Tag: space

A SpaceX Falcon 9 v1.1 rocket launches from Cape Canaveral, Florida. The Falcon 9 return-to-flight mission will be the first of an upgraded version with increased performance. Credit: SpaceX

PASADENA, Calif. — The return to flight of SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket, still a “couple of months” away, will also be the first launch of an upgraded version of the vehicle with increased performance, the company’s president said Aug. 31.

Speaking at the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics’ Space 2015 conference here, Gwynne Shotwell said the company was working through a series of intensive reviews of the Falcon 9 after its June failure while preparing the latest upgrade to the vehicle to increase its performance.

“Our next flight will be both the return to flight and the first flight of the upgraded vehicle,” she said. “So whenever people ask me what keeps me up at night, it’s getting ready for that flight.” [SpaceX’s Falcon 9 Rocket Explosion in Slow Motion (Video)]  

SpaceX had been working for some time on a upgrade to the current Falcon 9 v1.1, sometimes called v1.2, that features engines with increased thrust, providing an increase in performance of about 30 percent. That first launch of the upgraded Falcon 9 was scheduled for September before the June 28 launch failure.

Shotwell said after her panel session that there is a payload assigned to that return-to-flight mission, but could not name it without the permission of the customer. Prior to the launch failure, SES was scheduled to launch its SES-9 satellite on the first upgraded Falcon launch.

SpaceX blamed the June launch failure on a broken strut holding down a helium bottle in a propellant tank in the rocket’s upper stage. Helium leaking from the bottle then caused the tank to overpressurize and burst. Shotwell said SpaceX still believes that is the root cause of the failure.

Shotwell added that while this problem is relatively straightforward to correct, SpaceX is also examining the vehicle for other potential issues. “What we wanted to do was to take advantage of the lessons that we learned from that particular failure and make sure we’re not seeing something like that anywhere throughout the vehicle,” she said. That includes a series of top-down reviews, and having the work done by every company engineer checked by another engineer.

That additional investigation has delayed the vehicle’s next launch. While SpaceX Chief Executive Elon Musk said in July the vehicle could return to flight in September, Shotwell suggested it may be November before that launch takes place. “It’s taking more time than we originally envisioned to get back to flight,” she acknowledged. “We’re a couple of months away from the next flight.”

Shotwell remained optimistic about not just returning the Falcon 9 to flight this year, but also successfully landing the vehicle’s first stage, either on an oceangoing platform or a pad on land, as part of SpaceX’s efforts to develop a reusable version of the vehicle. The company has attempted landings of the first stage on its “autonomous spaceport drone ship” after launches in January and April, but neither was successful.

“I want to see a Falcon 9 first stage land on a drone ship or land on my landing site this year,” she said. “I want to stick a landing this year.”

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

An Apollo moon rock sample in the Lunar Sample Laboratory at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston. Credit: Science/AAAS

Some of the moon soil collected by Apollo astronauts has deteriorated significantly during its four-plus decades on Earth, a new study reports.

Scientists found that the median particle size in a set of 20 different Apollo soil samples held in laboratories for research use has decreased by more than half since the samples were first measured 40 years ago.

“It might be accurate to state that the Apollo lunar soils are literally crumbling to dust,” the scientists, led by Bonnie Cooper of Hanyang University in South Korea, wrote in the new study. [‪NASA’s 17 Apollo Moon Missions in Pictures]

Between 1969 and 1972, Apollo astronauts brought 842 lbs. (382 kilograms) of lunar rocks and dirt back to Earth. Eighty-three percent of that material remains unexamined in nitrogen storage at NASA’s Johnson Space Center (JSC) in Houston, Cooper told Space.com via email. The other 17 percent has been allocated to researchers for study in a number of different laboratories.

The 20 soil samples Cooper and her team looked at belonged to this latter group. Between 2007 and 2012, they used laser-diffraction techniques to measure particle sizes in the samples, which were provided by JSC and the University of Tennessee in Knoxville. The researchers compared their results with the original soil measurements, which were made in the 1970s using sieves.

The differences between the two datasets are stark. For example, the median particle diameter has decreased from 78 microns (0.0031 inches) to 33 microns (0.0013 inches). And in the original sieve data, 44 percent of soil particles were between 90 and 1,000 microns (0.0035 to 0.039 inches) wide; today, just 17 percent of the particles are that large.

The most likely explanation for the degradation is damage caused by water vapor, the scientists say.

