That's what makes it so spectacular to me. The never-ending layers of conspiracy theories and alternative science form this nonsensical subculture where the genuine believers are indistinguishable from satire. Newton and every physicist after him have fundamentally misunderstood gravity but that random construction worker from Idaho has it all figured out. Another thing I've noticed is that a lot of them have a hyper-literal judaeo-christian biblical worldview that leads to the belief in a flat earth. The FE and RWNJ Venn diagram circles overlap a lot.
Jupiter's winds run deep into the planet By Jonathan AmosBBC Science Correspondent 7 hours ago Image copyrightNASA/JPL-CALTECH/SWRI/ASI/INAF/JIRAM Image captionThe central cyclone at the planet's north pole is encircled by eight other storms We are finally getting a look inside the biggest planet in the Solar System - Jupiter. And it is very strange. The American space agency's Juno probe has been studying the variations in the pull of gravity as it flies across the giant world's banded atmosphere. These measurements betray the movement of mass within Jupiter, and that gives scientists clues to its structure. The latest data reveals the activity of those familiar, colourful, wind-sculpted bands extends 3,000km down. That's on a planet which is 140,000km wide. "This solves a long-time mystery," said Juno scientist Tristan Guillot from the Côte d'Azur Observatory, France. "For over 40 years we didn't know whether the bands would go all the way to the centre, or whether they were just skin deep. Three thousand km is actually quite deep. It's 1% of the mass of the planet. Jupiter's very big so it's about three Earth masses that are involved in this motion. "This is all really important for understanding atmospheric dynamics, not just on Jupiter but on other gaseous planets like Saturn, Uranus and Neptune and also the exoplanets we're now discovering," he told BBC News. Jupiter Great Red Spot has deep roots Juno peers below Jupiter's clouds Nasa probe arrives in Jupiter orbit Saturn probe Cassini is incinerated Dr Guillot is an author on a slew of papers in the journal Nature describing the latest observations from Juno. In particular, he led the study that examined what may lurk even deeper than the roots of the bands. This is a domain where the predominant gases of hydrogen and helium start to transition under immense pressure into exotic fluid states. And in contrast to the east-west motions that are seen at the surface, the entire interior mass of material appears to rotate in a uniform way - as if a solid body. It is within this body that Jupiter's immense magnetic field is produced. "It's generated a bit deeper down when hydrogen becomes so highly compressed that it becomes a metal. And then charges can move easily and you can have, with convection, what's called a dynamo effect," said Dr Guillot. The jury's still out on whether Jupiter has a rocky core. This determination is one of the key questions Juno was sent to answer. Early investigations suggest it may do, but not in the sense that is easily understandable. It could be quite diffuse; "diluted" or "partially mixed with the interior", the French scientist says. Image copyrightNASA Image captionArtwork: Juno arrived at Jupiter in July 2016 Clarity should come the longer the mission runs. The US space agency will soon need to approve a funded extension to Juno's stay. Scientists would like a minimum coverage of 34 orbits (one orbit around Jupiter takes 53 days), which would take the mission, which arrived in July 2016, through to 2021. It would permit the researchers to fully map the planet's magnetic field and to pursue other questions such as the precise depth of Jupiter's Great Red Spot. Microwave observations indicate the huge, long-lived storm in the southern hemisphere reaches down at least 350km into the atmosphere. Additional gravity measurements may find it descends further still. Juno so far has been a tour de force, bringing a very difference perspective on Jupiter to those spacecraft that have visited the gas giant in the past. The way that the probe flies around the planet, from pole to pole, means, for example, that it can see storms at high latitudes that simply are not visible from Earth-based telescopes. One of the papers published in Nature this week notes the interesting patterns in play. At the north pole, eight cyclones rotate around a single storm, whereas at the south pole, five cyclones encircle the central storm. Image copyrightNASA/JPL-CALTECH/SWRI/MSSS/KEVIN M. GILL Image captionAfter decades of debate we now know these banded flows extend 3,000km deep The origins of these cyclones and how they persist without merging, or letting another storm muscle in, remain unknown, however. Alberto Adriani, the lead author on the paper from the Institute for Space Astrophysics and Planetology, Italy, said: "Each one of the northern cyclones is almost as wide as the distance between Naples, Italy, and New York City - and the southern ones are even larger than that. They have very violent winds, reaching, in some cases, speeds as great as 220mph (350km/h). "Finally, and perhaps most remarkably, they are very close together and enduring. There is nothing else like it that we know of in the Solar System." Commenting on all the latest work, Leigh Fletcher, from Leicester University, UK, said Juno was really now starting to deliver on its promise. He believes that what we have learned at Jupiter, and at Saturn with Nasa's Cassini probe, will heighten the desire to send missions to the other giants in the Solar System. "We've been lobbying for years to go to Uranus and Neptune, and we're hoping that in the next few years the Americans will put it right at the top of their agenda, after the next mission to Jupiter's moon Europa. "That would mean by the late 2020s or early 2030s, we'd have a real mission to head out to those planets." Jupiter is 11 times wider than Earth and 300 times more massive It takes 12 Earth years to orbit the Sun; a "day" is 10 hours long In composition, it resembles a star; it's mostly hydrogen and helium Under pressure, the hydrogen assumes a state similar to a metal This "metallic hydrogen" is likely the source of the magnetic field Most of the visible cloud tops contain ammonia and hydrogen sulphide Jupiter's low-latitude "bands" play host to very strong east-west winds The Great Red Spot is a giant storm vortex wider than planet Earth
