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davieG

Technology, Science and the Environment.

By davieG, in General Chat

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  • 2 weeks later...
Vacamion

Vacamion

Posted
Posted

 

NASA have been vagueposting that they have an important announcement about The Moon.

 

However, they won’t tell us what is, and you have to wait until next Monday to find out.

 

I mean, if it’s THAT secret squirrel and THAT important, why not hold off talking about it until you can *actually* talk about it, instead of making an announcement about an announcement that won’t happen until until Monday.:rolleyes:

 

Bleddy geekteases. 

 

 

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stripeyfox

stripeyfox

Posted
Posted

 

NASA's asteroid "grab" mission a success - they say.

 

Probe will now return the sample to earth in 2023 

 

https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-54640475

 

Osiris-Rex: Nasa asteroid mission confident of success

By Jonathan Amos
BBC Science Correspondent

Published
6 hours ago
media captionSampling an asteroid: This image sequence is speeded up and repeated

"We really did kind of make a mess."

That was Dante Lauretta's take after reviewing the first pictures to come down from Nasa's Osiris-Rex probe following its bid to grab a sample from asteroid Bennu on Tuesday.

Dust and grit flew in all directions but that was good news, enthused the University of Arizona professor.

"Everything that we can see from these initial images indicates sampling success. So in case you can't tell, I'm pretty excited."

The principal investigator's team now has to work out precisely how much material Osiris-Rex might have lifted from the surface of 500m-wide Bennu.

If it's a kilo or more, it would represent the biggest extra-terrestrial sample cache since the Apollo astronauts gathered rocks from the Moon some 50 years ago.

But even a smaller amount would still be a great prize.

Bennu is a very primitive object, with chemistry preserved from the dawn of the Solar System more than 4.5 billion years ago. As such, it can tell us a great deal about how the Sun and the planets came into being.

media captionControllers at Lockheed Martin celebrate the touch and go

Osiris-Rex used what had been described as a "reverse vacuum cleaner" to acquire its clutch of "soil".

More properly called the Touch-and-Go Sample Acquisition Mechanism, or Tag-Sam, this device comprised a long boom with a ring-shaped collection chamber on the end.

The idea was to deliver a squirt of nitrogen when the Tag-Sam made contact with the asteroid.

The hope was this gas would stir up Bennu's fragmented surface, leading to a considerable number of rocky pieces getting trapped inside the collection chamber.

The messIMAGE COPYRIGHTNASA/GODDARD/UOA
image captionThe mess: Dust and grit are thrown in all directions as the sampling head makes contact
Presentational white space

The downlinked pictures certainly suggested the strategy was the right one.

Osiris-Rex may have been in contact with Bennu for only six seconds before retreating, but the sampling ring was flat and stable, and even pressing into the soil slightly. This should have maximised the chances of retaining material.

Rich Burns, Nasa's project manager on the mission, lauded the way his team managed to put the probe in just the right place on Bennu - almost exactly at the centre of the targeted sampling zone.

"We're over 320 million km away from Earth at this point, and we touched this asteroid within a metre of where we intended to. So that's extraordinary and a real credit to our team," he told reporters.

Artwork of probeIMAGE COPYRIGHTNASA/GODDARD/UOA
image captionEngineers will spin the probe to try to gauge the mass of material taken on board

On Thursday, engineers will command the spacecraft to take detailed pictures of the sampling ring to try to see what it contains.

And then on Saturday, they'll make Osiris-Rex spin itself around with the Tag-Sam outstretched. Any extra mass on board will change the level of torque required to turn the probe, compared with the level that was needed to perform the same rotation exercise prior to sample acquisition.

"We are expecting a final sample mass measurement report on Monday," explained Sandy Freund, the mission operations manager at Lockheed Martin, the company that manufactured Osiris-Rex.

It seems highly likely that Osiris-Rex has achieved its objective of taking at least 60g off Bennu. But if it hasn't, there are two more nitrogen bottles still aboard the probe to facilitate further sampling bids. And there's plenty of time, too.

