Ruimtevaart, foto's en missies

NASA's gloednieuwe Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) is er deze week niet in geslaagd zijn oudere broer Mars Global Surveyor (MGS) te fotograferen. De tien jaar oude MGS kampt met energieproblemen doordat een van de zonnepanelen is geblokkeerd en niet meer op de zon is gericht. Daardoor verliest de sonde energie en kan MGS niet meer met de missieleiding op aarde communiceren. Met opnames van MGS door MRO wilde NASA uitvogelen waar de satelliet precies was en hoe de zonnepanelen erbij stonden.

MRO moest MGS met twee camera's fotograferen om de toestand van de satelliet duidelijk te maken, maar is daar niet in geslaagd. Eerder dit jaar wist MRO de Mars Rover Spirit op te sporen, die aan de rand van Victoria Crater op Mars rondrijdt en bodemsamples neemt. Een karretje van een meter hoog op een andere planeet wél kunnen vinden, maar een satelliet kwijtraken? NASA stelt dat de omloopbaan van MGS in de loop der tijd achteruit is gegaan. Daardoor is het onzeker waar de satelliet zich precies bevindt en kon nieuwkomer MRO haar over het hoofd zien.
De Mars Rovers Spirit en Opportunity zijn nu NASA's laatste kans om met MGS in contact te komen. De Rovers hebben antennes aan boord waarmee ze de satelliet zullen vragen een radiobaken aan te zetten. Als MGS de Rovers hoort en genoeg energie heeft om het baken aan te zetten, kunnen de Rovers dat signaal opvangen en doorgeven aan NASA. Veel meer dan 'ik ben er nog' levert dat niet op en NASA denkt dan ook dat het is afgelopen met MGS.

'We hebben nog niet alles gedaan wat we kunnen', vertelt Fuk Li, programmaleider van het Marsonderzoek bij NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory. 'We denken wel dat het er niet goed uitziet voor MGS en dat de kans de satelliet weer aan de praat te krijgen klein is.'

NASA-satelliet Mars Global Surveyor draait al sinds 1997 rond Mars en heeft allerlei wetenschappelijke waarnemingen verricht. Zo maakte de satelliet opnames van geulen die lijken uitgesleten door vloeibaar water. Ook heeft de sonde landingsplaatsen voor de robotkarretjes Spirit en Opportunity bekeken en gezocht naar landingsplaatsen voor vervolgmissies naar Mars.
Na het voltooien van de hoofdmissie in 2001 heeft NASA al een aantal keer besloten Mars Global Surveyor langer in gebruik te houden. Nu de satelliet al twee weken taal nog teken geeft, overweegt de organisatie de stekker uit het project te halen. De Mars Global Surveyor-missie kostte $247 en zou oorspronkelijk twee jaar duren. Onlangs werd de missie nog twee jaar verlengd.

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Dag lieve MGS ...

China wil Rusland helpen met missie naar Phobos

De geruchten dat China Rusland zal helpen met een project om een ruimtesonde naar de Martiaanse maan Phobos te sturen lijken steeds realistischer te worden. Een afdelingschef van de Russische ruimtevaartorganisatie Roskosmos verklaarde dit gisteren tegenover de pers.

Volgens Yuri Nosenko zal China een apparaat ontwikkelen dat bodemmonsters neemt op Phobos. Verder wil China meewerken aan het plaatsen van een satelliet in een baan om de rode planeet.

De missie staat momenteel gepland voor 2009. Nosenko denkt binnenkort een overeenkomst te ondertekenen met de Chinezen.

Het is geen geheim dat Rusland en China steeds meer met elkaar willen samenwerken om het gebied van ruimtevaart. In september bracht Rusland dit al publiekelijk naar voren.

Apollo 16, op weg naar de maan.

Apollo 16, (AS-511)
Commandant John Young
LM-piloot Charles Duke
CM-piloot Thomas "Ken" Mattingly
Lancering 16 april 1972
Terugkeer 27 april 1972
Lanceerraket Saturn V, (SA-511)
Commandomodule "Casper" (CSM-113)
Maanlander "Orion" (LM-11)

Pluto-bound Spacecraft Spots its Target
^{By Leonard David Senior Space Writer
posted: 29 November 2006 02:15 pm ET}




New Horizons: Outbound For Jupiter Flyby
^{By Leonard David Senior Space Writer
posted: 30 November 2006 06:43 am ET}



BOULDER, Colorado -- Now heading outward on its lengthy trek to tiny Pluto, NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft is on course to zip by gigantic Jupiter early next year.

Engineers and scientists are plotting out an agenda of at-Jupiter investigations. Thanks to high-tech instruments onboard the craft, new looks at the gas giant are slated, as are views of several moons circling the planet.

But while science at Jupiter is to be gained, the real game is to shakeout New Horizons long before it encounters the Pluto system in 2015. Earlier this year the spacecraft photographed both Jupiter, and its final destination, Pluto.

[ Bericht 28% gewijzigd door -CRASH- op 30-11-2006 23:52:21 ]

quote:

Op zaterdag 25 november 2006 16:05 schreef Nieuwschierig het volgende:
Apollo 16, op weg naar de maan.

[afbeelding]

Hé, wat cool! Op dit plaatje kan je de Tower Clearance Maneuver goed zien! Waar heb je 'm vandaan?

quote:

Op vrijdag 1 december 2006 15:53 schreef Phooka het volgende:

[..]

Hé, wat cool! Op dit plaatje kan je de Tower Clearance Maneuver goed zien! Waar heb je 'm vandaan?

http://www.retroweb.com/apollo.html en dan het Apollo-archive
Contact Light deel is ook geweldig

NASA wil een permanente bemande basis op de maan


NASA wants permanent moon base

NASA Unveils Strategy for Return to the Moon

HOUSTON, Texas – NASA has decided to pursue a base on the Moon. The space agency rolled out today a strategy and rationale for robotic and human exploration of the Moon—determining that a lunar outpost is the best approach to achieve a sustained, human presence on the Moon.