This would seriously dent SpaceX's plans wouldn't it? The world’s largest airplane may launch a new space shuttle into orbit “I would love to see us have a full reusable system," Microsoft's co-founder said. ERIC BERGER - 3/7/2018, 8:10 AM Enlarge / The Stratolaunch aircraft has a wingspan of 117 meters. Stratolaunch Systems Corp. 179 As Stratolaunch Systems Corp. has rolled its super-massive aircraft out of the hangar during the last year and performed some ground-based tests, there has been one big unanswered question—what is the purpose of building the largest airplane in the world? Yes, the company had signed an agreement with Orbital ATK, a Dulles, Virginia-based company, for its aircraft to serve as the first stage for launching Pegasus XL rockets from the air. But these are relatively small rockets, with a diameter of just 1.27 meters—compared to the 117-meter wingspan of the Stratolaunch aircraft—and capable of hefting less than half a ton into low-Earth orbit. This is a bit like using a Falcon Heavy rocket to launch a few cubesats into space. We may finally have some clues. As part of his forthcoming book The Space Barons, the Washington Post's Christian Davenport got Stratolaunch founder Paul Allen to open up about his ambitions for the giant aircraft. And it turns out that Allen, a cofounder of Microsoft, wants to launch a reusable space shuttle into orbit. FURTHER READING Dear Mr. Allen, please let your big bird take flight soon. Signed, everyone Internally, the company calls the shuttle proposal "Black Ice." In an interview, Allen told Davenport, “I would love to see us have a full reusable system and have weekly, if not more often, airport-style, repeatable operations going." Allen apparently offered few technical details but did explain that the space plane would be about the same size as NASA's space shuttle, which had a 24-meter wingspan. Because of the Stratolaunch aircraft's mobility, the shuttle could be launched from virtually anywhere in the world where the large aircraft could take off. And the system would be fully reusable, with the airplane serving as the first stage and the space plane only needing to be re-fueled. Initially, the space plane might fly up to the International Space Station (although this facility may go away by the end of 2025) or take satellites into orbit. Eventually it might become capable of carrying people, although there are no immediate plans for that. Stratolaunch also has no immediate plans to develop the "Black Ice" vehicle. Building a new space plane from the ground up would likely require multiple years and hundreds of millions, if not billions, of dollars—and it is not clear whether Allen is committed to funding such an initiative. For now, Stratolaunch wants to make sure its massive airplane can fly. A first test flight could perhaps come in 2019.
Seems backwards. Trappist-1 exoplanets may have too much water to support life March 20, 2018 by Bob Yirka, Phys.org report Nature Astronomy (2018) doi:10.1038/s41550-018-0411-6" data-vivaldi-spatnav-clickable="1" style="color: rgb(49, 61, 87); outline: none 0px; cursor: zoom-in; font-weight: 700;"> Modelled χ2 goodness of fit for the masses of the TRAPPIST-1 planets as a function of the planet's radius and relative H2O mass fraction in wt% added to the system. Credit: Nature Astronomy (2018) doi:10.1038/s41550-018-0411-6 A team of researchers from Arizona State University and Vanderbilt University has found evidence that suggests the exoplanets surrounding the star Trappist-1 may be too wet to support life. In their paper published in the journal Nature Astronomy, the group describes using data from prior efforts that focused on determining the mass and diameter of the stars' planets to calculate densities, and from that, used a computer to model the likely building blocks of each. Last year, scientists discovered the Trappist-1 star system—a red dwarf 39 light years away surrounded by seven planets, all of which are similar in size to Earth. This discovery set off speculation on the possibility of one or more of the planets harboring life. The researchers with this new effort have thrown a wet blanket on such speculation by suggesting that all of the planets have too much water to support life. In modeling the planets, the researchers found that they all have far more water than Earth, from 50 percent of their mass to 10 percent. The Earth, by contrast, is just 0.2 percent water. So much water likely means there are no exposed land masses, which suggests no geochemical cycles that could promote an atmosphere. Also, a planet covered by very deep oceans would experience extreme mantle pressure preventing rock from moving upward, likely resulting in a runaway snowball effect. Slice through a model composition of TRAPPIST-1 'f' which contains over 50 percent water by mass. The pressure of the water alone is enough to cause it to become high-pressure ice. The pressure at the water-mantle boundary is so great that …more The seven planets are classified as rocky, which means they are not gaseous. Also, three of them reside in the "habitable zone," but their star is approximately 2,000 times dimmer than our own, which means that the planets most likely to support life reside very close to their star. But that could be a problem for a couple of reasons—one is that it means the planets are likely tidally locked, resulting in one side always being too hot while the other is too cold. Also, red dwarfs are known to flare a lot, which could spell doom for life on nearby planets. All seven planets discovered in orbit around the red dwarf star TRAPPIST-1 could easily fit inside the orbit of Mercury, the innermost planet of our solar system. Credit: NASA/JPL- Caltech The researchers suggest their results could also have implications for theories on how planets develop as they note that all seven of the planets in the Trappist-1 system lie within the "snow line," but the model shows that the outer planets likely formed beyond that line and migrated inwards over time. This graph shows the minimum starting distances of the ice-rich TRAPPIST-1 planets (especially f and g) from their star (horizontal axis) as a function of how quickly they formed after their host star was born (vertical axis). The blue line …more Explore further: TRAPPIST-1 system planets potentially habitable Read more at: https://phys.org/news/2018-03-trappist-exoplanets-life.html#jCp
That might actually be a good thing in this case in my mind. More likely some portion of the planet stays liquid. That's if there's not too much solar radiation, for life anyway.
