Here's the youtube playlist for the rover reports.

http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLE8C83FF0367EEF8C

2/16/2013 12:43:39 PM

http://www.nasaspaceflight.com/2013/02/asteroid-highlights-investigate-neos-nasa-missions/

2/16/2013 3:32:24 PM

Reading a little bit more about the Russian Meteor... it is estimated to have released 500 kilotons of energy

in comparison, the nuclear bomb used on Hiroshima released 16 kilotons.

2/16/2013 9:40:02 PM

So it's a good thing it exploded in the atmosphere?

2/16/2013 10:19:41 PM

well yeah... specifically that it was maybe 40 km above the surface vs ~1/2 km in the case of Hiroshima.

2/16/2013 10:39:06 PM

2/25/2013 9:31:54 AM

http://lightyears.blogs.cnn.com/2013/02/27/group-aims-to-send-2-humans-on-mars-mission-in-2018/?hpt=hp_t1

newly unveiled plans pan out, a man and a woman may represent humanity on one journey that has never been attempted before: a mission to Mars.

“It’s incredibly feasible. It’s not crazy talk," Taber MacCallum, CEO of Paragon Space Development Corp., told CNN.

MacCallum and millionaire Dennis Tito announced their plans Wednesday to send a couple of earthlings on a 501-day trip in a spacecraft that would fly by the red planet. The proposal was unveiled at the National Press Club in Washington.

The mission would lift off in 2018, they said. It would not involve landing on Mars, making the proposed journey infinitely easier than putting people on the planet's surface, which NASA wants to do later this century. But the spacecraft would pass within 100 miles of the planet.

Tito has founded the Inspiration Mars Foundation, a nonprofit organization spearheading this effort. No stranger to space, the one-time NASA engineer became in 2001 the first space tourist flying on a Russian rocket to the International Space Station....

2/27/2013 4:43:46 PM

NASA's NuSTAR also just released that they make some pretty crazy discovery. They measured the spin rate of a black hole, and apparently it rotates close to the theoretical maximum predicted by general relativity. Quite mind blowing.

This is what it looks like

2/27/2013 4:50:10 PM

^^I'll believe it when I see it. I feel like there have been a number of announcements made like this over the past few years that never amounted to anything. Also, NASA currently has no plan to put a person on Mars. That ended when Constellation was canceled a few years ago.

2/28/2013 9:05:16 AM

Are they talking about a flyby of Mars? Does that even make sense?

I would think they would do orbit capture. You could still potentially use aerobraking, although it would be fantastically dangerous. But if you just do a flyby... where do you go after grazing the planet? Do you just continue in orbit around the sun for the better part of a year until you come around to Earth again?

2/28/2013 9:42:23 AM

apparantly NASA has an internal "roadmap" type thing, but are reluctant to release it at this time due to the sensitive budget issues. (can you comment on that Wraith?)

but i feel like right now our space goals are exceedingly nebulous.


something more concrete, and much sooner in the future... SpaceX is launching another Falcon 9 rocket carrying a Dragon capsule tomorrow. The launch is scheduled for 10:10 am, and will take cargo to the ISS after berthing via the robotic arm.

These capsules will eventually be upgraded and used to carry people to the International Space Station, assuming funding will still be there after the sequester and everything.

[Edited on February 28, 2013 at 9:43 AM. Reason : ]

2/28/2013 9:42:23 AM

Quote :

"Are they talking about a flyby of Mars? Does that even make sense? I would think they would do orbit capture. You could still potentially use aerobraking, although it would be fantastically dangerous. But if you just do a flyby... where do you go after grazing the planet? Do you just continue in orbit around the sun for the better part of a year until you come around to Earth again?"

yep. it's a flyby... free return trajectory to the Earth.

2/28/2013 9:44:03 AM

Will they have then orbited the sun a different number of times from the rest of us (i imagine one less?)

Could they then legally dock one year from their age?

2/28/2013 11:08:04 AM

that's not the case. they would go around the sun the same number of times. the return trip dips them down to around venus' orbit to catch back up to Earth.



[Edited on February 28, 2013 at 11:52 AM. Reason : ]

2/28/2013 11:51:44 AM

Quote :

"can you comment on that Wraith?"

There are rumors (nothing official) that there may be works to land people on one or both of the Martian moons, Phobos and Diemos, but outside of that I haven't heard anything. Obviously whoever is planning these missions never played Doom. And although I want to be an astronaut I don't know how comfortable I would be going to a celestial body whose fist three letters spell out "Die".

2/28/2013 11:58:55 AM

How long would this flyby last? It would be awfully lame to take a 501 day trip and only get to see the red planet up close for few minutes.

That would be the most anti-climatic point in the history of all vacations.

2/28/2013 12:20:56 PM

It's another baby step in the grand scheme of things. First they locked up the 6 guys in russia in a simulated spaceship for 520 days to test the psychological effects, and now it's time to actually head into space.

