Vehicle in museum & our capabilities continue to decline! Very few seem concerned! We pay russia 90 million per ride!

As the Space Shuttle Program (SSP) heads into its final week of operations, United Space Alliance (USA) Vice President and SSP manager Howard DeCastro has spoken about how the retirement of the fleet makes no sense, from a technical, ISS support and national security standpoint. A last ditch reversal of the decision, likely via a NASA/commercial arrangement, would require a “miracle”, due to political obstructions.

Fwd: China's aim to explore Mars

Sent from my iPad

Begin forwarded message:

From: "Gary Johnson" <gjohnson144@comcast.net>
Date: March 21, 2016 at 2:12:50 PM CDT
To: "Gary Johnson" <gjohnson144@comcast.net>
Subject: FW: China's aim to explore Mars

 

 

China Exclusive: China's aim to explore Mars

 

2016-03-21 15:54:29

BEIJING, March 21 (Xinhua) -- China is preparing to launch a Mars probe in 2020, and it is expected to arrive on the red planet in 2021, aerospace expert Ye Peijian has said.

"Although we are not the first Asian nation to send a probe to Mars, we want to start at a higher level," said Ye, an academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences.

The probe will include an orbiter, a lander and a rover. The orbiter will conduct global surveys of Mars, and the entry device will land a rover on the surface. Parachute and reverse thrust engine technologies will probably be used in the landing, according to Ye.

"We have less than five years till the launch, but we are confident. The probe is being developed by the team that completed the Chang'e-3 lunar probe," says Ye, leader of the team with the China Academy of Space Technology (CAST).

A 3D demonstration video from CAST shows how the Mars probe will fly about 10 months before closing on the red planet. Controllers on Earth will guide it into a large elliptical orbit and the orbiter and lander will separate. The orbiter will stay in orbit for at least a year to photograph key areas and monitor the planet's environment.

Unlike the lunar lander of the Chang'e-3 probe, the Mars lander will carry a gasbag, a parachute and reverse thrust engines, which will together secure a safe landing, according to experts from CAST.

Zheng Yongchun, an associate researcher with the National Astronomical Observatory, says that combining orbiting exploration and a roving probe in one mission is a rational choice for starting Mars exploration at a high level.

"The best and most direct method to look for evidence of life on Mars is to explore the surface. Mars will be a key focus of China's deep space exploration in the future," Zheng says.

But communicating with the Mars probe is still a great challenge. China needs to develop a long-life, powerful relay communication device on the orbiter, says Zheng.

So how will the Mars rover differ from lunar rover Yutu (or Jade Rabbit), which China sent to the moon at the end of 2013?

In an exclusive interview, Jia Yang, deputy chief designer of the Chang'e-3 lunar probe, tells Xinhua the Mars rover will have a better autonomous capability as Mars is much further away than the moon. The distance between Mars and Earth ranges from 55 million kilometers to 400 million kilometers.

"The Mars rover should be able to sense the environment, plan its route, conduct scientific exploration and detect faults autonomously. It should be a mobile intelligence," Jia says.

Two-way signal transmissions between Mars and the Earth could be as long as 40 minutes. So most of the time, the rover will deal with things on its own. Ground controllers will solve the complicated problems, Jia says.

Chinese space experts say they still face a lot of technological hurdles in developing the Mars rover, which should be stronger than the lunar rover Yutu.

Since Mars is further from the sun than the Earth's moon, its solar panels should be as large as possible to generate more electricity, Jia says.

"Although the temperature change on Mars is less drastic than that on the moon, the Mars rover still needs an 'overcoat' to keep warm," Jia says.

Sandstorms often form on the red planet during summer, which inspired the story in the Hollywood blockbuster "The Martian." During the sandstorms, the solar energy will drop dramatically. Chinese space experts will design a "sleep" mode for such occasions, says Jia.

A prototype model of the Mars rover was displayed at the Airshow China 2014. It was about 2 meters long, with six wheels. Its size, weight and technologies were close to those of the American Mars rovers Spirit and Opportunity. Unlike the rover Curiosity, which uses a nuclear battery, the Chinese Mars rover will use solar power.

"Exploring the red planet and deep space will cement China's scientific and technological expertise. The knock-on effect is that innovations and independent intellectual property rights will surge, and, as a result, China's core competence will increase, pushing development in other industries," says Jia.

"As China continues with its lunar mission, glimpsing further and further into deep space, it will play a bigger role in solving key frontier scientific questions," Jia says. 

Editor: ZD 

 

Copyright ©2016 Xinhua News Agency. All rights reserved.