I thought the habitable zone for life in a tidally locked planet is limited to the twilight regions. One side is too cold, one side is too hot.
NASA added 12 Hubble images to their Messier catalog. https://www.nasa.gov/content/goddard/hubble-s-messier-catalog A few of the prettier ones Spoiler M62 M88 M75 M90 M95 M110
It's pretty cool how far we've come. Messier cataloged all these things for other astronomers to say "Don't waste your time looking at these, they aren't actually comets." Now with the Hubble telescope we can actually see what these objects really are, and they're gorgeous. Can't help but feel infinitesimal.
He fucking did it. Kinda, only a third of a mile but still.... Self-taught rocket scientist blasts off into California sky Pat Graham and Michael Balsamo, Associated Press , Associated Press•March 25, 2018 FILE - In this March 6, 2018, file photo, "Mad" Mike Hughes reacts after the decision to scrub another launch attempt of his rocket near Amboy, Calif. The self-taught rocket scientist who believes the Earth is flat propelled himself about 1,000 feet into the air before a hard-landing in the Mojave Desert that left him injured Saturday, March 24, 2018. Hughes tells The Associated Press that he injured his back but is otherwise fine after Saturday's launch near Amboy, Calif. (James Quigg/Daily Press via AP, File) LOS ANGELES (AP) -- He finally went up — just like the self-taught rocket scientist always pledged he would. He came back down in one piece, too — a little dinged up and his steam-powered vessel a little cracked up. Related SearchesSelf Taught Rocket ScientistRocket Launch Still, mission accomplished for a guy more daredevil than engineer, who drew more comparisons to the cartoon character Wile E. Coyote from his critics than he did to iconic stunt man Evel Knievel. "Mad" Mike Hughes, the rocket man who believes the Earth is flat, propelled himself about 1,875 feet into the air Saturday before a hard landing in the Mojave Desert. He told The Associated Press that outside of an aching back he's fine after the launch near Amboy, California. "Relieved," he said after being checked out by paramedics. "I'm tired of people saying I chickened out and didn't build a rocket. I'm tired of that stuff. I manned up and did it." The launch in the desert town — about 200 miles (321.85 kilometers) east of Los Angeles — was originally scheduled in November. It was scrubbed several times due to logistical issues with the Bureau of Land Management and mechanical problems that kept popping up. The 61-year-old limo driver converted a mobile home into a ramp and modified it to launch from a vertical angle so he wouldn't fall back to the ground on public land. For months he's been working on overhauling his rocket in his garage. It looked like Saturday might be another in a string of cancellations, given that the wind was blowing and his rocket was losing steam. Ideally, they wanted it at 350 psi for maximum thrust, but it was dropping to 340. "I told Mike we could try to keep charging it up and get it hotter," said Waldo Stakes, who's been helping Hughes with his endeavor. "He said, 'No.'" Sometime after 3 p.m. PDT, and without a countdown, Hughes' rocket soared into the sky. Hughes reached a speed that Stakes estimated to be around 350 mph before pulling his parachute. Hughes was dropping too fast, though, and he had to deploy a second one. He landed with a thud and the rocket's nose broke in two places like it was designed to do. "This thing wants to kill you 10 different ways," said Hughes, who had an altimeter in his cockpit to measure his altitude. "This thing will kill you in a heartbeat. "Am I glad I did it? Yeah. I guess. I'll feel it in the morning. I won't be able to get out of bed. At least I can go home and have dinner and see my cats tonight." He got permission to launch on the land owned by Albert Okura, who bought Amboy in 2005 for $435,000. Okura was in attendance and said the event lasted about three to four minutes. The rocket landed about 1,500 feet from the launch ramp, Stakes said. "Mike branded us as 'Rocket Town,'" Okura said. "It was amazing." This has been quite an undertaking for Hughes, who lives in Apple Valley, California. He's seen a flurry of reaction to his plans, with detractors labeling him a crackpot for planning the launch in a homemade contraption and his belief that the world is flat. Some naysayers have posted things like "He'll be fine" with a picture of Wile E. Coyote strapped to a rocket. "I hope he doesn't blow something up," retired NASA astronaut Jerry Linenger said as Hughes' plans captured widespread attention. Linenger orbited the globe more than 2,000 times during four months in 1997. "Rocketry, as our private space companies found out, isn't as easy as it looks." Hughes often sparred with his critics on social media leading up to the launch, through Facebook comments and a 12-minute video addressed to his doubters. He's always maintained that his mission isn't to prove the Earth is flat. "Do I believe the Earth is shaped like a Frisbee? I believe it is," he said. "Do I know for sure? No. That's why I want to go up in space." That's his project for down the road. He wants to build a "Rockoon," a rocket that is carried into the atmosphere by a gas-filled balloon, then separated from the balloon and lit. This rocket would take Hughes about 68 miles up. He has a documentary crew following him around to record his ambition, with a planned release in August. This was actually the second time he's constructed and launched a rocket. He said he jumped on a private property in Winkelman, Arizona, on Jan. 30, 2014, and traveled 1,374 feet. He collapsed after that landing and needed three days to recover. But there wasn't any footage of him climbing into the craft, leading some to question whether he even took off. This one was going to be shown online through Noize TV. "My story really is incredible," Hughes said. "It's got a bunch of story lines — the garage-built thing. I'm an older guy. It's out in the middle of nowhere, plus the Flat Earth. The problem is it brings out all the nuts also, people questioning everything. It's the downside of all this." His future plans are simple: Fill out the paperwork to run for governor. "This is no joke," Hughes said. "I want to do it."