The base would be built in incremental steps, starting with four-person crews making several seven-day visits. The first mission would begin by 2020, with the base growing over time, beefed up with more power, mobility rovers and living quarters.


Lunar Observatories: Grand Plans vs. Clear Problems

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Mars Orbiter Photographs Three Old Spacecraft

After circling the red planet for more than eight months, NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter has taken images of three spacecraft that the agency had previously sent to the Martian surface.

The orbiter provided high-resolution images of the Spirit rover that has been active on the surface since 2004 and of the two Viking landers that reached Mars some 30 years ago.

Ariel views of the surrounding terrain and detailed features are helping scientists get a new perspective on some familiar sights

[ Bericht 17% gewijzigd door -CRASH- op 05-12-2006 18:10:43 ]

NASA stelt lancering Discovery uit

CAPE CANAVERAL - De Amerikaanse ruimtevaartorganisatie NASA heeft donderdagavond (lokale tijd) op het laatste moment de lancering van spaceshuttle Discovery uitgesteld. Reden is het slechte weer op de lanceerbasis Kennedy Space Center in Florida, meldde NASA.

De zeven astronauten, onder wie twee vrouwen en een Europeaan, zaten al uren in het ruimteveer te wachten op vertrek. Maar een dikke laaghangende bewolking verhinderde de lancering.

Een NASA-woordvoerder meldde dat op zaterdagavond een nieuwe poging wordt gewaagd. Een harde wind zal een eerdere lancering onmogelijk maken.

Het wordt de derde en laatste vlucht van de Discovery naar het internationaal ruimtestation ISS dit jaar. De spaceshuttle keerde in juli terug van zijn tweede succesvolle missie. De trip van de Discovery duurt naar verwachting twaalf dagen.

quote:

Op donderdag 23 november 2006 20:45 schreef Frutsel het volgende:
. De Mars Global Surveyor-missie kostte $247 en zou oorspronkelijk twee jaar duren. Onlangs werd de missie nog twee jaar verlengd.

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Dag lieve MGS ...

Is dat niet een beetje erg goedkoop voor een marsmissie?
Was de satelliet misschien bij de Gamma in de aanbieding?
Geen wonder dat hij er mee kapte.

Zo'n beetje de meest beroemde missiefoto aller tijden: Earthrise, by Apollo 8 (Kerst 1968)

'EarthLike' Planethunter launched

PARIS, France (Reuters) -- A French-led satellite launched on Wednesday to seek out new Earth-like planets beyond the solar system and to explore the interior of stars.

The COROT project sent into orbit a telescope capable of detecting planets smaller than is currently known -- some maybe just a few times the size of Earth and rocky, rather than the larger, gaseous types, the European Space Agency (ESA) said.

"COROT will be able to find extra-solar planets of all sizes and natures, contrary to what we can do from the ground at the moment," Claude Catala, one of the researchers associated with the project, told France Info radio. (Watch the satellite launch )

"We expect to obtain a better vision of planet systems beyond the solar system, about the distribution of planet sizes," she said. "And finally, it will allow us to estimate the likelihood of there existing planets resembling the Earth in the neighborhood of the sun or further away in the galaxy."

COROT launched at 1423 GMT from Kazakhstan.

Planets have been found orbiting stars other than the sun but they have never been seen. Instead, scientists have deduced they are there based on the stars' "wobble", the result of the gravitational pull of planets revolving around them.

COROT, a project of the French National Space Studies Center (CNES) in which ESA is participating, will be able to detect smaller, rocky planets by using a different method.

It will measure the light emitted by a star and detect the drop in brightness caused when a planet passes in front of it.

Like the larger planets found so far, however, these new ones will have to be orbiting close to their star.

"Such planets would represent a new, as yet undiscovered, class of world that astronomers believe exists. With COROT, astronomers expect to find between 10-40 of them, together with tens of new gas giants," ESA said.

ESA said COROT would also be used to track sound waves that resonate through a star, creating changes in brightness that should give scientists a glimpse into the interior of the stars themselves.

"These create a 'starquake' that sends ripples across the star's surface, altering its brightness. The exact nature of the ripples allows astronomers to calculate the star's precise mass, age and chemical composition," it said.

In 2008, the U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) is due to launch the first space telescope capable of detecting Earth-sized planets in similar orbits to ours, ESA said.

Progress on Human Mission to Asteroid - Space.com

Progress is being made on defining a human mission to an asteroid. Experts at several NASA centers are sketching out a prospective piloted stopover at an asteroid -- a trek that could return samples from a targeted space rock as well as honing astronaut proficiency and test needed equipment for other space destinations.

At the heart of such a mission is drawing upon the technology of NASA's Constellation initiative -- the overarching program that is gearing up to extend human presence at the moon, on Mars and beyond.

One key ingredient is the Orion spacecraft -- a post-space shuttle vehicle now under design to thrust crews further than low Earth orbit.

Meanwhile, NASA is wrapping up a report required by the U.S. Congress on how best to search for, catalog and even deal with the hazard of Earth-bruising rocks from space. That space agency report is to be turned over to Congress by year's end.

If lawmakers give the green light to a next generation Near Earth Object (NEO) search program, there could be 40 times the current discovery rate of these celestial bodies. By the time a human mission to an asteroid is ready, there's likely to be a healthy list of suitable targets.

A feasibility study to stage a human mission to an asteroid is underway, said Carlton Allen, Astromaterials Curator and Manager of the Astromaterials Acquisition and Curation Office at NASA's Johnson Space Center (JSC). "It would involve flying people to one of the NEOs and, among other things, collect samples and bring them back," Allen told SPACE.com.

Edward Lu, veteran shuttle and international space station astronaut, is a member of the JSC study team. They are looking into use of Orion technology earlier than 2020, as well as utilizing Delta or Atlas Evolved Expendable Launch Vehicles to enable non-low Earth orbit missions.

"There are many asteroids that have very low relative velocities with respect to Earth," Lu observed. Identifying an "ideal" NEO is one that's both slow moving and comes close to Earth -- sort of a match made in heaven.

