NASA LDSD Flight Test: Saucer Flies to Near Space

Ian Clark, principal investigator of the Low-Density Supersonic Decelerator (LDSD), takes us through a play-by-play of NASA’s recent 'flying saucer' Test in Hawaii, using high-definition video shot from cameras on board the test vehicle.

The goal of this experimental flight test, the first of three planned for the project, was to determine if the balloon-launched, rocket-powered, saucer-shaped, design could reach the altitudes and airspeeds needed to test two new breakthrough technologies destined for future Mars missions.

Carried as payload during the shakeout flight were two cutting-edge technologies scheduled to be tested next year aboard this same type of test vehicle.

The Supersonic Inflatable Aerodynamic Decelerator (SIAD) is a large, doughnut-shaped air brake that deployed during the flight, helping slow the vehicle from 3.8 to 2 times the speed of sound.

The second, the Supersonic Disksail Parachute, is the largest supersonic parachute ever flown. It has more than double the area of the parachute which was used for the Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) mission that carried the Curiosity rover to the surface of Mars.

"A good test is one where there are no surprises but a great test is one where you are able to learn new things, and that is certainly what we have in this case." said Ian Clark, principal investigator for LDSD at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California.

"Our test vehicle performed as advertised. The SIAD and ballute, which extracted the parachute, also performed beyond expectations. We also got significant insight into the fundamental physics of parachute inflation. We are literally re-writing the books on high-speed parachute operations, and we are doing it a year ahead of schedule."

ESA Rosetta: Comet chaser nears its target - Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko

This artist's impression shows the Rosetta orbiter at comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko. The image is not to scale. 

Credit: ESA/ATG Medialab

After a decade-long quest spanning six billion kilometres (3.75 billion miles), the European probe Rosetta, will come face to face Wednesday with a comet, one of the Solar System's enigmatic wanderers.

The moment will mark a key phase of the most ambitious project ever undertaken by the European Space Agency (ESA), a 1.3 billion euro ($1.76 billion) bid to get to know these timeless space rovers.

More than 400 million km from where it was launched in March 2004, the spacecraft Rosetta will finally meet up with its prey, Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko.

To get there, Rosetta has had to make four flybys of Mars and Earth, using their gravitational force as a slingshot to build up speed, and then entering a 31-month hibernation as light from the distant Sun became too weak for its solar panels.

It was awakened in January.

After braking manoeuvres, the three-tonne craft should on Wednesday be about 100 km from the comet—a navigational feat that, if all goes well, will be followed by glittering scientific rewards.

"It's taken more than 10 years to get here," said Sylvain Lodiot, spacecraft operations manager.

"Now we have to learn how to dock with the comet, and stay with it for the months ahead."

Halley's Comet (1P/Halleys)

Blazing across the sky as they loop around the Sun, comets have long been considered portents of wonderful or terrible events, the birth and death of kings, bountiful harvests or famines, floods or earthquakes.

Astrophysicists, though, see them rather differently.

Comets, they believe, are clusters of the oldest dust and ice in the Solar System, the rubble left from the formation of the planets 4.6 billion years ago.

These so-called dirty snowballs could be the key to understanding how the planets coalesced after the Sun flared into life, say some.

Indeed, one theory, the "pan-spermia" hypothesis, is that comets, by bombarding the fledgling Earth, helped kickstart life here by bringing water and organic molecules.

Until now, though, explorations of comets have been rare and mainly entailed flybys by probes on unrelated missions snatching pictures from thousands of kilometres away.

Exceptions were the US probe Stardust, which brought home dust snatched from a comet's wake, while Europe's Giotto ventured to within 200 km of a comet's surface.

On November 11, the plan is for Rosetta to inch to within a few kilometres of the comet to send down a 100-kilogramme (220-pound) refrigerator-sized robot laboratory, Philae.

ESA Rosetta's Lander, Philae

Anchored to the surface, Philae will carry out experiments in cometary chemistry and texture for up to six months.

After the lander expires, Rosetta will accompany Comet 67P (C-G) as it passes around the Sun and heads out towards the orbit of Jupiter.

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Astronaut Sees 'UFO' Near Space Station - Video

When any kind of unidentified flying object floats by the International Space Station, you can bet astronauts are going to notice. That's just what happened this week, and one space traveler caught it all on video.

NASA astronaut Chris Cassidy was quick on the draw when he captured a video of the 'unidentified object' near the space station. He spotted the object floating near the space station on Monday (Aug. 19).

"Was it a UFO? Not really," NASA officials wrote in a video description. "Russian ground controllers identified it as an antenna cover from the Zvezda service module."

The object was an antenna cover from one of the low-gain WAL antennas on the space station used to help guide the European Space Agency's unmanned Automated Transfer Vehicle cargo ships during rendezvous and docking operations, NASA officials said.