Hopefully on the next mission to Saturn or Jupiter moons. New laser technique may help detect chemical warfare in atmosphere March 26, 2018, University of Central Florida UCF optics and photonics Professor Konstantin Vodopyanov works with his team to broaden the range of the laser frequencies that can get the job done. If costs can be reduced and the tech made mobile, the applications could be endless, he said. Credit: UCF: Karen Norum The Department of Homeland Security could benefit from a reliable, real-time instrument that could scan the atmosphere for toxic agents in order to alert communities to a biological or chemical attack. UCF optics and photonics Professor Konstantin Vodopyanov is developing just such a technology to accomplish that. He has found a new way to use infrared lasers to detect even trace amounts of chemicals in the air. Every chemical is made up of individual molecules that vibrate at their own unique frequency. Vodopyanov has found a way to use lasers to detect these vibrations. The technique is so accurate and sensitive that he can determine if there is a molecule of any chemical present even at concentrations as low as one part per billion. So even if someone tried to hide the toxic chemicals, his technique would be able to detect them. His findings are published online this week in Nature Photonics. "We still have much work ahead," he said. "We are now working on broadening the range of the laser frequencies that can get the job done. If costs can be reduced and the tech made mobile, the applications could be endless." A similar principle is used in the medical field to detect biomarkers for different kinds of health conditions, including cancer, by taking breath samples. It's possible, Vodopyanov said, because of the rules of physics. "The frequencies of molecules are very distinct, but they are invariant - here, on a different continent, on a different planet, anywhere," Vodopyanov said. "It is universal. Think of it as a molecular fingerprint. So when we use the laserwe can detect these fingerprints with great precision." The novel approach could open the door for developing non-invasive technology, including sensors, that could be used to detect: airborne agents that could be encountered in a biological or chemical attack at home or on the battlefield traces of life by space explorers on missions to other planets or asteroids Other collaborators on the Nature Photonics paper include Andrey Muraviev at UCF's the College of Optics & Photonics, Viktor Smolski of IPG Photonics—Mid-Infrared Lasers in Birmingham, AL, and Zachary Loparo from UCF's Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering. Read more at: https://phys.org/news/2018-03-laser-technique-chemical-warfare-atmosphere.html#jCp
Earth-bound Chinese spacelab plunging to fiery end March 27, 2018 by Marlowe Hood China's Tiangong-1 or "Heavenly Palace" spacelab was put into into orbit in September 2011 An uncontrolled Chinese space station weighing at least seven tonnes is set to break up as it hurtles to Earth on or around April 1, the European Space Agency has forecast. "It will mostly burn up due to the extreme heat generated by its high-speed passage through the atmosphere," it said in a statement. Some debris from the Tiangong-1 —or "Heavenly Palace"—spacelab will likely fall into the ocean or somewhere on land, but the chances of human injury are vanishingly small, said Stijn Lemmens, an ESA space debris expert based in Darmstadt, Germany. "Over the past 60 years of space flight, we are nearing the mark of 6,000 uncontrolled reentries of large objects, mostly satellites and upper (rocket) stages," he told AFP. More than 90 percent of those bits of high-tech space junk weighed 100 kilos (220 pounds) or more. "Only one event actually produced a fragment which hit a person, and it did not result in injury." Lemmens calculated the odds of being struck by space debris at one in 1.2 trillion—10 million times less likely than getting hit by lightning. The China Manned Space programme, which put Tiangong-1 into orbit in September 2011, has been mostly mum on the fate of China's first space station, designed to test technologies related to docking in orbit. Daily updates on its official website have tracked its gradual descent—average altitude as of Tuesday was 207.7 kilometres (129 miles)—but not much else. On Monday, China's state-run news agency Xinhua cited the agency as saying the spacelab "should be fully burnt as it reenters the Earth's atmosphere." During its operational lifetime, Tiangong took part in two crewed missions, and an unmanned one. As with all large satellites and spacecraft, the Chinese spacelab had been slated for a "controlled reentry" that would have seen it fall somewhere in the Pacific Ocean, far from human habitation. In March 2016, however, the space station ceased functioning. Factfile on the Chinese space station Tiangong-1, due to plunge into the Earth's atmosphere sometime between March 30 and April 2. 'Design for demise' With ground teams no longer able to ignite its engines, Tiangong is "expected to make an 'uncontrolled reentry'," the ESA said. "It can be surmised that Tiangong-1 will break up during its atmospheric reentry and that some parts will survive the process and reach the surface of Earth." Debris has become a major headache for space agencies and private companies lobbing satellites and other modules into Earth orbit. The problem is not what comes back down, but what stays in space. More than 5,000 rockets launched since 1957 have hoisted some 7,500 satellites into orbit, with more than 4,300 of them still in place. The US Space Surveillance Network tracks some 23,000 debris objects travelling at speeds of up to 28,000 kilometres per hour (17,500 miles per hour). Statistical models estimate that there are nearly 30,000 objects of at least 10 centimetres across, and 20 times that number measuring between one and 10 cm in diameter. "These form a real collision risk for spacecraft and manned space-flight activity," said Lemmens. "What we really fear is the so-called 'Kessler Syndrome', whereby objects collide in an exponential cascade, with one collision causing thousands of fragments that in turn start colliding with others." Not much can be done to reduce the volume of orbiting space junk, much of which will eventually drift into Earth's atmosphere and burn up. To avoid further clutter, programmed reentry is crucial, said Lemmens. All nations capable of launching a spacecraft have signed a treaty making them liable for damages caused, in space or on Earth, he noted. Future spacecraft will also be 'designed for demise' upon reentry. A new generation of fuel tanks, for example, will replace ones currently made with titanium, which can withstand very high temperatures. Tiangong-1 weighed 8.5 tonnes on take off, but with fuel consumption has probably shed at least one tonne. Read more at: https://phys.org/news/2018-03-earth-bound-chinese-spacelab-plunging-fiery.html#jCp
