Black Hole's and other Space Related Discussion

[BreakingBacks]

Orion: The Next Generation Crew Exploration Vehicle

Spectators gather around a mock-up of the Orion capsule that will carry astronauts back to the moon. The capsule is being displayed on the National Mall in Washington, D.C.

Scheduled to make its first flights to the International Space Station early in the next decade, Orion is part of the Constellation Program to send human explorers back to the moon, and then onward to Mars and other destinations in the solar system.

Image Credit: NASA/Michael Cabbage

[Keithlewis]

NASA readies for a return to the moon

Lunar satellites set for June launch to study landing sites, resources for human mission

NASA is preparing to return humans to the moon.

The space agency yesterday afternoon announced that two lunar satellites are on track to be launched next month. Both the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter and the Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite will be focused on sending information back to Earth to help NASA scientists determine safe landing sites and resources for a human return to the moon.

"These two missions will provide exciting new information about the moon, our nearest neighbor," said Doug Cooke, associate administrator of NASA's Exploration Systems Mission Directorate. "Imaging will show dramatic landscapes and areas of interest down to one-meter resolution. The data also will provide information about potential new uses of the moon. These teams have done a tremendous job designing and building these two spacecraft."

The two NASA satellites are expected to give scientists more information about the moon than they've ever had before.

NASA is hoping not only to return astronauts to the moon but also to build a lunar outpost by 2020. The plan includes the use of next generation robots and machines to help prepare the spacecraft and the surface of the moon for such missions.

In February, a NASA-sponsored study revealed that robots the size of riding lawn mowers could be used to start building a lunar outpost before humans make their next trip to the moon. "We're just starting to scratch the surface of these concepts," Carl Walz, director of advanced capabilities at NASA, said in an earlier interview. "It'll be absolutely critical. What we're trying to do is figure out how best to incorporate human exploration and robots. I think the nature of exploration will be different [because of robots]."

The two new satellites discussed in Thursday's NASA press conference are scheduled to be launched together on an Atlas V rocket from Cape Canaveral in Florida on June 17.

NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter has seven onboard instruments designed to create high-resolution, three-dimensional maps of the moon's surface, and to identify resources, like water and ice suspected to be in the moon's polar regions. The orbiter, which will orbit 50-kilometers above the moon, is also expected to study how the moon's radiation would affect humans.

The Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite is also designed to help scientists search for evidence of water on the moon, as well as study the mineral makeup of remote polar craters that sunlight never reaches.

Whether NASA goes ahead with a human mission to the moon largely depends on the agency's budget.

Earlier this month, President Barack Obama called for an independent review of NASA's human space flight activities. Looking at possible alternatives to programs already in the pipeline, the review is geared toward making sure the country's human space flight program remains "safe, innovative and affordable" after the space shuttle is retired, NASA says.

[Keithlewis]

Pretty sweet stuff

Space storm's 'epicentre' found

[broncofan]

I may be a dork but I need to get my telescope back out so I can check some of this out.

[Keithlewis]

Boy Hit by Meteorite Traveling at 30,000 MPH

A teenager was hit by a meteorite travelling at 30,000mph - and lived to tell.

Gerrit Blank was on his way to school when he saw a massive fireball heading straight towards him from the sky.

The white-hot meteorite bounced off the schoolboy's hand and hit the ground so hard it left a foot-long crater in the tarmac - as well as a three-inch scar on his hand.

Gerrit, 14, said: "At first I just saw a large ball of light and then I suddenly felt a pain in my hand.

"Then, a split second after that, there was an enormous bang like a crash of thunder."

"The noise that came after the flash of light was so loud that my ears were ringing for hours afterwards.

"When it hit me it knocked me flying and then was still going fast enough to bury itself in the road."

[Panther]

Russian Navy Reveals Its Secret UFO Encounters

Monday, July 27, 2009


It sounds like the classic science movie "The Abyss" — only in Russian.

The Russian Navy has declassified its records of UFO encounters, many of which take place in or around water, reports the Web site of the English-language Russian news channel Russia Today.

