Author Topic: Deep Space and Interplanetary Exploration - The Universe is Timeless  (Read 177074 times)

rebs

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Re: Deep Space and Interplanetary Exploration, 2015
« Reply #90 on: 18 March 2015, 19:44:41 »
To be honest, I pray not. What's that quote? "I can imagine a society that has given up war. We could beat them so easily", or the like.

(Frell politics. I can rant about Gene Rodenberry's hypocrisy more than I can about politics any day. Note how his "peaceful" StarFleet uses military structures & ranks, and heavily arms its exploration vessels? Court-martials crew? Supplies crew with military arms? Ignore the TNG & later versions, TOS StarFleet are cold warriors facing the enemy in all their primary coloured jumpers glory.

And that's the way I like it ;)

I'm hearing that music, too, man.  The TOS theme, of course   ;D
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Re: Deep Space and Interplanetary Exploration, 2015
« Reply #91 on: 18 March 2015, 21:04:01 »
How do you prepare to rendezvous with an asteroid?  To essentially free fall to the surface with a spacecraft the size of a car, collect a sample of regolith or dust (if available) to attempt to study the origins of the Solar System, while also measuring the give of the surface for study and preparation of future asteroid "landings" and while taking a multitude of other readings?  Learn about it right here, because it's happening with the planned launch of OSIRIS-REx in 2016. 

http://www.planetary.org/blogs/guest-blogs/dante-lauretta/20150317-collect-a-sample-of-bennu.html

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Re: Deep Space and Interplanetary Exploration, 2015
« Reply #92 on: 21 March 2015, 10:49:19 »
Philae is still chilling at the moment, but hopeful eyes are still watching from just about everywhere. 

A good article here from Phys.org on the updates.

http://phys.org/news/2015-03-chilly-philae-slumbering-comet-mission.html
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Re: Deep Space and Interplanetary Exploration, 2015
« Reply #93 on: 23 March 2015, 23:18:44 »
Nearing the very end of its mission life, NASA's MESSENGER spacecraft will be crashed into the surface of Mercury on April 30th. 

But before it takes that plunge, it's now orbiting closer to the surface than any probe before it, capturing close up images of all manner of curiosities spotted from earlier views of the closest planet to the Sun.  Check it all out here, including word of the most spectacular images sent back home yet.  Though that may be a tough order to fill, we've seen some dandies from that part of the Solar System.

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/best-images-ever-of-mercury-s-scorched-surface/?WT.mc_id=SA_Facebook
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Re: Deep Space and Interplanetary Exploration, 2015
« Reply #94 on: 23 March 2015, 23:28:08 »
Hmmmm ... got nothing coming to mind as a mechanism behind the "hollows".  ???
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Re: Deep Space and Interplanetary Exploration, 2015
« Reply #95 on: 23 March 2015, 23:47:33 »
They are still so newly pointed out, it's hard to picture them.  Here they are in false color, showing blue.

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Re: Deep Space and Interplanetary Exploration, 2015
« Reply #96 on: 23 March 2015, 23:54:23 »
Y'know, I just want to be the first person to say "mining".

I mean, if you wanted access to the good stuff to repair your hyperdrive, in a high energy environment, this is exactly/i] where you'd go.



Damage to permafrost after oil drilling. Just sayin' ....

(See also Stephen Baxter's Manifold:Space. The Manifold trilogy [plus short story collection] is a bit of a techno-mind-****. Three separate, parallel but linked takes on the biggest of big ideas, all connected by a bright light blue circle ...)
* No, FASA wasn't big on errata - ColBosch
* The Housebook series is from the 80's and is the foundation of Btech, the 80's heart wrapped in heavy metal that beats to this day - Sigma
* To sum it up: FASAnomics: By Cthulhu, for Cthulhu - Moonsword
* Because Battletech is a conspiracy by Habsburg & Bourbon pretenders - MadCapellan
* The Hellbringer is cool, either way. It's not cool because it's bad, it's cool because it's bad with balls - Nightsky
* It was a glorious time for people who felt that we didn't have enough Marauder variants - HABeas2, re "Empires Aflame"

kato

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Re: Deep Space and Interplanetary Exploration, 2015
« Reply #97 on: 24 March 2015, 15:13:18 »
But before it takes that plunge, it's now orbiting closer to the surface than any probe before it
Given that MESSENGER is the first Mercury orbiter at all... ;-)

But yeah, it's doing 25 km altitude orbits. That's the closest anyone has (intentionally) orbited any significantly sized object at all without intending to land/touch down on it or crashing into it at some point.