Fucking fucks, get your shit together. We've waited too long already. NASA delays next-generation space telescope until 2020 March 27, 2018 by Marcia Dunn In this April 13, 2017 photo provided by NASA, technicians lift the mirror of the James Webb Space Telescope using a crane at the Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. The telescope's 18-segmented gold mirror is specially designed …more NASA has delayed the launch of its next-generation space telescope until 2020. Officials say they need more time to assemble and test the James Webb Space Telescope, which is considered a successor to the orbiting Hubble Space Telescope. The observatory was supposed to fly this year. But last fall, NASA bumped the launch to 2019. NASA announced the latest delay on Tuesday. "We have one shot to get this right before going into space," said Thomas Zurbuchen, NASA's associate administrator of science. He said some mistakes were made while preparing the telescope, and NASA underestimated the scale of the job. NASA and its partner, the European Space Agency, will work together to firm up a new launch date, now tentatively targeted for May 2020. Once a new date is set, NASA says it will provide a new cost estimate. Officials say the cost may exceed the $8 billion program cap set by Congress. NASA has already poured $7 billion into the telescope. All of the telescope's parts are at Northrop Grumman Aerospace System in Redondo Beach, California. This 2015 illustration provided by Northrop Grumman via NASA shows the James Webb Space Telescope. On Tuesday, March 27 2018, NASA announced it is delaying the launch of its next-generation space telescope until 2020. (Northrop Grumman/NASA via AP) Read more at: https://phys.org/news/2018-03-nasa-next-generation-space-telescope.html#jCp
Thought this was interesting. Seems like there's a worry the overruns and delays on the JWST are starting to impact other projects. We're currently 13 years behind and at 1600% of the original budget.
Tabby's star dims again March 28, 2018 by Bob Yirka, Phys.org report Credit: wherestheflux.com The team of astrophysicists studying KIC 8462852, more well known as Tabby's star, has reported that the star recently dimmed again, and did so quite dramatically. The group, led by LSU's Tabby Boyajian who discovered the odd behavior of the star back in 2015, has been documenting their findings on their web site. Tabby's star has been under study for many years, as one of a group of starsknown to dim—space scientists are interested in such stars, because in most cases, they have planets transiting them, dimming their light. But KIC 8462852 is different, Boyajian noticed—it dimmed a lot more than other stars did—at one point, as much as 20 percent. That was too much to chalk up to a planet blocking its light. Also, the star tended to stay dim for longer periods of time than other dimming stars. So she and others wondered what could be causing the dimming. Researchers advanced many theories, such as aliens building a Dyson sphere, but most were shot down. The most likely explanation, Boyajian has suggested, is dust. She and her team found earlier this year that the light that makes its way to us from the star is of different wavelengths at different times, which, she notes, suggest that it is passing through something translucent, casting serious doubts on the Dyson sphere theory. She and her team have proposed several theories regarding the nature of the dust, most involving the idea of planets or other objects colliding. One notable exception is the possibility of a comet that was torn apart as it approached the star. In this latest report, the star was seen to dim on March 16—a dip that Boyajian reported was the largest observed since 2013 (she and her team went back and looked at old Kepler data after the star was found to dim abnormally). By the March 22, the star was nearly back to its normal brightness. In the same blog post, she reminded readers that the observation was made possible by donations to the Kickstarter campaign set up for just this purpose, and while that project has ended, she is still requesting donations. Read more at: https://phys.org/news/2018-03-tabby-star-dims.html#jCp
This is the third article I've read today mentioning the JWT launching in 2019. Dammit. Another water world though... Characterization of a water world in a multi-exoplanetary system March 28, 2018 by Ricardo Cardoso Reis, Universidade do Porto Artist's impression of a planet transiting a star. Credit: ESA/ATG medialab A team of astronomers from 11 countries, led by researchers at the Instituto de Astrofísica e Ciências do Espaço (IA), were able to determine the precise mass of two small exoplanets orbiting the variable star HD 106315. These two planets were previously detected by the Kepler satellite (NASA) via the transit method, which allowed researchers to determine the diameter of the planets. HD 106315b has a period of 9,5 days and a diameter of 2,44 times the diameter of the Earth, while HD 106315c has an orbital period of about 21 days, and a diameter 4,35 times the diameter of the Earth. But to characterize a planet (for example, to determine if it is gaseous or rocky, or whether they have an atmosphere), researchers also need to know the mass of the planet, measured by the radial velocities, so that together with size, they can infer its density. Susana Barros (IA & University of Porto), the first author of the paper, explains the problem with this star: "The variability of HD 106315 was thought to be a source of too much noise for radial velocity observation, and therefore we couldn't