“Leaching by water vapor causes the specific surface area of a lunar soil sample to multiply, and a system of pores develops,” they wrote in the study, which was published online last week in the journal Nature Geoscience. “These structural changes may be attributed to the opening of existing, but previously unavailable, pore structure or the creation of new surfaces through fracturing of cement or dissolution of amorphous particles.”

Apollo Quiz: Test Your Moon Landing Memory

It has been more than four decades since the first men landed on the moon on July 20, 1969. Test your memory of the moon landing with this quiz.

0 of 10 questions complete

Apollo Quiz: Test Your Moon Landing Memory

It has been more than four decades since the first men landed on the moon on July 20, 1969. Test your memory of the moon landing with this quiz.

0 of questions complete

The new results suggest that the Apollo soil samples being studied by scientists are not pristine, Cooper said.

“People should not assume that the Apollo lunar soil samples remain representative of soils found in the natural environment of the moon, especially if they have been exposed to air,” she told Space.com via email. “In addition to particle size distribution, other geotechnical properties (such as strength and cohesion) must also have changed. Also, for example, water found in the sample might be taken to be lunar in origin when in fact it is the result of contamination.”

Cooper suspects that all of the researcher-allocated material has been altered to some degree. The unexamined samples may not be completely pure, either.

“Based on other evidence, it’s possible that even the samples stored in nitrogen may be compromised,” Cooper said. 

There is no known way to restore degraded samples to their previous state, she said, adding that off-Earth storage is likely required to keep extraterrestrial material 100 percent pristine.

“To store future samples so that they are not contaminated by Earth’s atmosphere, we need a facility like the International Space Station (with samples stored outside the pressurized area and examined robotically) or a similar facility on the moon,” Cooper said. “If such a facility existed, new lunar samples (and samples from elsewhere in the solar system) could be stored with far less risk of contamination.”

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

This artist concept shows Comet Hitchhiker, an idea for traveling between asteroids and comets using a harpoon and tether system. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Cornelius Dammrich

A NASA spacecraft may one day sling itself from one comet or asteroid to another using a harpoon and a superlong tether.

That’s the idea behind Comet Hitchhiker, a proposal that received funding last year from the NASA Innovative Advanced Concepts (NIAC) program, which seeks to encourage the development of transformative exploration technologies.

“This kind of hitchhiking could be used for multiple targets in the main asteroid belt or the Kuiper Belt, even five to 10 in a single mission,” Comet Hitchhiker concept principal investigator Masahiro Ono, of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, said in a statement. (The Kuiper Belt is the ring of icy bodies beyond the orbit of Neptune; Pluto is its most famous resident.) [Best Close Encounters of the Comet Kind]

Comet Hitchhiker would grab hold of an asteroid or comet using its harpoon, then let out some tether while applying a brake to capture kinetic energy from the target object. The probe could then land softly by reeling in the line, which would likely need to be 62 miles to 620 miles (100 to 1,000 kilometers) long in total.

Rapidly retrieving the tether (using the harvested kinetic energy) would accelerate Comet Hitchhiker away from the body and on toward its next target, all without the need for any kind of propellant, NASA officials said.

Comet Hitchhiker, shown in this artist rendering, is a concept for orbiting and landing on small bodies.
Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Cornelius Dammrich

This strategy could enable the low-cost exploration of multiple bodies throughout the solar system, including orbital or landed missions to faraway comets and Kuiper Belt objects. (Currently, such distant targets can be studied only with flyby missions because of the tremendous amount of fuel that would be required to slow a spacecraft down enough, Ono wrote on Comet Hitchhiker’s NIAC page.)

Comet Hitchhiker could also get to faraway destinations relatively quickly, according to Ono. By hopping onto a comet, the spacecraft could arrive at Pluto’s orbit in about 5.5 years, Ono wrote; for comparison, NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft traveled for 9.5 years before reaching the dwarf planet for its epic July 14 flyby.

“We strongly believe that the Comet Hitchhiker concept will advance the frontier of space exploration to the most exotic worlds in the solar system,” Ono wrote on the concept’s NIAC page.

But this is all in the realm of speculation, for Comet Hitchhiker remains a concept in early development. The study received a 2014 NIAC Phase 1 award, which grants research teams about $100,000 to perform initial analyses over a period of nine months.

Phase 1 awardees can apply for a Phase 2 grant, which is worth up to $500,000 for two more years’ worth of concept development.

Landing on a comet isn’t as crazy as it may sound; the European Space Agency’s Rosetta mission pulled off the feat last November when its Philae lander touched down on Comet 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko (though Philae’s anchoring harpoon failed to fire and the probe bounced twice before finally settling on the comet’s surface).

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

The space-based action shows “Killjoys” and “Dark Matter” will both be getting second seasons in 2016, the Syfy network announced this week.

