NASA has claimed the threat of MicroMeteoroid and Orbital Debris (MMOD) – small pieces of space debris capable of punching bullet hole wounds into spacecraft – is the “primary” threat to the safety of Commercial Crew vehicles. The claim was made as the Agency works on closing the gap between the current analysis of the Loss Of Crew (LOC) numbers with the Program’s goal.
NASA’s Curiosity Mars Rover at Murray Buttes (360 View)
Explore this Mars panorama by moving the view with your mouse or mobile device. This 360-degree panorama was acquired on Aug. 5, 2016, by the Mastcam on NASA’s Curiosity Mars rover as the rover neared features called “Murray Buttes” on lower Mount Sharp. The dark, flat-topped mesa seen to the left of the rover’s arm is about 50 feet (about 15 meters) high and, near the top, about 200 feet (about 60 meters) wide.
Expedition 48 Commander Jeff Williams and Flight Engineer Kate Rubins concluded their spacewalk at 2:02 EDT. During the five-hour and 58-minute spacewalk, the two NASA astronauts successfully installed the first of two international docking adapters (IDAs).
The IDAs will be used for the future arrivals of Boeing and SpaceX commercial crew spacecraft in development under NASA’s Commercial Crew Program. Commercial crew flights from Florida’s Space Coast to the International Space Station will restore America’s human launch capability and increase the time U.S. crews can dedicate to scientific research, which is helping prepare astronauts for deep space missions, including the journey to Mars.
NASA is working to send astronauts beyond Earth’s orbit to destinations deep in space on the journey to Mars. The powerful Space Launch System rocket will send astronauts in the Orion spacecraft to places never before explored, enabling humanity to expand the frontier of space exploration. The first mission of SLS and Orion together, Exploration Mission-1, will send an uncrewed capsule about 40,000 miles beyond the moon.
NASA is giving us some more insight into its plans to get humans to Mars, under the blanket mission called ‘Journey to Mars,’ and during the press conference, NASA Deputy Associate Administrator for Exploration Systems Development Bill Hill revealed that the current hope is to hand off control of the International Space Station to a commercial owner by sometime around the mid 2020s.
“NASA’s trying to develop economic development in low-earth orbit,” Hill said, speaking on a panel of NASA staff assembled to discuss the upcoming Mars mission. “Ultimately, our desire is to hand the space station over to either a commercial entity or some other commercial capability so that research can continue in low-earth orbit […]
Following a key program review, NASA approved the Asteroid Redirect Mission (ARM) to proceed to the next phase of design and development for the mission’s robotic segment. ARM is a two-part mission that will integrate robotic and crewed spacecraft operations in the proving ground of deep space to demonstrate key capabilities needed for NASA’s journey to Mars.
The milestone, known as Key Decision Point-B, or KDP-B, was conducted in July and formally approved by agency management Aug. 15. It is one in a series of project lifecycle milestones that every spaceflight mission for the agency passes as it progresses toward launch. At KDP-B, NASA established the content, cost, and schedule commitments for Phase B activities.
Earlier this year, NASA updated the target launch date for the robotic mission to December 2021 in order to incorporate acquisition of the industry robotic spacecraft development into the project schedule. To reflect this new target date, the project’s cost cap was increased at KDP-B from $1.25 billion to $1.4 billion. This figure does not include the launch vehicle or the post-launch operations phase. The crewed segment, targeted for launch in 2026, remains in an early mission concept phase, or pre-formulation.
woot, looks rad
With OSIRIS-REx, an approximately $1 billion mission including its Atlas V launch vehicle, scientists will be able to control the source of the asteroid material, keep it free of Earth-based contamination, and preserve any organic molecules of interest. And that’s the key—planetary scientists are on the hunt for the organic precursors to life that might have existed in the early solar system. Notably, if key organic chemicals are found on asteroids it means that places like Mars and the Jovian moon of Europa were bombarded with the precursors of life billions of years ago, too.
“This mission is being driven by some of the most fundamental questions we ask ourselves as a species,” Lauretta said. “Where did we come from? How common is this process in the universe? Are we alone? By going back to the dawn of the solar system, and looking at the organic chemistry that occurred on these small bodies, we might find some answers.”
NASA’s Cassini spacecraft has found deep, steep-sided canyons on Saturn’s moon Titan that are flooded with liquid hydrocarbons. The finding represents the first direct evidence of the presence of liquid-filled channels on Titan, as well as the first observation of canyons hundreds of meters deep.
[…]
The Cassini observations reveal that the channels – in particular, a network of them named Vid Flumina – are narrow canyons, generally less than half a mile (a bit less than a kilometer) wide, with slopes steeper than 40 degrees. The canyons also are quite deep – those measured are 790 to 1,870 feet (240 to 570 meters) from top to bottom.
August 9, 2005 – The Space Shuttle Discovery comes home to Edwards Air Force Base, California. (NASA)
Gliding past Jupiter at the turn of the millennium, the Cassini spacecraft captured this awe inspiring view of active Io with the largest gas giant as a backdrop, offering a stunning demonstration of the ruling planet’s relative size. Although in the featured picture Io appears to be located just in front of the swirling Jovian clouds, Io hurtles around its orbit once every 42 hours at a distance of 420,000 kilometers or so from the center of Jupiter. That puts Io nearly 350,000 kilometers above Jupiter’s cloud tops, roughly equivalent to the distance between Earth and Moon.
This is footage of Orbital ATK’s QM-2 solid rocket booster test taken by NASA’s High Dynamic Range Stereo X (HiDyRS-X) camera. HiDyRS-X records high speed, high dynamic range footage in multiple exposures simultaneously for use in analyzing rocket engine tests. Traditional high speed video cameras are limited to shooting in one exposure at a time, but HiDyRS-X can record multiple high speed video exposures at once, combining them into a high dynamic range video that adequately exposes all areas of the video image for comprehensive analysis.
new mars imagery from the mars reconnaissance orbiter
kreuzaderny