They did a moon flyby during the earlier apollo missions before actually landing on it. This is just on a much larger/longer scale

2/28/2013 2:21:05 PM

Quote :

"The nearly 18-month trip will cover 818 million miles. Time spent within 60,000 miles of Mars: 10 hours."

2/28/2013 7:51:31 PM

and then the other 12014 hours can be spent on weightless sex.

this is a terrible vacation.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nr8r09c8ogg

2/28/2013 8:12:08 PM

Aside from >1 year spent in a capsule, is there any remote possibility of scientific value coming from this mission?

3/1/2013 9:04:47 AM

Keeping people alive and healthy in deep space for that long IS scientific value.

3/1/2013 9:42:52 AM

Also, the amount of technology and innovation that will be developed for safely sending people that far away and returning them.

3/1/2013 9:53:04 AM

right... for example the life support system they use on the ISS would not be adequate for this trip as it needs spare parts and repair ALL the time.

[Edited on March 1, 2013 at 10:03 AM. Reason : ]

3/1/2013 10:03:07 AM

There is a lot of research and development going into 3D printing and rapid prototyping for making spare parts for that kind of thing. Right across the street from me actually.

3/1/2013 10:40:15 AM

Quote :

"right... for example the life support system they use on the ISS would not be adequate for this trip as it needs spare parts and repair ALL the time."

The ISS went 125 days and then 128 days between supplies after the Challenger disaster. The argument that we haven't show how to keep a bunch of humans bottled in a pressurized container in space doesn't make a lot of sense. That's confusing what we've done with what we have the capability to do. We could absolutely plan a 1.5 year period of time to just let the ISS hang.

Quote :

"Also, the amount of technology and innovation that will be developed for safely sending people that far away and returning them."

The only physically novel thing I'm hearing is that we're going to bake two humans with more radiation than what we've ever done before.

3/1/2013 11:18:13 AM

A radiation shield will just be one of the technologies developed for this. There are all sorts of guidance computers and other things that work perfectly fine in simulations but have never been tested in real life. There is also a psychological and biological impact. Nobody has ever been in a weightless environment for such an extended period of time at such a long distance and as spaceflight becomes more common, the times are only going to get longer. If someone starts slipping on the ISS it would be relatively easy to get them back home. If they are halfway to Mars it is a completely different story.

3/1/2013 11:22:23 AM

Quote :

"A radiation shield will just be one of the technologies developed for this."

Do you know what Bigelow Aerospace has proposed to make their modules good at radiation protection? They're selling inflatable units, right?



How could this possibly be competitive with rigid modules (that have more mass in the walls) for radiation protection? What kind of amazing secret did they discover? They proposing lining the wall with water and other supplies.

That's the secret to radiation protection - there is no secret. Now, there's still lots of room for analysis. After all, you have to evaluate sufficiency. There is some improvement of radiation reduction per unit mass but not much. Of course, you could improve protection by making the module smaller. I'm sure you understand perfectly that it's the mass-thickness that provides protection against radiation. There's also some difference between heavy elements, light elements, and layered combinations. Honestly though, it's all about the mass.

You can absolutely do clever things with the rearrangement of the mass. Heck, maybe you could figure out a way to surround the habitat module with propellant before you burn it. But this idea that you're going to make a material difference in the tradeoff between radiation protection and payload mass is just one of the lovely white lies that scientists tell the public.

3/1/2013 11:35:39 AM

I kind of don't get it but I'm posting it anyway



I thought the rocks would be fearing the drill.

3/1/2013 11:48:16 AM

Quote :

"The ISS went 125 days and then 128 days between supplies after the Challenger disaster. The argument that we haven't show how to keep a bunch of humans bottled in a pressurized container in space doesn't make a lot of sense. That's confusing what we've done with what we have the capability to do. We could absolutely plan a 1.5 year period of time to just let the ISS hang."

challenger exploded in 1986. The first ISS module went up in 1998.

I assume you mean columbia?

The difference is the ISS is HUGE. there is a LOT of space to store stuff like spare parts.

3/1/2013 12:21:43 PM

NASA: IT'S OFFICIAL - MARS COULD HAVE SUPPORTED LIFE.

[Edited on March 12, 2013 at 2:08 PM. Reason : ]

3/12/2013 2:05:03 PM

^ out of the things they presented, I found this most interesting

http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/msl/multimedia/pia16835.html

done by: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sample_Analysis_at_Mars



So I guess they heat stuff and then run the gases through a spectrometer or something? I think the idea is that this sample had more diversity of stuff that came out than the Rocknest sample? Or maybe I don't understand.

http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/spaceimages/details.php?id=PIA16573

3/15/2013 8:57:12 AM

picture of the Dragon which is currently berthed to the ISS.

[Edited on March 16, 2013 at 3:06 PM. Reason : ]

3/16/2013 3:06:45 PM

Well if you're going to mess up page 15 margins, then I'm posting the latest full panorama.