The spacecraft is not scheduled to depart Bennu for Earth until April next year. A landing on Earth for any rock cache in this timeline would be late 2023.

Presentational white space

Prof Lauretta once again on Wednesday paid tribute to the British scientist who conceived Osiris-Rex.

This was Bristol-born Michael Drake who held senior science positions at the University of Arizona in Tucson.

He worked up the concept for the mission but sadly died in 2011, aged 65, just months after Nasa had green-lit the project.

"I'm pleased to see that my dad's legacy is being honoured at this exciting time in Osiris-Rex's mission," Michael Drake's son, Matt Drake, told BBC News.

"My father's idea to study near-Earth asteroids as a means of peering back in time to the birth of the Solar System finally came to fruition during [Tuesday's] Tag event.

"As the principal investigator of this team from its inception until his passing almost 10 years later, he would have been incredibly proud of his team's accomplishments."

Osiris-Rex carries a plaque of remembrance to Michael Drake.

Michael DrakeIMAGE COPYRIGHTUOA
image captionMichael Drake was the instigator behind the Osiris-Rex mission

[email protected] and follow me on Twitter: @BBCAmos

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stripeyfox

stripeyfox

Posted
Posted
3 minutes ago, Vacamion said:

 

NASA have been vagueposting that they have an important announcement about The Moon.

 

However, they won’t tell us what is, and you have to wait until next Monday to find out.

 

I mean, if it’s THAT secret squirrel and THAT important, why not hold off talking about it until you can *actually* talk about it, instead of making an announcement about an announcement that won’t happen until until Monday.:rolleyes:

 

Bleddy geekteases. 

 

 

ooh interesting.... 

any theories ?

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whoareyaaa

whoareyaaa

Posted
Posted
12 minutes ago, Vacamion said:

 

NASA have been vagueposting that they have an important announcement about The Moon.

 

However, they won’t tell us what is, and you have to wait until next Monday to find out.

 

I mean, if it’s THAT secret squirrel and THAT important, why not hold off talking about it until you can *actually* talk about it, instead of making an announcement about an announcement that won’t happen until until Monday.:rolleyes:

 

Bleddy geekteases. 

 

 

Water on the moon or has this already been discovered?

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leicsmac

leicsmac

Posted
Posted
6 hours ago, Vacamion said:

 

NASA have been vagueposting that they have an important announcement about The Moon.

 

However, they won’t tell us what is, and you have to wait until next Monday to find out.

 

I mean, if it’s THAT secret squirrel and THAT important, why not hold off talking about it until you can *actually* talk about it, instead of making an announcement about an announcement that won’t happen until until Monday.:rolleyes:

 

Bleddy geekteases. 

 

 

 

6 hours ago, whoareyaaa said:

Water on the moon or has this already been discovered?

That's already been sorted out.

 

My guess would be a clearer idea about the Artemis Program and us getting back there.

 

3 hours ago, Bellend Sebastian said:

Not now, Arctic Sea:

 

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/oct/22/alarm-as-arctic-sea-ice-not-yet-freezing-at-latest-date-on-record

Clock's ticking.

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whoareyaaa

whoareyaaa

Posted
Posted
On 22/10/2020 at 15:13, leicsmac said:

 

That's already been sorted out.

 

My guess would be a clearer idea about the Artemis Program and us getting back there.

 

Clock's ticking.

clearly wasn't already sorted out.

 

the announcement was a conformation of water lol.

 

WE GOING BACK TO THE MOON BABY! 

 

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/science-environment-54698308

 

The US space agency, Nasa, has revealed conclusive evidence of water on the Moon.

Unlike previous detections of water in permanently shadowed parts of lunar craters, scientists have now detected the molecule in sunlit regions of the Moon's surface.

But what does this mean for future missions to the Moon? And beyond?

And what else is on the Moon?

BBC Science Correspondent Laura Foster explains.

Video by Laura Foster, Terry Saunders and Mattea Bubalo.