"Those are easy targets," Lu said. They wouldn't require a lot of rocket oomph to rendezvous with, he said.

Lu told SPACE.com that NEO exploration study members are posing the following question: How can already existing or currently planned Constellation hardware be used or minimally changed to permit other exploration agendas?

Constellation boosters and spacecraft hardware are now geared to support NASA's return to the Moon and onward to Mars plans. "The whole point of Constellation is that it is an exploration system," Lu noted. "So what else can you do?"

Lu said that their report will be completed by the end of this coming January. "We're in the midst of it right now...and it's looking interesting."

NEO mission

A human voyage to an asteroid would not only trial run Orion equipment -- particularly putting high-speed heat shield technology through its paces -- but also could become part of the test program for lunar landings, Lu said.

Moreover, NASA needs to wean itself off from Earth orbiting missions -- round and round our planet with the space shuttle and space station. Ground controllers are set up for essentially zero light-time, instantaneous communications with space crews.

There will be some lag time keeping in touch with future moon explorers, and more so when expeditionary adventurers travel to faraway Mars, Lu advised. A NEO mission could help in the readiness of ground teams to work issues beyond low Earth orbit, he said -- stepping stone conditioning for robust lunar and Mars operations.

Once you pull up to some asteroid...what's an astronaut to do?

"There are no handholds on the surface," Lu said. "It may not be a solid surface anyway."

Lu said that an Orion spaceship would hover in close proximity to the NEO. "We're talking about an object that's more than likely just 330 feet (100 meters) across, or less. We're talking a big rock or probably a big rubble pile, and likely rotating."

From their spot in space, a crew could deploy a remotely-piloted vehicle. Looking out spacecraft windows, an astronaut might fly a robotic probe via a joy stick, Lu envisioned, dropping off packages on the NEO or scooping up select samples for return to Earth.

"A human flying something remote-controlled is way smarter than anything you can program. You could look for interesting spots on the asteroid and make real-time decisions," Lu added.

A NEO mission would deepen NASA's quest for deep space experience, Lu said. There's interest in asteroids for a range of reasons, he continued, for exploration, for pure science, resource utilization, as well as learning how to mitigate the threat from a sniping space rock that has its crosshairs on Earth.

"It brings it all together," Lu concluded, "which is nice."

"We're looking seriously at this," said Chris McKay, deputy scientist in the Constellation science office at JSC. He is stationed at NASA's Ames Research Center located in California's Silicon Valley, part of a study team there delving into the scientific output from a piloted asteroid flight.

NASA Ames officials are looking at how the Orion exploration vehicle could be used for a human mission to an NEO, McKay explained. The study is only about halfway complete but initial results look to be positive, he said.

McKay said that the main question seems to be finding a NEO that allows for missions that are not too long.

Once on station at an asteroid, crewmembers might release a probe to crash onto the asteroid as they watch from a distance, McKay added.

"A human mission to a NEO, and the associated robotic probes, will return a lot of science and this will be valuable. But as a lifelong resident of Earth...I think that being prepared to save the planet ranks higher on the priority list than insights into the formation of the solar system. But we can do both."

Asteroids: Ready for them or not?

NASA Administrator Michael Griffin, told an audience recently at NASA's Langley Research Center that "our species hasn't been around long enough to have experienced a cataclysmic extinction event. But they will occur again, whether we are ready for them or not."

So, in the end, Griffin said, "human expansion into our solar system is fundamentally about the survival of the species, about ensuring better odds for our survival through the promulgation of our species."

"But one assumption that I know will be justified is that the Moon, the near-Earth asteroids, and the rest of the solar system contain the resources that will take mankind to the next level of civilization and prosperity. I don't know when it will occur or who will do it, but it will happen. I hope that it will be soon, and that we will be the agents of this great endeavor," Griffin explained.

NASA's upswing in asteroid interest is good news, reported William Burrows, author of The Survival Imperative -- Using Space to Protect Earth (Forge, 2006). He's also a professor of journalism at New York University.

"The cliche that we should land on one or more asteroids 'because they are there' certainly applies, since the need to explore is an ancient and deeply-held human trait," Burrows explained. "But more pragmatically, knowledge is never wasted, so there will be things to learn from being on asteroids that we cannot anticipate but that can only be beneficial," he said.

Burrows said that resource mining in the distant future is part of that learning process.

"But far more important, it will teach us valuable things about them and the need to spread the human seed, not only for adventure, but as a hedge against a civilization-threatening catastrophe on the home planet," Burrows said.

Planetary defense

In a few months time, NASA is set to co-sponsor the 2007 Planetary Defense Conference to be convened in Washington, D.C.

The March meeting is organized to capture the state-of-the-art in terms of protecting Earth from NEOs, said William Ailor of The Aerospace Corporation in El Segundo, California and general chair of meeting.

"There are a lot of unknowns relative to asteroids," Ailor said, like how they are put together -- a key piece of information required in order to deflect any Earth-threatening space rock. "One of the issues that you have is that there's probably some variability asteroid to asteroid."

Ailor said that piloted flight to an asteroid would yield additional detail on dealing with a future hostile object. However, the real challenge, he said, is that no one country is going to have the wherewithal to cover every aspect of the problem.

So the question is, Ailor added, just how does the world community get together to incrementally add information about these objects and offer mitigation ideas?

"I think it's becoming more of a credible issue now. People recognize that these kinds of events can happen...and we actually have the capability now to do something about it," Ailor suggested.

"The [space] community -- and I would include the political community -- is beginning to take this more seriously. We've progressed a long way over the last few years...but we still have a long way to go," he said.

(zal deze ook even in het Asteroiden Topic gooien - Close encounters: Asteroiden op ramkoers )

Weet neit of 'ie al gepost is, maar vond het volgende filmpje wel mooi om te zien:

http://www.filecabi.net/video/shuttle-time30.html

Is een filmpje opgenomen met een externe camera op een van de rocketboosters welke op 45km hoogte afgeworpen worden.

quote:

Op donderdag 18 januari 2007 12:53 schreef The_stranger het volgende:
Weet neit of 'ie al gepost is, maar vond het volgende filmpje wel mooi om te zien:

http://www.filecabi.net/video/shuttle-time30.html

Is een filmpje opgenomen met een externe camera op een van de rocketboosters welke op 45km hoogte afgeworpen worden.

