Deep Space and Interplanetary Exploration - The Universe is Timeless

[Weirdo]

What he said. Earth has the same things. The difference is because the giants don't have those annoying land masses to muddle things up, both physically and thermally. On Jupiter, there's nothing to break the wind.

[rebs]

Yes, and then heat from outside (the sun) and even more heat (is it three or four times as much heat as it receives from solar radiation?  I could look it up, but I'm kind of lazy today) from the inside stirring the system in ways we can't exactly replicate here on earth at the moment. 

Not to mention crushing pressures.  I'm certainly no meteorologist, but the differences between a high pressure zone and a low pressure zone on Jupiter can only be magnified compared to what we experience on the earth.

[BirdofPrey]

Not sure how it might influence the weather patterns on Jupiter, but the planet does a full rotation in about 9 hours

[ANS Kamas P81]

Not sure how it might influence the weather patterns on Jupiter, but the planet does a full rotation in about 9 hours

Just for giggles...Jupiter's official radius, per Google, is 69,911 km.  Assuming a proper shape and even radius, (which it's not, hello oblate spheroids) that's a circumference of 439,263km - which I will round off to 439,000km for simple enough math.  Rotational period is 9 hours 55 minutes 30 seconds, which I will again round off, to ten hours exactly.  So every ten hours, Jupiter spins (more than) 43,900km an hour...plugging that into this site needs the following data:
Radius in centimeters: 69,911km = 69,911,000m = 6,991,100,000 centimeters
RPM: 1 every 10 hours = 1 every 600 minutes = 1/600 of an RPM = 0.001666 rpm
Hit calculate for G forces...and you get over 0.2g of centrifugal force.  That's a hell of a spin!

What he said. Earth has the same things. The difference is because the giants don't have those annoying land masses to muddle things up, both physically and thermally. On Jupiter, there's nothing to break the wind.

Insert breaking wind on Uranus joke here!

[Wrangler]

OSIRIS-REx has successfully launched, the asteroid retrieval mission slated to arrive in 2020.  OSIRIS-REx is suppose to scoop up some soil off Asteroid Bennu, which is a primitive carbon-based Asteroid. 

Launch was interesting, the Atlas rocket has a single solid state booster on it's side.  It sort looks vaguely like on those old Guppy Cargo Aircraft NASA used to shuttle unusual cargo around.

[kato]

Rosetta's final destination was published and named on friday: Deir el-Medina in Ma'at regio.

Planned touchdown is between Ma'at_02 - Deir el-Medina - and Ma'at_03 in this picture. For scale reference, including solar arrays, Rosetta is slightly above 30 meters wide and would be well visible in this image. Deir el-Medina is also visible in the center of this picture (taken two years ago).

Rosetta will impact at 0.9m/s, slightly less than Philae did. Officially Rosetta will not bounce though - because they're simply shutting off the transmitter at the exact point of impact.

With a bit of snide ESA points out that Deir el-Medina can be found in "many" pictures in their NAVCAM and OSIRIS public image archive. It currently contains 42,000+ pictures though (including a couple thousand each of Earth, Mars, Lutetia and Steins), so good luck searching.

[kato]

Since ESA encourages you to do this...


Credit: ESA/Rosetta/MPS for OSIRIS Team MPS/UPD/LAM/IAA/SSO/INTA/UPM/DASP/IDA

This somewhat more recent picture from June from the image archive shows Rosetta's planned destination quite nicely with regard to a load of "known" comet features.

• Deir el Medina is just to the right of the horizontal center line about three quarters up, on the small lobe.
• Left of the center line, less than 300m away horizontally (and about 1 km down) is the "neck" with its characteristic strewn boulder line.
• Further to the right, about 700m from Deir el Medina, is the Hatmehit basin (under that characteristic peak), which Philae bounced across between first and second touchdown. Agilkia, the planned landing site of Philae is about 500m to the right of Deir el Medina on the "hill" between it and Hatmehit.
• Abydos, Philae's final landing place, is roughly in the vertical center line, in the scragged field immediately at the right edge of the picture just below Hatmehit - the border to Bastet regio.

In case you're wondering comet north is about 40° off to the left at top, i.e. in the topleft corner nominally. For the small lobe at least.

[Wrangler]

The New Glenn, Blue Origin's next rocket. This thing bigger than Heavy Falcon and comes close to Saturn V.

They're really going ahead with this, with 2 & 3 Stage rocket which their planning to land on their own just like Space X. However, their planning to get up and going in a decade.  Not easy thing to do i would think, but one can hope they can achieve some success and make it actual space race.

[worktroll]

Very cool, and very good news. BDB for moving mass to orbit, and something smarter for people-moving.

[kato]

Eh, payload-wise from it's layout it'll just be commercial competition for Ariane 64 and Vulcan, likely laid out for the same payload class (i.e. one size above Falcon Heavy) while offering savings through first stage return.

[worktroll]

Which is no bad thing.

[Wrangler]

There a bipartisan panel US Senate lawmakers are trying to safeguard funding for SLS and Orion for future missions from next President.  This purely focus on funding and trying sustain momentum to keep any random cuts from happening to the program after last turn over of the presidency.

Its interesting since the proposal gives NASA more focus on accomplishing their mission in trying get people to mars and settle with establishment of some kind of space economy.

[Wrangler]

Another bit of random news, New Horizon probe detected X-Rays being transmitted from Pluto.  This is surprising, since you usually need magnetic field of some kind to emit X-Rays.  Especially as far Pluto is from the planet.

Goes to show you there alot more to learn about our universe!

