Deep Space and Interplanetary Exploration - The Universe is Timeless

[BirdofPrey]

I can't imagine dense materials being particularly attractive an option in any case.  I would imagine it would cut into the mission payload quite heavily.

[Weirdo]

I know tech like this is being developed for the Orion Mars mission(among others). My favorite approaches are either the magnetic fields, or the idea of using the craft's water storage as shielding. Water's heavy too, but it's stuff you gotta bring along anyway, so you're not exactly boosting useless dead weight. Eventually you won't have to boost it up at all, as we start harvesting it from other places that are easier to leave. Finally, using water adds a level of redundancy to your life support, since having those kinds of reserves lessens the danger if your recycling systems go on the fritz.

[kato]

Radiation coming from Jupiter would have long term health issues.

The radiation belts of Jupiter are intense enough for short term health issues too. Io's surface gets 36 Sievert per day - that gets you a lethal dose in 2-4 hours if going out there unprotected. ESA's standing guideline allows for an accumulated maximum 1 Sievert for astronauts during their lifetime.

Given lack real development in manned spacecraft aside trying to get of the ground and getting money for it, i don't have high hopes in either development.

It's on a bit of a low burn, but afaik magnetic shield basic research is ongoing with both NASA and DLR (in different parallel projects).

[rebs]

Exploration of the Jovian system would be dangerous for human unfortunately. Radiation coming from Jupiter would have long term health issues.

I hope someone is able to develop something to migrate or redirect that deadly energies around craft operating out there.  There was talk I read awhile ago by producing artificial magnetic field around a ship and also putting dense materials into the hull of manned spacecraft.  Given lack real development in manned spacecraft aside trying to get of the ground and getting money for it, i don't have high hopes in either development.

I was remembering from an older plan I read: A base would be on Callisto (which receives less harmful wavelengths of radiation on its surface than we do on Earth), where control of smaller vehicles and robots are much easier communications-wise to explore the rest of the system. 

But we are many years out of anything of the like, I know... 

[worktroll]

Curiosity rover: The reward for 'whale watching' on Mars

http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-34490337

All the climate models of early Mars have failed to simulate conditions in which liquid water could run and pool on the surface long enough to produce the stratigraphy seen in Gale. The air was too rarefied; it was simply too cold.

But the mudstones and sandstones seen by Curiosity disagree. On their evidence, it is not even as if the ancient lakes were ephemeral. The rover sees no examples of the types of sediments that are associated with dried-out lakebeds, or even the kinds of glacial deposits that might suggest the water was frozen for long periods.

One tantalising consequence of all this is the possibility that the planet may once have featured a large body of water somewhere on its surface. This could have produced the atmospheric humidity, the rains and snows, needed to drive the features seen in Gale.

For decades, researchers have wondered if the flat, northern lowlands could have held an ocean during Mars' early history. The latest Curiosity results are re-igniting interest in this idea, says John Grotzinger, the lead author on this week's paper and the former project scientist on Curiosity.

Okay, I have to say it - I made similar claims back in 1980, when I was a postgrad with no reputation to risk. Quite modest permafrost deposits are needed in order to generate the required temperature; the trick was to determine conditions where CO2 bulk was enough to bring things up to get the H2O into the air.

And then ...

Mars atmosphere 'eroded by Sun activity'

http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-34736574

Which means one could go back and have higher initial bulk variables, based on higher stripping. (The stripping's not new; known about that for decades, along with the link to lack of magnetic field. But the additional rates based on solar activity is new.)

[kato]

Akatsuki is only about 140,000 km from Venus now. Decisive burn for orbital entry is in about 11 hours at 23:54 UTC, about six minutes before closest approach.

You can find a realtime simulation of Akatsuki's position here. That's generated from JAXA's published trajectory plan.

The spacecraft lost its primary propulsion five years ago during its first orbital entry attempt and will perform this now using only its maneuvering thrusters (on one side of the probe). If this fails they have a second try during the outbound leg of its Venus flyby, turning the spacecraft the other way and attempting again with the thrusters on that side.

The attempt is to get Akatsuki into a wide elliptic orbit around Venus with an apogee of about 500,000 km, which would be lowered to about 300,000 km in another burn attempt next April.

[rebs]

Best of luck to the Japanese Space Program.  Sounds like this will be valuable experience for everyone on earth.

[kato]

Looking forward to 2016 it's gonna get iffy btw. There's two Mars-destined probes intended for the next launch window: ExoMars 2016 (ESA) and InSight (NASA).

