SpaceX Dragon Arrives at ISS - Docked

SpaceX Dragon spacecraft arrives at ISS to unload cargo and refresh astronauts' supplies. 

Credit: NASA

SpaceX's Dragon capsule is set to arrive at the International Space Station this morning.

The cargo craft, launched early Saturday from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, is carrying more than 5,000 pounds of supplies and payloads, including the Cloud–Aerosol Transport System (CATS), which will monitor cloud and aerosol coverage that directly impacts the global climate.

ESA Astronaut Samantha Cristoforetti tweeted; 'Dragon is berthed! Did leak check & equalized pressure, now our hatch is open. On Dragon hatch "smell of space".' 

Cloud–Aerosol Transport System (CATS) 

Credit: NASA

Antonov 225 Mriya Takeoff at Minneapolis: Largest cargo plane

The Antonov An-225 Mriya is a strategic airlift cargo aircraft that was designed by the Soviet Union's Antonov Design Bureau in the 1980s.

The An-225's name, Mriya (Мрiя) means "Dream" (Inspiration) in Ukrainian. It is powered by six turbofan engines and is the longest and heaviest airplane ever built with a maximum takeoff weight of 640 tonnes.

It also has the largest wingspan of any aircraft in operational service. The single example built has the Ukrainian civil registration UR-82060.

A second airframe was partially built; its completion was halted because of lack of funding and interest.

This image shows A Volga-Dnepr Airlines Antonov An-124

Credit: Wiki

The Antonov An-225, initially developed for the task of transporting the Buran spaceplane, was an enlargement of the successful Antonov An-124.

The first and only An-225 was completed in 1988. After successfully fulfilling its Soviet military missions, it was mothballed for eight years.

It was then refurbished and re-introduced, and is in commercial operation with Antonov Airlines carrying oversized payloads.

The airlifter holds the absolute world records for an airlifted single item payload of 189,980 kilograms (418,834 pounds), and an airlifted total payload of 253,820 kilograms (559,577 pounds).

It has also transported a payload of 247,000 kilograms (545,000 pounds) on a commercial flight.

Comet 2014 Q2 Lovejoy image

A new comet is in the skies during January. 

This is comet 2014 Q2 Lovejoy, discovered last August by prolific comet-hunter Terry Lovejoy.

Having spent the time since its discovery in the southern hemisphere as a faint object, it is now reaching fourth magnitude, and is visible using binoculars or small telescopes.

It should be visible with the naked eye from country locations.

On 6 January Robin Scagell found the comet easily in 12 x 45 binoculars from Flackwell Heath, Bucks.

'I was surprised how bright and large it appeared. I didn't have to search very carefully to find it, ' he reports. 'It was circular, with no hint of a tail.'

By 10 January the comet was easily spotted using 30 mm binoculars. Photography brings out a faint gas tail, which changes daily as a result of pressure from the solar wind.

During January it gets higher in the sky and also becomes brighter. It reaches perihelion – its closest to the Sun, on 30 January.

However, it will be closest to the Earth in the second week of January, which is when it will probably be at its brightest for Earth-bound observers.

Comet Lovejoy's track during December 2014 and early January 2015. 

Ticks mark its position at midnight on the date shown.

SLAC 3,200-megapixel camera: World's largest digital camera

SLAC is leading the construction of the 3,200-megapixel camera, which will be the size of a small car and weigh more than 3 tons. 

The digital camera will be the largest ever built, allowing LSST to create an unprecedented archive of astronomical data that will help researchers study the formation of galaxies, track potentially hazardous asteroids, observe exploding stars and better understand mysterious dark matter and dark energy, which make up 95 percent of the universe. 

Credit: SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory

Plans for the construction of the world's largest digital camera at the Department of Energy's SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory have reached a major milestone.

The 3,200-megapixel centerpiece of the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope (LSST), which will provide unprecedented details of the universe and help address some of its biggest mysteries, has received key "Critical Decision 2" approval from the DOE.

"This important decision endorses the camera fabrication budget that we proposed," said LSST Director Steven Kahn.

"Together with the construction funding we received from the National Science Foundation in August, it is now clear that LSST will have the support it needs to be completed on schedule."

Science operations are scheduled to begin in 2022 with LSST taking digital images of the entire visible southern sky every few nights from atop a mountain called Cerro Pachón in Chile.

It will produce the widest, deepest and fastest views of the night sky ever observed.

Over a 10-year time frame, the observatory will detect tens of billions of objects, the first time a telescope will catalogue more objects in the universe than there are people on Earth, and will create movies of the sky with details that have never been seen before.

