NASA & World Space Exploration...News, Views, Photos & videos

Miragedriver

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YES, this is awesome!:D

......Based on new information about the number of other worlds where life could have taken hold it is "quite likely" humans are not alone, he said.

"There is no bigger question," Hawking said. "It is time to commit to finding the answer to search for life beyond Earth.".......

I would love to know that we are not along in the large universe. I just hope that they are humanoid looking and what to be friends, and that they don’t try to colonize, subjugate us or have us as livestock…..

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Miragedriver

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New Horizons' Encounter With Pluto -- Our Solar System's Missing Link

In our modern world of extremes, what's just happened over 4.5 billion miles away -- at what was once considered the edge of the solar system -- is something else. On the morning of July 14, NASA's New Horizons interplanetary space probe hurtled past the Plutonian system at over 32 thousand miles an hour, executing the most exquisitely timed and delicately balanced pirouettes to ensure every last second of precious time was used to capture as much scientific data as possible of Pluto and its five known moons. Instruments painstakingly designed to operate in the brutally hostile environment of deep space took spectra images, sampled dust and space plasma and deliberately had their radio signals blotted out by Pluto and its moon Charon so as to directly probe their primitive atmospheres. All of this was done remotely, as it takes almost five hours for radio signals to travel out to the Smart car-sized spacecraft; and so for the New Horizons team, it was the longest possible wait until the probe finally oriented its modest antenna dish back home and started sending back its precious cargo.

And what cargo it is. Since its serendipitous discovery by the young American astronomer Clyde Tombaugh in the cold winter of 1930, Pluto has kept its secrets to itself, its staggering remoteness and small size confounding our attempts to make sense of what it is, and why it's there. These are simple questions -- like all the best questions in science should be -- yet ironically, these are always the hardest to answer. Pluto has always been regarded as the runt of the planetary litter. The inner planets (Mercury, Venus, Earth and Mars) are small, rocky and compact; the outer planets are giants of swirling gas and ice (Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune). They all orbit the Sun in the same plane, and like a giant orrery, cycle around our nearest star with Newtonian precision. Wind the clock back and what we see now broadly reflects the most recent scientific models of the inner solar system's initial formation. Except for Pluto, with its screwy, chaotic orbit that for a time had it closer to the Sun than the ice giant Neptune.

Unless of course Pluto is an interloper. And this is why New Horizons' fleeting visit is so important. It's not just because it's there (like Everest) that NASA has spent $650 million and planetary scientists almost two decades of their lives planning this event. It's because right now, Pluto is the most accessible object that belongs to the outer solar system, in what's called the Kuiper Belt. We are talking about a twilight zone that hasn't changed since the formation of Earth and its siblings many billions of years ago. Clyde Tombaugh painstakingly 'blinked' photographic plates night after night to track down Pluto -- today using modern technology over 1300 objects similar to Pluto and its moons have been detected throughout the Kuiper Belt. And Pluto is the largest -- and the closest -- of these objects.

What did we expect? Well, we expected to see craters for starters, lots of craters, punishment for those billions of years billard-balling around the outer solar system. We also expected to see inert worlds, mute witnesses to a time eons ago during the solar system's genesis. The look of utter astonishment on Alan Stern's face -- New Horizons' Principal Investigator -- when the images came up on the monitors said it all though. There are no craters, hardly any. There are chasms, mountain chains, a huge rift valley on Pluto's main moon Charon, copious amounts of methane frosting and water ice -- and this is the first of 16 months of data being drip fed back to Earth. This means two immediate things -- firstly, rip out the sections on Pluto in yourEncyclopedia Brittanica, they are now worthless. Secondly, the Sun's twilight zone is actually full of living worlds -- geologically speaking. And we have no idea why that is, and how that happened. Which is the way discoveries in science are supposed to be made -- as surprises.

So you see, the hoopla about planets and 'dwarf' planets is a sideshow. New Horizons' visit to the Plutonian system, albeit brief, is the first step in exploring this new frontier in our solar system -- not only for what it tells us about out there, but what it tells us about here. The stuff of life -- the organics, water -- would have been eviscerated whilst the inner solar system formed, and it is only through 'seeding' from this twilight zone that life could have ultimately had the chance to get a foothold on our beautiful home planet. Pluto is, from an astrobiological perspective, our true missing link. And on a more human level, its just so nice to be finally able put a face to name we have all known for such a long time.