 

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Post re DARPA & words Praising The Shuttle!! DARPA wants IMPROVED SHUTTLE!!!!

Go to show you how idiotic Congress decision to kill shuttle was--- DARPA wants an improved version!!!

Fwd: The Write Stuff

Sent from my iPad

Begin forwarded message:

From: "Space & NASA - Orlando Sentinel" <noreply+feedproxy@google.com>
Date: March 23, 2016 at 7:12:45 AM CDT
To: bobbygmartin1938@gmail.com
Subject: The Write Stuff
Reply-To: "Space & NASA - Orlando Sentinel" <online@orlandosentinel.com>

The Write Stuff

---

• Cargo supply mission launches to International Space Station
• NASA shows off access arm, "last place on earth" for astronauts on Space Coast
• Orbital ATK set for cargo launch to Space Station tonight

Cargo supply mission launches to International Space Station Posted: 22 Mar 2016 08:15 PM PDT Fresh supplies shipped out late Tuesday for the International Space Station, where the shelves finally are getting full after a string of failed deliveries. Launching beneath the light of a nearly full moon, the unmanned Atlas V rocket provided late-night sparkle as it headed north with its precious...

NASA shows off access arm, "last place on earth" for astronauts on Space Coast Posted: 22 Mar 2016 06:04 AM PDT The components that will help NASA once again launch humans into space from the Space Coast are starting to come together. Officials with the space agency, United Launch Alliance and Boeing on Monday in Oak Hill gave reporters a look at the access arm and "White Room" astronauts will use to board...

Orbital ATK set for cargo launch to Space Station tonight Posted: 22 Mar 2016 01:45 PM PDT If you're up late tonight in Central Florida, take a look to the east. United Launch Alliance has a launch window that will open at 11:05 p.m. for a mission that will send supplies to astronauts on the International Space Station. The window will close at 11:35. The company's 188-foot-long Atlas...

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As summarized by a former Chief Engineer at Kennedy Space Center, “The Orbiter is the most fantastic flying machine built by man. Its retirement in 2010 is premature and shortsighted

Fwd: New gravity map gives best view yet inside Mars

Sent from my iPad

Begin forwarded message:

From: "Gary Johnson" <gjohnson144@comcast.net>
Date: March 22, 2016 at 7:54:15 AM CDT
To: "Gary Johnson" <gjohnson144@comcast.net>
Subject: FW: New gravity map gives best view yet inside Mars

 

21-Mar-2016

New gravity map gives best view yet inside Mars

NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center

 

A new map of Mars' gravity made with three NASA spacecraft is the most detailed to date, providing a revealing glimpse into the hidden interior of the Red Planet.

Icarus

 

 

 

 

March 21, 2016

New Gravity Map Gives Best View Yet Inside Mars

A new map of Mars' gravity made with three NASA spacecraft is the most detailed to date, providing a revealing glimpse into the hidden interior of the Red Planet.

"Gravity maps allow us to see inside a planet, just as a doctor uses an X-ray to see inside a patient," said Antonio Genova of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Cambridge, Massachusetts. "The new gravity map will be helpful for future Mars exploration, because better knowledge of the planet's gravity anomalies helps mission controllers insert spacecraft more precisely into orbit about Mars. Furthermore, the improved resolution of our gravity map will help us understand the still-mysterious formation of specific regions of the planet." Genova, who is affiliated with MIT but is located at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, is the lead author of a paper on this research published online March 5 in the journal Icarus.

https://youtu.be/iDTDNIh4Qhw

Scientists have used small fluctuations in the orbits of three NASA spacecraft to map the gravity field of Mars.

Credits: NASA/GSFC/Scientific Visualization Studio

High-resolution images and video

The improved resolution of the new gravity map suggests a new explanation for how some features formed across the boundary that divides the relatively smooth northern lowlands from heavily cratered southern highlands. Also, the team confirmed that Mars has a liquid outer core of molten rock by analyzing tides in the Martian crust and mantle caused by the gravitational pull of the sun and the two moons of Mars. Finally, by observing how Mars' gravity changed over 11 years – the period of an entire cycle of solar activity -- the team inferred the massive amount of carbon dioxide that freezes out of the atmosphere onto a Martian polar ice cap when it experiences winter. They also observed how that mass moves between the south pole and the north pole with the change of season in each hemisphere.

A map of Martian gravity looking down on the North Pole (center). White and red are areas of higher gravity; blue indicates areas of lower gravity.