The Apollo 15 CSM did 13 km above Luna before LM separation, but that was more of a non-intentional, barely avoided accident. LRO is doing an elliptic orbit with periapsis at 30 km altitude, that's the lowest otherwise. If one wants to include smaller objects Rosetta did the closest bound orbits at about 8 km above 67P/C-G before Philae separated.

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Re: Deep Space and Interplanetary Exploration, 2015
« Reply #98 on: 24 March 2015, 21:38:15 »
Given that MESSENGER is the first Mercury orbiter at all... ;-)

It was late... mistakes were made  ;)
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Re: Deep Space and Interplanetary Exploration, 2015
« Reply #99 on: 26 March 2015, 22:23:39 »
More from MESSENGER, from the Planetary Society.  Fantastic imagery, and commentary from their resident geologist.

http://www.planetary.org/blogs/emily-lakdawalla/2015/03251744-lpsc-2015-messenger-mercury.html

And this one on Aeolian processes and patterns on the surface of two very different bodies in our Solar System, Mars and Titan.  More great imagery, of course.  Very spectacular.

http://www.planetary.org/blogs/guest-blogs/2015/0326-lpsc-2015-aeolian-processes-mars-titan.html
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rebs

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Re: Deep Space and Interplanetary Exploration, 2015
« Reply #100 on: 26 March 2015, 22:33:00 »
Y'know, I just want to be the first person to say "mining".

I mean, if you wanted access to the good stuff to repair your hyperdrive, in a high energy environment, this is exactly/i] where you'd go.



Damage to permafrost after oil drilling. Just sayin' ....

(See also Stephen Baxter's Manifold:Space. The Manifold trilogy [plus short story collection] is a bit of a techno-mind-****. Three separate, parallel but linked takes on the biggest of big ideas, all connected by a bright light blue circle ...)

I was thinking, and nations rose and fell, and volcanoes were born and laid flat again...  are these areas that once had underground water, that has since run deeper into Mercury's mantle (or escaped with time through fissuring) slowly through eons of super heating followed by super cooling?  Then the top collapses with time...  or maybe this happened long ago, and these are the ancient scars?

edited:

Mining sounds good.  I'm just always on board with progress, even future progress imagined from our standpoint in time.  Prospecting visually might even be within this probe's abilities.  That could be a great possible reason/motivation for the super-close orbital approaches. They are a lot more risky, and it makes sense to do it at the end of the primary mission, but it makes more sense that it's being done for purposes of giving us reasons to go back soon.  Practical ones I would hope, in addition to the advance in science that we get from our endeavors.

Volatiles everywhere is also promising.

Might as well edit this one in.  Planetary Society look at seriously lowering the cost of missions to the Outer Planets.

http://www.planetary.org/blogs/guest-blogs/van-kane/20150326-four-ideas-to-bust-the-floor-on-outer-planet-mission-costs.html
« Last Edit: 27 March 2015, 00:15:29 by rebs »
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Re: Deep Space and Interplanetary Exploration, 2015
« Reply #101 on: 27 March 2015, 02:00:46 »
Planetary Society look at seriously lowering the cost of missions to the Outer Planets.
Cost is a relative thing - what really costs money in space missions for NASA is the instruments. ESA does the tricky thing, and doesn't make the instruments part of a mission budget - instruments in ESA missions are always just donated items contributed by ESA's subgroups. NASA in contrast nominally puts the instruments in the budget but doesn't account for the launch.

This is how NASA can sell fast or complicated path missions (i.e. outer planets) on a limited budget. The limitation in those missions is then that they're skimping on what they bring along - see Dawn, which carries a grand total of one US-built, accounted instrument (plus two "donations") with the other two planned instruments stripped out for cost reason, or Juno, which is realistically a single-purpose, extremely short mission nowhere near as capable or lasting as the two previous outer planet orbiters (33 orbits around Jupiter? Seriously, we're sending something for that?).

ESA's budgeting hides the real cost to some extent (often criticized), but from the ESA side of things presents a more holistic approach - they budget what they're actually paying for. The limitation by comparison is here that the contributing national space agencies retain control over their instruments' data, leading to fractured and often limping public output (see Rosetta).

If you really want to lower the cost of outer planet missions combine both approachs and limit the mission budget to buying the bus, spacecraft integration and flight operations ;)

And before you say something - that's how they're realizing AIM. That's a two-spacecraft mission to a binary asteroid involving an instrument-laden, slow-moving orbiter and a heavy, fast impactor sent later on separately on as big a rocket as possible. ESA's doing the orbiter, hence stripping the instruments from the budget, while NASA's doing the impactor, hence stripping the cost of its launcher from the budget. If they'd do it the other way around that mission would have at least twice the nominal cost.
« Last Edit: 27 March 2015, 02:03:44 by kato »

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Re: Deep Space and Interplanetary Exploration, 2015
« Reply #102 on: 27 March 2015, 18:02:43 »
Well that's something to think about.  Being an enthusiast, I love the excitement of discovery and new knowledge that these types of missions often yield.  But I often don't think about exactly how the costs are calculated and pitched to the government bodies that oversee the funding processes for each new mission.  Glad to share in some insight. 