 

 

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leicsmac

leicsmac

Posted
Posted
2 hours ago, whoareyaaa said:

clearly wasn't already sorted out.

 

the announcement was a conformation of water lol.

 

WE GOING BACK TO THE MOON BABY! 

 

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/science-environment-54698308

 

The US space agency, Nasa, has revealed conclusive evidence of water on the Moon.

Unlike previous detections of water in permanently shadowed parts of lunar craters, scientists have now detected the molecule in sunlit regions of the Moon's surface.

But what does this mean for future missions to the Moon? And beyond?

And what else is on the Moon?

BBC Science Correspondent Laura Foster explains.

Video by Laura Foster, Terry Saunders and Mattea Bubalo.

 

 

Aha, looks like the difference was to do with placement. Water ice was found in shadowed areas of the Moon in 2018, but this most recent discovery was on sunlit soil - as the article says. So sorted out in a different way, it would seem.

 

Either way, gives an additional incentive to the Artemis Project now that the possible places for a permanent station are rather broader.

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  • 2 weeks later...
Innovindil

Innovindil

Posted
Posted

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-54841528

 

Work is beginning on what is thought to be the world's first major plant to store energy in the form of liquid air.

 

It will use surplus electricity from wind farms at night to compress air so hard that it becomes a liquid at -196 Celsius.

 

Then when there is a peak in demand in a day or a month, the liquid air will be warmed so it expands.

 

The resulting rush of air will drive a turbine to make electricity, which can be sold back to the grid.

 

The 50MW facility near Manchester will store enough power for roughly 50,000 homes.

 

---------

 

What a clever idea that is. Energy storage without the need for expensive battery materials. Hope it works out. 

 

 

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SpacedX

SpacedX

Posted
Posted

Commander Michael Hopkins, pilot Victor Glover, and mission specialist Shannon Walker of NASA and Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) mission specialist Soichi Noguchi will launch on the Crew-1 mission from Launch Complex 39A at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida if all goes to plan on Saturday 14th November @ 7.49pm EST. 

 

Again, this is an 'instantaneous window' due to rendezvous with the ISS.


download.jpg.c23690b5fd5367deb4b3f2eb05b10501.jpg

 

Reports are that in the wake of Tropical Storm Eta that headed into the Gulf of Mexico earlier this week the weather looks good for Saturday's attempted launch. Again, conditions throughout the entire launch corridor need to be nominal and again, the trajectory means that it will be visible from the UK were it not for the overcast skies and the fact that you will need to be up and looking south west a little before 1.00am. 

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Innovindil

Innovindil

Posted
Posted

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-54703204

 

A consortium led by Rolls Royce has announced plans to build up to 16 mini-nuclear plants in the UK.

 

It says the project will create 6,000 new jobs in the Midlands and the North of England over the next five years.

 

The Prime Minister is understood to be poised to announce at least £200m for the project as part of a long-delayed green plan for economic recovery.

 

Rolls argues that as well as producing low-carbon electricity, the concept could become a new export industry.

 

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SpacedX

SpacedX

Posted
Posted
On 11/11/2020 at 13:51, Line-X said:

Commander Michael Hopkins, pilot Victor Glover, and mission specialist Shannon Walker of NASA and Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) mission specialist Soichi Noguchi will launch on the Crew-1 mission from Launch Complex 39A at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida if all goes to plan on Saturday 14th November @ 7.49pm EST. 

 

Again, this is an 'instantaneous window' due to rendezvous with the ISS.


download.jpg.c23690b5fd5367deb4b3f2eb05b10501.jpg

 

Reports are that in the wake of Tropical Storm Eta that headed into the Gulf of Mexico earlier this week the weather looks good for Saturday's attempted launch. Again, conditions throughout the entire launch corridor need to be nominal and again, the trajectory means that it will be visible from the UK were it not for the overcast skies and the fact that you will need to be up and looking south west a little before 1.00am. 

Delayed by 24hrs due to rocket recovery weather. Now 15th @ 7.27pm EST.

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