The Space Race

[dorsetknob]

Bad news for Kepler .. Hope it's fixable

Does NASA have

Phone Number

 

[Drone]

Maybe we should borrow some spacecraft, spacesuit, some tools and a jetpack and fix it ourselves

 

[CAPSLOCKSTUCK]

Maybe we should borrow some spacecraft, spacesuit, some tools and a jetpack and fix it ourselves

Where do i sign?

 

[Drone]

Ok our team

dorsetknob
CAPSLOCKSTUCK
me

to do list:

primary mission

refill Kepler's liquid hydrogen fuel tank
fix reaction wheel

spare parts we'll need

1 reaction wheel

1 hydrogen fuel tank

secondary optional mission:

fix Herschel space telescope:

1 extra liquid helium tank

 

[dorsetknob]

Don't forget we will need Accommodation so we need to build a Habitat ( somewhere that does not have a Clanger infestation )

Ps we could invite @Toothless

is this the Telescope that needs fixing

 

[CAPSLOCKSTUCK]

I can bring sandwiches.

 

[dorsetknob]

I can bring sandwiches.

and @Toothless A Soup Dragon

 

[Drone]

In the meanwhile Rosetta is 415 million km from the Sun and 285 million km from Earth, maybe we should check her out too

 

[Toothless]

and @Toothless A Soup Dragon

I bake and break stuff.

 

[dorsetknob]

@Drone
Update

The Kepler space telescope is back in action after mysteriously shifting into emergency mode last week.
"Mission operations engineers have successfully recovered the Kepler spacecraft from Emergency Mode (EM)," said Charlie Sobeck, Kepler's mission manager at NASA's Ames Research Center.
"On Sunday morning, the spacecraft reached a stable state with the communication antenna pointed toward Earth, enabling telemetry and historical event data to be downloaded to the ground. The spacecraft is operating in its lowest fuel-burn mode."
The telescope is situated 75 million miles from Earth and is used to scan the galaxy for exoplanets circling distant stars. It finished its last mission on March 23 and was placed in a Point Rest State, which keeps the telescope's communications antenna pointed towards ground stations while using the least possible amount of fuel.

Last week, the telescope was supposed to be orientated to look at the center of the Milky Way as part of a mission which is looking for exoplanets and wandering planetary bodies near the heart of our galaxy. But NASA engineers performing a check found Kepler locked in EM after an unexplained fault.

Engineers at the Ames Research Center in California's Silicon Valley, Ball Aerospace, and the Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics at the University of Colorado are now going over the telescope's systems and analyzing how much fuel is left in the distant instrument.

"It was the quick response and determination of the engineers throughout the weekend that led to the recovery," Sobeck said. "We are deeply appreciative of their efforts, and for the outpouring of support from the mission's fans and followers from around the world."

Frankly, it's a miracle the telescope has lasted this long. The telescope maintains its orientation using four reaction wheels that rotate to provide stable aiming of the scope's 95-megapixel camera, and in 2012 one of the wheels stopped working.

NASA wasn't too worried, since the telescope had been designed to work with three. But in 2013 a second wheel failed, causing the telescope to lose orientation. After months of careful calculations, NASA worked out a way to stabilize the instrument by using the pressure of solar wind against the telescope's solar panels counterbalanced by the two remaining wheels.
The telescope has been in operation since December 2009 and was only supposed to last for three and a half years. NASA engineers are experts at interesting hacks to keep hardware going, but these latest problems do indicate the telescope might be nearing the end of its useful life.

 

[Toothless]

After Hubble they need to name the next telescope "Bubble"

 

[dorsetknob]

I thought with nvida sponsership it was Kepler then maxwell then Pascal

Oops wrong SponserThread and telescope

 

[CAPSLOCKSTUCK]

@Drone
Update

The Kepler space telescope is back in action after mysteriously shifting into emergency mode last week.
"Mission operations engineers have successfully recovered the Kepler spacecraft from Emergency Mode (EM)," said Charlie Sobeck, Kepler's mission manager at NASA's Ames Research Center.
"On Sunday morning, the spacecraft reached a stable state with the communication antenna pointed toward Earth, enabling telemetry and historical event data to be downloaded to the ground. The spacecraft is operating in its lowest fuel-burn mode."
The telescope is situated 75 million miles from Earth and is used to scan the galaxy for exoplanets circling distant stars. It finished its last mission on March 23 and was placed in a Point Rest State, which keeps the telescope's communications antenna pointed towards ground stations while using the least possible amount of fuel.

Last week, the telescope was supposed to be orientated to look at the center of the Milky Way as part of a mission which is looking for exoplanets and wandering planetary bodies near the heart of our galaxy. But NASA engineers performing a check found Kepler locked in EM after an unexplained fault.

Engineers at the Ames Research Center in California's Silicon Valley, Ball Aerospace, and the Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics at the University of Colorado are now going over the telescope's systems and analyzing how much fuel is left in the distant instrument.

"It was the quick response and determination of the engineers throughout the weekend that led to the recovery," Sobeck said. "We are deeply appreciative of their efforts, and for the outpouring of support from the mission's fans and followers from around the world."

Frankly, it's a miracle the telescope has lasted this long. The telescope maintains its orientation using four reaction wheels that rotate to provide stable aiming of the scope's 95-megapixel camera, and in 2012 one of the wheels stopped working.

