Great Space

​Taking to the Skies: Orion Test Brings Moon, Mars Missions Closer

A launch abort system (LAS) with a test version of Orion attached soars upward on NASA’s Ascent Abort-2 (AA-2) flight test atop a Northrop Grumman provided booster on July 2, 2019, after launching at 7 a.m. EDT.

#NASA

​Researchers develop a steam-powered spacecraft that can hop between asteroids

Last year I wrote an article about Asteroid mining. This quadrillion market attracts scientits and businessmen around the world. Science doesn't stay stagnant and we suggest to take a closer look at this field. (Spoiler: soon will be announced a mission).

Thanks to a mashup of science and industry, researchers have developed a prototype spacecraft that can mine water from an asteroid, use that water to generate steam, then use that steam as fuel to hop across the surface of an asteroid — or even jump to an entirely different world altogether.

Last Friday Jake Parks, a Writer of Astronomy.com, has told about the prototype spacecraft - named «The World Is Enough» (WINE). Further are an excerpts from an article.

♦️The prototype spacecraft — named The World Is Not Enough (WINE) — was largely developed by Honeybee Robotics in Pasadena, California, with plenty of help from planetary scientist Philip Metzger of the University of Central Florida.

♦️According to Zacny, a Vice President and Director of Exploration Technology at Honeybee Robotics WINE is the first prototype to successfully show it can combine all the technology necessary for ISRU and steam propulsion: It heated the analog asteroid regolith, extracted water, and then used that water to create enough steam to propel itself right off the ground.

♦️A basic version of WINE would have about 75 meters per second (250 ft/s) of delta-v, which is the total change in velocity the spacecraft would experience as it propels itself off the surface of an object.

♦️This amount of propulsion «is enough to hop a distance of several kilometers at a time on a large world like Europa,» Metzger told Astronomy via email.

♦️According to Metzger, a WINE would have the potential to indefinitely travel between countless asteroids in our solar system — that is, as long as the targets have both water and relatively low gravity.

♦️Alternatively, a WINE could carry its own instruments for on-the-fly analyses of larger worlds. The primary payload likely would be used to analyze a target's ice content, determining things like how much water is available and how much metal and organic content is within that water.

♦️In order to generate enough power for the initial tasks of mining and making steam, the WINE spacecraft would utilize deployable solar panels. However, if the craft were to venture too far from the Sun it would need to rely on Radioisotope Heater Units (RHUs) to kick off its mining operation.

♦️Though a WINE spacecraft would likely need supplemental sources of power to run its mining operation on a distant world, the benefits of a semi-perpetual spacecraft would far outweigh the extra engineering challenges it requires.

♦️Metzger said, «WINE was designed to never run out of propellant so exploration will be less expensive. It also allows us to explore in a shorter amount of time, since we don’t have to wait for years as a new spacecraft travels from Earth each time.»

💬 Best Comments on Reddit

ErikTheAngry: «75m/s of DV isn't much. It'd be enough to slowly travel to different asteroids, possibly, but remember it needs to slow down again. 35m/s of "acceleration" won't get you anywhere fast. Those asteroids aren't nearly as close together as they are in movies.»

🎑 What is shown in the photo?

The WINE prototype spacecraft that will harvest water from targets and use that water to create steam that it will use as fuel.

​From Mount Tschirgant in the Alps, you can see not only nearby towns and distant Tyrolean peaks, but also, weather permitting, stars, nebulas, & the band of the Milky Way Galaxy. And if you climbed during the Perseids Meteor Shower, like photographer Nicholas Roemmelt did, also a marvel like this 🌄

​NASA May Decide This Year to Land a Drone on Saturn's Moon Titan

Titan is the only known body in the solar system with oceans on its surface (liquid methane). Knowledge of those Titan traits comes primarily from data gathered by the Cassini mission to the Saturn system and the Huygens probe that traveled with Cassini and touched down on Titan in 2005. Taken together, those two spacecraft completely reshaped scientists' ideas about the moon.

Scientists want to combine terrestrial drone technology and instruments honed by Mars exploration to investigate the complex chemical reactions taking place on Saturn's largest moon.

Last tuesday Meghan Bartels, a Senior Writer of Space.com, has told a Nasa's plans for Titan. The following extract is from an article.

