Space News and Discussions

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raklian
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If there is no gravity, there is no buoyancy. Counterintuitive, isn't it? ;)

To know is essentially the same as not knowing. The only thing that occurs is the rearrangement of atoms in your brain.
weatheriscool
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NASA waves off next Artemis I launch attempt due to tropical storm
Source: CNN

CNN — The Artemis I rocket will not have its third launch attempt on Tuesday as planned due to concerns over Tropical Storm Ian making its way toward Cuba and Florida. After meeting on Saturday morning, NASA’s Artemis team decided to forgo the September 27 launch opportunity and is now preparing the mega moon rocket stack for rollback.

“On Tuesday, Tropical Storm Ian is forecast to be moving north through the eastern Gulf of Mexico as a hurricane, just off the southwest coast of Florida. A cold front will also be draped across northern Florida pushing south,” said CNN Meteorologist Haley Brink.

“The combination of these weather factors will allow for increased rain chances across much of the Florida peninsula on Tuesday, including the Cape Canaveral area. Showers and thunderstorms are forecast to be numerous and widespread across the region. Tropical storm-force winds from Ian could also arrive as early as Tuesday night across central Florida.” Meanwhile, the Space Launch System rocket and Orion spacecraft continue to sit on the launchpad at Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

Team members continue to monitor the weather as they make a decision about when to roll the rocket stack back into the Vehicle Assembly Building at Kennedy. NASA will receive information from the US Space Force, the National Hurricane Center and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration to inform their decision.
Read more: https://www.cnn.com/2022/09/24/world/na ... index.html
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raklian
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Live stream of DART impact.




See the asteroid whose moon (not yet visible) DART will impact? This is how far away it is at this instance.

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EDIT: As of 22:22 UTC, moon is now coming into view. ;)

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weatheriscool
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NASA's DART spacecraft will crash into an asteroid tonight in historic planetary defense test
Source: Space.com
Brace for impact. NASA's Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) spacecraft is hurtling toward the asteroid Didymos and its moonlet Dimorphos, and it'll reach its target tonight (Sept. 26). At 7:14 p.m. EDT (2314 GMT), if all goes well, DART will crash into Dimorphos in an attempt to alter the moonlet's trajectory. The mission is meant to test the theory that this technique could be used to divert an asteroid heading straight for Earth.

While neither Dimorphos nor Didymos pose a threat to our planet, and nothing that happens today can change that, the results of the DART mission will provide crucial data for scientists and engineers to develop plans for planetary defense. DART, which is managed for NASA by Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory (JHUAPL), marks the first-ever planetary defense test. You can watch the DART asteroid impact live online, courtesy of NASA, beginning at 6 p.m. EDT (2200 GMT).

"This is an exciting time, not only for the agency but in space history and in the history of humankind, quite frankly," Lindley Johnson, NASA's planetary defense officer, said in a news conference held on Thursday (Sept. 22). "This demonstration is extremely important to our future here on Earth."

DART launched atop a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket on Nov. 23, 2021, and has since been traveling the 7 million miles (11 million kilometers) to Didymos and Dimorphos. As DART approaches Dimorphos, it will use its sole instrument, the Didymos Reconnaissance and Asteroid Camera for Optical navigation (DRACO), to autonomously navigate to its impact zone. Considering that scientists estimate Dimorphos has a diameter of just 560 feet (170 meters), that's no easy task.
Read more: https://www.space.com/nasa-dart-asteroid-impact-preview
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raklian
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It's now precision locked by the impactor. Impact in 10 minutes.

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Impact in under 3 minutes.

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40 seconds.

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Right before impact! :)

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weatheriscool
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Bam! NASA spacecraft crashes into asteroid in defense test
Source: AP

By MARCIA DUNN
CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) — A NASA spacecraft rammed an asteroid at blistering speed Monday in an unprecedented dress rehearsal for the day a killer rock menaces Earth.

The galactic slam occurred at a harmless asteroid 7 million miles (11.3 million kilometers) away, with the spacecraft named Dart plowing into the space rock at 14,000 mph (22,500 kph). Scientists expected the impact to carve out a crater, hurl streams of rocks and dirt into space and, most importantly, alter the asteroid’s orbit.