That launch window lasts from the beginning of January to the end of March. ExoMars was originally planned for launch on January 7th, ExoMars for February 3rd. Both launches have been postponed, for ExoMars due to a faulty gasket that had to be replaced (new launch on March 14, window up to March 25); this has been rectified, and ExoMars will be flown to Kazakhstan next week. InSight has a puncture in a vacuum-sealed sphere containing its seismic instruments, which might push it back for months (launch window closes March 30) if not up to two years.

Both missions won't fly "alone": ExoMars 2016 brings along the EDM Schiaparelli experimental lander, which will be mostly a technology demonstration for the ExoMars 2018 rover landing (separation near Mars); the Atlas upper stage for Insight will release two 6U cubesats, MarCO 1 and 2, which will fly alongside InSight to Mars, and are intended to provide a data relay during the atmospheric entry of InSight since no NASA satellites will be in the right orbital position for that.

The only other interplanetary probe launching next year will be OSIRIS-REx, basically NASA's recycling of JAXA's Hayabusa missions (albeit without landers).

[rebs]

But we also have JUNO arriving to destination to reacquaint us with the wonders of the Jupiter system. 

It's criticized as being too short a mission, but it will be valuable all the same.  It's packed with instruments that will all be working overtime without pay at a wide range of distances, there will be reams of data.  It's also featuring the latest technology to be sent beyond the asteroid belt, and will be a landmark in how to execute fast-paced missions beyond (Hello, Uranus and Neptune again in our lifetimes! Perhaps; there are increased rumblings about such ambitious missions, and not just NASA.)

[rebs]

Also, Cassini is now entering the boldest phase of it's Awesome Mission. 

The coming years should be filled with daring things to do with an aging robot in orbit around a spectacular jovian planet.  [skull] 


Edit:

Need some Cassini eye candy here featuring Enceladus.  Courtesy of The Planetary Society and NASA.  Check out the plumes around the southern polar region (edit: and also that faint ring now associated directly with this phenomenon!). 

This is such a beautiful shot, it takes one to the very edge of words and their capabilities.

[Sabelkatten]

...is the Death Star changing orbit...? 8)

[ANS Kamas P81]

Oh look, a Union on a combat drop

[rebs]

Securing the Halo in orbit around Saturn.  O0

[kato]

Akatsuki's orbital insertion was successful.

[rebs]

Akatsuki sneaking up to Venus.  Courtesy of JAXA.


Check out this closeup of Pluto.  Hard to tell with all the meteorite activity in the Pluto system, but methinks an Imperial Probe landed not far from this location.  Courtesy of NASA and New Horizons. (which is on its way to target number 2.)

[worktroll]

The 1970s model of Pluto's surface was a layered, smooth ice-ball - different strata of frozen gasses, deposited in order of their freezing points.

This model's been discarded - Pluto has geology going on (exogeology?), with rifts, faulting, melting, and weird things we don't get right now.

The picture does however strongly suggest stratification - see how the craters tend to have "layer cake", with the layers dependant on depth (the relation to size of crater is related). So there's a thin dark surface layer, thicker lighter layer, another thin dark layer, and a lighter layer under that.

And then something's actively depositing a very thin light layer over the top. It can't just be "winter is coming" - 'atmosphere' cooling as Pluto heads back out into the darkness. Because then everything would have a similar layer (it's unreasonable to suggest the darker, better-defined craters all happened in the last dozen years or so).

What we're seeing is more like volcanic venting, like on Io, or Triton. Very slow, but covering older craters more than newer. See how the largest and the smallest craters are more heavily obscured?

[ANS Kamas P81]

I remember that model, it hung around for a long while.  The new one...the big kicker is, where's the heat coming from?  There's not enough from the tidal stress from Charon, or its own gravity...

[rebs]

The 1970s model of Pluto's surface was a layered, smooth ice-ball - different strata of frozen gasses, deposited in order of their freezing points.

This model's been discarded - Pluto has geology going on (exogeology?), with rifts, faulting, melting, and weird things we don't get right now.

The picture does however strongly suggest stratification - see how the craters tend to have "layer cake", with the layers dependant on depth (the relation to size of crater is related). So there's a thin dark surface layer, thicker lighter layer, another thin dark layer, and a lighter layer under that.

And then something's actively depositing a very thin light layer over the top. It can't just be "winter is coming" - 'atmosphere' cooling as Pluto heads back out into the darkness. Because then everything would have a similar layer (it's unreasonable to suggest the darker, better-defined craters all happened in the last dozen years or so).

What we're seeing is more like volcanic venting, like on Io, or Triton. Very slow, but covering older craters more than newer. See how the largest and the smallest craters are more heavily obscured?

I do see that.  It makes sense. 

Looking very close I can also see the outlines of craters that have been "snowed over" more or less completely, too, in the white fields between the more obvious impacts.