🔸Scientists are working on a proposed mission called «Dragonfly.» Dragonfly, if chosen, would aim to launch in 2025 and arrive at Titan in 2034.

🔸On Earth, sunlight powers organic life growing in fields and forests; the same sunlight triggers chemical reactions in Titan's upper atmosphere that create large organic molecules that pour down on the moon's surface, like Earth's rainwater.

🔸Cassini never got a good view of the surface through the Saturn moon's thick atmosphere. If all goes smoothly, Dragonfly would be able to explore dozens of sites over the course of two Earth years.

🔸According to Melissa Trainer, a Research Space Scientist in the Planetary Environments Laboratory at NASA , «landing on Titan takes something like over 2 hours because of dense atmosphere.»

🔸With its rotor-copter design, Dragonfly can lift itself off the surface and fly away using the nuclear power source that NASA had available for this class of mission.

🔸That science will tackle the chemistry on Titan. Scientists know that the moon hosts huge amounts of organic compounds, but Cassini and Huygens didn't gather enough data to clarify the details of the planet's chemistry.

🔸Dragonfly would be able to identify precise organic compounds, so scientists could determine just how close Titan's molecules are to those that terrestrial biology relies on.

💬 Best Comment on Reddit

Randomtask: «A submarine on Titan or Enceladus has been the ultimate dream of planetary scientists ever since Voyager discovered that those moons had lakes 40 years ago. Proposals come and go, but one of these days the technology and the cost are going to hit the sweet spot, and it’s going to happen. Couldn’t be more excited for seeing it come to fruition sometime in the coming decades.»

🎑 What is shown in the photo?

An artist's depiction shows each stage of the proposed Dragonfly mission, including landing on Titan's surface, doing science in place and relocating to a new work site.

​Giant leaf for mankind? 🇨🇳China germinates first seed on moon 🌓

Yesterday Hannah Devlin, the Guardian's science correspondent has published a sensational article about a small cotton shoot is growing onboard Chang’e 4 lunar lander.

This article remains an issue of active public debate around the world and has already achieved 900 comments on Reddit. Let's consider the key messages.

🔹The sprout has emerged from a lattice-like structure inside a canister after the Chang’e 4 lander touched down earlier this month.

🔹«This is the first time humans have done biological growth experiments on the lunar surface,» said Xie Gengxin who led the design of the experiment.

🔹The ability to grow plants in space is seen as crucial for long-term space missions and establishing human outposts elsewhere in the solar system, such as Mars.

🔹The Chang’e 4 probe made the world’s first soft landing on the far side of the moon on 3 Januarya major step in China’s ambitions to become a space superpower.

🔹Scientists from Chongqing University sent an 18cm bucket-like container holding air, water and soil. Inside are cotton, arabidopsis, potato seeds, fruit-fly eggs and yeast.

🔹Images sent back by the probe show a cotton plant has grown well, but so far none of the other plants had sprouted, the university said.

🎁 Bonuses
What comments have scored the largest number of upvotes on Reddit?

GuiltyLie said: «But why fruit flies? I hate fruit flies. Can they even pollinate a plant? What we really need are bees 🐝 on the moon. A colony of moon bees!».

Tjhintz answered to GuiltyLie: «Fruit flies are a really good model for scientists to observe how mutations affect development! Plus we don’t feel as bad doing cruel experiments with them as we would with bees».

Have you missed us?

During the last period the world has seen a lot of space events. In the nearest time we'll tell about you about the most significants. By the way, we have prepared for you a much interesting own content and competitions! Most of you wrote us and supposed an interesting themes. Thank you for your support and we'll produce articles and posts in accordance with your interests.

Today suggest you to read an interesting article written by Daniel Clery, a Science’s senior correspondent in the United Kingdom.

Today's topic is «NASA is planning four of the largest space telescopes ever. But which one will fly?»

8 min read ★

https://telegra.ph/NASA-is-planning-four-of-the-largest-space-telescopes-ever-But-which-one-will-fly-01-10

Dedicated to the memory of Stephen Williams Hawking😔
Dear Friends,
today I want you dive with me in life of this incredible person.
We we'll look at his study years, awards, achievments, disease, fighting, unexpected discoveries and of course heritage. I hope you will enjoy. Time reading 10 minutes.
http://telegra.ph/Genius-of-Stephen-Williams-Hawking-03-17