Wow, mooie film. Zo zit ie nog in de ruimte, zo ligt ie in de zee. Leuk reisje in die paar minuten

quote:

Op donderdag 18 januari 2007 18:45 schreef Nieuwschierig het volgende:

[..]

Wow, mooie film. Zo zit ie nog in de ruimte, zo ligt ie in de zee. Leuk reisje in die paar minuten

Ik heb wel het idee dat er een stukje uitgeknipt is.. Maar vond hem ook wel mooi om te zien en toch knap dat ze die dingen nog redelijk nauwkeurig kunnen "mikken" vanaf die hoogte...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) -- A spacecraft is zooming toward a close encounter with Jupiter to study its tempestuous atmosphere, ring system and four of its moons before dashing off to see distant Pluto in 2015, scientists said on Thursday.

NASA's New Horizons, the fastest spacecraft ever built by humans, is due to reach Jupiter, our solar system's largest planet and fifth from the sun, after a 13-month journey from Earth, flying almost half a billion miles.

Launched on January 19, 2006, it is set to make its closest pass by Jupiter on February 28, flying within 1.4 million miles.

NASA scientists said the main purpose for visiting Jupiter is to exploit the giant gas planet's gravity to slingshot New Horizons at 52,000 miles per hour toward frigid and unexplored dwarf planet Pluto, a journey that will take eight more years.

Doing it this way shaves three years off the trip, said Alan Stern of Southwest Research Institute in Boulder, Colorado, New Horizons' principal investigator.

Since New Horizons was in the neighborhood, the scientists figured it may as well do some sightseeing.

Jupiter has been visited by seven other spacecraft from Earth, including Voyager 1, Galileo and Cassini, but none had equipment as sophisticated as New Horizons' seven science instruments.

Stern said studying Jupiter, its four big moons Io, Europa, Ganymede and Callisto, its ring system and the magnetic field enables NASA to "work out the kinks" in the craft's systems and instruments so there are no surprises when it gets to Pluto.

"Jupiter is extremely fascinating in its own right, and we'll be making the most of this opportunity to learn a lot about Jupiter itself," added John Spencer of the New Horizons Jupiter Encounter Science Team.

The craft, now 41 million miles from Jupiter, already has taken dozens of images and will make more than 700 observations in all, the scientists said.

New Horizons, a compact, 1,050-pound spacecraft, will look at Jupiter's turbulent and stormy atmosphere, they said.

Spencer said it will examine Jupiter's famous Great Red Spot, the storm about twice the size of the Earth that has been raging for several hundred years.

It also will get the first close-up look at the Little Red Spot, a storm that formed in the last few years when three smaller spots coalesced, the scientists said.

Images already taken as it approaches Jupiter show that turbulence previously observed near the Great Red Spot has dissipated, they said.

Spencer said the craft will look at volcanic activity on Io and features on Europa, where scientists think liquid ocean lurks underneath an icy shell.

Jupiter's small ring system certainly is far less impressive than the massive rings around neighboring Saturn, and they were discovered only in 1979.

"This should be the most detailed investigation of the ring system that's ever been done," Spencer added.

The craft's instruments will allow scientists to understand the ring system's three-dimensional structure, Spencer said.

NASA also plans for the craft to take a first-ever trip down the long "tail" of Jupiter's magnetic field -- a wide stream of charged particles stretching millions of miles into space.

New Horizons is due to spend five months studying Pluto and its three moons after arriving in July 2015. If all goes well, it could study one or more smaller worlds in the Kuiper Belt, the region at the far reaches of the solar system of ancient, rocky and icy bodies.

Jacht op ExoPlaneten (aard-achtigen) wordt nu echt geopend

De lijst van bevestigde exoplaneten blijft groeien en telt op dit moment al tweehonderd leden – het merendeel in de vorm van gasreuzen als Jupiter en Saturnus. Toch vermoedt men dat enkele daarvan aardse planeten zijn, werelden met een vast oppervlak van rots en/of ijs.

De lijst van bevestigde exoplaneten blijft groeien en telt op dit moment al tweehonderd leden – het merendeel in de vorm van gasreuzen als Jupiter en Saturnus. Toch vermoedt men dat enkele daarvan aardse planeten zijn, werelden met een vast oppervlak van rots en/of ijs.

Met de succesvolle lancering van de Europese COROT satelliet en de toekomstige lancering van NASA’s Kepler-sonde (ergens in 2008) is de jacht op aardse exoplaneten nu echt geopend. Nu is natuurlijk de grote vraag: op wat voor sterren moeten deze telescopen hun ogen richten? Onderzoek wijst uit dat aardse planeten algemeen moeten zijn, zelfs bij dubbelsterren.

Planeten worden geboren uit protoplanetaire schijven: schijven van gas en stof die jonge sterren omringen. Men denkt nu dat vrijwel alle sterren met een dergelijke schijf geboren worden – de grote vraag is nu wanneer deze schijven een volwaardig planetenstelsel kunnen vormen, en wanneer de schijven niet verder komen dan een verzameling puin en gruis. De enige manier om hier meer over te weten te komen is aan de hand van computermodellen.

Nu hebben deze modellen uiteraard hun beperkingen (onze kennis van protoplanetaire schijven is immers verre van compleet), maar door alle kennis die we wél hebben in de simulaties te stoppen, kunnen we in ieder geval een beetje een idee krijgen van de processen die hier spelen. In de modellen is vooral veel aandacht besteed aan de gasdynamiek (in de vroege stadia van het planeetvormingsproces) en aan de zwaartekrachtinteracties tussen de verschillende protoplaneten. Bij eenzame sterren als de zon blijkt dat aardse planeten zich vrijwel altijd vormen.