LSST will generate a vast public archive of data, approximately 6 million gigabytes per year, that will help researchers study the formation of galaxies, track potentially hazardous asteroids, observe exploding stars and better understand dark matter and dark energy, which make up 95 percent of the universe but whose nature remains unknown.

"The telescope is a key part of the long-term strategy to study dark energy and other scientific topics in the United States and elsewhere," said David MacFarlane, SLAC's director of particle physics and astrophysics.

"SLAC places high priority on the successful development and construction of the LSST camera, and is very pleased that the project has achieved this major approval milestone."

This is a rendering of the LSST observatory (foreground) atop Cerro Pachón in Chile. 

When LSST starts taking images of the entire visible southern sky in 2022, it will produce the widest, deepest and fastest views of the night sky ever observed. 

Over a 10-year time frame, LSST will image several tens of billions of objects and create movies of the sky with unprecedented detail. 

Credit: Large Synoptic Survey Telescope Project Office

The LSST team can now move forward with the development of the camera and prepare for the "Critical Decision 3" review process next summer, the last requirement before actual fabrication of the camera can begin.

Components of the camera, which will be the size of a small car and weigh more than 3 tons, will be built by an international collaboration of labs and universities, including DOE's Brookhaven National Laboratory, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and SLAC, where the camera will be assembled and tested.

"Many excellent, hard-working people have been developing LSST for a long time and it is gratifying to see the quality of their efforts being recognized by the DOE approval," said Steve Ritz of the University of California, Santa Cruz, the lead scientist of the camera project. "We are all excited about the amount of great science that LSST will enable."

SpaceX Falcon 6 Rocket Launch: Orbit Insertion success but loss of launcher

Dragon cargo ship on its way to the International Space Station. 

A Space Exploration Technologies Falcon 9 rocket blasted off from Cape Canaveral Air Force tion.

The rocket lifted off at 4:47 a.m. EST (0947 GMT), streaking through nighttime skies as it headed into orbit.

Nine minutes later, the rocket’s upper-stage engine shut down and deposited Dragon into its preliminary orbit.

The capsule was due to reach the space station, which circles about 260 miles above the planet, on Monday.

As Dragon began its solo journey, the discarded first-stage booster was attempting to land itself vertically on a platform in the ocean, part of an ongoing series of tests to develop reusable rockets.

"Rocket made it to drone spaceport ship, but landed hard," SpaceX founder and chief executive Elon Musk posted on Twitter.

The rocket was aiming for a 300- by 100-ft platform stationed about 200 miles off the coast of Jacksonville, Florida, in the Atlantic Ocean.

Ground control teams reported two engine restarts as the rocket descended back through the atmosphere before the communications link was lost.

The rocket was expected to make one more engine burn and extend four landing legs prior to touchdown.

SpaceX engineers stationed on a nearby support ship tried to catch the descent and landing on video, but it was "pitch dark and foggy," Musk said. "Didn't get good landing/impact video ... Will piece it together from telemetry and ... actual pieces."

The ship itself is fine, he added, though some of the support equipment on the deck will need to be replaced, Musk added.

He previously had pegged the chance of a successful touchdown on the first try at 50 per cent.

"Returning anything from space is a challenge, but returning a Falcon 9 first stage for a precision landing presents a number of additional hurdles," SpaceX said in a blog post about the test.

"At 14 stories tall and traveling upwards of 1300 m/s (meters per second), stabilizing the Falcon 9 first stage for re-entry is like trying to balance a rubber broomstick on your hand in the middle of a wind storm."

SpaceX Launch. Credit: M. Staples

To help stabilise the stage and to reduce its speed, SpaceX relights the engines for a series of three burns.

The first burn, the boostback burn, adjusts the impact point of the vehicle and is followed by the supersonic retro propulsion burn that, along with the drag of the atmosphere, slows the vehicle's speed from 1300 m/s to about 250 m/s.

"The final burn is the landing burn, during which the legs deploy and the vehicle's speed is further reduced to around 2 m/s.

“The legspan of the Falcon 9 first stage is about 70 ft and while the ship is equipped with powerful thrusters to help it stay in place, it is not actually anchored, so finding the bullseye becomes particularly tricky,” SpaceX said.

“During previous attempts, we could only expect a landing accuracy of within 10 km. For this attempt, we’re targeting a landing accuracy of within 10 meters,” SpaceX said.

SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket grid fins. Credit: SpaceX

Musk said dark and foggy conditions prevented cameras aboard the rocket and the landing barge from recording good video of the impact, but there is plenty of other data to help determine what happened.

SpaceX engineers revealed that a loss of power in the grid fins caused a loss of control of the launcher, resulting in it being damaged on impact.

