Rockets, Launches, Satellites, ISS, etc.

[John Thomas8]

Two year old video, but the subject is still fascinating:

[RTH10260]

Russia’s Luna-25 spacecraft crashes into the moon
Craft spun into ‘unpredictable’ orbit before planned touchdown could take place, Russia’s state space corporation says

Andrew Roth and agencies
Sun 20 Aug 2023 15.42 BST

Russia’s first moon mission in 47 years has failed after its Luna-25 spacecraft spun out of control and crashed into the moon, dealing a significant setback to the embattled Russian space programme’s attempt to revive its Soviet-era prestige.

The state space corporation Roscosmos said it had lost contact with the craft at 1157 GMT on Saturday after a problem as the craft was shunted into pre-landing orbit. A soft landing had been planned for Monday.

“The apparatus moved into an unpredictable orbit and ceased to exist as a result of a collision with the surface of the moon,” Roscosmos said in a statement. It said a special interdepartmental commission had been formed to investigate the reasons behind the loss of the Luna-25 craft.

Pavel Luzin, an expert on the Russian space programme, said before the mission that Russia needed Luna-25 “to demonstrate that it is capable to do something even without the west”.

The failure underscored the decline of Russia’s space power since the glory days of cold war competition when Moscow was the first to launch a satellite to orbit the Earth – Sputnik 1, in 1957 – and the Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin became the first man to travel into space in 1961.

The Luna-25 mission sought to land near the south pole of the moon, collecting geological samples from the area, and sending back data for signs of water or its building blocks, which could raise the possibility of a future human colony on the moon.



https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/ ... o-the-moon

[Foggy]

[John Thomas8]

[keith]

Yeah isolation in a small habitat is a big problem, but have they made any progress on the environmental control system exposed by Biosphere2 30 odd years ago?

[raison de arizona]

I missed copying the C when grabbing "CBS Evening News," so it ended up "BS Evening News." I'm easily amused.

NASA astronaut Frank Rubio is celebrating one year in space – longer than any American in history for a single space flight. He was only expected to be at the station for six months, but the capsule that was supposed to take him home was damaged, extending his stay.

[AndyinPA]

https://www.theguardian.com/science/202 ... mple-earth

Sitting isolated in the arid landscape of the Utah desert, its orange and white parachute cast aside, the Osiris-Rex capsule was a picture of stillness. Yet all around, scientists were swinging into action, rushing to recover its precious cargo: 4.6bn-year-old chunks of space rock.

Racing towards the scene were four helicopters bearing scientists, engineers and military safety personnel. Their mission: to recover the capsule as quickly as possible to prevent samples of asteroid Bennu from becoming contaminated by planet Earth.

As the first team members ventured forth, the picture resembled a sci-fi movie, with experts clad in safety gear cautiously approaching as the world watched from afar.

[p0rtia]

[Chilidog]

Excellent.

[Chilidog]

I was poking around looking at some stuff related to satelite images and I stumbled across this.

Its a few years old but it's cool as hell.

Discovr is a satelite sitting at Lagrange L1 point between the Earth and the sun, about 1.5 million miles from earth.

It has an awesome imaging system called EPIC.

On February 11th, 2021, the moon again passed between DSCOVR and the Earth. EPIC snapped these images over a period of about 3 hours. In this set, the far side of the moon, which is never seen from Earth, passes by. In the backdrop, Earth rotates over Australia and the Pacific, gradually revealing Asia.

https://epic.gsfc.nasa.gov/galleries/20 ... nsit/video

[Lani]

Reading this reminded me when I was very young and lived in a NACA & NASA family neighborhood. The kids were told that they could name the next satellite. I said Pegasus. I won. And now I see that Pegasus continues... Means a lot to me.

[AndyinPA]

I was poking around looking at some stuff related to satelite images and I stumbled across this.

Its a few years old but it's cool as hell.

Discovr is a satelite sitting at Lagrange L1 point between the Earth and the sun, about 1.5 million miles from earth.

It has an awesome imaging system called EPIC.

On February 11th, 2021, the moon again passed between DSCOVR and the Earth. EPIC snapped these images over a period of about 3 hours. In this set, the far side of the moon, which is never seen from Earth, passes by. In the backdrop, Earth rotates over Australia and the Pacific, gradually revealing Asia.

https://epic.gsfc.nasa.gov/galleries/20 ... nsit/video

Really cool!