Volledige artikel -->
http://www.astrostart.nl/index.php?subaction=showfull&id=1169836809&archive=&start_from=&ucat=132&
=========
even wachten nog dus tot 2008 ^^

Hubble Main Camera shuts down

The main camera on the Hubble Space Telescope (HST) has shut down after an electrical failure, Nasa has said.
Astronomers are calling the malfunction of the Advanced Camera for Surveys a "great loss" as it has taken the clearest pictures yet of the Universe.

US space agency engineers said only one-third of the camera's functions were likely to be restored.

Hubble is due to receive a new camera during a planned servicing mission by space shuttle in 2008.

This should recover all of the capability lost in the latest failure.

"The successful completion of [the shuttle mission] and insertion of Wide Field Camera-3 (WFC3) will take us fully back to not only where we are now, but where we want [the telescope] to be in the future," said David Leckrone, Nasa's senior project scientist on Hubble.

'Great loss'

The Advanced Camera for Surveys has been the most in-demand instrument on the observatory since its installation in 2002. It generates about 10 gigabytes of data each day. The ACS actually consists of three sub-cameras that detect and filter light from the ultraviolet to the near infrared.

Astronomers can continue to use Hubble's other instruments - which include the Field Planetary Camera-2 and the Near Infrared Camera Multi-Object Spectrograph - but the loss of its primary camera is being mourned by the scientific community.

"Science will continue, but it's a great loss, no doubt," said Mario Livio at the Space Telescope Science Institute which manages Hubble.
"It's a great loss because this was a fantastic camera that just produced incredible science."

Life Extension

Nasa has set up an Anomaly Review Board to investigate the latest incident.

"It is too early to know what influences the ACS anomaly may have on Hubble Space Telescope Servicing Mission-4 planning," said Preston Burch, the programme manager for Hubble.

It is important that the review board conduct a thorough investigation that will allow us to determine if there are any changes needed in the new instruments that will be installed on the upcoming servicing mission so that we can be sure of maximising the telescope's scientific output."

The servicing mission to be conducted by astronauts on the Discovery shuttle should launch in September of 2008
In addition to the Wide Field Camera-3, the crew will fit the Cosmic Origins Spectrograph (COS). Together, the new instruments will improve significantly Hubble's ability to probe distant, faint objects in the early Universe.

New batteries and gyroscopes will maintain the telescope's power and pointing systems.

The servicing mission should extend Hubble's orbital lifetime to at least 2013, by which time Nasa will be getting close to launching a successor: the James Webb Space Telescope.

Hubble is the result of a joint venture between the US and European space agencies.


Shuttle Discovery will grab Hubble with a robotic arm and pull it on to a work platform to allow astronauts easy access to its interior
Hubble has six gyroscopes that are critical to its control and pointing systems. These have started to fail and all will have to be replaced
Six new batteries will rejuvenate the electrical system; astronauts will attach new thermal blankets to insulate sensitive components
The telescope has two instrument bays; the COS and WFC3 will be slid into racks made vacant by the removal of older instruments
An attempt will also be made to repair the Space Telescope Imaging Spectrograph (STIS) which stopped working in 2004

Phoenix-missie overleeft schrappingsprocedure

De Phoenix-missie, waarvan de lander in augustus naar Mars wordt gelanceerd, hoeft niet bang te zijn om geschrapt te worden. De missie bevond zich in een kritische fase. Wetenschappers hadden namelijk 31 miljoen dollar extra nodig, omdat het oorspronkelijke budget van 386 miljoen dollar niet genoeg was.

NASA heeft nu toestemming geven om de missie door te laten gaan. "Het vreet al drie maanden aan mij," erkent Peter Smith, hoofdonderzoeker van de missie aan de universiteit van Arizona in Tucson.



Phoenix vestigt zich in mei 2008 permanent op de noordpool van Mars, waar de lander met een robotarm in de grond gaat boren om waterijs onder het oppervlak te onderzoeken. Misschien dat de lander er organische moleculen vindt.

De missie kampte de laatste maanden met een aantal problemen, waardoor het budget snel op was. Zo werkte de altimeter niet goed die de hoogte en de snelheid van de lander bijhoudt, terwijl het gevaarte afdaalt in de atmosfeer van Mars. Daarnaast konden de wetenschappers geen goede landingsplek vinden voor Phoenix. Ze hadden wel een goede landingsplaats gevonden, maar ESA's Mars Express ontdekte later dat deze landingsplaats vol lag met grote rotsblokken

NASA ziet het budget voor 2007 slinken

NASA moet dit jaar wat rustiger aan doen met het budget. De Amerikaanse ruimtevaartorganisatie verwachtte 16,8 miljard dollar te krijgen, maar het subsidiecomité van het Huis van Afgevaardigden besloot gisteren om dat bedrag te verlagen tot 16,25 miljard dollar. Hierdoor loopt NASA een half miljard dollar mis, wat gevolgen heeft voor de ontwikkelingsplannen van de Ares 1 raket en de Orion capsule.

Het bedrag dat NASA nu krijgt is hetzelfde als vorig jaar, maar minder dan de ruimtevaartorganisatie heeft aangevraagd. Toch blijft NASA één van de meest beloonde organisaties van de Verenigde Staten. In totaal gaat er dit jaar 463,5 miljard dollar naar alle Amerikaanse organisaties.

NASA dient maandag de budgetaanvraag voor 2008 in.

De cover van Life Magazine van september 1964, met een net vertrokken Saturnus V van lanceerplatform 39C.
Launchpad 39C is echter nooit gebouwd, de plannen om een vaste maanbasis te bouwen en elke week een retourvlucht naar de maan te maken werden in 1967, een jaar voor Apollo 8, eigenlijk al geschrapt.