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Re: Deep Space and Interplanetary Exploration, 2015
« Reply #103 on: 28 March 2015, 11:35:55 »
The AIM mission will actually be an exciting one. There's a binary asteroid heading broadly towards us (closest pass in 2023 at 0.1 AU or so). The focus of the mission is on the smaller of the two asteroids.

ESA will send an orbiter towards it around 2020 with a mission profile broadly similar to what Rosetta is doing at 67P/C-G. That is, examine it from various orbits, find some specialties, put a lander on it (a MASCOT derivative - like the one currently enroute to another asteroid with Hayabusa 2). Also check out the big asteroid as well. As a bonus, they're bringing along a number of cubesats as separate orbiters for which they're currently holding a competition. From the ESA side, this mission satisfies two goals: one, we're doing our own mission to an asteroid, and two, we're doing some technology testing - those cubesats would be the first on any such mission, and the orbiter will test a laser communication terminal at interplanetary distances. The mission is moderately small - about 260 million Euro including launch, but without the instruments that are currently only considered as a black box strawman package. Those will involve radar and IR measuring, broadly, some in conjunction with the lander.

The NASA mission (DART) has a different focus: Its sole intention is to produce an impact of about 1.33 tons TNT-eq (300 kg at 6.1 km/s) on the surface of that smaller asteroid.  The impact will change the orbit of the 150m-diameter asteroid (around its binary partner) slightly in such a way as to be measurable even from Earth. The only real instrument brought along is a flight spare of the LORRI imager from New Horizons used for navigation and some images before impact, hence virtually free. The launcher is not included in NASA's extremely low 150-million USD estimate for the mission, but given that it'll likely launch on a ULA rocket, will be somewhere around twice the mission budget (the larger Deltas run up to 450 million per launch).

Both missions are built in such a way that they can function completely independently - basically the ESA orbiter will just be conveniently in place (withdrawing to a safe spot 100 km away) to observe the impact, measure its results and reexamine the asteroid for impact damage on and under the surface. NASA can pitch it as a cheap mission to test technology to deflect asteroids (at least that's how they're pitching it), ESA can pitch it as "see, this is the same asteroid impact study mission we already planned five years ago - but now for less than half the money".

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Re: Deep Space and Interplanetary Exploration, 2015
« Reply #104 on: 28 March 2015, 11:40:44 »
P.S.: Here's the US pitch for that mission - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mIuHeY3jfIo

It's a bit like "oh my god Chelyabinsk / oh my god Asteroids are out to kill us - bring in the military / we're gonna sink him and save America!".

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Re: Deep Space and Interplanetary Exploration, 2015
« Reply #105 on: 02 April 2015, 11:49:41 »
In case anyone's interested, ESA has made an archive of 2700 pictures taken by Rosetta's navigation camera available publically. The images are under CreativeCommons-ShareAlike license, hence freely usable for distribution and modification as long as ESA is credited properly.

The archive so far includes:
  • 220 photos taken during the Mars flyby
  • 295 photos taken during the three Earth flybys
  • 620 photos taken during the two asteroid flybys (Steins and Lutetia)
  • 964 photos taken during deep-space cruise and maneuvers
  • 613 photos taken between rendezvous and landing phases at the comet
http://imagearchives.esac.esa.int/index.php?/category/9

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Re: Deep Space and Interplanetary Exploration, 2015
« Reply #106 on: 01 May 2015, 00:49:57 »
And now we have seen the end of the MESSENGER orbiter. 

No more fuel to adjust attitude to keep the built-on sunshade in proper position meant it was baking to a crispy death, anyway. 

NPR blogged it nicely here:

http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2015/04/30/403279933/kill-the-messenger-nasa-orbiter-set-to-crash-into-mercury-thursday

edit: Pay no heed to commenters on the blog, please.  They can at times be rather excitable in rule four type ways. 
« Last Edit: 01 May 2015, 00:54:36 by rebs »
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Re: Deep Space and Interplanetary Exploration, 2015
« Reply #107 on: 01 May 2015, 07:05:26 »
Best part of that article? Lithobraking is now an official thing.

