Ruimtevaart, foto's en missies

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Op maandag 17 april 2006 12:54 schreef Frutsel het volgende:
Nog een interessant stuk over een komeet die de aarde in mei passeert en die in stukken gevallen is. (zie ook de Frontpage waarop één of andere gast beweert dat delen er van op 25-5 gaan inslaan)

http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2006/24mar_73p.htm

Weet nie of het een apart topic waardig is en waar het anders in zou moeten

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Op maandag 17 april 2006 14:47 schreef -skippybal- het volgende:
Kunnen we die kometen hier in Nederland ook zien?

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Op dinsdag 23 mei 2006 00:07 schreef Phooka het volgende:
Had ik deze hier al neergeplempt? Ik heb d'r ook doorheen mogen kruipen om de besturing van de upper stage te controleren, zo'n 7 dagen voor de lancering...

[afbeelding]

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Op dinsdag 23 mei 2006 22:43 schreef -CRASH- het volgende:

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GUILTY

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Op dinsdag 23 mei 2006 23:08 schreef Phooka het volgende:

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Hahaha - hm. Ach ja, ik mis Frans Guyana... Naast de lanceerbasis zijn er ook veel andere interessante zaken, daar.

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Op woensdag 24 mei 2006 22:47 schreef -CRASH- het volgende:

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LIVE Coverage: Delta 4 Rocket Poised to Launch GOES-N Weather Satellite


UH...... Je gaat toch niet naar Cape Canaveral hé

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Op maandag 29 mei 2006 20:02 schreef Freek99 het volgende:
Op 1 juli 2006 zal na ruim een jaar opnieuw de Space shuttle Discovery gelanceerd worden. Wat verwachten jullie van deze missie en zullen er opnieuw problemen zijn met het hitteschild?

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Op donderdag 22 juni 2006 11:45 schreef Freek99 het volgende:
Voor de mensen die niet weten op welke tijd Space Shuttle Discovery vertrekt en waar de lancering live te volgen is: klik hier

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Op zaterdag 1 juli 2006 22:03 schreef -CRASH- het volgende:

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En ze zijn nog niet weg
vanwege de onweers wolken in de buurt.

Te volgen op Nasa TV

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Op vrijdag 4 augustus 2006 08:23 schreef Frutsel het volgende:
Twee 'planeten zonder ster' ontdekt
Sterrenkundigen hebben twee bijzondere planeten ontdekt. Terwijl de meeste planeten om een ster draaien, doen deze twee dat om elkaar. De ontdekking staat in het Britse blad New Scientist.

Verrassing
De sterrenkundigen zijn verrast door de vondst en weten niet precies hoe dergelijke hemellichamen hebben kunnen ontstaan. De planeten liggen op ongeveer 400 lichtjaren van de aarde.

Afstand
De tussenliggende afstand is ongeveer 240 keer zo groot als die tussen de aarde en de zon. De planeten zijn gevonden met behulp van een telescoop in Chili.

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SPACE.com Exclusive: Spectacular Meteor Shower Possible for 2007


A spectacular meteor shower might be in the offing late next summer, SPACE.com has learned.

It may not last very long, but could produce a bevy of bright, swift shooting stars for favorably positioned skywatchers. The prediction is found in a technical report, co-authored by two astronomers who are targeting Sept. 1, 2007 as the date for the potential display.

The meteors are called "Aurigids" because they appear to fan-out from the constellation of Auriga, the Charioteer.

At least a strong shower

Meteor showers occur whenever we ride into the dusty debris left behind in a comet's orbit. The debris left behind by Kiess, a comet last seen in 1911, is what produces the Aurigids. The comet takes approximately 2,500 years to orbit the Sun, but there are also dense trails of dust traveling along its orbit. Earth has had glancing blows in the past with a few of these dust trails in 1935, 1986 and 1994.

In 2007, however, the Earth is expected to pass very close to the center of a dust trail, which astronomers Esko Lyytinen of Finland and Peter Jenniskens of NASA's SETI Institute in California said, should result in "a spectacularly rich shower of bright meteors."

Verder lezen klik bovenstaande link

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Op donderdag 17 augustus 2006 21:04 schreef -CRASH- het volgende:

SPACE.com Exclusive: Spectacular Meteor Shower Possible for 2007
*knip*

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NASA's Spitzer Digs Up Troves of Possible Solar Systems in Orion
^{For Release: August 14, 2006}

Spitser Image Gallery
Astronomers have long scrutinized the vast and layered clouds of the Orion nebula, an industrious star-making factory visible to the naked eye in the sword of the famous hunter constellation. Yet, Orion is still full of secrets.

A new image from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope probes deep into the clouds of dust that permeate the nebula and its surrounding regions. The striking false-color picture shows pinkish swirls of dust speckled with stars, some of which are orbited by disks of planet-forming dust.