[ Bericht 5% gewijzigd door Nieuwschierig op 01-02-2007 18:32:10 ]

New Horizons captured this unique view of Jupiter's moon Io with its color camera - the Multispectral Visible Imaging Camera (MVIC) - at 00:25 UT on March 1, 2007, from a range of 2.3 million kilometers (1.4 million miles). The image is centered at Io coordinates 4 degrees south, 162 degrees west, and was taken shortly before the complementary Long Range Reconnaissance Imager (LORRI) photo of Io released on March 13, which had higher resolution but was not in color.



Like that LORRI picture, this processed image shows the nighttime glow of the Tvashtar volcano and its plume rising 330 kilometers (200 miles) into sunlight above Io's north pole. However, the MVIC picture reveals the intense red of the glowing lava at the plume source and the contrasting blue of the fine dust particles in the plume (similar to the bluish color of smoke), as well as more subtle colors on Io's sunlit crescent. The lower parts of the plume in Io's shadow, lit only by the much fainter light from Jupiter, are almost invisible in this rendition. Contrast has been reduced to show the large range of brightness between the plume and Io's disk.

A component of the Ralph imaging instrument, MVIC has three broadband color filters: blue (480 nanometers), red (620 nm) and infrared (850 nm); as well as a narrow methane filter (890 nm). Because the camera was designed for the dim illumination at Pluto, not the much brighter sunlight at Jupiter, the red and infrared filters are overexposed on Io's dayside. This image is therefore composed from the blue and methane filters only, and the colors shown are only approximations to those that the eye would see. Nevertheless, the human eye would easily see the red color of the volcano and the blue color of the plume.

Credit: NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Southwest Research Institute

Deep Impact Extended Mission Could Probe Deeper Into Solar System Origin

In July, 2005, the Deep Impact spacecraft released a probe that blasted a crater in comet Tempel 1, spilling its elements into space so scientists could discover its composition. The assault was justified because comets are thought to be leftovers from the formation of our solar system, so learning more about them helps to understand how our solar system came to be.

Since those fireworks, the spacecraft has cruised silently through space, healthy and able to take on another mission, if needed. The Deep Impact team realized that with the spacecraft already built and launched, extra discoveries could be made at very little cost, a bonus for an already successful mission.

The team put together a proposal to use the spacecraft's telescope to observe the atmospheres of alien worlds, and to visit another comet. The proposed extended mission is called EPOXI (Extrasolar Planet Observation and Deep Impact Extended Investigation), and it has received $500,000 from NASA for an initial study to determine the requirements and costs in greater detail.

If approved, as Deep Impact passes by Earth on December 31, 2007, it will use our planet's gravity to direct itself to comet Boethin. While it cruises toward the comet, the first part of the extended mission -- the investigation of alien worlds --would begin in January, 2008. More than 200 alien (extrasolar) planets have been discovered to date. Most of these are detected indirectly, by the gravitational pull they exert on their parent star. Directly observing extrasolar planets is very difficult, because the star is so brilliant compared to the planet. Planets simply get lost in the glare, like fireflies near a headlight.

However, sometimes by chance the orbit of an extrasolar planet is aligned so that it eclipses its star as seen from Earth. In these rare cases, light from the extrasolar world can be seen directly. "When the planet appears next to its star, your telescope captures their combined light. When the planet passes behind its star, your telescope only sees light from the star. By subtracting light from just the star from the combined light, you are left with light from the planet. We can analyze this light to discover what the atmospheres of these planets are like," said Drake Deming of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md., Deputy Principal Investigator for EPOXI.

=====================
Rest van het artikel ==> http://www.nasa.gov/centers/goddard/news/topstory/2007/epoxi.html

'New Horizons brengt Callisto in beeld (Astrostart)

Hoewel NASA's New Horizons ruimtesonde allang weer op weg is naar Pluto, stromen nog steeds nieuwe foto's van Jupiter en zijn manen binnen. Dit keer is het de beurt aan Callisto, na Ganymedes de grootste Joviaanse maan van Jupiter. Op de nieuwe foto's is Callisto gedetailleerd te zien.

Beide onderstaande foto's zijn eind februari gemaakt met de Long Range Reconnaissance Imager (LORRI). De linkerfoto op een afstand van 4,7 miljoen kilometer bij Callisto vandaan en de rechterfoto op een afstand van 4,2 miljoen kilometer bij Callisto vandaan. Callisto bevond zich tijdens de scheervlucht van New Horizons aan de andere kant van Jupiter, dus het is opzienbarend dat er toch nog zulke mooie foto's gemaakt zijn van deze maan.

VENUS FLYBY:
Today when NASA's MESSENGER spacecraft
flies by Venus en route to Mercury, the craft will shoot a laser
beam into Venus' clouds, among other experiments,
to learn more about Earth's "evil twin." Get the full story from Science@NASA

terwijl ik dit post.... duurt het nog 40 minuten voor de fly-by





[ Bericht 11% gewijzigd door -CRASH- op 05-06-2007 18:33:09 ]

You must be shitting me ?.......O my God

quote:

"We are treating the Venus flyby as a full dress rehearsal for the first flyby of Mercury in January 2008," says Sean Solomon, the mission's principal investigator at the Carnegie Institution of Washington. "All of the spacecraft's science instruments will be turned on during the flyby."

Of particular interest is the laser experiment, which aims to measure the location of Venus' cloud decks. "It could either fizzle or be a major result," says Ralph McNutt, MESSENGER's project scientist at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Lab. "We've never sent a laser to Venus before. This could give us some unique information about the planet's clouds."

see captionThe name of the laser is MLA--short for Mercury Laser Altimeter. It was designed to map the rocky topography of Mercury, but MLA turns out to have some nice properties for the study of Venus. Solomon explains: "Venus' atmosphere and clouds are nearly transparent at several infra-red wavelengths." The wavelength of the laser (1064 nm) is close to one of these spectral "windows," so it may be able to penetrate deep into the atmosphere. "It's a long shot, but we may even see returns from the surface of Venus," he speculates.

2008.01 jummy

Oh is er al nieuws over het laseren van Venus? Of moeten we weer 6 maanden wachten

quote:

Op woensdag 6 juni 2007 09:09 schreef wdn het volgende:

[..]