[Foggy]

Hay Mom, look what followed me home! Can we keep it, huh? Can we keep it, Mom?

A NASA capsule carrying pieces of an asteroid successfully lands in Utah

NASA’s OSIRIS-REx spacecraft flung a capsule the size of a car tire onto a bombing range in Utah on Sunday, delivering safely to Earth a sample of the intriguing and potentially hazardous asteroid Bennu.

The capsule, released four hours earlier by the spacecraft, parachuted onto the Utah Test and Training Range. Recovery teams in four helicopters raced to the landing site in a carefully rehearsed effort designed to bag the capsule quickly to lower the risk of contamination.

They found the capsule on the desert floor, intact and sitting perfectly upright, as if it had taken pains to be presentable. A helicopter hauled the capsule on a 100-foot line to a specially prepared “clean room” in a military hangar. It will be flown Monday to the NASA Johnson Space Center in Texas for scientific study.

Mission managers, pleased with the trajectory of the spacecraft, had voted early Sunday morning to proceed with releasing the capsule. It spent four hours nearing Earth before plunging into the atmosphere at 27,000 miles per hour. The parent spacecraft then fired thrusters to ensure that it would not wind up in Utah, but would instead move on to another target, the asteroid Apophis, with a scheduled encounter in 2029.

[Chilidog]

We will, we will ROCK YOU.

Before he was performing for a sea of fans in England’s Wembley Stadium, Queen guitarist Brian May was working toward his PhD in astrophysics while researching the Zodiacal Light — a glowing patch in the sky caused by sunlight reflecting off millions of dust particles in the solar system.

The hiatus lasted 30 years. Since then, May has not only received his doctorate, but has also put his skills to the test at NASA — even helping to prevent a recent mission from biting the dust.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2 ... a-mission/

[Sam the Centipede]

May has not only received his doctorate, but has also put his skills to the test at NASA — even helping to prevent a recent mission from biting the dust.

As opposed to the mission described in the preceding post, which aimed to bite the dust, and successfully did so.

[johnpcapitalist]

We will, we will ROCK YOU.

Before he was performing for a sea of fans in England’s Wembley Stadium, Queen guitarist Brian May was working toward his PhD in astrophysics while researching the Zodiacal Light — a glowing patch in the sky caused by sunlight reflecting off millions of dust particles in the solar system.

The hiatus lasted 30 years. Since then, May has not only received his doctorate, but has also put his skills to the test at NASA — even helping to prevent a recent mission from biting the dust.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2 ... a-mission/

The article missed a very interesting fact about Dr. May. In addition to doing publicity and science popularization for various NASA missions, he made a significant scientific contribution to OSIRIS-REx. They were having trouble picking a landing site. Dr. May came up with a technique for stitching an overlapping photomosaic together into simulated 3-D images so that the landing team could better assess the size of boulders on the surface and thus to pick a safe landing spot.

Dr. May was able to do this because he has had a lifelong interest in Victorian-era stereophotography. He has amassed one of (if not the) world's largest collections of stereophotographs and viewers, but has also published research on the optics of this type of photograph and even patented a modern stereophotograph viewer.

Dr. May sounds like the kind of guy I would love to hang out with. The rock superstar thing is cool, but the broad range of interests he's really good at is just remarkable.

[northland10]

Sooo.... He helped NASA bite the dust instead of rocking you (well, their capsule filled with dust and rocks).

When the capsule landed, did it blow out some of the desert floor and create dust in the wind? Oh, wait, wrong group.

[RTH10260]

NASA mission to capture asteroid worth $10,000,000,000,000,000,000 lifts off successfully

Niamh Shackleton
Published 18:19, 13 October 2023 BST
| Last updated 18:48, 13 October 2023 BST

NASA is officially on its way to the asteroid 16 Psyche.

The space station announced over the summer that it was going to set off for the faraway asteroid, named 16 Psyche, which is said to be filled with precious metals worth an eye-watering $10,000,000,000,000,000,000.