“Dark Matter” tells the story of six people who wake up on a spaceship with no memory of who they are, or how they got there. According to a statement from the network, the show averaged 1.8 million viewers in its first season. The second season will consist of 13 episodes, and will premiere sometime in 2016.

“Killjoys” follows three space-romping bounty hunters and their talking spaceship through a planetary system called The Quad, where class tensions are about to boil over. The trio’s lives are further complicated as their leader Dutch’s dark past begins to haunt her. The show averaged 1.5 million viewers in its first season, according to Syfy. The 10-episode second season will air sometime in 2016. [Syfy’s ‘Killjoys’ in Photos: Space Bounty Hunting Action & Adventure]

“Dark Matter,” is based on a graphic novel by Joseph Mallozzi and Paul Mullie, former producers and writers for the “Stargate” franchise. Mallozzi serves as showrunner for “Dark Matter,” and just before the show premiered, he spoke with Space.com about some of the awesome science fiction featured in the show. (Among other things, Mallozzi created a faster-than-light travel mechanism that involves the traveler downloading his or her brain to a computer, and uploading it into a clone body in a distant location.)  

The first season ended with a shocking revelation and a major cliffhanger, leaving fans eager for a second season. The show’s cast includes Melissa O’Neil, Marc Bendavid, Anthony Lemke, Alex Mallari Jr. and Jodelle Ferland, with Roger Cross and Zoie Palmer.

Created by screenwriter Michelle Lovretta (who talked with Space.com before the show’s premiere), “Killjoys” is packed with lots of treats for science fiction fans, including gorgeous cosmic scenery and talking spaceships. There’s also great chemistry among the show’s three main cast members — Hannah John-Kamen as Dutch, Luke Macfarlane as D’avin and Aaron Ashmore as John.

“With exciting space-based action, deep world building and a standout cast, ‘Killjoys’ has struck a nerve with viewers and critics alike,” Bill McGoldrick, executive vice president of original content at Syfy, said in a statement. “We can’t wait to see what adventures Michelle Lovretta and Temple Street take Dutch, John and D’avin on in season two.”

The Syfy channel has a strong space lineup set for late 2015 and 2016. In December, the network will debut a 10-part series called “The Expanse,” based on the book series of the same name by James S. A. Corey (the pen name for Daniel Abraham and Ty Franck). The network has also announced plans to develop shows based on Frederik Pohl’s book “Gateway,” and Dan Simmons’ novel “Hyperion.” In addition, the network’s time-travel-themed show “12 Monkeys,” which is inspired by the 1995 Terry Gilliam movie, has also been renewed for a second season. 

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

The MUOS-4 satellite launched aboard an Atlas V rocket on Sept. 2, 2015. The rocket trail reflected sunlight in the early dawn hours to create this stunning aerial light show. Credit: United Launch Alliance

Early this morning, in a double display of sheer power and explosive force, two rockets thousands of miles apart blasted off toward space within 6 hours of each other.

Just before dawn today (Sept. 2), a United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket lifted off from Florida’s Cape Canaveral Air Force Station carrying a military communications satellite. The rocket’s fiery tail reflected the light coming from below the horizon, creating the illusion of a glowing orb hanging over the water. The fantastic sight was captured in the photograph above.

Earlier in the day (12:37 a.m. EDT (0437 GMT), a Russian Soyuz rocket blasted off from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan carrying three human passengers headed for the International Space Station.

Photographs of the Soyuz rocket taking off show the enormous trail of fire that propelled the rocket skyward. The arrival of the three spaceflyers at the orbiting laboratory early Friday morning (Sept. 4) will bring the total crew count to nine. There have not been that many crewmembers on the station at once since November 2013, according to NASA.

A Soyuz TMA-18M spacecraft launched ESA astronaut Andreas Mogensen, commander Sergei Volkov and Aidyn Aimbetov to the International Space Station on Sept. 2, 2015, from Baikonur cosmodrome, Kazakhstan.
Credit: ESA/S. Corvaja

The Soyuz spacecraft is carrying cosmonaut Sergey Volkov; Denmark’s first astronaut, Andreas Mogensen of the European Space Agency (ESA); and Kazakhstan’s Aidyn Aimbetov. After launch, the three astronauts radioed a status update down to mission control, saying, “Everything is in order on board.” 

The Atlas V rocket that took off from Cape Canaveral carried the fourth satellite in the U.S. Navy’s MUOS communications network. The satellite system “works like a smartphone network in space,” according to a statement from the Navy, and will be used by military personnel around the world. The satellites are built by Lockheed Martin.