2008.01 jummy

Oh is er al nieuws over het laseren van Venus? Of moeten we weer 6 maanden wachten

SUCCESSFUL FLYBY:
Last night, NASA's MESSENGER spacecraft flew over the cloud tops of Venus
at a velocity of more than 30,000 mph. Mission controllers say onboard systems
performed flawlessly, gathering approximately 6 gigabits of data.
Playback begins on June 7th with a full color mosaic of Venus and a first look
at the exciting laser experiment due on June 8th. Stay tuned!

Voyager At 30: Looking Beyond And Within
^{by Staff Writers
Pasadena CA (JPL) Sep 07, 2007}

quote:

A mission that was supposed to last just five years is celebrating its 30th anniversary this fall. Scientists continue to receive data from the Voyager 1 and 2 spacecraft as they approach interstellar space. The twin craft have become a fixture of pop culture, inspiring novels and playing a central role in television shows, music videos, songs and movies from the 1980s and 1990s. Many of these fictional works focus on what would happen if an alien race were able to locate Earth via Voyager's famous golden records, which include sounds and images of Earth.
The selections portray people young and old, male and female -- not to mention examples of many other species -- and include information about every continent on the planet, as well as Earth's location in space.

Earlier NASA missions included plaques with information about Earth, in case an intelligent alien race intercepted the probes. This spurred, John Casani, Voyager's first project manager, to appoint astronomer and author Carl Sagan to head a committee to come up with a message for Voyager.

In his book "Murmurs of Earth," Sagan later described how the committee created the record and chose its contents. Physicist Frank Drake suggested the idea of a record that would have pictures on one side and sounds on the other side. The group had less than six weeks to come up with a record that would represent the entire population of Earth -- in addition to the planet itself -- if it were ever discovered by an intelligent alien race.

Although the chances of extraterrestials finding the message are extremely slim, the Voyager golden record has become an icon. "It's the classic message in a bottle. The likelihood of finding it is small, but the payoff is huge if it is found," said Ann Druyan, a science media producer and author. Druyan was appointed creative director of the record project and later married Sagan.

Ed Stone, Voyager's project scientist and former JPL director, explained that although there is almost no chance of the record being found, the record is important as a message to ourselves.

"In a sense it's a unifying message," Stone said. "It's a message from Earth. It contains greetings in many languages, music from many cultures and images that portray our home planet. It's our attempt to say what is Earth, and it's a record of who we think we are." Druyan also explained that the coupling of music and science was an especially compelling reason to devote so much energy to the record.

"The record represented the idea that science and technology could come together with art," said Druyan, who also designed the sound essay.. "It's one of the few totally great stories that we have about humans. It cost the taxpayers virtually nothing, nobody got killed. It was a way to celebrate the glory of being alive on this tiny blue dot in 1977.

"This was the most romantic and beautiful project ever attempted by NASA. It had the sounds of a kiss, a mother saying hello to her newborn baby for the first time, all that glorious music. Remember, this was during the Cold War. Everyone was living with the knowledge that 50,000 nuclear weapons could go off at any time, and there was a lot of angst about the future. This was something positive -- a way to represent Earth and put our best foot forward. That was irresistible."

Carl Sagan's son Nick was six years old in 1977 when the Voyager records were being assembled. The records feature a recording of him as a child saying, "Hello from the children of planet Earth."

"I had no sense of the magnitude of it at the time," said Nick Sagan, who partially followed in his late father's footsteps by pursuing a career as a science fiction writer. "Literally it was my parents putting me in front of a microphone and saying, 'What would you say to extraterrestrials?'"

Sagan said he began to realize what the record meant as he got older, and as a teen he started to realize what a "strange but wonderful honor" it was.

"It's been a challenge for the rest of my life to live up to that honor. It's always there in my subconscious," he said. "My dad inspired so many people to do so many great things -- to not take things at face value and to look at evidence to search for the truth. It's something that I look to as a beacon."

Sagan said that he and his father discussed the Voyager discoveries in the context of their search for life. They got excited when the spacecraft photographed Titan and Europa, and Sagan noted a change in his father as the years went by.

"One of the things that surprised him was that we didn't find life during his lifetime," he said. "He started to realize that if there's no other life out there, and life is so rare, we need to protect ours. I saw a shift in him. That's when he started to become more socially and politically conscious."

In the end, Sagan believes that Voyager and other extraterrestrial missions are important because of their process rather than their discoveries.

"The question is: What's it all about?" he said. "If we do find life it will change us, but if not it will change things also. The act of looking will tell us so much, and we will learn so much about ourselves."

Hubble And Spitzer Space Telescopes Find Lego-Block Galaxies In Early Universe
^{by Staff Writers
Pasadena CA (SPX) Sep 07, 2007}

quote:

^{In this image of the Hubble Ultra Deep Field,
several objects are identified as the faintest,
most compact galaxies ever observed
in the distant universe.}

NASA's Hubble and Spitzer Space Telescopes have joined forces to discover nine of the smallest, faintest, most compact galaxies ever observed in the distant universe. Blazing with the brilliance of millions of stars, each of the newly discovered galaxies is a hundred to a thousand times smaller than our Milky Way Galaxy. "These are among the lowest mass galaxies ever directly observed in the early universe" says Nor Pirzkal of the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, Md.
The conventional model for galaxy evolution predicts that small galaxies in the early universe evolved into the massive galaxies of today by coalescing. These nine Lego-like "building block" galaxies initially detected by Hubble likely contributed to the construction of the universe as we know it.

Pirzkal was surprised to find that the galaxies' estimated masses were so small. Hubble's cousin observatory, NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope was called upon to make precise determinations of their masses. The Spitzer observations confirmed that these galaxies are some of the smallest building blocks of the universe.

These young galaxies offer important new insights into the universe's formative years, just one billion years after the Big Bang. Hubble detected sapphire blue stars residing within the nine pristine galaxies. The youthful stars are just a few million years old and are in the process of turning Big Bang elements (primarily hydrogen and helium) into heavier elements. The stars have probably not yet begun to pollute the surrounding space with elemental products forged within their cores.