An unidentified object floats near the International Space Station on August 19, 2013. 

Russian ground controllers later identified it as an antenna cover from the Zvezda service module.

Credit: NASA TV

NASA spokesman Josh Byerly told reporters that the wayward antenna cover, which is now space junk, poses no impact threat to the space station.

During a spacewalk outside the station today (Aug. 22), two Russian cosmonauts are inspecting six WAL antennas on the Zvezda module to check the positions of their covers.

The cosmonauts reported some of the covers to be loose and were expected to tighten them at a later date.

Storm Clouds Over the Atlantic Ocean Near Brazil

One of the Expedition 36 crew members aboard the International Space Station used a 50mm lens to record this image of a large mass of storm clouds over the Atlantic Ocean near Brazil and the Equator on July 4, 2013. 

A Russian spacecraft, docked to the orbiting outpost, partially covers a small patch of sunglint on the ocean waters in a break in the clouds. 

Image Credit: NASA

Black hole Discovered to be spinning Close to the relativistic limit

A composite X-ray image of the galaxy NGC1365 taken by NuSTAR and XMM-Newton.

Courtesy: Guido Risaliti

The best evidence yet that some supermassive black holes (SMBH) rotate at extremely high rates has been found by an international team of astronomers.

Made using the recently launched NuStar space telescope, the study suggests that a huge black hole at the centre of a distant galaxy acquired a huge amount of rotational energy as it formed.

The discovery could provide important information about how SMBHs and their associated galaxies form and evolve.

Astronomers know that black holes that are as large as a billion solar masses can be found at the heart of most galaxies.

Because these gravitational behemoths are created at the same time as their host galaxies, understanding how they formed could provide important information about galaxy formation and evolution.

Knowing the spin of an SMBH can provide important clues about how it formed. If the black hole grew slowly, by sucking in small amounts of matter from all directions, then it isn't expected to have much spin.

However, if the formation process involves the black hole gorging rapidly on matter from a specific direction, conservation of angular momentum would leave it with an extremely large spin.

Redshifted X-rays
The spin of a supermassive black hole can be measured by looking at the effect that the spin has on material that is being sucked in to the black hole.

This material forms an accretion disc that swirls around the black hole before disappearing from sight. The faster the black hole is spinning, the closer the inner edge of the disc is to the centre of the black hole.

As a result, the X-rays emanating from the inner edge are affected by the black hole's gravity more when the black hole is spinning.

Astronomers see this as a "stretching" of the wavelength (redshift) of characteristic X-rays emanating from iron and other elements in the accretion disc. By measuring the redshift, the spin of the black hole can be deduced.

The problem, however, is that these X-rays must first travel through fast-moving clouds of gas that surround the accretion disc.

The absorption of X-rays by the gas could mimic the effect of a spinning black hole. As a result, astronomers have not been that confident about their estimates of black-hole spin.

Nearest supernova of its type for 40 years | University of Oxford Department of Physics

Astronomers have discovered a bright, nearby supernova, otherwise known as an exploding star, and say it is the nearest of its type observed for 40 years.

The supernova was spotted in the Pinwheel Galaxy, M101, a spiral galaxy a mere 21 million light years away, lying in the famous constellation of the Great Bear (Ursa Major).

Scientists from the Department of Physics, University of Oxford made the discovery with their colleagues from the Palomar Transient Factory (PTF) collaboration, using a robotic telescope in California in the United States.

Oxford team leader, Dr Mark Sullivan, said: 'The most exciting thing is that this is what's known as a type 1a supernova – the kind we use to measure the expansion of the Universe. Seeing one explode so close by allows us to study these events in unprecedented detail.'

The supernova, dubbed PTF11kly, is still getting brighter, and the team's best guess is that it might even be visible with good binoculars in ten days' time, appearing brighter than any other supernova of its type in the last 40 years.

Following the discovery, the team have triggered various follow-up observations around the globe. They hope to use NASA's Hubble Space Telescope to study the supernova's chemistry and physics, and the team will be watching carefully over the next few weeks as the supernova evolves.

The scientists in PTF have discovered more than 1,000 supernovae since it started operating in 2008, but they believe this could be their most significant discovery yet. The last time a supernova of this sort occurred so close was in 1972.

The Palomar Transient Factory is a wide-field survey operated at the Palomar Observatory by the California Institute of Technology on behalf of a worldwide consortium of partner institutions. Collaborating institutions are Caltech, Columbia University, Las Cumbres Observatory Global Telescope, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, UC Berkeley, University of Oxford, and the Weizmann Institute of Science (Israel).

Nearest supernova of its type for 40 years | University of Oxford Department of Physics

Iran's newly disclosed nuclear fuel facility near Qom

Iran's newly disclosed nuclear fuel facility near Qom, Iran, is pictured in this GeoEye satellite photograph

Picture: REUTERS