Ebb (of the Grail spacecraft) has returned its first video of the far side of the Moon.
The Japanese government has given the final go-ahead for a new Hayabusa asteroid sample return mission, set for launch in 2014.
Invented by engineers at the US government’s Sandia National Laboratories, the self-guided bullet homes in on a laser spot trained on a target from up to 1.4 kilometres away from its firing point. If the target is a moving truck, say, and it moves after the bullet is fired, the laser illumination as seen by a laser sensor in the bullet’s nose instructs the bullet to finely twist tiny rudder-like fins on its rear end to keep it on target.
The Great Moonbuggy Race is an engineering competition that requires a team of six students to design a “proof-of-concept” wheeled rover that will race over a half mile of simulated lunar terrain. In April, two team members, one male and one female, will drive the completed vehicle in competition at the U.S. Space and Rocket Center in Huntsville, Alabama. This contest will present design challenges that are similar to those encountered by the original lunar rover team. This is the 16th year of competition for high school teams, but it will be the first year for Chicago’s public high school students.
The Russians have announced that the loss of Phobos-Grunt was due to the failure of an onboard computer to be properly hardened against cosmic rays.
The fall of Rosat last October, which ended up in the Bay of Bengal, might have instead landed on Beijing had the spacecraft remained aloft a mere seven minutes longer.
The Russians now say the next manned flight to ISS will be delayed a month, until the end of April, due to defects found in the Soyuz capsule.
The story suggests some confusion over what caused the cracks, either defects to the capsule itself or a mistake in the testing process.
A commission set up to probe the setback said violations of the testing procedure caused the damage to the reentry vehicle incident, earlier reports said. Either excessive pressure was applied by the personnel, or the shell of the reentry vehicle had defects or was improperly welded up.
“The highway is the tenant … and actually pays rent.” With pictures.
“This re-entry capsule now cannot be used for manned spaceflight.”
This postponement of the next two Russian manned missions to ISS looks like a serious problem. For cracks to form in a finished capsule when tested under pressure suggests significant production failures that had gone unnoticed during assembly. In fact, this problem is far more serious than the launch failure that occurred last year. The Russians have to not only find a capsule they can trust to use on the next flight, they have to track down the errors that allowed a capsule to be built that is so obviously flawed it cracked when put in use.
Want to play with some old computers? You can, at the Vintage Computer Festival East 8.0.
The Soviet Union’s gigantic nuclear equipped Ekranoplane, rusting on the shores of the Caspian Sea. With pictures.
Equipped with nuclear warheads and able to blast across the sea at 340 mph, the Lun-class Ekranoplane; part plane, part boat, and part hovercraft — is a Ground Effect Vehicle (GEV). A GEV takes advantage of an aeronautical effect that allows it to lift off with an immense amount of weight, but limits its flight to 16 feet above the waves. Its altitude can never be greater than the length of the wings.
As noted by one commenter, the full Gingrich speech on space is available here on C-SPAN.
I have now listened to the whole speech, and can say without hesitation that everything I wrote in my previous post was correct. Gingrich is knowledgeable about space, science, and history. He is basing his proposals on past successful models where the U.S. government did nothing but buy the product developed by private individuals or companies. These proposals actually continue as well as accelerate the Obama administration’s efforts. And he is not proposing a giant pork program.
His proposal to have a moon base by 2020 is unquestionably campaign talk that won’t happen. Nonetheless, this proposal is aimed at energizing the American aerospace industry by focusing the government’s goals, which will then need to be purchased by the government from private companies. He also made it very clear he wants to shrink the NASA bureaucracy, reducing its budget while devoting ten percent of that savings (equal to billions of dollars) for prizes. The example of a $10 billion tax-free prize for the first to get to Mars was only for illustration. As he said,
The model I want us to build is largely is the model of the ’20s and ’30s, when the government was actively encouraging development but the government wasn’t doing anything. The government was paying rewards, it was subsidizing the mail. … We had enormous breakthroughs in aviation in the ’20s and ’30s at very little cost to the government because lots of smart people [outside the government] did it.
I beg everyone to listen to this speech, in its entirety. It illustrates a thoughtful man who understands history. Gingrich might not be a perfect man, and he certainly is not the perfect candidate for President, but don’t tell me what you think of him if you refuse to listen to him. For two decades too many people have eagerly expressed opinions about him without really listening to what he has actually said or done. And what he says here is reasonable, intelligent, and certainly worthy of consideration.
