Curiosity rover reaches its 3,000th day on Mars
Monday, 11 January 2021 20:52
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As the rover has continued to ascend Mount Sharp, it's found distinctive benchlike rock formations.
It's been 3,000 Martian days, or sols, since Curiosity touched down on Mars on Aug. 6, 2012, and the rover keeps making new discoveries during its gradual climb up Mount Sharp, the 3-mile-tall (5-kilometer-tall) mountain it has been exploring since 2014. Geologists were intrigued to see a series of rock "benches" in the most recent panorama from the mission.
Stitched together from 122 images taken on Nov. 18, 2020, the mission's 2,946th sol, the panorama was captured by the Mast Camera, or Mastcam, which serves as the rover's main "eyes.
45th Space Wing forecasts more than 50 launches in 2021
Monday, 11 January 2021 20:05 Write a comment
WASHINGTON — As many as 53 space missions are projected to lift off in 2021 from Florida’s Space Coast, the vice commander of the 45th Space Wing said Jan. 12.
“We have 53 launches in our forecast with one already on the books,” Col.
L3Harris develops electronic antenna for command and control of military satellites
Monday, 11 January 2021 18:54 Write a comment
WASHINGTON — L3Harris Technologies announced Jan. 12 it completed the development of an electronic phased array ground antenna for the U.S. Space Force.
The prototype “multi-band multi-mission” antenna is one three that were developed under a Defense Innovation Unit 2019 contract.
White House executive order promotes development of space and defense nuclear power systems
Monday, 11 January 2021 17:04 Write a comment
WASHINGTON — Less than a month after issuing a policy directive on space nuclear power, the White House released an executive order Jan. 12 seeking to promote the development of small nuclear reactors for space and defense applications.
Cheers! French wine, vines headed home after year in space
Monday, 11 January 2021 16:56 Write a comment
The International Space Station bid adieu Tuesday to 12 bottles of French Bordeaux wine and hundreds of snippets of grapevines that spent a year orbiting the world in the name of science.
SpaceX's next idea: Catch Super Heavy boosters with the launch tower
Monday, 11 January 2021 14:14 Write a comment
SpaceX is getting closer and closer to realizing the design for its Starship and Super Heavy launch system. Once complete, it will be the world's first fully reusable launch system and will facilitate trips to low Earth orbit (LEO), the moon and Mars. Construction began on the system's booster element (Super Heavy) this past summer and, according to a recent tweet by Musk, will be "caught" by its launch tower.
The tweet came (as they often do) in response to a question from one of Musk's followers. In this case, it was a space designer who goes by the Twitter handle Erc X (@ErcXspace) who produced a video that illustrates what the Super Heavy might look like as it returns to its landing site. The video is captioned with a question: "Accurate Super Heavy Descent profile?"
Accurate Super Heavy Descent profile? pic.twitter.com/MxIJ0zLzKn
— Erc X (@ErcXspace) December 30, 2020
Musk responded by tweeting:
"We're going to try to catch the Super Heavy Booster with the launch tower arm, using the grid fins to take the load… Saves mass & cost of legs & enables immediate repositioning of booster on to launch mount—ready to refly in under an hour.
Aerojet Rocketdyne completes assembly of its first AR1 rocket engine
Monday, 11 January 2021 14:01 Write a comment
WASHINGTON — Aerojet Rocketdyne has completed the assembly of the first AR1, a new rocket engine funded by the U.S. Air Force. The company does not yet have customers for the engine and plans to market it for first-stage boosters in medium-sized launch vehicles.
Exotrail demonstrates miniature Hall-effect thruster in orbit
Monday, 11 January 2021 14:00 Write a comment
SAN FRANCISCO – French startup Exotrail announced Jan. 12 that its miniature Hall-effect thruster ignited in orbit, and propelled a NanoAvionics R2 cubesat a few hundred meters.
“This is the smallest Hall thruster ever flown and the first time a Hall thruster flew on a satellite of less than 100 kilograms,” Exotrail CEO David Henri told SpaceNews.