Spitzer, with its powerful infrared vision, was able to unearth nearly 2,300 such planet-forming disks in the Orion cloud complex, a collection of turbulent star-forming clouds that includes the well-known Orion nebula.

The disks -- made of gas and dust that whirl around young suns -- are too small and distant to be seen by visible-light telescopes; however, the infrared glow of their warm dust is easily spotted by Spitzer's infrared detectors. Each disk has the potential to form planets and its own solar system.

"This is the most complete census of young stars with disks in the Orion cloud complex," said Dr. Thomas Megeath of the University of Toledo, Ohio, who led the research. "Basically, we have a census of potential solar systems, and we want to know how many are born in the cities, how many in small towns, and how many out in the countryside."

A look at Orion's demographics reveals that the potential solar systems populate a variety of environments. Megeath and his colleagues found that about 60 percent of the disk-sporting stars in the Orion cloud complex inhabit its bustling "cities," or clusters, containing hundreds of young stars. About 15 percent reside in small outer communities, and a surprising 25 percent prefer to go it alone, living in isolation.

Prior to the Spitzer observations, scientists thought that up to 90 percent of young stars, both with and without disks, dwelled in cities like those of Orion.

"The Orion image shows that many stars also appear to form in isolation or in groups of just a few stars," said team member Dr. John Stauffer of NASA's Spitzer Science Center at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena. "These new data may help us to determine the type of environment in which our sun formed."

Astronomers do not know whether our middle-aged sun grew up in the stellar equivalent of the city or countryside, though most favor a large city scenario. Newborn stars like the ones in Orion tend to drift away from their siblings over time, so it is hard to trace an adult star's origins.

Megeath and his colleagues estimate that about 60 to 70 percent of the stars in the Orion cloud complex have disks. "It is an interesting question why this number isn't 100 percent. Eventually, we may be able to understand why some stars don't have disks," said Megeath.

Spitzer's infrared vision also dug up 200 stellar embryos in the Orion cloud complex, most of which had never been seen before. Stellar embryos are still too young to have developed disks.

The Orion cloud complex is about 1,450 light-years from Earth and spans about 240 light-years of space. Spitzer's wide field of view allowed it to survey most of the complex, an area of the sky equivalent to 28 full moons. The featured image shows a slice of this survey, the equivalent of four full moons-worth of sky, and includes the Orion nebula itself.

NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., manages the Spitzer Space Telescope mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington. Science operations are conducted at the Spitzer Science Center. Caltech manages JPL for NASA. Spitzer's infrared array camera, which made the observations, was built by NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md. The instrument's principal investigator is Dr. Giovanni Fazio of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics.

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Op donderdag 31 augustus 2006 16:27 schreef the_disheaver het volgende:
is het al bekend wanneer STS-115 (atlantis) de lucht in gaat?

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SMART-1 to Crash the Moon

August 30, 2006: Amateur astronomers, grab your telescopes. A spaceship is about to crash into the Moon, and you may be able to see the impact.

The spacecraft: SMART-1, a lunar orbiter belonging to the European Space Agency (ESA).


The impact site: Lacus Excellentiae (The Lake of Excellence), an ancient, 100-mile wide crater in the Moon's southern hemisphere.

The time to watch: Saturday, September 2nd at 10:41 p.m. PDT (Sept. 3rd, 0541 UT).

Right: The impact site, with current moon phase shown. Updated daily. Image courtesy: ESA.

Why is SMART-1 crashing? There's nothing wrong with the spacecraft, which is wrapping up a successful 3-year mission to the Moon. SMART-1's main job was to test a European-built ion engine. It worked beautifully, propelling the craft in 2003 on a unique spiral path from Earth to the Moon. From lunar orbit, SMART-1 took thousands of high-resolution pictures and made mineral maps of the Moon's terrain. One of its most important discoveries was a "Peak of Eternal Light," a mountaintop near the Moon's north pole in constant, year-round sunlight. Peaks of Eternal Light are prime real estate for solar-powered Moon bases.

But now SMART-1 is running low on fuel. It has to come down sometime—and soon—so ESA mission scientists decided to crash it in a place where the crash can be seen from Earth and studied.

When SMART-1 hits the ground, it will explode in a flash of light. This won't be the sort of explosion we'd see on Earth. The Moon has no oxygen to support fire or combustion. Instead, the flash will be caused by rocks and soil made so hot by the impact that they suddenly glow.

The area will be in complete darkness at the moment of impact, so much the better to see the flash. How bright will it be? No one knows. Estimates range from 7th to 15th magnitude. In other words, it might be bright enough for backyard telescopes--or so dim that even big professional observatories won't see a thing. The only way to find out is to look. Observing tips may be found here (ALPO), here (ESA) and, in many languages, here (REA Brazil).