measure the mass of the two planets." Using data from a large observing program with the HARPS spectrograph (ESO), the IA team estimated the mass of the smaller planet HD 106315 b to be 12,6 times that of the Earth, and the density to be 4,7 g/cm3. For the larger planet, HD 106315 c, the derived mass is 15,2 times that of the Earth, with a density of 1,01 g/cm3. These values indicate that planet "c" has a thick hydrogen-helium envelope, while a detailed investigation of planet "b," using planetary interior models, indicates at up to 50 percent of rocky material and 9—50 percent of water, making it a water world. Seek00:00Current time00:06Volume This animation shows a planet whose orbit is aligned in such a way that it crosses the disc of its parent star as seen from Earth: during these transits, the star appears less bright. By detecting these periodic decreases of brightness over time, it …more Nuno Santos (IA & Science Faculty of the University of Porto), leader of IA's "Towards the detection and characterization of other Earths" thematic line adds: "Thanks to an intensive observation strategy and a sophisticated data analysis method developed by our team, we were able to determine the masses of these two planets and the composition of planet b." Susana Barros further points out that: "This planetary system showcases the diversity in the composition of planets, and since they transit a bright star, it will be possible to study their atmospheres. With current instruments, it's currently possible to observe the atmosphere of planet c, but for planet b we will need to wait for instruments like the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), to be launched in 2019." Mass-radius relationship for different compositions of small planets: The blue line represents a composition of 50% mantle/50% water; the dark green line 100% mantle; the light green line an Earth-like 32,5% core/67,5% mantle; the brown …more Probing atmospheres with upcoming new facilities like JWST (NASA) or ESO's Extremely Large Telescope (ELT) will help to better understand the composition of HD 106315 b, since this planet lies in the transition between rocky and gaseous planet composition. Read more at: https://phys.org/news/2018-03-characterization-world-multi-exoplanetary.html#jCp
Some details on what's going on with JWT. Spoiler Webb woes worsen with leaky valves and a torn sunshield “Simply put, we have one shot to get this right before going into space.” ERIC BERGER - 3/27/2018, 1:31 PM Enlarge / The towering primary mirror of NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope stands inside a cleanroom at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston. NASA 246 The US space agency began preliminary design work on what would come to be known as the James Webb Space Telescope back in 1996. At the time, NASA projected a launch date of 2007 for the large, infrared telescope, with a total cost of $500 million. That was then. On Tuesday, senior officials at NASA announced yet another delay for the world-class instrument. After encountering more technical challenges and struggles with its testing processes, NASA said, the telescope now would launch no earlier than May 2020. Moreover, the agency said it no longer could guarantee that the project would live within an $8 billion cost cap imposed by Congress. FURTHER READING Meet the largest science project in US government history—the James Webb Telescope These were painful admissions to make for a program that has already sustained more than a decade in delays and billions of dollars in cost overruns. But acknowledging them, ultimately, is probably the right thing to do. NASA will only ever have one opportunity to safely launch and deploy the Webb telescope. Once in space, it cannot be repaired. "Simply put, we have one shot to get this right before going into space," said Thomas Zurbuchen, associate administrator of NASA's Science Mission Directorate, during a teleconference with reporters. "Now, it looks like we have a ways to go before we cross the finish line." Two pieces NASA has substantially completed all of the hardware for the Webb project, which remains in two pieces before final assembly. One half is the observatory itself, with 18 hexagon-shaped mirrors combining for a total observing area of 6.5 meters and the associated scientific instruments. This part has held up well under various tests so far. The other half is the spacecraft and power systems, including a critical sun shield that must unfurl in space to cover an area about the size of a tennis court and block light from the Sun. FURTHER READING James Webb Telescope sun shield snags, further launch delays likely Most of the problems have occurred with the spacecraft half of the project, which was built by Northrop Grumman in California and is undergoing testing there. During the teleconference, NASA officials, including acting Administrator Robert Lightfoot, expanded upon technical problems first reported publicly by the agency's inspector general last month. These include leaky valves within the spacecraft's propulsion system and difficulties encountered during deployment tests of the sun shield. Not only did the thin, five-layer sun shield snag during the deployment, but technicians also found seven tears up to 10cm long within the material. NASA and Northrop Grumman have identified fixes for these problems, but their repair has added months of delays to the project, and engineers cannot be sure that more issues will not crop up during further testing. Congress NASA has now spent $7.3 billion of the $8 billion in funds allocated by Congress for Webb. By this summer, NASA will submit a detailed report to Congress that estimates the costs of the delays and provides an overview of corrective actions, Lightfoot said. If the project breaches the $8 billion cost cap, the Webb telescope program will have to be reauthorized by Congress. Lightfoot seemed optimistic that will happen, explaining that—since the hardware is now complete—NASA is very close to launching the project. But it does not seem like a slam dunk, especially with the retirement of US Senator Barbara Mikulski (D-M.D.), a champion of the telescope, in early 2017. In response to a query from Ars, the chairman of the House Science Committee, U.S. Representative