Category: Space

Mars Nasa Opportunity Rover Science Space

The Opportunity rover is dead

sudshr47 February 13, 2019

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The Opportunity rover is dead, at age 15. 

After spending over 5,000 Martian days rumbling through the inhospitable red desert planet, NASA acknowledged on Wednesday that its sun-powered exploration rover hasn’t responded to over 600 attempts at contact since June 2018, and is presumed dead. 

“I’m standing here with a sense of deep appreciation and gratitude to declare the Opportunity mission as complete,” Thomas Zurbuchen, associate administrator of NASA’s Science Mission Directorate, said from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California.

Deprived of sunlight by a dust storm the size of North America, Opportunity came to rest in a place known as “Perseverance Valley,” which sits on the edge of the 14-mile wide Endeavor crater. It is here that the 400-pound machine, built by NASA engineers in Southern California, will now spend millennia getting blanketed in red dust, for the Martian winds don’t ever stop blowing. Its batteries, completely bereft of power, will not turn on again. Read more…

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Mars One goes bankrupt as reality catches up to the doomed space scam

sudshr47 February 11, 2019

A grand mission to Mars that was always light on details has come to a decidedly terrestrial end. Mars One, a controversial space exploration project that made it as far as the “highly produced videos” stage of space colonization, has quietly filed for bankruptcy, according to a liquidation listing spotted by a Redditor on r/space. […]

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Andromeda galaxy will deliver a ‘glancing blow’ to our Milky Way later than expected

sudshr47 February 9, 2019

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Astronomers have long suspected that the colossal Andromeda galaxy would, in billions years, collide with our humble Milky Way.

The collision was forecast to happen in some 3.9 billion years. But after astronomers analyzed new data captured by the European Space Agency’s star-surveying satellite Gaia, they now put the imminent date at 4.5 billion years — so 600 million years later than initially expected.

The event, detailed in The Astrophysical Journal, is characterized as a “swipe” rather than a direct collision. The end result would be a merger of the galaxies into one, monstrous galaxy. 

“This finding is crucial to our understanding of how galaxies evolve and interact,”  Timo Prusti, ESA Gaia Project Scientist who had no role in the study, said in a statement.  Read more…

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NASA releases the “last light” image taken by Kepler before it retired last year

sudshr47 February 8, 2019

NASA has released the final view taken by Kepler in September, shortly before the space telescope was retired after nearly a decade of unprecedented discoveries about the universe beyond our solar system. “It bookends the moment of intense excitement nine and a half years earlier when the spacecraft first opened its eye to the skies […]

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Climate Change Global Warming Nasa Science Space

After escaping the Trump chopping block twice, NASA’s carbon sleuth will get blasted into space

sudshr47 February 7, 2019

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In early 2017, the Trump Administration tried to ax NASA’s Orbiting Carbon Observatory 3, or OCO-3. It didn’t work. Then, again in 2018, the White House sought to terminate the earth science instrument. 

Again, the refrigerator-sized space machine persisted.   

Now, SpaceX is set to launch OCO-3 to the International Space Station in the coming months, as early as April 25. Using a long robotic arm, astronauts will attach OCO-3 to the edge of the space station, allowing the instrument to peer down upon Earth and measure the planet’s amassing concentrations of carbon dioxide — a potent greenhouse gas.  Read more…

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SpaceX and Boeing commercial crew capsule test dates slip yet again

sudshr47 February 6, 2019

One of the most important upcoming events in the space industry is undoubtedly the advent of SpaceX and Boeing’s competing crew-bearing capsules, which the companies have been working on for years. But today brings yet another delay for both programs, already years behind schedule.

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NASA cubecraft WALL-E and EVE sign off after historic Mars flyby

sudshr47 February 5, 2019

A NASA mission that sent two tiny spacecraft farther out than any like them before appears to have come to an end: Cubesats MarCO-A and B (nicknamed WALL-E and EVE) are no longer communicating from their positions a million and two million miles from Earth respectively.

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Elon Musk shows off SpaceX’s Starship Raptor engine firing

sudshr47 February 4, 2019

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Who knew seeing a rocket fire up close could be so pretty?

On Sunday, SpaceX CEO Elon Musk shared photos and video of the company’s Starship Raptor engine firing in its first ground test.

A still shows a kaleidoscope of colours streaming from the engine, although that could be just the camera not quite keeping up with the fire’s intensity.

“Green tinge is either camera saturation or a tiny bit of copper from the chamber,” Musk added in a tweet.

First firing of Starship Raptor flight engine! So proud of great work by @SpaceX team!! pic.twitter.com/S6aT7Jih4S

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) February 4, 2019 Read more…

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