The surface "crust" does look layered.  Like an early winter snow around here, where rain falls, then snow, and it ices over, the surface freezes, and the rest drains away into the ground because it wasn't quite frozen yet.  When you step on the frozen crust, it crashes through to the muddy grass beneath it. 

I remember that model, it hung around for a long while.  The new one...the big kicker is, where's the heat coming from?  There's not enough from the tidal stress from Charon, or its own gravity...

My only guess about the internal heat source is there's a lot more radioactives out there than we hypothesized.  That, or there's lots of ammonia or other substances to keep water in liquid form, since it seems to be a major part of Pluto's surface.

Ha!  I still remember the first week of this, I was still thinking in terms of what we might call cryovolcanoes - spewing liquid nitrogen or even ethane or propane 

[kato]

Akatsuki's orbital insertion was successful.

And now official: http://global.jaxa.jp/press/2015/12/20151209_akatsuki.html

It's notable for the fact that once Juno and Cassini have dived into their respective gas giants at the end of 2017 Akatsuki will be the only probe active in orbit of a planet other than Earth or Mars (there will also be probes active near two near-Earth asteroids, OSIRIS-REx and Hayabusa 2).

[Maingunnery]

I remember that model, it hung around for a long while.  The new one...the big kicker is, where's the heat coming from?  There's not enough from the tidal stress from Charon, or its own gravity...

Maybe it doesn't need much heat? It is cryo-geology anyway.

[kato]

To sum up 2015 around the solar system:

Flybys and Deep Space:
- Pluto whizzed by Pluto and took some pictures. Now bound for some rock in the outer solar system while sending back those pictures.
- Hayabusa 2 flew by Earth, bound for near-Earth asteroid Ryugu. Procyon too, bound for deep space since its thruster failed.
- LISA Pathfinder launched to SEL1 this month. Should arrive there in four weeks. DSCOVR launched that way at the beginning of the year.
- Ikaros is still around, using her solar sail to ride the wind between Venus' and Earth' orbit around the sun. Ikaros hibernates for about 7-9 out of 10 months. Last contact was in May, next should be around February or March. Exact position isn't all that predictable, the sail has so far produced around 1 km/s delta-v pushing her "off-path".
- Juno is still bound for Jupiter. Should be somewhere in the outer fringes of the belt now.

Orbital operations:
- Rosetta keeps rolling round 67P/C-G and taking pictures.
- Dawn arrived at Ceres and took some pictures. Now going for the actual mapping orbit.
- Cassini did some of its last close Saturn moon flybys. And took some pictures.
- Venus Express did its final dive into Venus' atmosphere at the beginning of the year. Akatsuki swung itself into orbit around Venus at the end of the year, after circling the sun for five years after its failed first attempt to do so.
- Messenger crashed into Mercury as planned.
- Mars still has MRO, Odyssey, Mars Express, MAVEN and Mangalyaan orbiting it.
- The moon currently has LRO, Artemis P1, Artemis P2 and the Chang'e-5-T1 bus orbiting it.

Ground Operations:
- The rovers keep roving. Curiosity and Opportunity on Mars, Yutu on the moon. Well, Yutu not so much. It's been standing still for the past two years. But just called back in after surviving yet another lunar night.
- Philae sitting on 67P/C-G woke up and fell asleep again. Last signals so far detected this week, they're looking into it.

[ANS Kamas P81]

Don't stay in the house, there's a beautiful yard to play in as well.
http://voyager.jpl.nasa.gov/news/tsunami_wave.html
Apparently the Voyagers are surfing in interstellar space, riding magnetic plasma tsunamis with some interesting implications for what lies between stars.  And at twenty billion kilometers from Earth and the Sun, so very far from home.

If we ever do invent warp drive, we really should go collect all four of them.  Both Voyagers, and the Pioneers if they can be located.

[Sabelkatten]

We really should get a true deep-space probe launched. Get some high-quality data on what's out there.

[St.George]

And why does it take forever to upload to the cloud???It's a light-year away,,,,  ;D

[rebs]

Agreed.  Space Exploration, we need more of it.  (Can't really help you with the cloud, George!  But I hear ya. O0 )

Cassini gave us a nice new shot a month back...  Here we have Enceladus eclipsing (...err, transiting?) a much larger Tethys, creating a spectacular Cold Eye effect. 

Loved it so much, I had to use it at my poetry blog, too.

[kato]

No one's started a 2016 thread yet  ???

[rebs]

Should I?  Or, thinking outside the thread box, should I simply re-purpose this one? 

I leave it to the community.  Someone start another one, or if not, I'll re-title this one to read 2015-2016. 

