tone as the written logs in the book, full of humor and quips despite the dire circumstances. (Some of the book’s best lines made their way into the movie, and even into the trailers, which I considered a good sign.) Those logs, which are essentially a dialogue with the audience, go a long way toward keeping the tight focus on one isolated man interesting in both book and film.

But in the movie, Watney shares the screen with another, inescapable character: the Red Planet itself. In the book, Mars reaches out and periodically makes itself known — producing the particular conditions that challenge Watney during his journey — but Mars’ constant, giant emptiness; fierce weather; and looming landscapes are much more present in the visual medium. Where in the book Watney fills up the audience’s view, because readers are only seeing his words, in the movie Watney is almost always shown at his proper scale in comparison to the vast, isolated planet.

Other elements that benefit from the movie treatment are the machinations, collaboration and debate by people within NASA. Although those aspects are included in the book, they don’t shine quite as much as Watney’s narration. Seeing the personalities on screen, explaining a seemingly impossible spaceship maneuver or digging up old technology to try to rig a solution to a communications problem, makes those scenes much more of a treat.

Basically, this movie makes space travel look awesome. It makes it look challenging and dangerous and fallible. And it conveys, perhaps better than the book does, a gut feeling of why space travel is worth doing — and that it’s filled with smart people improvising doing their best with the situation they’re in. [Read chapter one of “The Martian”]

Those smart solutions are by necessity less detailed in the movie than in the book. Though they seem to be consistent in both the book and the movie, Watney’s thought processes (and NASA’s) are explained meticulously in the novel, but they are only hinted at on-screen. It’s a difficult screenwriting challenge to capture the exhilarating moment of solving a problem without the full explanation of how that solution works. Nonetheless, the moments the film does choose to explain more carefully succeed in conveying that feeling.

In an essay by Weir included at the end of the Crown edition of “The Martian,” entitled “How Science Made Me a Writer,” Weir discusses the way the actual conditions on Mars, and the fundamental problems they would cause, acted as a base for his storytelling and dictated the course of the story.

“Science creates plot!” Weir wrote. “No need for meteor strikes — the surprises, catastrophes, and narrow escapes were coming fast and furious on their own.”

That drive is carried over into the movie, and so in a basic sense, even if it doesn’t match the book challenge for challenge, the movie succeeds at capturing what makes the book so riveting.

Email Sarah Lewin at slewin@space.com or follow her @SarahExplains. Follow us @Spacedotcom, Facebook and Google+. Original article on Space.com.

Russia’s robotic Progress 61 cargo craft approaches the International Space Station on Oct. 1, 2015. Credit: NASA TV

A robotic Russian cargo ship arrived at the International Space Station this evening (Oct. 1), ending a brief orbital chase.

Russia’s uncrewed Progress 61 freighter, also known as 61P, docked with the space station’s Zvezda service module at 6:52 p.m. EDT (2252 GMT), while the two craft were zooming together over the North Atlantic Ocean. The cargo vessel, which is stocked with more than 3 tons of food and supplies for the astronauts aboard the orbiting lab, had launched atop a Russian Soyuz rocket from Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan just 6 hours earlier.

Progress 61 will remain docked to the International Space Station (ISS) until December, when the ship will depart, full of trash, and burn up in Earth’s atmosphere over the Pacific Ocean, NASA officials said.

The Progress vehicles aren’t the only robotic spacecraft that bring cargo up to the $100 billion orbiting complex. Japan’s HTV-5 resupply ship, for example, just left the ISS on Monday (Sept. 28) after wrapping up its mission.

NASA also holds billion-dollar resupply deals with two American aerospace companies, SpaceX and Orbital ATK. SpaceX has flown six successful missions with its Falcon 9 rocket and Dragon capsule, and Orbital has delivered cargo twice using its Antares rocket and Cygnus spacecraft.

Both companies failed in their last resupply attempts, however. In late June, the Falcon 9 broke apart less than 3 minutes after liftoff, and the Antares exploded just seconds after rising off the launch pad in October 2014.

The Progress has also encountered problems. In July, the Progress 60 freighter reached the space station as planned, but the previous mission never made it. Progress 59 began spinning wildly after separating from its Soyuz rocket and ended up crashing to Earth nine days after its late April launch.

All of these robotic resupply vessels are disposable, with the exception of Dragon, which is designed to make a parachute-assisted ocean splashdown.

As Hurricane Joaquin barrels across the Atlantic Ocean, NASA satellites are tracking the storm to determine how it will affect residents along the East Coast of the United States.

A new video of the hurricane taken by NASA’s Global Precipitation Measurement satellite shows a 3D view of how the storm grew and changed on Tuesday (Sept. 29). The animation shows rain rates and cloud heights just before the storm built into a hurricane.

Today (Oct. 1) Joaquin reached Category 4 status, with maximum sustained winds near 130 mph (210 km/hour), according to NASA. News sources are reporting that leaders in Maryland, Virginia, New Jersey and North Carolina have preemptively declared states of emergency in anticipation of the storm reaching those areas. [Amazing Hurricane Photos From Space]

A stunning composite image of Hurricane Joaquin, which is now a category 4 storm. The image was taken at 8 a.m. EDT (1200 GMT) on Thursday, Oct. 1. The infrared data comes from the EUMETSAT weather and climate monitoring satellites.
Credit: 2015 EUMETSAT

Joaquin was upgraded to a Category 4 storm at 2 p.m. EDT (1800 GMT) today (Oct. 1). The most recent statement from NASA says that “some additional strengthening is possible during the next 24 hours, with some fluctuations in intensity possible Friday night and Saturday.”

At about 5 p.m. EDT (2100 GMT) today, the National Hurricane Center (NHC), part of the National Weather Service, tweeted a short list of “Key Messages on Hurricane Joaquin.” In that tweet, the NHC said, “We are becoming optimistic that the Carolinas and the mid-Atlantic states will avoid the direct effects from Joaquin. However, we cannot yet completely rule out direct impacts along on the east coast and residents there should continue to follow the progress of Joaquin over the next couple of days.”

The NHC also mentioned that even if Joaquin moves out to sea, it could still create minor coastal flooding. Additional heavy rains not associated with Joaquin are expected to increase the likelihood of flooding in the Atlantic coastal states. 

This scientific visualization shows a 3D side view of Hurricane Joaquin in action.
Credit: Scientific Visualization Studio, NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center

Tracking Joaquin’s progress

“Joaquin was moving towards the west-southwest near 5 mph (7 kph), and this motion is expected to continue today,” NASA spokesman Rob Gutro of the Goddard Space Flight Center said in a statement today. “NHC noted that a turn toward the west- northwest is forecast tonight (Oct. 1), followed by a turn toward the north and an increase in forward speed on Friday, Oct. 2.”

On Wednesday (Sept. 30), NASA’s Steve Lang at the Goddard Center said in a statement that swells from Joaquin would affect the Bahamas over the next few days, and should reach parts of the southeastern coastlines of the United States by today.

“These swells are likely to cause life-threatening surf and rip current condition,” Lang said Thursday.  But he also noted: “There is still some uncertainty in the forecast track.” 

Follow us @Spacedotcom, Facebook and Google+. Original article on Space.com.