NASA wasn't too worried, since the telescope had been designed to work with three. But in 2013 a second wheel failed, causing the telescope to lose orientation. After months of careful calculations, NASA worked out a way to stabilize the instrument by using the pressure of solar wind against the telescope's solar panels counterbalanced by the two remaining wheels.
The telescope has been in operation since December 2009 and was only supposed to last for three and a half years. NASA engineers are experts at interesting hacks to keep hardware going, but these latest problems do indicate the telescope might be nearing the end of its useful life.

Does this mean we're not going?

 

[RealNeil]

After Hubble they need to name the next telescope "Bubble"

Big bubbles, no troubles,....

 

[Drone]

Does this mean we're not going?

I thought we did it


Good news: maybe we can use this new propulsion method

NASA engineers are conducting tests to develop models for the Heliopause Electrostatic Rapid Transport System (HERTS) concept. An electric sail could potentially send scientific payloads to the edge of our solar system, the heliopause, in less than 10 years.

In this concept, long, very thin, bare wires construct the large, circular E-Sail that would electrostatically repel the fast moving solar protons. The momentum exchange produced as the protons are repelled by the positively charged wires would create the spacecraft's thrust.



duh: it's actually protons but guy in the video says photons. Anyone else noticed that?

 

[CAPSLOCKSTUCK]

YURI GAGARIN

1st man in space...55 years ago
As repoted today

A better documentary/dramatization

 

[Drone]

Happy Cosmonautics Day, cosmonauts and astronauts!

On 12 April 1961, Yuri Gagarin became the first person to orbit Earth in his Vostok spacecraft that launched from Baikonur Cosmodrome, now in Kazakhstan. ESA astronaut Tim Peake was launched into space from the very same launchpad as Yuri Gagarin and now, 55 years later, he tweeted this picture of himself on the International Space Station reading Yuri's autobiography Road to the Stars.

The book is a special copy, signed by Gagarin himself, and it flew to space in 1991 with British astronaut Helen Sharman to the Russian space station Mir. The book is now signed by the current crew on the International Space Station, as well as the crew on Mir during Helen’s mission.

******

12 April has become a worldwide day of celebration of human spaceflight. Cosmonauts on the International Space Station are given a day off on this day.

Today Oleg Skripochka, Yuri Malenchenko, Alexei Ovchinin are given a break from their busy schedules in space – aside from their obligatory daily exercise. They congratulate all Earthlings with World Cosmonautics Day

Life Over Earth: Astronaut's 'Most Incredible' Space Station Experiences

 

[Drone]

After Sentinel-1A, last 3 April 2014, Sentinel-1B will be launched next 22 April on a Soyuz rocket from Europe’s Spaceport in French Guiana.

Gyroscopes in space

Little bit old video (October 2015) Proton-M with Turksat-4В rollout

 

[Drone]

NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, is being built to test the avionics system that will guide the world's most powerful rocket, the Space Launch System (SLS). SLS will launch crews of up to 4 astronauts in the agency's Orion spacecraft on missions to explore multiple, deep-space destinations, including Mars.

 

[CAPSLOCKSTUCK]

On the 35th anniversary of the first space shuttle launch, the last remaining external fuel tank set sail today from its factory in New Orleans to Los Angeles and a remarkable museum attraction in the making.

External tanks — 28 feet in diameter and 154 feet long — were the structural backbone of the shuttle vehicle on launch, holding the twin solid rockets while being the reservoir of a half-million gallons of liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen for the orbiter main engines. The tanks were the only expendable part of the shuttle system, separating from the orbiters while on suborbital trajectories and burning up in the atmosphere on the way back down.


https://spaceflightnow.com/2016/04/...tank-in-existence-heads-to-california-museum/

 

[Drone]

Glyn Collinson explains the 4 states of matter making a cup of tea as an example
And from 3:40 the media clips & explanation on the birth & construction of the ULA Atlas V Centaur MMS rocket

Space Station Live: Everything's Coming up Veggie

Latest episode of Space to Ground

Old video: Soyuz-U with Progress M-28M rollout

 

[Drone]

Soyuz assembly, video by Roskosmos

Two new videos from Nasa

 

[Drone]

The hardware is for the engine section, and is the first major SLS flight component to finish full welding on the VAC. The engine section is located at the bottom of the rocket's core stage and will house the four RS-25 engines for the first flight of SLS with NASA's Orion spacecraft in 2018.

new videos:

ISS 360: Columbus

 

[Drone]

A view from below in High Bay 3 inside the Vehicle Assembly Building at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida, shows three work platforms installed for NASA's Space Launch System (SLS) rocket.

Soyuz rocket will take Sentinel-1B, three CubeSats and Microscope into orbit. Liftoff is on 22 April 2016.

ISS 360: Kibo

 

[Drone]

latest episode of Space to Ground

Earth day

Image gallery is here:

Vostochny Cosmodrome

Rocket Soyuz-2-1A with booster Volga and three satellites (Mikhailo Lomonosov); (Aist); (SamSat)
Russian Federal Space Agency decided to roll out it on April 23. and lift off is on April 27.
General tests are today

Old videos: Plesetsk Cosmodrome: Soyuz-2.1a roll out

edit: Sozyuz-2.1 lift off from Plesetsk Cosmodrome