A press release issued by NASA in July read: "With less than 100 days to go before its launch, teams of engineers and technicians are working almost around the clock to ensure the orbiter is ready to journey 2.5 billion miles to a metal-rich asteroid that may tell us more about planetary cores and how planets form."

While the asteroid's contents is worth a staggering amount, NASA aren't going to 16 Psyche purely to harvest its precious metals, but to learn more about planetary cores and how planets form.

The spacecraft - a SpaceX Falcon Heavy from Space Launch Complex 39A - was initially scheduled to launch last year but was pushed back due to software issues.

Now, the long-awaited mission has officially taken to the skies today (October 13).

The spacecraft will travel 2.2 billion-miles (3.5 billion km) to get to the asteroid, which is located in the main asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter.

With the very long distance that the SpaceX craft needs to travel, the rocket isn't expected to reach its destination until July 2029.

It's reported that the ship will get a little velocity boost from Mars when passing it in May 2026.

There are nine metal-rich asteroids known to exist in our solar system, but 16 Psyche is the largest - which is why NASA chose it.




https://www.unilad.com/technology/nasa/ ... 2-20231013

[Foggy]

There are nine metal-rich asteroids known to exist in our solar system ...

I suspect there are a lot more than that. I think asteroid miner is going to be an important job in the second half of the century.

[RTH10260]

Prepare for the next boom past cryptocurreny mining

Read the daily Sex And Crime news. "he stole my asteroid" --- Judge: life sentence, banned to Jupiter!

[Suranis]

This is going back a while but a conversation on discord told me that some people have no idea that we have photos of the surface of Venus... because the Russians did it.

*sigh*

But ya, the Russians dropped Camera Probes onto the surface of Venus in the 70s and 80s. They lasted between 30 to 45 minutes on the surface which by itself is an achievement considering the hellish conditions on that planet.

You can see all six pictures on this website. Sadly, it's just dust and rocks but they are photos of something never seen before or since, as NASA hasn't had any interest in going back (and you know American snobbery would have hated admitting the Russians were there before them,) and the Russians probably couldn't afford to.

https://www.planetary.org/articles/ever ... rface-ever

[Estiveo]

Another great shot from Andrew McCarthy, the backyard astrophotographer from Arizona.

The ISS transits the Moon, appearing to kiss Tycho crater. Keep in mind the ISS is only about 250 miles out, while the Moon is around 237,750 miles beyond it.

Estiveoshot_20231110_204119.jpg (213.31 KiB) Viewed 7899 times

[Volkonski]

SpaceX Starship launch failed minutes after reaching space

https://www.reuters.com/technology/spac ... 023-11-18/

SpaceX's uncrewed spacecraft Starship, developed to carry astronauts to the moon and beyond, failed in space shortly after lifting off on Saturday, cutting short its second test but making it further than an earlier attempt that ended in an explosion.

The two-stage rocketship blasted off from the Elon Musk-owned company's Starbase launch site near Boca Chica in Texas, helping boost the Starship spacecraft as high as 90 miles (148 km) above ground on a planned 90-minute test mission to space and back.

But the rocket's Super Heavy first stage booster, though it achieved a crucial maneuver to separate with its core Starship stage, exploded over the Gulf of Mexico shortly after detaching, a SpaceX webcast showed.

Meanwhile, the core Starship stage boosted further toward space, but a few minutes later a company broadcaster said that SpaceX mission control suddenly lost contact with the vehicle.

"We have lost the data from the second stage... we think we may have lost the second stage," SpaceX engineer and livestream host John Insprucker said. He added that engineers believe an automated flight termination command was triggered to destroy the rocket, though the reason was unclear.

About eight minutes into the test mission, a camera view tracking the Starship booster appeared to show an explosion that suggested the vehicle failed at that time. The rocket's altitude was 91 miles (148 km).

The launch was the second attempt to fly Starship mounted atop its towering Super Heavy rocket booster, following an April attempt that ended in explosive failure about four minutes after lift-off.

[neonzx]

This is not at all the way Star Trek movies documented the history of us into this uncharted territory. Are not the Vulcans supposed to come greet us?

[RTH10260]

BUT.... But.... but.... the most urgent question has not yet been answered - did the rebuilt start ramp survive this time or was it again spread across the environment of a nature reserve