Musk tweeted the grid fins added to the rocket launched Saturday “worked extremely well from hypersonic velocity to subsonic, but ran out of hydraulic fluid right before landing.”

An upcoming flight will carry 50 percent more hydraulic fluid, Musk said. The mission “should have plenty of margin for landing attempt next month.”

ESA Rosetta: Latest Four-image mosaic of Comet 67/P

This four-image mosaic from ESA Rosetta spacecraft comprises images taken from a distance of 28.4 km from the centre of Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko on 3 January. 

The image resolution is  2.4 m/pixel and the mosaic measures 4.4 x 4.2 km. 

Credit: ESA

This four-image mosaic from ESA Rosetta spacecraft comprises images taken from a distance of 28.4 km from the centre of Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko on 3 January.

The image resolution at this distance is 2.4 m/pixel and the individual 1024 x 1024 frames measure 2.5 km across.

The mosaic is slightly cropped and rotated and measures about 4.4 x 4.2 km.

Because rotation and translation of the comet during the imaging sequence make it difficult to create an accurate mosaic, always refer to the individual images before drawing conclusions about any strange structures or low intensity extended emission.

The mosaic shows a great view across the Imhotep region, which includes the Cheops boulder on the larger of the two comet lobes.

The name of this region was revealed during the AGU conference in December (see the 17 Dec post).

The smaller of the comet’s lobes is situated to the far left of the mosaic.

The illumination conditions contribute to the interesting view of the features standing out against the shadowed foreground, close to the centre.

Some of the streaks and specks seen around the nucleus will likely be dust grains ejected from the comet, captured in the 4.3 second exposure time.

NASA Volcanobot: Geological Robot Explores Kilhauea Fissures

An active lava flow from Kilauea volcano in Hawaii. 

Credit: Reuters

Nasa is planning to explore volcanoes using robots being developed at its Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

The space agency's Jet Propulsion Laboratory has already tested one robot, VolcanoBot 1, at the Kilauea volcano in Hawaii and is now developing a second, lighter and smaller robot, to find out how volcanoes erupt.

Carolyn Parcheta, from Nasa's JPL, and robotics researcher Aaron Parness are developing bots that can delve into crevices humans never could in order to gain a new insight into volcanoes.

"We don't know exactly how volcanoes erupt. We have models but they are all very, very simplified. This project aims to help make those models more realistic," Parcheta explained.

Two robots designed to explore volcanoes are pictured here. VolcanoBot 1 (right) has a length of 12 inches (30 centimeters) and 6.7-inch (17-centimeter) wheels. 

VolcanoBot 2 (left) is smaller, as it is 10 inches (25 centimeters) long and has 5 inch (12 centimeter) wheels.

Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

VolcanoBot 1 was 30cm long and 17cm wide. It was rolled down into a fissure (a crack that erupts magma) in the active Kilauea volcano in Hawaii in May last year.

VolcanoBot 1 explored the Kilauea volcano in Hawaii in May 2014. 

The robot is enabling researchers at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory to put together a 3-D map of the fissure.

Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

The robot set about mapping the pathways of the magma, descending to depths of 25m to two locations.

VolcanoBot 1 allowed the researchers to develop a 3D map of the fissure, confirming that bulges in the rock wall seen at the surface are present deep underground as well.

"To eventually understand how to predict eruptions and conduct hazard assessments, we need to understand how the magma is coming out of the ground. This is the first time we have been able to measure it directly, from the inside, to centimetre-scale accuracy," Parcheta said.

Researchers now want to return to the site with VolcanoBot 2 to delve deeper into the volcano. The latest version of the robot has stronger motors and electrical communications, so more data can be returned. As well as being smaller and lighter, it can tip up and down and turn to look at features around it.

Carolyn Parcheta working with VolcanoBot 1 in Hawaii in May 2014

Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

"It has better mobility, stronger motors and smaller (5 inch, or 12 centimeter) wheels than the VolcanoBot 1. We've decreased the amount of cords that come up to the surface when it's in a volcano," Parcheta said.

VolcanoBot 2will be tested in March 2015, Nasa said.

The researchers say their findings have implications for studying volcanoes on other planets and moons, including Mars, Mercury, Enceladus and Europa.

Parness said: "In the last few years, NASA spacecraft have sent back incredible pictures of caves, fissures and what look like volcanic vents on Mars and the moon. We don't have the technology yet to explore them, but they are so tantalising!

"Working with Carolyn, we're trying to bridge that gap using volcanoes here on Earth for practice. We're learning about how volcanoes erupt here on Earth, too, and that has a lot of benefits in its own right."