Your call, my fellow forumites.  There's still a lot of space to explore.

[ANS Kamas P81]

Plenty of space (badump tish) left in this thread, so I vote for retitling to a space exploration general, sans date.  The universe is timeless.

[rebs]

It is done. 

"The universe is timeless"

Edit: I'll get a 50 page locked-down thread, by hook or by crook.  ;D

[kato]

For a more general look out there: Here's an overview on what will (probably) launch during the next six months.

A bit off probably, mostly since the Chinese don't really publish their launches much ahead and many commercial companies tend to present orderbooks without specific launch dates. Hence why this list is also without giving the launch date, just more or less generic.

To Geostationary Orbit

Basically mostly commercial communications satellites. Currently planned, based by commercial platform:

• 8 on a Space Systems Loral SSL-1300 bus
• 4 on a Boeing BSS-702 bus (1 MP,2 SP,1 HP)
• 2 on an Astrium E3000 bus
• 1 on a OHB Luxor bus
• 1 on a Chinese DFH-4 bus

5 launches (for 7 sats) by Arianespace, 5 by SpaceX, 3 by International Launch Services (i.e. on Proton), 1 by China

In addition to that three Indian and two US military satellites will go to GEO. The two US sats are MUOS-5 and Orion-9, both launched by ULA as per standing contract; the Indian satellites are IRNSS-1E thru G, for their regional independent navigation network (as in missile guidance). MUOS is military satcom, the Orion series supposedly SIGINT.

To Medium Earth Orbit

Navigation satellite territory. One GPS-2F (#12) and one Glonass-M (#51) to be launched, plus apparently one Beidou (#21). ESA will put a couple Galileos up there later in the year.

Also going there is Tundra-12L, a Russian military early warning satellite on a Molnya orbit, part of a network to replace the old Cold War US-K satellites that Russia kept launching till two or three years ago. First of the series launched in November.

To Low Earth Orbit

Human Spaceflight:

Russia has two Soyuz and one Progress flight to ISS planned. First Soyuz MS and second Progress MS flight in fact, both are transitioning over to a new model right now. Mostly another incremental update. ISS will additionally be supplied by two Cygnus and three SpaceX Dragon flights, which will also bring two smaller components for ISS: the second IDA docking adapter (first one was lost last year by SpX) and NASA's BEAM Bigelow inflatable module prototype.

China supposedly wants to fly Shenzhou 11 in the first half of the year, often doubted because they've always stated they want to loft their second Tiangong spacelab first so that SZ-11 has something to dock to.

Commercial:

Only two flights. One launching Aleph-1, an Argentinian commercial earth observation satellite, and the other one a double launch of 2 Iridium-NEXT commercial communications satellites.
Yeah, seems meager. SpaceX supposedly has a couple Iridium mass launches on its orderbook for later in the year.

Institutional earth observation:

• 3 Sentinel (ESA)
• Resurs-P 3 (Russia)
• Kanopus-V-IK (Russia)
• FormoSat-5 (Taiwan)

That Resurs-P satellite is the only one that stands out - it's based on the old military Yantar platform, and weighs in at a hefty 6.6 tons. The Sentinels are all around one ton, while the other above are half that.

Military:

• Topaz-4 (USA)
• 3 Gonets-M (Russia, communications satellites)

Topaz is also known as FIA-Radar.

Science:

• ASTRO-H is a Japanese moderately large x-ray telescope in LEO.
• Microscope is a French compact 180-kg satellite that's supposed to explore some general relativity concepts (Equivalence Principle to an accuracy of 10^-15, whatever that means - apparently earthbased experiments only go to n* 10^-13 accuracy).
• Jason-3 is a continued ocean topography mission (mostly tracking wave height i think). Joint US/French project.
• MVL-300 will observe ultra-high energy cosmic rays by tracking their path in the upper atmosphere. Russian project.
• Zond is a Russian solar observation satellite that will explore the interaction of solar emissions with the upper atmosphere for up to a decade (i think).
• Shijian-10 is a Chinese biological experiment exposing significant amounts of seeds and fungi to a space environment for several weeks before returning to Earth. First such mission was in 2006.

Nice juicy selection in my opinion. Actually quite a lot when you think about it. Some of the cubesats below, those not designed by commercial providers, also occasionally have some minor science function too.

Technology Demonstration:

• around 35 cubesats going up as passengers on launchers, possibly more
• plus whatever they toss out of ISS (typically around 10-15 per month, usually resupplied by the Cygnus and SpX flights...)
• possibly up to two launcher test flights in the first half; Falcon Heavy and Long March 7.

Missions Beyond

Now that's an easy one. Cuz there's one remaining. ExoMars TGO/EDM.