Entries Tagged 'Exploration' ↓

We know that the earth runs into small meteorites all the time (ranging from dust size up to small boulders). We see these as “Shooting Stars” in the night time sky. But here’s something you might not have thought about: The moon get hit too. Unlike the earth, the moon has no thick atmosphere to protect it, so when something hits, it hits.

This article talks about a telescope that has been setup to monitor the moon for the these types of collisions. On its first night in operation it captured the explosion of a 12cm meteor impacting the lunar surface at 27 km/s! The resulting explosion was equivalent to 70 kg of TNT and it is thought to have left a crater 3 meters in diameter!

An interesting tidbit from the article is that they are reviewing the data from the telescope by watching it, not by having a computer process it. That blew my mind, these explosions from impacts would probably be really short lived events. Plus imagine all of the cross checking the computer could do: As it finds a flash it could look to see if there were any satellites in the vicinity, then check the duration of the event to make sure it wasn’t a cosmic ray, it could cross check with another telescope to make sure it wasn’t a fluke camera malfunction… The possibilities are endless. I really need to get more involved in virtual astronomy, there is just so much coolness happening there.

From this article on MSNBC:Space crew weathers a scare during re-entry

When describing to reporters the air leak in his space capsule (for those of you who don’t follow space much, that is a very very very bad thing to have happen) Cosmonaut Sergey Krikalev said:

“In principle this was an anomalous situation of medium complexity. … In fact, it was a fairly serious situation.”

Yikes, in my book any time air is leaking out of my sapceship while it is in space and I am sitting it it, it is an extremely serious situation.

I saw this article about the next “tourist” who is scheduled to visit the international space station. Apparently he wants to do something a little different: Japanese whiz aims for space — in cartoon uniform

As dorky as it might sound right now, that might look pretty cool when they are doing their walk to the launch pad. Two cosmonauts and a guy gressed up like a Gundam pilot.

Of course it would be even cooler if he could actually dress up like the Gundam itself…

This is kinda cool, they have found a moon orbiting large Trans-Neptunian Object that was announced a few weeks ago: The moon of the 10th planet. You know, the one called Xena. In fact, they are calling the moon Gabrielle.

Once they are able to get some telescope time they are going to try and determine the orbital period which will give a pretty good mass estimate for the planet. Yes, I said planet, it sure seems like it is one crazy orbit or not.

Spaceflight Now | Breaking News | NASA formally unveils lunar exploration architecture

For years I’ve wondered why NASA didn’t have a separate cargo launch capability. Especially for the Apollo missions, it just seems to me like it would have been easier to launch the lander and booster rockets first, then launch the crew module and have them link up in orbit. It seems doing things this way would have let them use smaller rockets (instead of the Saturn V).

At any rate I’m glad to see that NASA is intending to go this route. I think taking the “simple but works” route for designing the spacecraft is the right move. The shuttle is nice and all, but it has shown itself to be very expensive and delicate.

Speaking of which I’m curious to see how the reuse of shuttle technologies goes. While I think the Solid Rocket Boosters (SRBs) are a pretty solid design, I’m wondering about the decision to reuse the Shuttle Main Engines (SME). I haven’t done any research on this, but I seem to recall that the reason a lot of the launches in the past have been scrubbed was due to glitches in the SMEs (or their associated turbopumps, etc.).

Also I’m curious about the flight dynamics of the new setup using the SRB as its main booster. I recall those generate a ton of thrust, and they can’t be throttled (i.e. once it starts, there is no stopping it, you have to let it burn out). Remember, those SRBs were designed to be used in pairs to help move a very heavy shuttle and its fuel tank off the ground and get them to supersonic speeds. Using just one SRB with a greatly reduced in weight spacecraft could lead to a very wild ride.

I imagine if the simulations show that they are too powerful (causing too many G’s on the crew) they can take out a segment or two to alter their flight profile.

Overall I’m hoping that this is a return of the NASA of old, when solid, simple engineering and a desire to explore and learn where the guiding principals.