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Miragedriver

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Rosetta Spacecraft Loses Contact With Philae Lander - Aerospace Center
The Philae research module, currently on the surface of Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko, might have changed its position and so lost communication with the Rosetta spacecraft, the German Aerospace Center (DLR) said Monday.

MOSCOW (Sputnik) — The research module landed on the comet in November 2014 to collect and transfer data on its composition. After landing on the comet the Philae module went into "silent mode," due to low batteries, before reawakening in June.

The Lander Control Center at the DLR has been trying to reestablish communication with Philae since July 9, when the lander returned to "silent mode" after a successful data transmission session.

"We sent a command to turn on the Rosetta Lander Magnetometer and Plasma Monitor (ROMAP), but have not seen a response," DLR's Philae project leader Stephan Ulamec said.

He added that the communication between the lander and the space probe might be hampered if Philae's antennas are concealed from Rosetta, or their orientation relative to the control module has changed due to outgassing during the comet's approach to the sun.

According to the DLR, Philae is now receiving maximum solar energy for its batteries, disallowing a power problem as a possible reason for communication to suddenly cease.

DLR engineers believe a problem might have occurred due to radio receiver damage or a malfunction of a transmitter unit on the lander.

Ulamec said his team will send an instruction to Philae for "blind commanding" to switch the probe to operate with only one transmitter and receiver.

At the end of the week Rosetta will change its orbit due to the increasing activity in the comet's subsoil as it approaches the sun and warms up. This new stage of the mission will reduce the chances of reestablishing contact with the Philae module.

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Miragedriver

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A photograph of Earth taken from one million miles away by a camera on Nasa's Deep Space Climate Observatory (DSCOVR) satellite that has returned its first view of the entire sunlit side of Earth
Picture: EPA/NASA/DSCOVR


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Miragedriver

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$5 trillion asteroid passes Earth amid talk of mining space

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Asteroid 2011 UW 158 is the type of asteroid Planetary Resources hopes to one day mine. Photo: Arecibo Observatory

Measuring about 1,000 by 2,000 feet, it passed our planet at a distance of about six times farther out than our moon, but close enough to interest companies in developing a means of exploiting the valuable asteroids that pass Earth.

One such company is
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, the Asteroid Mining Company in Redmond, Washington. It describes Asteroid 2011 UW158 as a “prime example of an asteroid Planetary Resources will aim to mine in the future.”

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NASA is also interested in what sort of resources near-Earth asteroids may hold for future missions and is currently planning a so-called “asteroid redirect mission” that will involve using a robotic craft to snag an asteroid or part of an asteroid and then move it into orbit around the moon, where it can be visited in person by astronauts for research and other purposes. The space agency is already in the midst of imaging 2011 UW158 with space and ground-based telescopes as it passes by us and lists the rock on a list of potential human mission targets.

Planetary Resources, which just received two grants from NASA to help its development of mining space, just last week
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from the International Space Station to begin a 90-day mission to test asteroid prospecting technology.

Though mining space might still be years away, perhaps it will be commonplace when Astroid 2011 UW158 passes Earth again—in 2108.

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Miragedriver

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An image of a newly discovered mountain range on the surface of Pluto taken by Nasa's New Horizons’ Long Range Reconnaissance Imager (LORRI) from a distance of 48,000 miles (77,000km). Features as small as a half-mile (1km) across are visible.
Picture: Nasa/JHUAPL/SWRI


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Miragedriver

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The Soyuz-FG booster rocket with the Soyuz TMA-14M space capsule on board blasts off for the International Space Station from the Russian leased Baikonur cosmodrome in Kazakhstan
Picture: AP Photo/Pavel Golovkin


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International Space Station crew member Kjell Lindgren from the USA, smiles after donning his space suit at the Baikonur cosmodrome, Kazakhstan
Picture: Shamil Zhumatov/Reuters


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Miragedriver

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Approved rescheduling observation satellite PAZ

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(defensa.com) Spain announced agreement to modify the limit of authorized commitments to the Ministry of Defense by the Agreement of 13 June last year reconnaissance satellite program PEACE. This will allow adjustment of the corresponding annuity 2020 (the last since they began in 2015) of the National Programme for Earth Observation Satellite (PNOTS) using the PAZ radar satellite.

According to the agreement last June to acquire authorized limits spending commitments against future exercises, pursuant to the provisions of Article 47 of Law 47/2003 of 26 November. This allows the Ministry of Defence modification and reprogramming the schedule of the payment schedule of this program valued at 133.1 million euros.