3/16/2013 6:25:43 PM

So, from a source "in the know" at NASA...

The office of Business Management from the White House called NASA HQ and didn't like that NASA wasn't making news about how the cuts were hurting - because they weren't. NASA's management actually made good decisions and absorbed sequestration cuts well.

But the Obama administration didn't like that, so now steps are being taken to do things that employees and the general public will notice, including travel to conferences, etc.

3/16/2013 9:53:39 PM

http://www.space.com/20168-spacexs-reusable-grasshopper-rocket-makes-fiery-leap-video.html

3/16/2013 10:26:53 PM

http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/msl/multimedia/pia16809.html

I was waiting to see results from this instrument.

Quote :

"This set of graphs shows variation in the amount and the depth of water detected beneath NASA's Mars rover Curiosity by use of the rover's Dynamic Albedo of Neutrons (DAN) instrument at different points along the distance the rover has driven, in meters. "

-> their major radiation probe to search for water.



I'm not entirely sure what the significance of the depth metric is. Anyway, I would imagine it would still be fairly difficult for a mission to extract significant water for their purposes.

3/19/2013 2:12:35 PM

http://www.popsci.com/science/article/2013-03/first-time-cold-war-us-making-plutonium-238


NASA has restarted plutonium production for spacecraft. First time in a quarter century.

3/19/2013 5:18:01 PM

Voyager has officially entered interstellar space (the first man made object to do so):
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-21866532

3/20/2013 12:55:25 PM

Quote :

"The Voyager-1 probe may be outside the Solar System, some scientists say."

it's been flirting with the edge for years now.

3/20/2013 2:28:29 PM

It's almost as if a body in motion just like keeps on going or something like that...
...and that there's not a defined edge to the solar system.

Yeah, like God would would make things in such relative and subjective terms, as if!

3/20/2013 3:46:55 PM

I'm really glad we took advantage of the planetary alignment and pulled off the voyager missions.

Especially Voyager 6... sucks about it falling into that damned black hole though.


Fun facts...
Despite the fastest launch speed ever from Earth in 2006 at 36,000mph, the New Horizons probe (which is on it's way to Pluto), will never surpass Voyager 1's distance from Earth. Voyager 1 used a gravitation assist from Jupiter, Saturn, and Saturn's moon Titan (which sent it careening out of the plane of the solar system), and is now speeding along at ~39,000 mph.

3/20/2013 6:07:03 PM

The founder of Amazon found and recovered F-1 engines from the ocean floor from the Apollo program... these were the mighty engines used to lift the Saturn V rockets from the pad.

There is current research into updating and producing modern versions of the F-1 engine to use as boosters for the SLS. (designated the "F-1B" by Dynetics Inc. and partner Pratt & Whitney Rocketdyne)

3/20/2013 6:47:48 PM

Meanwhile, aboard the ISS...

3/20/2013 7:51:46 PM

didn't post yesterday, but the Dragon made it back safe and sound yesterday afternoon.

3/27/2013 12:34:06 PM

New International Space Station crew is launching in a few minutes
http://www.space.com/17933-nasa-television-webcasts-live-space-tv.html


One of the crew is the "Chuck Norris" of astronauts... Chris Cassidy.

3/28/2013 4:24:22 PM

flawless launch of the Russian Soyuz. They are on a path to the ISS which will take ~ 6 hours to reach! normally it's a couple of days.

3/28/2013 4:58:02 PM

they are now within 10 miles of the space station... docking around 10:30

3/28/2013 9:47:15 PM

http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/asteroids/news/asteroid_initiative.html

So it's been in the news for a few days now, but the latest idea is to capture a small asteroid, put it in orbit around the moon, and visit it with NASA astronauts as early as 2021 via the Orion/SLS. This would fulfill Obama's idea of sending NASA astronauts to an asteroid, as well as give us a destination within reach without having to develop a lander for lunar surface activities.

Kind of a cop out in my opinion, but still intriguing none the less. Chances of it actually happening? I don't know but doubt very high.

There's a neat video though on the link above that's worth watching.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/nasahqphoto/sets/72157633207165838/7

http://www.flickr.com/photos/nasahqphoto/8635589238/in/set-72157633207165838

[Edited on April 10, 2013 at 2:30 PM. Reason : ]

4/10/2013 2:28:23 PM

There would still need to be some kind of lander. Fortunately they are working on right here at MSFC . In fact they just did a test flight on the prototype today.

4/10/2013 4:38:46 PM

^well, according to the notional artwork, it looks like they would perform spacewalks directly from the Orion capsule... the gravity of a 10 meter asteroid would be next to zero.

Are you referring to work on the Morpheus lander program?


http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=lg0uX0ogA5k

[Edited on April 10, 2013 at 8:41 PM. Reason : ]

4/10/2013 8:32:30 PM