Lamar Smith, issued the following statement: Today’s announcement that the James Webb Space Telescope launch will slip again and likely go over the $8 billion development cost cap is disappointing and unacceptable. Just in December, NASA told the Science Committee that the launch would be delayed from 2018 to 2019, and now the launch is delayed by another year and costs may breach the cap. These continued delays and cost overruns undermine confidence in NASA and its prime contractor, Northrop Grumman. NASA must keep their promises to the American taxpayers. Every time a mission is delayed or goes over budget, it negatively affects other science missions. This includes delays, cancellations and de-scoping of other missions. Those effects ripple out within NASA and through the entire scientific community. The James Webb Space Telescope is a crucial project and an investment in our future. I expect it to be completed within the cap and launched as close to on schedule as possible so we can look forward to the incredible discoveries it will bring. In the meantime, NASA seems to be exerting additional pressure on Northrop Grumman to finish testing of the telescope components. NASA has established an external Independent Review Board, chaired by Thomas Young, to assess the program. The agency has also added managers to Northrop Grumman's project team and will add "experience" on the testing floor in California. FURTHER READING The James Webb Space Telescope has emerged from the freezer In response to a question from Ars, Lightfoot said he wasn't sure if this increase in oversight was unprecedented, but he said it did reflect the agency's prioritization of the Webb project. "We want to make sure we know what's going on on a daily basis," he said. "We want to make sure this has the right amount of attention in the agency and at Northrop Grumman as well."
NASA prepares to launch next mission to search sky for new worlds March 29, 2018, NASA Illustration of the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) in front of a lava planet orbiting its host star. TESS will identify thousands of potential new planets for further study and observation. Credit: NASA/GSFC NASA's Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) is undergoing final preparations in Florida for its April 16 launch to find undiscovered worlds around nearby stars, providing targets where future studies will assess their capacity to harbor life. "One of the biggest questions in exoplanet exploration is: If an astronomer finds a planet in a star's habitable zone, will it be interesting from a biologist's point of view?" said George Ricker, TESS principal investigator at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Kavli Institute for Astrophysics and Space Research in Cambridge, which is leading the mission. "We expect TESS will discover a number of planets whose atmospheric compositions, which hold potential clues to the presence of life, could be precisely measured by future observers." On March 15, the spacecraft passed a review that confirmed it was ready for launch. For final launch preparations, the spacecraft will be fueled and encapsulated within the payload fairing of its SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket. TESS will launch from Space Launch Complex 40 at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida. With the help of a gravitational assist from the Moon, the spacecraft will settle into a 13.7-day orbit around Earth. Sixty days after launch, and following tests of its instruments, the satellite will begin its initial two-year mission. Four wide-field cameras will give TESS a field-of-view that covers 85 percent of our entire sky. Within this vast visual perspective, the sky has been divided into 26 sectors that TESS will observe one by one. The first year of observations will map the 13 sectors encompassing the southern sky, and the second year will map the 13 sectors of the northern sky. The spacecraft will be looking for a phenomenon known as a transit, where a planet passes in front of its star, causing a periodic and regular dip in the star's brightness. NASA's Kepler spacecraft used the same method to spot more than 2,600 confirmed exoplanets, most of them orbiting faint stars 300 to 3,000 light-years away "We learned from Kepler that there are more planets than stars in our sky, and now TESS will open our eyes to the variety of planets around some of the closest stars," said Paul Hertz, Astrophysics Division director at NASA Headquarters. "TESS will cast a wider net than ever before for enigmatic worlds whose properties can be probed by NASA's upcoming James Webb Space Telescope and other missions." TESS will concentrate on stars less than 300 light-years away and 30 to 100 times brighter than Kepler's targets. The brightness of these target stars will allow researchers to use spectroscopy, the study of the absorption and emission of light, to determine a planet's mass, density and atmospheric composition. Water, and other key molecules, in its atmosphere can give us hints about a planets' capacity to harbor life. "TESS is opening a door for a whole new kind of study," said Stephen Rinehart, TESS project scientist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, which manages the mission. "We're going to be able study individual planets and start talking about the differences between planets. The targets TESS finds are going to be fantastic subjects for research for decades to come. It's the beginning of a new era of exoplanet research." Through the TESS Guest Investigator Program, the worldwide scientific community will be able to participate in investigations outside of TESS's core mission, enhancing and maximizing the science return from the mission in areas ranging from exoplanet characterization to stellar astrophysics and solar system science. "I don't think we know everything TESS is going to accomplish," Rinehart said. "To me, the most exciting part of any mission is the unexpected result, the one that nobody saw coming." Read more at: https://phys.org/news/2018-03-nasa-mission-sky-worlds.html#jCp