[cray]

Astronomical photography are out.

This one stuck out to me, since it reminded both the photographer and me of sunrise on a binary planet. In fact, it's the moon and Venus in a misty moment.

[Daryk]

Gorgeous!  I have no other words for that image, regardless of how long it took to take it...

[rebs]

Nice shot!  I love it when art and science Stackpole like that.  :D

[Nebfer]

I'm surprised no one was talking about the big SpaceX news that dropped today
They unveiled their plans for their next big rocket

The Interplanetary Transport System (or Its)

To quote my Brother, it's going to rattle windows here when it launches.

A Vid
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0qo78R_yYFA

And the conference about it
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A1YxNYiyALg

[VhenRa]

Dear lord that thing is insane.

Seriously, my reaction to this thing is impossible to type here, because it would get me banned... but it basically involved repetitive expletives and swearing until my head got my mind around it.


I mean, the proposed design... would reach Mars in 17 days. Just shy of BT's Columbia... using chemical propulsion.

[Nebfer]

Dear lord that thing is insane.

Seriously, my reaction to this thing is impossible to type here, because it would get me banned... but it basically involved repetitive expletives and swearing until my head got my mind around it.


I mean, the proposed design... would reach Mars in 17 days. Just shy of BT's Columbia... using chemical propulsion.

The expected travel time is actually around 3 or 4 months, one way.

IIRC the proposed hab space per occupant is around 10 cubic meters I believe.

[kato]

Dear lord that thing is insane.

Capability-wise it's perfectly in line with previous NASA proposals for less single-minded missions, such as Nova before Saturn or HLLV after it. Size-wise it's a bit small in comparison though. Payload-wise it's in line with NASA's Mars Reference Mission btw, just in a single launch instead of more economic assembly in orbit.

Other than that it's of course just vapourware yet.

[VhenRa]

The expected travel time is actually around 3 or 4 months, one way.

IIRC the proposed hab space per occupant is around 10 cubic meters I believe.

Doesn't fit with the figures they were saying for interplanetary transit speed. Its around double that of New Horizons. New Horizons could have made it to Mars in 40 days IIRC.

[kato]

For Rosetta's mission end ESA TV will begin live streaming from ESOC Darmstadt on Thursday afternoon (12:30-15:30 UTC) and follow up with live streaming and broadcasting from ESOC Friday morning (07:45-12:15 UTC, sat/stream from 10:30 UTC). Planned programme for Thursday is a summary of mission scientific results; for Friday from last command to Rosetta (08:00 UTC) to touchdown (11:20 UTC).

You can also find the scientific results summarized in the "Living with a Comet" post series on their blog, one from each instrument team - published in the last 2-3 days. At least for Consert, Miro, Cosima, Giada, Midas, Rosina, Virtis and Alice instruments. Osiris and the whole RPC suite are missing (yet).

There's also a new part for the Ambition movie produced by them btw.

[Wrangler]

Spaceflightnow.com  posted that Musk announces his long term plans for colonization of Mars.

It won't be for a long time, but at least someone says "I want try doing this" verses. hearing someone "Maybe some day."

[Maingunnery]

Well if he succeeds then cities (and other things) will be named after him.

[Weirdo]

Even if it never gets off the ground, we're gonna get some really cool technologies and techniques out of this project. Either way, win/win.

[Kit deSummersville]

Well if he succeeds then cities (and other things) will be named after him.

He isn't satisified with Muskegon?  :P

[rebs]

I bet he won't be happy until his people build Great Muskovy Imperial Center of the Martian Ascendancy for him.

[Weirdo]

He isn't satisified with Muskegon?  :P

I've been there, and certainly wouldn't be...

[cray]

Rosetta is over after 12 years. It has crashed into comet 67P.

[kato]

ESA's ExoMars will arrive in 12 days - in two parts; Schiaparelli will detach from TGO in 9 days and head for the planet while the orbiter will swing into orbit.

The media campaign for ExoMars is nowhere as big as for Rosetta; there's no blog on ESA's site, but at least twitter feeds for the mission, the orbiter and the lander. Detail info website here.

Intended landing area for Schiaparelli is in Meridiani Planum very close to the current location of NASA's Opportunity rover, within a few km. It's considered highly unlikely that Opportunity will spot Schiaparelli's descent though.

Schiaparelli is an experimental platform mostly intended to test Mars re-entry and landing as a demonstrator. While it carries a scientific payload, it is battery-powered and only planned to perform for 2-8 sol after landing, likely under 4 sol. The science payload is called DREAMS and will perform studies on Martian dust storms as well as their possible relation to local electric fields. Despite its function as a demonstrator, Schiaparelli carries a camera (flight spare from Herschel) that will take 15 photos during descent.
After the batteries run out Schiaparelli will still serve a function as a static retroreflector target for geodetic analysis and possibly in the future as a target for laser communications tests and LIDAR atmospheric analysis; it's the first such retroreflector on Mars, on the Moon similar systems were placed in the Apollo missions and by the Lunokhod rovers.

TGO, the orbiter, is the main mission of ExoMars 2016 and will analyze the Martian atmosphere. It also carries an observation camera that will take stereoscopic colour images. Part of the mission is to map out where certain trace gasses in the atmosphere - known to exist - are generated for analysis of potential biological or chemical causes. TGO has a planned mission time of one Martian year (687 earth days) beginning after it swings into its lower 400 km circular orbit by early 2017. Beyond that it will also serve as a communications relay for future missions.

The mission will be supported communications-wise by Mars Express, since it will be better positioned for monitoring Schiaparelli's landing.