"They are most often seen in the deepest part of the Atlantic Ocean, in the southern part of the Bermuda Triangle, and also in the Caribbean Sea," said one naval intelligence officer quoted by the Web site.

Another incident cited involved six unknown objects that followed a nuclear submarine in the Pacific. When the sub surfaced, so did the objects — which then lifted themselves out of the water and flew away.

In perhaps the most compelling account, military divers in Siberia's Lake Baikal, the world's deepest lake, encountered "a group of humanoid creatures dressed in silvery suits" at a depth of 160 feet. Three humans died during the ensuing chase.



I knew it

[Keithlewis]

Mars Life Looks Increasingly Unlikely

Despite the discovery of a meteorite on Mars the other day that looks vaguely like the famous one from the 1990s, hopes are beginning to dim for finding life on the red planet, Space.com reports.

That's because while methane was found in the Martian atmosphere--which led to speculation that something living had produced it--a new study released today in the journal Nature said that the methane plumes were actually concentrated in one spot, the report said. That means they were probably generated by a chemical reaction within the atmosphere, instead of spread out across the atmosphere the way it happens with living beings. And the plumes are also destroyed quickly--within the hour.

"If observations of spatial and temporal variations of methane are confirmed, this would suggest an extraordinarily harsh environment for the survival of organics on the planet," wrote Franck Lefevre and Francois Forget, of the Universitaire Pierre et Marie Curie in Paris, in the journal.

http://www.gearlog.com/2009/08/mars_lif ... ngly_u.php

That sucks

[broncofan]

Space hotel says it's on schedule to open in 2012. The cost of a three-night stay at ‘Galactic’ resort estimated at $4.4 million.



BARCELONA, Spain - A company behind plans to open the first hotel in space says it is on target to accept its first paying guests in 2012 despite critics questioning the investment and time frame for the multi-billion dollar project.

The Barcelona-based architects of The Galactic Suite Space Resort say it will cost $4.4 million for a three-night stay at the hotel, with this price including an eight-week training course on a tropical island.

During their stay, guests would see the sun rise 15 times a day and travel around the world every 80 minutes. They would wear Velcro suits so they can crawl around their pod rooms by sticking themselves to the walls like Spiderman.
Story continues below ↓advertisement | your ad here

Galactic Suite Ltd's CEO Xavier Claramunt, a former aerospace engineer, said the project will put his company at the forefront of an infant industry with a huge future ahead of it, and forecast space travel will become common in the future.

"It's very normal to think that your children, possibly within 15 years, could spend a weekend in space," he told Reuters Television.

A nascent space tourism industry is beginning to take shape with construction underway in New Mexico of Spaceport America, the world's first facility built specifically for space-bound commercial customers and fee-paying passengers.

British tycoon Richard Branson's space tours firm, Virgin Galactic, will use the facility to propel tourists into suborbital space at a cost of $200,000 a ride.

Galactic Suite Ltd, set up in 2007, hopes to start its project with a single pod in orbit 280 miles above the earth, with the capacity to hold four guests and two astronaut-pilots.

It will take a day and a half to reach the pod — which Claramunt compared to a mountain retreat, with no staff to greet the traveler.

"When the passengers arrive in the rocket, they will join it for three days, rocket and capsule. With this we create in the tourist a confidence that he hasn't been abandoned. After three days the passenger returns to the transport rocket and returns to earth," he said.

More than 200 people have expressed an interest in traveling to the space hotel and at least 43 people have already reserved.

The numbers are similar for Virgin Galactic with 300 people already paid or signed up for the trip but unlike Branson, Galactic Suite say they will use Russian rockets to transport their guests into space from a spaceport to be build on an island in the Caribbean.

But critics have questioned the project, saying the time frame is unreasonable and also where the money is coming from to finance the project.

Claramunt said an anonymous billionaire space enthusiast has granted $3 billion to finance the project.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/33579859/ns ... ?GT1=43001