Credits: MIT/UMBC-CRESST/GSFC

The map was derived using Doppler and range tracking data collected by NASA's Deep Space Network from three NASA spacecraft in orbit around Mars: Mars Global Surveyor (MGS), Mars Odyssey (ODY), and the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). Like all planets, Mars is lumpy, which causes the gravitational pull felt by spacecraft in orbit around it to change. For example, the pull will be a bit stronger over a mountain, and slightly weaker over a canyon.

Slight differences in Mars' gravity changed the trajectory of the NASA spacecraft orbiting the planet, which altered the signal being sent from the spacecraft to the Deep Space Network. These small fluctuations in the orbital data were used to build a map of the Martian gravity field.

A map of Martian gravity looking down at the South Pole (center). White and red are areas of higher gravity; blue indicates areas of lower gravity.

Credits: MIT/UMBC-CRESST/GSFC

The gravity field was recovered using about 16 years of data that were continuously collected in orbit around Mars. However, orbital changes from uneven gravity are tiny, and other forces that can perturb the motion of the spacecraft had to be carefully accounted for, such as the force of sunlight on the spacecraft's solar panels and drag from the Red Planet's thin upper atmosphere. It took two years of analysis and computer modeling to remove the motion not caused by gravity.

"With this new map, we've been able to see gravity anomalies as small as about 100 kilometers (about 62 miles) across, and we've determined the crustal thickness of Mars with a resolution of around 120 kilometers (almost 75 miles)," said Genova. "The better resolution of the new map helps interpret how the crust of the planet changed over Mars' history in many regions."

For example, an area of lower gravity between Acidalia Planitia and Tempe Terra was interpreted before as a system of buried channels that delivered water and sediments from Mars' southern highlands into the northern lowlands billions of years ago when the Martian climate was wetter than it is today. The new map reveals that this low gravity anomaly is definitely larger and follows the boundary between the highlands and the lowlands. This system of gravity troughs is unlikely to be only due to buried channels because in places the region is elevated above the surrounding plains. The new gravity map shows that some of these features run perpendicular to the local topography slope, against what would have been the natural downhill flow of water.

A Martian gravity map showing the Tharsis volcanoes and surrounding flexure. The white areas in the center are higher-gravity regions produced by the massive Tharsis volcanoes, and the surrounding blue areas are lower-gravity regions that may be cracks in the crust (lithosphere).

Credits: MIT/UMBC-CRESST/GSFC

An alternative explanation is that this anomaly may be a consequence of a flexure or bending of the lithosphere -- the strong, outermost layer of the planet -- due to the formation of the Tharsis region. Tharsis is a volcanic plateau on Mars thousands of miles across with the largest volcanoes in the solar system. As the Tharsis volcanoes grew, the surrounding lithosphere buckled under their immense weight.

The new gravity field also allowed the team to confirm indications from previous gravity solutions that Mars has a liquid outer core of molten rock. The new gravity solution improved the measurement of the Martian tides, which will be used by geophysicists to improve the model of Mars' interior.

Changes in Martian gravity over time have been previously measured using the MGS and ODY missions to monitor the polar ice caps. For the first time, the team used MRO data to continue monitoring their mass. The team has determined that when one hemisphere experiences winter, approximately 3 trillion to 4 trillion tons of carbon dioxide freezes out of the atmosphere onto the northern and southern polar caps, respectively. This is about 12 to 16 percent of the mass of the entire Martian atmosphere. NASA's Viking missions first observed this massive seasonal precipitation of carbon dioxide. The new observation confirms numerical predictions from the Mars Global Reference Atmospheric Model – 2010.

The research was funded by grants from NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter mission and NASA's Mars Data Analysis Program. 

Bill Steigerwald

NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Maryland

William.A.Steigerwald@nasa.gov

Last Updated: March 21, 2016

Editor: Bill Steigerwald

 

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March 21, 2016

New Gravity Map Gives Best View Yet Inside Mars

This Mars map shows variations in thickness of the planet's crust, the relatively thin surface layer overlying the mantle of the planet. It shows unprecedented detail derived from new mapping of variations in Mars' gravitational pull on orbiters.Credit: NASA/GSFC/Scientific Visualization Studio
› Full image and caption

A new map of Mars' gravity made with three NASA spacecraft is the most detailed to date, providing a revealing glimpse into the hidden interior of the Red Planet.