"We'll be watching," says Bill Cooke, the head of NASA's Meteoroid Environment Office at the Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama. "Measuring the brightness of SMART-1's impact is important to our research."

His group at the Marshall Space Flight Center has spent the last year watching things hit the Moon—not spacecraft, but meteoroids. "The Moon is under constant bombardment from meteoroids," says Cooke. "They hit the ground and explode just like SMART-1 will do." The Moon actually sparkles, slowly and faintly, as one space rock after another hits the ground.


Above: Possible SMART-1 impact times and coordinates. Image courtesy: ESA.

Cooke's group has a knack for this kind of work: Using only two small telescopes, they've spotted eight meteoroid impacts this year, almost doubling the number of confirmed sightings in all of the history of astronomy before 2006. Cooke attributes their success to improvements in digital video cameras, which they use to record the brief flashes.

Lunar impacts interest NASA greatly. Astronauts are going back to the Moon and "we need to know what kind of danger meteoroids pose to both people and Moon bases," explains Cooke. How often do they hit? And what kind of damage do they do?

Think of SMART-1 as a controlled, man-made meteoroid impact, he says. "We know exactly how much kinetic energy SMART-1 packs. And, if all goes well, we're going to see how bright a flash it makes. This will help us interpret our meteoroid data."

When SMART-1 hits, it won't plunge straight into the ground. "The spacecraft will enter Lacus Excellentiae at a shallow angle, only a few degrees from horizontal," notes Cooke. For this reason, it will gouge a long, narrow crater, about a meter wide and many meters long. The grazing impact should kick up a plume of debris—no one knows how high. If it rises high enough, the plume might catch some sunlight and become visible to telescopes on Earth. The chances of this, however, are slim. The main event is the flash of heat and light at the "point" of impact.

Another side-effect of the shallow approach is uncertainty about when, exactly, SMART-1 will strike. The spacecraft is due to glide low over the floor of Lacus Excellentiae several times on Sept. 3rd. Mission controllers believe it will hit on orbit number 2890 at 0541 UT. But it could equally well hit one orbit earlier or one orbit later. Possibilities are summarized in the table, above. The nominal impact time favors observers in western parts of North America and across the Pacific Ocean. Depending on when SMART-1 hits, however, almost anyone could catch the flash.

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LUNAR FLASH:
Europe's SMART-1 spacecraft crashed into the Moon this morning at 0542 UT. The resulting flash was too faint for most backyard telescopes, but a team of astronomers using the big 3.6m CFH telescope in Hawaii did photograph the explosion:

^{Credit: Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope / 2006 More Images}

The flash in this animation is an infrared flash. It shows heat generated by the spacecraft's 4500 mph impact into the lunar surface near the edge of Lacus Excellentiae (34.4 S, 46.2 W).

Lacus Excellentiae was in darkness when SMART-1 hit--the better to see the flash. Tomorrow, however, the sun will come up, illuminating the impact site. Amateur and professional astronomers will scour the area for additional signs of the crash.

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Op maandag 17 april 2006 14:34 schreef -CRASH- het volgende:

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"73P/Schwassmann-Wachmann 3 is approaching Earth--and fast"
[afbeelding]
says amateur astronomer Guillaume Poulin (Mont-Mégantic Observatory)
who made this movie of fragment B traveling 36,000 mph on April 11th.

Not shown in Poulin's movie are 19 other fragments of the comet also heading our way.
The swarm will pass only 6 million miles from Earth on May 12th-14th, providing a
marvelous view to anyone with a backyard telescope:
Lees Verder....

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Op vrijdag 10 november 2006 21:51 schreef Schonedal het volgende:

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Als je het artikel goed doorleest hebben ze het over mei 2006, dus die komeet is allang voorbij.

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Op vrijdag 10 november 2006 21:30 schreef Frutsel het volgende:
zag net beelden op CNN van een mega-hurricane op saturnus...
interessante foto's!

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Op vrijdag 10 november 2006 19:14 schreef -CRASH- het volgende:
NASA Loses Contact With Mars Global Surveyor

NASA's Mars Global Surveyor (MGS) spacecraft has failed to check in with Earth for the fifth straight day in a row, after losing contact during a routine adjustment of its solar array.

On Nov. 2, MGS mangers sent commands for the spacecraft to adjust the position of one of its solar power arrays to better track the sun. Returning data indicated a problem with the motor that moves the array, so a backup motor and control circuitry were switched on.

No signal was received on Nov. 3 and 4, but a weak signal was received on Nov. 5, suggesting the spacecraft had switched to a safe mode and was awaiting further instructions from Earth. The signal cut out completely later that day and nothing has been heard since.
Lees Verder....

Dat is geen goed teken......