Space NEWS #9 (SpaceX landing!)

Hi,
in one post I already talked about the company SpaceX which is founded by Elon Musk who is a billionair and fan to Mars colonization. Right now SpaceX often delivers food and other goods on ISS helping NASA. Musk wants to make flying to space a lot cheaper and the first step for this is reusable rocket, right now to deliver one kilogram on Earth’s orbit costs about 20,000$.

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I already mentioned how the company was able to land on one particular spot which was a great breakthrough. Since this would be in long term quite dangerous (to land over on continent where it could hit someone), it was needed to try this on the ocean. In the mission with Jason-3 there was some damage and the rocket exploded.

SpaceX learned from their mistakes and yesterday they actually landed on a barge. The barge was named “Of Course I Still Love You” and trust me it was a real challenge, not only the last steps but also the whole process before, the barge is small compared to the vastness of ocean and yet, they were able to land just few meters next to the right spot.

Here is the link for the landing, this should left you wondering, how far can we get?

Dragallur

 

Space NEWS #8 (Planet Nine and Flower on ISS)

Hi,
why space news again? Well new planet has been found, if you know something about astronomy this would not really excite you since new planets are found “all the time”. Well what if I say to you that Solar System has new planet? The planet Nine?

Also on ISS first flower was able to bloom!

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When I saw the message about planet Nine I was very excited, but most media made again a mistake to say that it was found, that is not right it was not found yet. There is a strong evidence that such a planet could exist in our Solar System (if this planet is really approved to have been found, I promise to make another post about for “Planets of our Solar System”).

This planet would have mass to about 10 times the mass of Earth making it about the same size as Uran and Neptune, which means that it would be ice giant.

Above you can see the artist’s impression of such a planet. The evidence for it is in the movemenent of TNOs (trans neptunian objects). Those are things like Sedna which you can see below.

Those objects as well as planet Nine have highly excentic orbit. It is clear that we can detect them only when they are close to Sun which means that there are surely more of them. The problem is with their orbit lined up in plane which is very improbably without planet Nine. It’s magnitude is very low, to about +20 or so making it really hard to see even if we were able to find it’s exact spot on the sky. It could orbit in distance ranging from 200 AU in afelion and 1000 AU in perihelion. Caltech is the institution that published about it 20.1.2016.

This week also for the first time flower called zinnia (it is on the picture) finally bloomed. Why this plant? Because it has longer growth of about 60 to 80 days which is more then plants which were planted before.

This flower is a big step forward to grow tomatoes.. tomatoes for food!

That is why it is so important, we need to be able to make a food in microgravity to sustain when traveling through deep space.

Dragallur

 

Space NEWS #4

Hi,
last time in Space NEWS I was writing about SLS, the Space Launch System. Today I will add some more stuff because NASA finished simulations of booster separation.

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So first, those boosters are those things you can see on the right. They are the first part of rocket to be used up when its launched. The problem is that something can happen when they are separeted from the rest of rocket (the separation must be precise so it wont move with the rest of the rocket).

There had to be about 22,000 different simulations to see if everything is ok. Those simulations were made by the supercomputer Pleiadas (like the constellation). Each simulation took about 200 hours and together with some other simulations it took 12.7 million hours to complete it (there were also overflow more precise simulations. Each of them took 20,000 hours and there was almost 400 of them). Omg really? On the left is one of those simulations. The violet, red and orange thing is the shockwave. On the end you can see the separation of boosters.

Dragallur
EDIT: Those 12.7 million hours were divided between 400 Intel Xeon Nodes, otherwise it would take over half a million days to complete it.

Pictures from: https://www.nasa.gov/ames/image-feature/simulation-sls-booster-separation AND “Two Space Shuttle SRBs on the Crawler transporter” by Photo credit: NASA/Ben Cooper – http://mediaarchive.ksc.nasa.gov/detail.cfm?mediaid=49261. Licensed under Public Domain via Commons – https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Two_Space_Shuttle_SRBs_on_the_Crawler_transporter.jpg#/media/File:Two_Space_Shuttle_SRBs_on_the_Crawler_transporter.jpg

Space NEWS #1

Hi,
I decided to write about Space NEWS! Most of them probably would be from NASA page.
Today I want to start with WT1190F impact of Earth and then about cloud which was found in Titan`s atmosphere.

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First, yesterday 13th November some space debris entered the Earth`s atmosphere.
Most of it burned up in the atmosphere but still it made a fireball.
For few years object named WT1190F orbited Earth in more and more eliptical orbit. Finally this object falled down entering atmosphere in 11 kilometers per second. Nobody was in danger because it fell about 100 kilometers south of Sri Lanka.
For some time it was not known if its asteroid or not but finally when its density was calculated astrophysicists were sure that it is hollow and manmade. This event was important for improvment of calculating of stuff falling from the space.
Pictures taken from wikipage about WT1190 and twitter page.

In Titan`s atmosphere (Titan is Saturn`s moon) Cassini found a giantic storm forming.
Those clouds are about 200 kilometers tall. Cassini used its infrared toll called Composite InfraRed Spectrometer (CIRS).
Those clouds form in very strange way. Not by water evaporating from ground but by flow of gases from warmer pole to the other where those gases sink and in different levels of atmosphere they condensate forming those clouds.
Titan`s seasons last more than 7 years and this is the time when winter starts on Titan`s southern hemisphere.
This page by NASA.

Dragallur