"Gravity maps allow us to see inside a planet, just as a doctor uses an X-ray to see inside a patient," said Antonio Genova of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Cambridge. "The new gravity map will be helpful for future Mars exploration, because better knowledge of the planet's gravity anomalies helps mission controllers insert spacecraft more precisely into orbit about Mars. Furthermore, the improved resolution of our gravity map will help us understand the still-mysterious formation of specific regions of the planet." Genova, who is affiliated with MIT but is located at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, is the lead author of a paper on this research published online March 5 in the journal Icarus.

https://youtu.be/iDTDNIh4Qhw

The improved resolution of the new gravity map suggests a new explanation for how some features formed across the boundary that divides the relatively smooth northern lowlands from heavily cratered southern highlands. Also, the team confirmed that Mars has a liquid outer core of molten rock by analyzing tides in the Martian crust and mantle caused by the gravitational pull of the sun and the two moons of Mars. Finally, by observing how Mars' gravity changed over 11 years - the period of an entire cycle of solar activity -- the team inferred the massive amount of carbon dioxide that freezes out of the atmosphere onto a Martian polar ice cap when it experiences winter. They also observed how that mass moves between the south pole and the north pole with the change of season in each hemisphere.

The map was derived using Doppler and range tracking data collected by NASA's Deep Space Network from three NASA spacecraft in orbit around Mars: Mars Global Surveyor (MGS), Mars Odyssey (ODY), and the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). Like all planets, Mars is lumpy, which causes the gravitational pull felt by spacecraft in orbit around it to change. For example, the pull will be a bit stronger over a mountain, and slightly weaker over a canyon.

Slight differences in Mars' gravity changed the trajectory of the NASA spacecraft orbiting the planet, which altered the signal being sent from the spacecraft to the Deep Space Network. These small fluctuations in the orbital data were used to build a map of the Martian gravity field.

The gravity field was recovered using about 16 years of data that were continuously collected in orbit around Mars. However, orbital changes from uneven gravity are tiny, and other forces that can perturb the motion of the spacecraft had to be carefully accounted for, such as the force of sunlight on the spacecraft's solar panels and drag from the Red Planet's thin upper atmosphere. It took two years of analysis and computer modeling to remove the motion not caused by gravity.

"With this new map, we've been able to see gravity anomalies as small as about 62 miles (100 kilometers) across, and we've determined the crustal thickness of Mars with a resolution of almost 75 miles (around 120 kilometers)," said Genova. "The better resolution of the new map helps interpret how the crust of the planet changed over Mars' history in many regions."

For example, an area of lower gravity between Acidalia Planitia and Tempe Terra was interpreted before as a system of buried channels that delivered water and sediments from Mars' southern highlands into the northern lowlands billions of years ago when the Martian climate was wetter than it is today. The new map reveals that this low gravity anomaly is definitely larger and follows the boundary between the highlands and the lowlands. This system of gravity troughs is unlikely to be only due to buried channels because in places the region is elevated above the surrounding plains. The new gravity map shows that some of these features run perpendicular to the local topography slope, against what would have been the natural downhill flow of water.

An alternative explanation is that this anomaly may be a consequence of a flexure or bending of the lithosphere -- the strong, outermost layer of the planet -- due to the formation of the Tharsis region. Tharsis is a volcanic plateau on Mars thousands of miles across with the largest volcanoes in the solar system. As the Tharsis volcanoes grew, the surrounding lithosphere buckled under their immense weight.

The new gravity field also allowed the team to confirm indications from previous gravity solutions that Mars has a liquid outer core of molten rock. The new gravity solution improved the measurement of the Martian tides, which will be used by geophysicists to improve the model of Mars' interior.

Changes in Martian gravity over time have been previously measured using the MGS and ODY missions to monitor the polar ice caps. For the first time, the team used MRO data to continue monitoring their mass. The team has determined that when one hemisphere experiences winter, approximately 3 to 4 trillion tons of carbon dioxide freezes out of the atmosphere onto the northern and southern polar caps, respectively. This is about 12 to 16 percent of the mass of the entire Martian atmosphere. NASA's Viking missions first observed this massive seasonal precipitation of carbon dioxide. The new observation confirms numerical predictions from the Mars Global Reference Atmospheric Model - 2010.

The research was funded by grants from NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter mission and NASA's Mars Data Analysis Program. NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter and Odyssey missions.

For images and video, refer to:

http://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/2016/mars-gravity-map

 

Media Contact

William Steigerwald / Nancy Neal Jones
Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md.
301-286-5017 / 301-286-0031
william.a.steigerwald@nasa.gov / nancy.n.jones@nasa.gov

Guy Webster
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.
818-354-6278
guy.w.webster@jpl.nasa.gov

Dwayne Brown / Laurie Cantillo
NASA Headquarters, Washington
202-358-1726 / 202-358-1077
dwayne.c.brown@nasa.gov / laura.l.cantillo@nasa.gov

2016-079  

 

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