A Soyuz rocket carrying three crew members headed for the International Space Station took off from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazahkstan at 12:38 a.m. EDT (0438 GMT) on Sept. 2, 2015.
Credit: ESA/S. Corvaja

The Atlas V left the ground at 6:18 a.m. EDT (1018 GMT), and the light of the rocket leaving Earth made a spectacular sight against the backdrop of a predawn sky. The first three MUOS satellites launched in 2012, 2013 and 2015.

An Atlas V rocket carrying the MUOS-4 satellite took off from Florida’s Cape Canaveral Air Force Station at 6:18 a.m. EDT (1018 GMT). This long exposure snapshot captured the streak of the rocket’s fiery tail across the predawn sky. Credit: United Launch Alliance.
Credit: United Launch Alliance

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

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False-color view of cloud features on Venus taken by Europe’s now-defunct Venus Express spacecraft. Credit: ESA/MPS/DLR/IDA

Scientists interested in studying Venus, as well as other extreme places in the solar system, now have an option besides expensive, one-off space missions. A new test rig at NASA’s Glenn Research Center in Ohio can replicate the planet’s lead-melting temperature, crushing pressure and noxious mix of atmospheric gases to create a similar hell on Earth.

“You don’t have to go Venus now to do Venus atmospheric research,” Daniel Vento, project manager for the Glenn Extreme Environment Rig, or GEER, told Discovery News.

NEWS: Venus May Have Once Been Awash With CO2 Oceans

Inside the 14-ton, stainless steel, 3- by 6-foot chamber, temperatures can soar beyond 900 degrees Fahrenheit, hotter than the surface of Venus. At the same time, pressure can reach nearly 100 times the weight of Earth’s atmosphere at sea level. 

Add carbon dioxide, which comprises 96 percent of Venus’ atmosphere, nitrogen and a sprinkling of other chemicals and scientists can replicate the superfluid physics that shape another world. [10 Weirdest Facts About Venus]

Other test chambers have been able to replicate components of a planet’s atmosphere, but GEER takes the simulation a step beyond. “We wanted to do everything at once,” Vento said.

ANALYSIS: Baked Exoplanet Gets Lab Treatment

Engineers plan to outfit GEER with infrared spectrometers and other instruments so scientists can, for example, watch minerals interact and evolve in a Venus-like setting. The chamber also can be set up to replicate Jupiter and Saturn, both warm environments.

With the addition of cooling walls, GEER one day could be used to simulate Uranus and other frozen worlds of the outer solar system. “The long-term plan for GEER is to be able to run any planetary atmosphere,” Vento said.

Glenn Research Center, known mainly for its work in aeronautics and rocket engines, didn’t intend to get into the planetary science business. But more than a decade ago, engineers were working on a methane rocket engine and ended up with a test facility that also replicated conditions on Titan, Saturn’s largest moon.

Explainer: Venus Volcanoes May Be Alive After All

GEER’s roots stem from another technology initiative to develop a cryocooler. When the program was canceled, the equipment was converted into the extreme environment rig.

“Turns out, the atmosphere of Venus has an awful lot in common with the inside of a jet engine,” Vento said.

In addition to scientific research, GEER also will be used to test sensors and equipment, such as high-temperature electronics, that one day could enable long-duration surface missions to Earth’s mysterious sister planet.

This article was provided by Discovery News.

An artist’s impression of Alpha Centauri, which involves two close-orbiting stars, with an Earth-mass planet in orbit around one. A third star orbits the close pair from a distance. Credit: ESO/L. Calçada/Nick Risinger (skysurvey.org)

Astronomers have long struggled with how young planets form around pairs of stars without destroying themselves, but new research suggests it can be done with the perfect setup: a massive, slightly elongated disk of debris from the star.

Planets forming around a star with another stellar neighbor nearby must somehow overcome the gravity of the second star during the formation process. A new view of the process suggests that the material in two-sun systems similar to Tatooine in “Star Wars” can indeed overcome the star’s destructive pull and form planets, even very small ones — if the planet-forming material around the star is sufficiently massive and the disk of material is slightly stretched.

“It may seem surprising given the disk is less massive, but if you’re moving far from the central star a lot of the disk material is around you, while the central binary is concentrated toward the center,” Kedron Silsbee, a graduate student at Princeton University, said at the recent Emerging Researchers in Exoplanet Science Symposium at Pennsylvania State University. Working with Roman Rafikov, also of Princeton, Silsbee modeled planetary formation in close binaries. “It turns out the disk can actually be the dominant component,” Silsbee said. [How 2 ‘Tatooine’ Planets Orbit Twin Stars (Infographic)]

The dust is mightier than the star

Planets form from the disk of dust and gas left over after their parent star is born. When that star is one of a pair, its companion can have a disruptive effect on planet formation. Previous studies have shown that binary stars separated by less than 20 times the Earth-sun distance should feel too much gravitational disruption from the companion star to form a planet around the host star.

