sputnik-3 replica at kapustin yar, russia
Since Kepler launched in 2009, 21 planets less than twice the size of Earth have been discovered in the habitable zones of their stars. The orange spheres represent the nine newly validated planets announcement on May 10, 2016. The blue disks represent the 12 previous known planets. These planets are plotted relative to the temperature of their star and with respect to the amount of energy received from their star in their orbit in Earth units. The sizes of the exoplanets indicate the sizes relative to one another. The images of Earth, Venus and Mars are placed on this diagram for reference. The light and dark green shaded regions indicate the conservative and optimistic habitable zone.
Credits: NASA Ames/N. Batalha and W. Stenzel
Less than once per decade, Mercury passes between the Earth and the sun in a rare astronomical event known as a planetary transit. The 2016 Mercury transit occurred on May 9th, between roughly 7:12 a.m. and 2:42 p.m. EDT.
current and future human spacecraft
Three frame Cassini ISS widefield mosaic of Saturn, acquired on April 25, 2016. At this time Cassni was at a distance of about 2.8 million km from the planet. This is an approximately true color image constructed using images from the spacecraft’s RED, GRN, BL1, and CLR filters.
Image Credit: NASA / JPL / Cassini-SSI / Justin Cowart
While MAVEN will enhance the existing telecommunications network, its limited lifetime and the aging fleet of other orbiters at Mars does not match the needed timeline for human exploration of Mars, nor would it be prudent to not upgrade the communications network now.
To that end, NASA has announced a solicitation of ideas from U.S. industry for designs of a Mars orbiter for potential launch in the 2020s.
The satellite would provide advanced communications and imaging, as well as robotic science exploration, in support of NASA Mars missions.
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For MRO, NASA has stated that the spacecraft has enough propellant to remain operational in Mars orbit until at least 2034.
Thus, none of the existing telecommunications satellites in orbit of Mars will be operational at the time of the earliest possible human exploration of the red planet under the current time lines.
This directly translates to a need to begin replacement of the existing telecommunications network as well as an enhancement of that network to provide the types of communication that will increase and enhanced safety as humans move toward a presence on another planet.
For one, the polar atmosphere is up to 70 degrees colder than expected, with an average temperature of -157°C (114 K). Recent temperature measurements by Venus Express’ SPICAV instrument (SPectroscopy for the Investigation of the Characteristics of the Atmosphere of Venus) are in agreement with this finding.
The polar atmosphere is also not as dense as expected; at 130 and 140 km in altitude, it is 22% and 40% less dense than predicted, respectively. When extrapolated upward in the atmosphere, these differences are consistent with those measured previously by VExADE at 180 km, where densities were found to be lower by almost a factor of two.
The scenario outlined by JAXA highlights a series of onboard failures leading to Hitomi ending up in a deathly tumble through space. Trouble first emerged when the Star Trackers were unable to deliver the data needed for the correction of a large bias in IRU data. The IRU’s time integration caused the expected drift of the error to smaller values, but the erroneous roll reading stalled at 21.7°/h leading to the spacecraft inducing an actual roll when attempting to correct the non-existent roll reading.
Hitomi’s fate was sealed when the spacecraft Safe Mode kicked in an operated the vehicle’s 3-Newton thrusters according to settings that were not compatible with the present spacecraft configuration, further accelerating the roll and causing pieces to be slung from the spacecraft.
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investigating the possibility of high-speed travel (~10 years) to the edge of the solar system via electric sail propulsion
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