"While blue light seen by Hubble shows the presence of young stars, it is the absence of infrared light in the sensitive Spitzer images that was conclusive in showing that these are truly young galaxies without an earlier generation of stars," says Sangeeta Malhotra of Arizona State University in Tempe, Ariz., one of the investigators.

The galaxies were first identified by James Rhoads of Arizona State University and Chun Xu of the Shanghai Institute of Technical Physics in Shanghai, China, by their prominent and energetic light coming from glowing hydrogen. Three of the galaxies appear to be slightly disrupted - rather than being shaped like rounded blobs, they appear stretched into tadpole-like shapes. This is a sign that they may be interacting and merging with neighboring galaxies to form larger, cohesive structures.

The galaxies were observed in the Hubble Ultra Deep Field (HUDF) with Hubble's Advanced Camera for Surveys and the Near Infrared Camera and Multi-Object Spectrometer. Observations were also done with Spitzer's Infrared Array Camera and the European Southern Observatory's Infrared Spectrometer and Array Camera.

[ Bericht 45% gewijzigd door -CRASH- op 08-09-2007 17:48:14 ]

Is die foto misschien ook groter te vinden?

quote:

Op zaterdag 8 september 2007 17:45 schreef -skippybal- het volgende:
Is die foto misschien ook groter te vinden?

In this image of the Hubble Ultra Deep Field (HUDF), several objects are identified as the faintest, most compact galaxies ever observed in the distant Universe. They are so far away that we see them as they looked less than one thousand million years after the Big Bang. Blazing with the brilliance of millions of stars, each of the newly discovered galaxies is a hundred to a thousand times smaller than our Milky Way Galaxy.

The bottom row of pictures shows five of the nine compact galaxies in the HUDF studied by Pirzkal et al. [2007], with their distance expressed in redshift in the lower right corner. Three of the galaxies appear to be slightly disrupted. Rather than being round-shaped, they appear stretched into tadpole-like forms. This is a sign that they may be interacting and merging with neighbouring galaxies to form larger structures.

The detection required joint observations between Hubble and NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope. Blue light seen by Hubble shows the presence of young stars. The absence of infrared light from Spitzer observations conclusively shows that these are truly young galaxies without an earlier generation of stars.

ESA Sceince & Technology

[ Bericht 31% gewijzigd door -CRASH- op 08-09-2007 17:55:50 ]

quote:

Op woensdag 5 mei 2004 15:28 schreef pfaf het volgende:
een terugvindpostje.
En dan meteen een paar van de mooiste foto's ooit posten
Van Hubble uiteraard.

[afbeelding]
nevel met stergeboorte

[afbeelding]
sterven van een zon-achtige ster

[afbeelding]
waterstof, zuurstof en zwavelstrormpje

[afbeelding]
en nog een neveltje

Je vergeet de fantastische Eskimo (Clownface) nevel:



Hier een paar zelfgemaakte filmpjes:

Zonnestelsel deel 1 & deel 2 en wat dies meer zij.

quote:

Ruimtesonde Dawn succesvol gelanceerd

27/09/2007 14:00

Donderdag omstreeks 13u34 Belgische tijd werd de ruimtesonde Dawn gelanceerd vanop Cape Canaveral, Florida. De sonde is op weg naar Vesta en Ceres, twee asteroïden die een baan tussen die van Mars en Jupiter hebben.

Het gebeuren was te zien op NASA-tv. Een Delta II-raket bracht de sonde doorheen de atmosfeer in een baan rond de aarde.

De neuskegel van de raket viel weg zoals gepland, en bracht Dawn 'echt' in de ruimte. Ingenieurs blijven Dawn nauwkeurig volgen, en wachten op de tweede en derde trap van de raket die Dawn op weg zullen helpen. De reis gaat naar de asteroïdengordel tussen Mars en Jupiter, waar de twee protoplaneten Ceres en Vesta liggen.

Met de Dawn-missie wil NASA deze twee hemellichamen nader onderzoeken, dit vooral om meer te weten komen over het ontstaan van ons zonnestelsel. Ceres en Vesta zijn in dat opzicht interessant: ze werden ongeveer gelijktijdig gevormd, maar via een ander proces, waardoor ze nu erg verschillend zijn.

Ceres is de kleinste dwergplaneet van ons zonnestelsel, met een oppervlak dat heel wat ijs zou bevatten en een diameter van ongeveer 950 km. Vesta is een rotsachtige asteroïde met een diameter van ongeveer 530 km.

De totale duur van de missie bedraagt bijna 8 jaar. Als alles volgens schema verloopt, zou Dawn in september 2011 Vesta bereiken. Een kleine drieënhalf jaar later, in februari 2015, zou ze Ceres aandoen, en nog enkele maanden later zou de hoofdmissie ten einde lopen. De mogelijkheid dat Dawn nadien nog andere asteroïden zou onderzoeken blijft echter open.

http://www.knack.be/nieuw(...)n27-article8459.html

Kickje. Na een maand of wat vertraging staat de klok nu op -9 minuten (and holding). Nu geen kapotte sensors, mogelijk het weer die wel roet in het gooit.

8:45 mogelijke lift off.

Met daarin de wetenschappelijke module 'Columbus' van ESA ter waarde van 1,3 miljard.

T-9 and counting

And lift off!

gaaf. was net te laat om het begin van de lancering te zien, maar de rest van de beelden waren ook mooi

http://spaceweather.com/s(...)antis_1202544039.jpg

Stephane Palfray

Image taken:

Feb. 8, 2008

Location:

Etainhus, Normandy, France

Details:

Only a small telescope Meade 114/900 and a Philips Vesta Pro webcam
are suffisant to observe the ISS pass. Half an hour later, the space shuttle Atlantis,
pratically in the same trajectory. Stay tuned today for the rendezvous !

De Columbus module wordt nu
uit de payloadbay gehesen...

http://home.hccnet.nl/t.amerongen/Nasa%20TV.htm