'Luxury Space Hotel' to Launch in 2021 By Mike Wall, Space.com Senior Writer | April 5, 2018 01:01pm Well-heeled space tourists will have a new orbital destination four years from now, if one company's plans come to fruition. That startup, called Orion Span, aims to loft its "Aurora Station" in late 2021 and begin accommodating guests in 2022. "We are launching the first-ever affordable luxury space hotel," said Orion Span founder and CEO Frank Bunger, who unveiled the Aurora Station idea today (April 5) at the Space 2.0 Summit in San Jose, California. [Aurora Station: A Luxury Space Hotel in Pictures] Artist's illustration of Orion Span's planned orbiting hotel, Aurora Station. Credit: Orion Span "Affordable" is a relative term: A 12-day stay aboard Aurora Station will start at $9.5 million. Still, that's quite a bit less than orbital tourists have paid in the past. From 2001 through 2009, seven private citizens took a total of eight trips to the International Space Station (ISS), paying an estimated $20 million to $40 million each time. (These private missions were brokered by the Virginia-based company Space Adventures and employed Russian Soyuz spacecraft and rockets.) "There's been innovation around the architecture to make it more modular and more simple to use and have more automation, so we don't have to have EVAs [extravehicular activities] or spacewalks," Bunger said of Aurora Station. Aurora Station will accommodate four paying guests and two crewmembers. Credit: Orion Span "The goal when we started the company was to create that innovation to make simplicity possible, and by making simplicity possible, we drive a tremendous amount of cost out of it," he told Space.com. [In Pictures: Private Space Stations of the Future] Orion Span is building Aurora Station itself, Bunger added. The company — some of whose key engineering players have helped design and operate the ISS — is manufacturing the hotel in Houston and developing the software required to run it in the Bay Area, he said. Aurora Station will be about the size of a large private jet's cabin. It'll measure 43.5 feet long by 14.1 feet wide (13.3 by 4.3 meters) and feature a pressurized volume of 5,650 cubic feet (160 cubic m), Orion Span representatives said. For comparison, the ISS is 357 feet (109 m) long and has an internal pressurized volume of 32,333 cubic feet (916 cubic m). Orion Span plans to add onto the original Aurora Station core over time as demand grows. Credit: Orion Span The private outpost will orbit at an altitude of 200 miles (320 kilometers) — a bit lower than the ISS, which is about 250 miles (400 km) above Earth on average. Right now, it's unclear how Aurora Station and its future occupants will get to orbit; Orion Span has yet to confirm any deals with launch providers, Bunger said. Aurora Station will accommodate four paying guests and two crewmembers; these latter personnel will likely be former astronauts, Bunger said. Most of the guests will probably be private space tourists, at least initially, but Orion Span will be available to a variety of customers, including government space agencies, he added. And the space hotel will get bigger over time, if everything goes according to plan. As demand grows, Orion Span will launch additional modules to link up with the original core outpost, Bunger said. "Our long-term vision is to sell actual space in those new modules," he said. "We're calling that a space condo. So, either for living or subleasing, that's the future vision here — to create a long-term, sustainable human habitation in LEO [low Earth orbit]." Orion Span isn't alone in seeking to carve out this path. Several other companies, including Axiom Space and Bigelow Aerospace, also aim to launch commercial space stations to Earth orbit in the next few years to meet anticipated demand from space tourists, national governments, researchers and private industry. (Other private players, including Virgin Galactic and Blue Origin, are developing vehicles to take paying customers to and from suborbital space, and are scheduled to begin commercial operations soon.) If you've got $80,000 to spare, you can put a (fully refundable) deposit down on an Aurora Station stay beginning today. Folks who fly up will undergo a three-month training program, the last portion of which will occur aboard the space hotel itself, Bunger said. To learn more, go to www.orionspan.com. https://www.space.com/40207-space-hotel-launch-2021-aurora-station.html
I imagine the former astronauts are going to perform the maid servicing. Can you imagine what that job description entails? Wonder if they have written procedures for all the grossness they are going to have to deal with.
I imagine there'll be a whole training session about what you may and may not do: This is how you use the bathroom. It's suction-driven. DO NOT get any ideas. Multiple people use this and we can't just run out to the store if it breaks. No public masturbation. No really, we have to say this. (sigh) Please try to contain yourselves while masturbating in private, it's very cramped up here. And if you absolutely must? Please contain... YOURSELVES. Hocking loogies for public one-upsmanship ended with puberty. Zero-g is not the place to open that door again.
Juno recently took this infrared image of night on Io, highlighting how Jupiter’s gravity churns it’s moon into a volcano world.
ESA ScienceVerified account @esascience 37m37 minutes ago #ICYMI Yesterday @ESAGaia released the most precise stellar map ever made, based on observations of nearly 1.7 billions of stars in our Milky Way & neighbouring galaxies: http://sci.esa.int/gaia/60192-gaia-creates-richest-star-map-of-our-galaxy-and-beyond/ …
This would be such a shitty move on musk's part if true... He wants to inhabit other planets, not limit the opportunities to get there. It will definitely change my belief in him if he goes this route to build capital for spacex https://arstechnica.com/science/201...-for-less-cargo-delivery-to-the-space-station
This seems like reasonable reasoning. Perhaps most tellingly, the inspector general’s report notes the following about SpaceX’s reasoning: “They also indicated that their CRS-2 pricing reflected a better understanding of the costs involved after several years of experience with cargo resupply missions.” This suggests the company either under-bid on the first round of supply contracts or failed to achieve some of the cost savings it had hoped to achieve. (The company declined comment to Ars).