The PEACE is an Earth observation satellite equipped with a synthetic aperture radar (SAR) in X-band with which Spain will have independence in this area and have military and civilian applications. The Spanish company HISDESAT was commissioned in 2007 by the Ministry of Defense and is the owner, operator and operator of the satellite, expected to be launched before the end of the year by a Russian rocket DNPER company Kosmotras.

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The manufacture was commissioned in December 2007. EADS CASA Espacio, it is foreseen that the launch would take place in 2012 but various causes, mainly the economic crisis that has affected the Ministry of Defense has delayed this event. The PAZ satellite will form a constellation with radar satellites TerraSAR-X and TanDEM-X under an agreement signed in the year 2012 HISDESAT with Astrium Services GEO, now Airbus Defence and Space.

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SteelBird

Colonel
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An artistic illustration compares Earth (L) to a planet beyond the solar system that is a close match to Earth, called Kepler-452b in this NASA image released on July 23, 2015. The planet, which is about 60 percent bigger than Earth, is located about 1,400 light years away in the constellation Cygnus, the scientists told a news conference on Thursday. (Photo/Agencies)
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An artist's concept depicts one possible appearance of the planet Kepler-452b, the first near-Earth-size world to be found in the habitable zone of star that is similar to our sun in this NASA image released on July 23, 2015. The planet, which is about 60 percent bigger than Earth, is located about 1,400 light years away in the constellation Cygnus, the scientists told a news conference on Thursday. (Photo/Agencies)
 

Miragedriver

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Airbus Defence and Space built the spacecraft JUICE, next search for signs of life in our solar system ESA

(Defensa.com) The European Space Agency (ESA) has chosen Airbus Defence and Space, as prime contractor for the development and construction of the spacecraft JUICE (Jupiter Icy moons Explorer "Explorer of the icy moons of Jupiter"). JUICE is the first large-scale mission of the ESA Cosmic Vision program. The launch is scheduled for 2022.

"JUICE will try to answer the question of whether outside the Earth in our solar system, there are currently habitats necessary to support life," said François Auque, Head of Space Systems. "To this end we will develop and fabricate a fabulous spaceship based on unrivaled knowledge that we have gained in other previous space exploration missions. After missions to the Sun, Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Titan ... even a comet, the next challenge for our engineers will build this sophisticated spacecraft to explore the Jupiter system. "

JUICE is Europe's first mission to Jupiter; its theme is to study the emergence of habitable worlds around gas giants. JUICE investigate the Jovian system, focusing on its icy moons and worlds that may harbor oceans of Europa, Ganymede and Callisto. The mission will analyze the moons focusing on two main issues: what are the conditions for planet formation and the emergence of life are. Following its launch with an Ariane 5, JUICE will travel for seven and a half years by a comprehensive use gravity assist maneuvers (to save fuel and energy) around Earth, Mars and Venus before reaching Jupiter system. After insertion into the planet's orbit, JUICE made multiple flybys to complete a comprehensive orbital path along three and a half years. At the end, JUICE will be placed in orbit around Ganymede, becoming the first spacecraft to enter orbit around an icy satellite of the outer solar system. The complex mission profile will support specific cameras aboard the sailing ship.

To carry out its scientific mission, it will carry ten instruments covering a wide range of measurement techniques (optical, submillimeter, radar, magnetic-electric sensors and plasma and particles). To avoid any disruption to the operation of scientific instruments magnetic level "clean" will be unprecedented. JUICE weighed five tons and average. Energy supply a large solar panel of 97 m2, the largest built for an interplanetary mission responsible. This will ensure sufficient energy production even in low sun exposure environment of Jupiter.

Airbus Defence and Space has unmatched expertise in the design and construction of scientific exploration spacecraft, having participated in all European interplanetary missions. His background includes missions to Venus (Venus Express), Mars (Mars Express), Titan (Huygens) and the comet 67P (Rosetta). At present the company is building the components of the missions to the Sun (Solar Orbiter), Mercury (BepiColombo) and Mars (ExoMars), plus all satellites already completed or in-process research of the Earth (Swarm, CryoSat Sentinel and many more ...).

Through these missions Airbus Defence and Space has developed a unique knowledge of its kind on autonomy, enabling the spacecraft to be self-sufficient during cruise phases of long duration, as was the case in Rosetta, and careful planning electromagnetic fundamental missions as cleaning Swarm mission to measure the Earth's magnetic field.

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