Getting to know Dream Chaser.
In the days ahead there is going to be a lot of talk about Newt Gingrich’s proposals for space exploration. I think it important that people actually see and listen to the entire speech before discussing it. Here is the longest clip I can find on youtube, covering the first seven and a half minutes. I think it is complete, but unfortunately, I can’t be sure. It doesn’t appear to include his remarks about awarding space prizes, and when it ends Gingrich does not appear to be finished. When I find a longer clip I will post it.
Several points immediately come to mind:
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Good news: A new superconducting detector might supersede CCDs for large astronomical telescopes.
Ben Mazin, an astronomer at the University of California, Santa Barbara, believes that he is on the cusp of a camera breakthrough: his lab is working on a superconducting detector that could eventually replace the charge-coupled devices (CCDs) that have become de rigueur in both consumer and astronomical digital cameras. Mazin’s detectors, known as microwave kinetic inductance detectors (MKIDs), can simultaneously count photons, measure their energy and record each one’s time of arrival — something that CCDs can do only after the light is split with a prism or a grating, an extra step that adds to the loss of photons.
And you know that inevitably some variation of this technology is going to find its way into ordinary commercial products.
Act quick! The deadline to apply to join the next astronaut class at NASA is Friday.
Though if you ask me (and no one is), it probably makes more sense to apply to Virgin Galactic, Scaled Composites, SpaceX, or Stratolaunch if you want to be a space cadet, as these are going to be the guys in charge in coming years.
Stratolaunch announced yesterday the groundbreaking of its production facility and hanger at Mohave.
Bill Harward has some details on the cause of the Dragon/Falcon 9 launch delay.
Essentially, nothing seems critical. They found a few minor issues that they felt needed more testing, and are simply making sure these issues are resolved before launch. All in all I find this report very encouraging. Stay tuned.
European safety officials are about to order safety checks on the Airbus A380 jumbo jet after two different inspections found cracks in the plane’s wings.
The Dragon/Falcon 9 test flight is now set for no earlier than late March.
Scientists have postponed until 2015 the decision on whether clocks should be linked to the Earth’s rotation around the Sun.
Not good: More cracks found in the wings of an Airbus A380.
Why am I not surprised? The Russian commission investigating the failure of Phobos-Grunt has concluded that the spacecraft failed because of Russian engineering errors, not U.S. sabotage.
I had suspected this whole kerfuffle was a fake issue inspired by Russian politicians. This report proves it.
Who knew? The hi-tech home of a British soccer star has become a threat to radio astronomy.
The Japanese space agency has released more details about the hacking of their computers.
Drilling down to Lake Vostok has resumed in Antarctica.
This week, a Russian team drilling into Lake Vostok in the center of the Antarctic continent is likely to break through the ice to water. It will be the first time that a subglacial lake has been breached. These modern-day explorers hope to discover whether Vostok, which at 5000 km 3 is the third largest lake on the planet, is teeming with hidden, cold-loving life that could have evolved separately from the rest of the world for hundreds of thousands of years….
After drilling 3720 meters last February, time ran out for the team and the project was stymied just 29.5 meters from its destination as winter set in. Over the summer, they modified their drill bits and now the team is back at work with plenty of time to spare. They had left the large hole filled with antifreeze, so it was ready and waiting for them. It will remain open for years to come, Priscu says, potentially allowing other teams to sample the waters in the future.
Could the Russians be right!? In a break from standard practice, U.S. military has removed the links to its tracking data of Phobos-Grunt.
On Jan. 12, the Space Track website originally published information on the estimated re-entry track for Phobos-Grunt, a Russian probe that malfunctioned shortly after its November 2011 launch and was stuck in low-Earth orbit for more than two months.
After routine updates and revised estimates over the course of the next two days, the military removed links to these re-entry predictions and did not publish final confirmation data on the spacecraft’s fall on Jan. 15, according to Aviation Week.
A careful analysis of recent activities by U.S. radar show that it could not have affected Phobos-Grunt. Yet, the U.S. military has now taken actions that not only break with standard procedures, they draw attention to the issue. All very astonishing.