“We have impact!” Mission Control’s Elena Adams announced, jumping up and down and thrusting her arms skyward.

Telescopes around the world and in space aimed at the same point in the sky to capture the spectacle. Though the impact was immediately obvious — Dart’s radio signal abruptly ceased — it will take as long as a couple of months to determine how much the asteroid’s path was changed.

Read more: https://apnews.com/article/nasa-dart-as ... osition_02
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Scientists depict Dragonfly landing site on Saturn moon Titan
https://phys.org/news/2022-09-scientist ... aturn.html
by Blaine Friedlander, Cornell University
When NASA's 990-pound Dragonfly rotorcraft reaches the Selk crater region—the mission's target touchdown spot—on Saturn's moon Titan in 2034, Cornell's Léa Bonnefoy will have helped to make it a smooth landing.

Bonnefoy and her colleagues assisted the future arrival by characterizing the equatorial, hummocky, knoll-like landscape by combining and analyzing all of the radar images of the area acquired by the Cassini spacecraft during its historic 13 year exploration of the Saturn system. They used radar reflectivity and angled shadows to determine the properties of the surface.

Effectively, it's a scene of sand dunes and broken-up icy ground.

The research, "Composition, Roughness, and Topography from Radar Backscatter at Selk Crater, the Dragonfly Landing Site," was published Aug. 30 in The Planetary Science Journal.

"Dragonfly—the first flying machine for a world in the outer solar system—is going to a scientifically remarkable area," said Bonnefoy, a postdoctoral researcher in the group of Alex Hayes, associate professor of astronomy in the College of Arts and Sciences.

"Dragonfly will land in an equatorial, dry region of Titan—a frigid, thick-atmosphere, hydrocarbon world," Bonnefoy said. "It rains liquid methane sometimes, but it is more like a desert on Earth—where you have dunes, some little mountains and an impact crater. We're looking closely at the landing site, its structure and surface. To do that, we're examining radar images from the Cassini-Huygens mission, looking at how radar signal changes from different viewing angles."
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Nasa, SpaceX study Hubble telescope re-boost mission

5 hours ago

Nasa and the SpaceX rocket company are to study the feasibility of running a private astronaut mission to extend the life of the Hubble telescope.

The orbiting observatory, one of the greatest instruments in the history of science, is gradually losing altitude.

If nothing is done to re-boost it, the telescope will eventually fall into the atmosphere and burn up.

Hubble was serviced on five occasions by astronauts in Nasa's space shuttle, the last time being in 2009.

Since then, the telescope has come down by about 25km and now circles the Earth at a height of 540km.

Ideally, Nasa would like to get the observatory back up to the 600km altitude where it was positioned at launch in 1990.

This might give it an additional 20-30 years of life, although longevity would also be heavily dependent on the continued good operation of the telescope's systems and, in particular, its four instruments.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-63084707


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Hubble and Webb Pics Reveal DART Impact Was Even Bigger Than Expected
by Daniel Lawler
September 30, 2022

Introduction:
(Science Alert) The James Webb and Hubble telescopes on Thursday revealed their first images of a spacecraft deliberately smashing into an asteroid, as astronomers indicated that the impact looks to have been much greater than expected.

The world's telescopes turned their gaze towards the space rock Dimorphos earlier this week for a historic test of Earth's ability to defend itself against a potential life-threatening asteroid in the future.

Astronomers rejoiced as NASA's Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) impactor slammed into its pyramid-sized, rugby ball-shaped target 11 million kilometers (6.8 million miles) from Earth on Monday night.

Images taken by Earth-bound telescopes showed a vast cloud of dust expanding out of Dimorphos – and its big brother Didymos which it orbits – after the spaceship hit.

While those images showed matter spraying out over thousands of kilometers, the James Webb and Hubble images "zoom in much closer", said Alan Fitzsimmons, an astronomer at Queen's University Belfast involved in observations with the ATLAS project.
Read more here: https://www.sciencealert.com/hubble-an ... -expected
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