Tag: space

EmDrive

A group at NASA’s Johnson Space Center has successfully tested an electromagnetic (EM) propulsion drive in a vacuum – a major breakthrough for a multi-year international effort comprising several competing research teams. Thrust measurements of the EM Drive defy classical physics’ expectations that such a closed (microwave) cavity should be unusable for space propulsion because of the law of conservation of momentum.

there’s a low, but nonzero probability that we’ll have a reactionless drive by eoy:

Spacecraft equipped with a reactionless drive could potentially make it to the moon in just a few hours, Mars in 2-3 months, and Pluto within 2 years. that’s about 4x faster.

Artificial meteors

a satellite capable of generating artificial meteor showers will be in orbit sometime in the next 2 years. From 500 kilometers above Earth’s surface, the orbiter will shoot metal spheres the size of blueberries into the upper atmosphere. As these particles move across the sky at 28k kilometers an hour, the spheres will burn into brilliant crisps—painting the night with colorful streaks on demand.

Pluto

That flyby was far too quick.

2015-07-17: Animated Flyover

2015-07-24: Pluto’s atmosphere

Taken when New Horizons was about 2m kilometers past Pluto, when the tiny rock and ice world was very nearly between the spacecraft and the Sun. New Horizons looked over its shoulder, back at Pluto, to capture this breathtaking picture. The ring of light you are seeing? That’s Pluto’s atmosphere! Light passing through that cold, thin, nitrogen gas gets scattered, bent, and we see it as a halo surrounding the night side of Pluto.

2015-09-20: very nice Pluto picture.

The Galaxy from Orbit


Astronaut Terry Virts, aboard the International Space Station, shared this picture earlier today, stating this was “the view of our Galaxy from space.”

Normally, the reason you can’t see stars in high oblique photos from the space station is that the shutter speed is too fast. Fast shutter speeds are used to eliminate blur from the motion of the orbiting outpost. One exception to this rule is when astronauts use camera settings specifically to photograph features such as the Aurora and the Milky Way. The crew must use slower shutter speeds in order to capture the light of the aurora. In these cases stars also show up in the photograph. The photos are also slightly blurry because very long exposures are needed to capture these dim nighttime features.

Space Slippage

it’s interesting that as far as i can tell, among space companies, only spacex manages to keep their schedules. virgin galactic suborbital was supposed to launch to the public in 2014, and bigelow aerospace was supposed to have inflatable crew modules 3x the volume of the ISS in orbit by 2015.