With half the stars in the solar system part of a binary system, this appears to be bad news for planet formation. Yet more than 20 percent of planets found using the same method as NASA’s Kepler spacecraft exist around binary stars. To date, five planetary systems are known to exist around stars in  close binaries: Three of them house massive Jupiter-size planets, while the other two have smaller satellites, including Alpha Centauri, which has an Earth-mass planet.  Since their discovery, scientists have puzzled over how they could have formed.

Planetary embryos form as gravity draws bits of gas and dust together. But if two pieces of rock are traveling too fast compared to one another, they will not merge but will instead suffer a catastrophic collision that may shatter one or both pieces at worst, and knock smaller pieces off at best. At the same time, the gravitational tug of the companion star will stretch the orbit of the dust and rock in the disk, causing them to collide at different speeds and angles that are not ideal for planetary formation.

Think of it as a series of (very small) cars racing around the track of the disk. If two cars are traveling in roughly the same direction at comparable speeds, a small brush between the two of them causes very little damage (in this scenario, they would merge into a single car). However, if they are traveling at wildly different speeds, they will ricochet off one another, often with fatal results. A companion star would pull on that disk, sending the “cars” careening around in an unorderly fashion and smashing into one another more destructively.

Silsbee and Rafikov modeled the formation of planet embryos, or planetesimals, in close binaries while for the first time factoring in the disk’s own gravitational pull to help slow down the ricocheting action. The pair realized that if the disk was mildly eccentric — not perfectly circular but not significantly stretched out, either — the dust and rock would travel in orbits that would allow for smoother merging.

The researchers found that a massive enough disk — at least a hundredth of the mass of the sun — could overwhelm the gravitational pull of the disruptive companion star, maintaining the slightly stretched elliptical orbit that allowed pieces to mesh together and smoothly form planets.

“You basically want a massive disk in order for the disk gravity to dominate over the binary companion,” Silsbee said.

Although observations of close binaries have not yet revealed sufficiently massive disks, Rafikov and Silsbee said that the presence of Jupiter-mass planets in the observed systems suggests that the stars once housed disks large enough to form the enormous planets present today.

“Disk mass cannot be much lower than at least several Jupiter masses, otherwise the disk simply would not contain enough gas to form these massive objects,” the pair said in one research paper.

The research was a detailed in May in a series of three papers in the Astrophysical Journal.

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

California-based company Arx Pax has developed a hoverboard using “Magnetic Field Architecture” technology. Credit: Arx Pax

It’s a vision of the future that may even have eluded Marty McFly: hoverboard tech in space.

NASA wants to make this vision a reality, and soon. The space agency is teaming up with California-based company Arx Pax, which has developed a real-life hoverboard using a technology called Magnetic Field Architecture (MFA).

The collaboration — which takes the form of a Space Act Agreement — aims to find a way to manipulate tiny satellites called cubesats without actually touching them.

“Arx Pax and NASA will work together to design a device with the ability to attract one object to another from a distance,” Arx Pax representatives said in a statement today (Sept. 2). “The device will draw, as well as repel, satellites at the same time, meaning it will hold a satellite at a distance and won’t allow it to move away or toward the capture device. This will enable the capability to capture, and possibly manipulate, microsatellites or other objects without making physical contact with them.” [Science Fiction or Fact? 10 Out-There Concepts]

Arx Pax has built MFA tech into engines that create and manipulate magnetic fields, allowing them to hover over conductive surfaces. One such “hover engine” drives Arx Pax’s Hendo Hoverboard, which was introduced in October 2014.

The same principle can theoretically be applied to move and control cubesats, which can be smaller than a cereal box. (The basic building blocks of cubesats are “units” that measure 4 inches, or 10 centimeters, on a side. “3U” cubesats are the size of three of these units put together, 6U cubesats are as big as six of them, and so on.)

But a space-based hover engine wouldn’t draw spacecraft in from far away like a tractor beam from “Star Trek.”

“We’re talking on the scale of centimeters,” Arx Pax co-founder and CEO Greg Henderson told The Verge.

The company and NASA plan to develop a prototype of the cubesat-moving device over the next couple of years, The Verge reported.

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

Credit: NASA/GSFC