Reconstructing the solar system's original architecture
Monday, 11 January 2021 13:19 Write a comment
As the solar system was developing, the giant planets (Jupiter and Saturn) formed very early, and as they grew, they migrated both closer to and further away from the sun to stay in gravitationally stable orbits.
The gravitational effect of these massive objects caused immense reshuffling of other planetary bodies that were forming at the time, meaning that the current locations of many planetary bodies in our solar system are not where they originally formed.
Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) scientists set out to reconstruct these original formation locations by studying the isotopic compositions of different groups of meteorites that all derived from the asteroid belt (between Mars and Jupiter). The asteroid belt is the source of almost all of Earth's meteorites, but the material that makes up the asteroid belt formed from sweeping of materials all over the solar system.
Madrid snowbound
Monday, 11 January 2021 12:35 Write a comment
Image:
This Copernicus Sentinel-2 image of Madrid in Spain appears to have been taken in black and white. In fact, it is a true-colour image – but the heaviest snowfall in 50 years has blanketed the region, turning the landscape white. Energy from solar wind favors the north
Monday, 11 January 2021 12:32 Write a comment
Using information from ESA's Swarm satellite constellation, scientists have made a discovery about how energy generated by electrically-charged particles in the solar wind flows into Earth's atmosphere—surprisingly, more of it heads towards the magnetic north pole than towards the magnetic south pole.
The sun bathes our planet with the light and heat to sustain life, but it also bombards us with dangerous charged particles in the solar wind.
Image: Frosty scenes in Martian summer
Monday, 11 January 2021 12:29 Write a comment
The CaSSIS camera onboard the ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter captured remnant frost deposits in a region near Sisyphi Tholus, in the high southern latitudes of Mars (74ºS/246ºE).
This image was taken during the early morning of a midsummer day in the southern hemisphere. At these high latitudes, carbon dioxide ice and frost develop. Frost can be seen within polygonal cracks in the terrain, a feature that indicates the presence of water ice embedded in the soil. The black spots observed throughout the scene are due to dark soil being pushed through cracks in the carbon dioxide ice as it sublimates—turns directly from solid ice to vapor—in the summer months.
The scale is indicated on the image.
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The obliquity of Mars: Periodic bedding in Tithonium Chasma
Monday, 11 January 2021 12:28 Write a comment
Earth's seasons are caused by the tilt of our planet's rotational axis to the orbital plane or obliquity. Mars' obliquity is currently about 25 degrees, which is not much different from Earth's 23 degrees. However, numerical calculations by scientists at the Paris Observatory and Massachusetts Institute of Technology suggest that this near-agreement is a coincidence.
Under the influence of gravitational torques from other planets, Mars' obliquity varies chaotically, probably reaching values greater than 60 degrees and lower than 10 degrees. By contrast, Earth's obliquity appears to have been limited to small variations from its current value because of the stabilizing gravitational influence of the Moon. If the calculations are correct, then for most of the Solar System's history, the obliquity of Mars was greater than 25 degrees. This would produce warmer summers and colder winters than on present-day Mars. On Earth, a recent 1 degree rise in obliquity is believed to have triggered ice sheet retreat from the current location of New York City to Greenland. The climatic consequences of 50 degree changes in obliquity on Mars remain unknown.
It is possible, though unproven, that higher obliquity triggered partial melting of some of Mars' water ice.
Pool preps
Monday, 11 January 2021 12:08 Write a comment
Image:
Prepping for a spacewalk typically means diving underwater to rehearse and fine-tune operations.
In 2016, ESA astronaut Alexander Gerst performed such an underwater rehearsal for the Colka high speed radio, the brown box imaged above, that will be installed this month on the International Space Station.
NASA astronauts Mike Hopkins and Victor Glover will integrate the small fridge-sized device outside the European Columbus module during a spacewalk scheduled this year. ESA astronaut Andreas Mogensen will be at NASA’s mission control directing the spacewalkers as Capcom. The Columbus Ka-band terminal, nicknamed ‘Colka’, will enable faster communication with Europe.
Orbiting the planet every
Ariane 6 launch complex – December 2020
Monday, 11 January 2021 12:00 Write a comment
Video:
00:02:20
Tour the Ariane 6 launch complex at Europe's Spaceport in Kourou, French Guiana