The "Science and Space" Thread #2

[ekim68]

UK set to help build space debris removal satellite

The UK government has announced a firm based in the UK will help build the Clearspace-1 satellite which aims to clear space debris. The satellite is jokingly called ‘The Claw’ and will begin its mission in 2025.

Once in space, The Claw will use a pincer motion to collect debris and then control it to re-enter Earth’s atmosphere where it will burn up. The debris that is sent into the atmosphere will be too small to make it through the atmosphere and pose a risk to life but if any does eke its way through there’s a very high likelihood it’ll end up in the sea.

 

[ekim68]

Texas astronomers revive idea for 'Ultimately Large Telescope' on the moon

A group of astronomers from The University of Texas at Austin has found that a telescope idea shelved by NASA a decade ago can solve a problem that no other telescope can: It would be able to study the first stars in the universe. The team, led by NASA Hubble Fellow Anna Schauer, will publish their results in an upcoming issue of The Astrophysical Journal.

 

[ekim68]

Earth's nearest miss on record as small asteroid zips by closer than ISS

Last week, the Earth had its closest shave with an asteroid ever recorded, when a small space rock skimmed just 370 km (230 miles) above the surface. For comparison, that’s closer than the orbit of the International Space Station.

 

[ekim68]

Famed Arecibo telescope, on the brink of collapse, will be dismantled

The Arecibo telescope’s long and productive life has come to an end. The National Science Foundation (NSF) announced today it will decommission the iconic radio telescope in Puerto Rico following two cable breaks in recent months that have brought the structure to near collapse. The 57-year-old observatory, a survivor of numerous hurricanes and earthquakes, is now in such a fragile state that attempting repairs would put staff and workers in danger.

 

[ekim68]

Rocket Lab nails its first ever booster recovery attempt

Startup Rocket Lab has joined SpaceX and Blue Origin in the world of rocket recovery, today bringing its Electron booster back down to Earth for the first time ever. The company’s recovery of the Electron’s first stage during its landmark “Return to Sender” mission will act as a springboard for even more ambitious recovery techniques in the coming years.

 

[ekim68]

Next SpaceX Starlink launch set to hit a big milestone:

The company aims for bi-coastal missions in a single day this weekend.

 

[ekim68]

HALO space habitat module passes preliminary design review

Northrop Grumman has announced that its Habitation and Logistics Outpost (HALO) module has passed its preliminary design review. The module, which forms a key element of NASA's Gateway deep space outpost, will act as a way station for future missions to the Moon and beyond.

 

[ekim68]

Astronomers discover new 'fossil galaxy' buried deep within the Milky Way

The proposed fossil galaxy may have collided with the Milky Way ten billion years ago, when our galaxy was still in its infancy. Astronomers named it Heracles, after the ancient Greek hero who received the gift of immortality when the Milky Way was created.

 

[ekim68]

China launches ambitious mission to land on moon and return samples to Earth

China launched its most ambitious moon mission yet Monday: a robotic spacecraft expected to land on the lunar surface by the end of the week. The spacecraft is expected to collect about 4 pounds of rock and soil samples, and return them to Earth next month for laboratory analysis.

 

[ekim68]

Perseverance rover to create oxygen on the surface of Mars

When NASA’s Perseverance rover touches down in Jezero Crater on February 18, 2021, it will carry with it an experiment that will attempt to transform atmospheric carbon dioxide into precious oxygen. Future crewed missions to the Red Planet could use large amounts of converted oxygen to create fuel with which to launch return rockets from the surface of Mars.

 

[2twenty2]

Happy Birthday Mike!

 

[ekim68]

Thanks Twenty2, one more day and all of a sudden another year..

 

[zebanovich]

The most fascinating thing about space is human inability to develop interstellar travel.

So far the best and most developed tech among other space races is mathematics, thanks to math there is 100% working theory about FTL space travel, it's called Alcubierre drive - Wikipedia

 

[ekim68]

SpaceX blows away cobwebs at dormant California pad with satellite launch as a Falcon 9 makes touchdown number 7

In Brief Elon Musk's SpaceX demonstrated that a long-dormant pad could be reactivated with seemingly little effort after it launched the Sentinel-6 Michael Freilich satellite from Space Launch Complex 4 at California's Vandenberg Air Force Base.

The launch, at 17:17 UTC on 21 November, was the first from the pad since 2019, and the brand-new Falcon 9 booster performed the always-impressive trick of landing back on Earth, fiery end down. Rather than a drone ship, however, the first stage performed a ground landing.

 

[ekim68]

There will be a remote-control car race on the Moon in 2021. Seriously.

An extremely odd project is planning to hold a remote-controlled car race next October ... On the surface of the Moon. What's more, the two racecars will be partially designed by high school kids, and McLaren P1 designer Frank Stephenson is involved.

Each car will weigh 2.5 kg (5.5 lb), and the "deployment mechanism" used to deposit them on the lunar surface will weigh a further 3 kg (6.6 lb.) This 8 kg (17.6 lb) combined weight is a big deal, because it's going to the Moon. That's somewhat of a special delivery, and not a cheap one. Lunar logistics company Astrobotic, for example, is currently quoting prices of US$1.2 million per kilogram (around US$544,000 per pound) to plonk things down in one of its Peregrine lander modules.