(I don't care who made it up, I'm crediting Cray. ;D)
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Re: Deep Space and Interplanetary Exploration, 2015
« Reply #108 on: 01 May 2015, 07:23:33 »
Lithobraking has been a thing since they did it at the moon sometime around 1960 ;)

On an unrelated note: JAXA reports that IKAROS has called in again.

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Re: Deep Space and Interplanetary Exploration, 2015
« Reply #109 on: 02 May 2015, 02:06:09 »
Best part of that article? Lithobraking is now an official thing.

(I don't care who made it up, I'm crediting Cray. ;D)

When you really need to come to a complete stop in mid-orbit, nothing works like a terrestrial body.   O0
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Re: Deep Space and Interplanetary Exploration, 2015
« Reply #110 on: 11 May 2015, 17:45:25 »
Cool!



I'm fascinated to see the two bright "headlight" spots are shiny at all aspects - not what I was expecting from a flat, icy surface. So it's a rumpled icy surface?

And is it my imagination, or are the spots slightly brighter when at the limbs - eg. more reflective from low incident light angles? Most peculiar if so.
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Re: Deep Space and Interplanetary Exploration, 2015
« Reply #111 on: 11 May 2015, 22:59:40 »
May just be contrast with the surrounding material and an inability to show the highest brightness, or else (much more likely) it's an uneven shape that just happened to reflect better in one direction - smoother on that side, for whatever reason.  Still interesting, especially if it isn't an ice formation...
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Re: Deep Space and Interplanetary Exploration, 2015
« Reply #112 on: 12 May 2015, 00:07:26 »
That 4-km high mountain is also interesting, especially given how it's a rather unique shape at least locally:


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Re: Deep Space and Interplanetary Exploration, 2015
« Reply #113 on: 12 May 2015, 04:53:34 »
That 4-km high mountain is also interesting, especially given how it's a rather unique shape at least locally:



Indeed, it looks as though it should be called Sugarloaf of Ceres.  A little reminiscent, anyway. (edit: wait... angles? hmmm, cool.)

But, it looks like the ice on the sides of the mountain could quite well be very fresh material, or otherwise freshly disturbed icy material. 
« Last Edit: 12 May 2015, 04:55:47 by rebs »
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Re: Deep Space and Interplanetary Exploration, 2015
« Reply #114 on: 12 May 2015, 11:16:47 »
I've seen some suggestions that it could be a geologic formation, pushed out from the interior. And that there's probably more such objects on the surface, just not as big or as prominent.

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Re: Deep Space and Interplanetary Exploration, 2015
« Reply #115 on: 12 May 2015, 17:54:59 »
Ice Pyramids of Ceres! I see it now!

(Unfortunately the Headlights appear to be flat. Which makes the reflectance ... odd. Banks of cats-eye reflectors left behind by the silicoid civilisation of the Hadean age?
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Re: Deep Space and Interplanetary Exploration, 2015
« Reply #116 on: 13 May 2015, 09:06:38 »
The mountain could been made by comet impact of some kind, small one.  It certainly looks like there crater next to it.

I can't wait for New Horizons passes through Pluto.  I just wish it wasn't going so fast, it won't be there long enough to really study it and they've spend so much time making this project to happen.
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Re: Deep Space and Interplanetary Exploration, 2015
« Reply #117 on: 13 May 2015, 16:58:55 »
I can't wait for New Horizons passes through Pluto.

Personally, I hope they miss by a little bit ;)

Seriously, they've had to do some serious modelling - Pluto has 3-5 small moonlets as well as Charon, and the odds of a collision were non-trivial.
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Re: Deep Space and Interplanetary Exploration, 2015
« Reply #118 on: 14 May 2015, 06:39:16 »
I meant pass through pluto system.  :-[
It seems to be shame since there so much there, now we know.
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kato

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Re: Deep Space and Interplanetary Exploration, 2015
« Reply #119 on: 14 May 2015, 11:36:26 »
In case anyone's interested, ESA has made an archive of 2700 pictures taken by Rosetta's navigation camera available publically. The images are under CreativeCommons-ShareAlike license, hence freely usable for distribution and modification as long as ESA is credited properly.
That archive is now updated about every 4-6 weeks btw. Last batch pushed it to 3300 pictures (new ones from 30 km orbit phase), next batch (early June) will contain the NAVCAM pictures of the landing. Each update contains about two months worth, will be done that way until they've caught up to where they'll release to the archive exactly six months after the images are taken.

Mattias Malmer has used the new images already to update his shape model of the comet:
http://mattias.malmer.nu/2015/05/new-shapemodel-based-on-the-esa-navcam-bonanza/