Early this morning, the European Space Agency’s comet-circling spacecraft ended its mission with a crash landing into Comet 67P. Sweet sleep, friend.
Category: Space
Musk Outlines Mars Plan ⇢
SpaceX plans to build a “self-sustaining city” on Mars, according to its founder Elon Musk. But, while we now know a lot more about how SpaceX plans to get to Mars, details about how people will actually survive up there remain sketchy.
Misra has the best round-up of the news that I’ve seen. I haven’t had a chance to see all of the keynote yet, but there are plenty of open questions left about Musk’s plan.
Voyager Golden Record Kickstarter ⇢
A new Kickstarter project has grabbed my attention:
Experience the historic interstellar message for extraterrestrials the way it was meant to be played.
In 1977, NASA’s Voyager I and II probes were sent to explore the outer solar system1 and beyond. In fact, Voyager I holds the distinct record of being the first human-built object to enter interstellar space.
In addition to cameras and sensors, the space craft are carrying a special payload:
China Launches Space Station ⇢
Chinese officials have announced that this morning’s launch of the Tiangong-2 space station was successful.
Not much is known about the station, but this article outlines what has been shared.
Juno Beams Home Images From First Perijove ⇢
Emily Lakdawalla at The Planetary Society:
On August 27, Juno soared across Jupiter’s cloud tops from pole to pole, with all instruments operating. NASA posted some terrific first results from several of the instruments today. And the JunoCam team released all 28 raw images taken during the close encounter. I’ve collected all the data onto a single page for easy browsing and downloading; I’ll have more to say about that below.
SpaceX Falcon 9 Explodes on Pad
News broke this morning that a Falcon 9 rocket due to launch later this weekend exploded on the launch pad at Cape Canaveral.
Black smoke from an explosion of a #SpaceX rocket in Cape Canaveral, Fla. pic via @PointyEndUp pic.twitter.com/pHKy0jLgpK
— Zora Suleman (@ZoraSuleman) September 1, 2016
There are few details known at this point, but early reports say the failure occurred leading up to a static fire test, in which the rocket’s motors are fired while the vehicle is clamped down to the pad. Some tweets have indicated the explosion took place during a “catastrophic abort” of the test.
NASA’s Juno Completes First Jupiter Flyby ⇢
While results from the spacecraft’s suite of instruments will be released down the road, a handful of images from Juno’s visible light imager — JunoCam — are expected to be released the next couple of weeks. Those images will include the highest-resolution views of the Jovian atmosphere and the first glimpse of Jupiter’s north and south poles.
It’s an exciting time to be a space enthusiast.
OSIRIS-Rex ⇢
Nola Taylor Redd at Space.com:
In 2023, a bit of the primordial solar system will return to Earth. That’s when NASA’s OSIRIS-Rex mission will return a sample of the asteroid Bennu, a carbon-rich rock hosting traces of the early solar system. While there, the mission will conduct an in-depth study of the rocky body, learning more about how sunlight can shift its position, before gathering a small sample to return to Earth.
Apollo 11 Flight Plan Re-Issue ⇢
I’m a sucker for re-issued space books,1 and this Kickstarter project looks great:
The flight plan was a minute-by-minute time line of activities for the Apollo 11 mission crew. We are reproducing this plan..perfectly.
-
My copy of the NASA Graphics Standard Manual re-issue is amazing. ↩︎
NASA names investigations for future planetary missions ⇢
DC Agle, writing on the JPL blog:
NASA has selected five science investigations for refinement during the next year as a first step in choosing one or two missions for flight opportunities as early as 2020. Three of those chosen have ties to NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California. The submitted proposals would study Venus, near-Earth objects and a variety of asteroids.
One or two of these will be funded for future missions. I think I’m partial to the VERITAS and NEOCam missions myself.
One Year of Earth ⇢
NOAA’s DSCOVR satellite’s EPIC camera captured its first imagery of Earth on July 6, 2015. Since then, it has delivered thousands of images of our world, including the moon’s shadow being cast on Earth during a solar eclipse.
Juno sends first in-orbit image of Jupiter ⇢
Juno will end up much closer to the gas giant next month, but this first image sure is stunning.