Three Visions of Human Space Settlement: 1970s
You may have seen images of NASA’s 1970s space colony artwork. But you’ve never seen them like this, in full size, high resolution scans.
In the 1970s, NASA Ames Research Center (ARC) conducted space colony summer studies on Toroidal Colonies and Bernal Spheres which could hold population of up to 10,000 humans living in space, and on Cylindrical Colonies which could hold a population of 1,000,000.
On April 1, 2018 the Juno spacecraft obtained a series of views of Jupiter’s varied cloud details. Here we see The Great Red Spot in the one frame all of it was visible after it appeared over the horizon during the Juno’s 12th close approach to Jupiter.
south pole of Jupiter, from the Juno probe
NASA’s Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite - TESS - will fly in an orbit that completes two circuits around Earth every time the Moon orbits once. This special orbit will allow TESS’s cameras to monitor each patch of sky continuously for nearly a month at a time. To get into this orbit, TESS will make a series of loops culminating in a lunar gravity assist, which will give it the final push it needs. TESS will reach its orbit about 60 days after launch.
Deimos is poorly explored. This is one of few color portraits, taken by Viking 2 on August 10, 1977. This is a highly processed image: the reseaux have been painted out; channels warped to align each other (because of apparent rotation of Deimos from one image to the next); and a blue channel has been synthesized from red- and clear-filter data.
NASA may fly crew into deep space sooner, but there’s a price
Acting agency administrator Robert Lightfoot confirmed during a Congressional hearing on Thursday that NASA is seriously considering launching humans to the Moon on the Block 1 SLS. “We’ll change the mission profile if we fly humans and we use the Interim Cryogenic Propulsion Stage (ICPS), because we can’t do what we could do if we have the Exploration Upper Stage,” Lightfoot said.
The key difference between the original configuration of the SLS rocket—which NASA has spent more than $10 billion developing since 2011—and its successor is the upper stage that sits atop the booster. Under current plans, the weaker upper stage, known as the ICPS, was to fly only once—on the maiden flight of the SLS rocket in 2020. Then, NASA was to switch to a new, much more powerful second stage that would increase the SLS rocket’s overall performance by about 50 percent.
Now, NASA will probably fly the SLS rocket in its Block 1 configuration at least two or even three times before it debuts the more powerful variant of the booster. By doing so, it may get humans into deep space faster. The current launch date of 2023 for the deep space Exploration Mission 2 could move forward, a NASA spokeswoman confirmed. “The earliest possible launch date is being assessed, with a formal decision expected in the coming months,” she added.
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Launching at least one crewed mission or more with the basic, Block 1 rocket buys NASA time for development of the new upper stage, without the embarrassment of long gaps between flights of the SLS rocket. But the decision does not come without its challenges, either. No astronauts have ever flown on a rocket with the ICPS, so it would have to undergo a time-consuming and costly process of “human-rating” the hardware.
Engineer Allyn “Hap” Hazard tries out his prototype moon-suit design in the otherworldly landscape of the Mojave Desert, 1962.
While cruising around Saturn, be on the lookout for picturesque juxtapositions of moons, rings, and shadows. One quite picturesque arrangement occurred in 2005 and was captured by the then Saturn-orbiting Cassini spacecraft. In the featured image, moons Tethys and Mimas are visible on either side of Saturn’s thin rings, which are seen nearly edge-on. Across the top of Saturn are dark shadows of the wide rings, exhibiting their impressive complexity. The violet-light image brings up the texture of the backdrop: Saturn’s clouds. Cassini orbited Saturn from 2004 until September of last year, when the robotic spacecraft was directed to dive into Saturn to keep it from contaminating any moons.
The Hypervelocity Asteroid Mitigation Mission for Emergency Response (HAMMER) spacecraft — a collaboration between the National Nuclear Security Administration, NASA, and two Energy Department weapons labs — would either steer its 8.8-ton bulk (called an “impactor”) into a small asteroid, or carry a nuclear device to deflect a big one.
“If the asteroid is small enough, and we detect it early enough, we can do it with the impactor,” physicist David Dearborn of the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory told BuzzFeed News. “The impactor is not as flexible as the nuclear option when we really want to change the speed of the body in a hurry.”
Just because these plans now exist does not mean the spacecraft will ever get built. NASA scientists declined to give a cost estimate for a mission, citing the sensitivity of pricing information, but for comparison, NASA’s more complex OSIRIS-REx mission, now on its way to Bennu, cost $800 million.
High above Earth, the Agena target vehicle gets closer and closer to the Gemini 8 space capsule, March 16, 1966. (NASA/ASU)
The Twin Study propelled NASA into the genomics era of space travel. It was a ground-breaking study comparing what happened to astronaut Scott Kelly, in space, to his identical twin brother, Mark, who remained on Earth. The perfect nature versus nurture study was born.
The Twins Study brought ten research teams from around the country together to accomplish one goal: discover what happens to the human body after spending one year in space. NASA has a grasp on what happens to the body after the standard-duration six-month missions aboard the International Space Station, but Scott Kelly’s one-year mission is a stepping stone to a three-year mission to Mars.
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Another interesting finding concerned what some call the “space gene”, which was alluded to in 2017. Researchers now know that 93% of Scott’s genes returned to normal after landing. However, the remaining 7% point to possible longer term changes in genes related to his immune system, DNA repair, bone formation networks, hypoxia, and hypercapnia.
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In this composite image, derived from data collected by the Jovian Infrared Auroral Mapper (JIRAM) instrument aboard NASA’s Juno mission to Jupiter, shows the central cyclone at the planet’s north pole and the eight cyclones that encircle it. JIRAM collects data in infrared, and the colors in this composite represent radiant heat: the yellow (thinner) clouds are about 9 degrees Fahrenheit (-13° Celsius) in brightness temperature and the dark red (thickest) are around -181 degrees Fahrenheit (-118.33° Celsius).
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This computer-generated image shows the structure of the cyclonic pattern observed over Jupiter’s south pole. Like in the North, Jupiter’s south pole also contains a central cyclone, but it is surrounded by five cyclones with diameters ranging from 3,500 to 4,300 miles (5,600 to 7,000 kilometers) in diameter. Almost all the polar cyclones (at both poles), are so densely packed that their spiral arms come in contact with adjacent cyclones. However, as tightly spaced as the cyclones are, they have remained distinct, with individual morphologies over the seven months of observations detailed in the paper.
For hundreds of years, this gaseous giant planet appeared shrouded in colorful bands of clouds extending from dusk to dawn, referred to as zones and belts.
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The bands were thought to be an expression of Jovian weather, related to winds blowing eastward and westward at different speeds. This animation illustrates a recent discovery by Juno that demonstrates these east-west flows, also known as jet-streams penetrate deep into the planet’s atmosphere, to a depth of about 1,900 miles (3,000 kilometers). Due to Jupiter’s rapid rotation (Jupiter’s day is about 10 hours), these flows extend into the interior parallel to Jupiter’s axis of rotation, in the form of nested cylinders. Below this layer the flows decay, possibly slowed by Jupiter’s strong magnetic field.
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