While you’ve been out living your life in the sunshine and open air, scientists watched as six men willingly spent 520 days locked in windowless, steel tubes inside a Moscow warehouse. Results: this group, once cream of the astronaut crop, morphed into sluggish, unmotivated frat dudes. More »
Interested in buying a 15,000-foot runway? Or maybe a launch pad? It turns out that NASA is quietly planning to lease or sell off a few of its assets at the Kennedy Space Center. A list of items for sale apparently isn’t available yet, but it’s said that Launch Pad 39A, a runway, and the Launch Control Center are up for sale.
If you’re interested in starting your own private space program, talking with NASA about their liquidation sale might be a good start, but of course, you’ll have to have a lot of money in order to get it off the ground (pun intended). Currently, entrepreneur Elon Musk is doing just that with his SpaceX program.
Apparently NASA is wanting to sell their things off quickly before any of the structures fall into a state of disrepair — ideally they want everything sold by the end of 2013, with offers expected to roll in about six months from now. So, if you’re serious about your new space venture, you might be able to snag a bargain or two with some strategic offers.
The process is mostly secret, though, because NASA has agreed to let bidders declare their proposals proprietary and keep them out of the view of competitors and the general public, similar to how a silent auction works, so be prepared to come with your best offers in hand, or else Musk might beat you to the punch.
[via Orlando Sentinel]
Image via Flickr
NASA to hawk space shuttle facilities is written by Craig Lloyd & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.
NASA’s Curiosity rover has already reached a few milestones, including being the first ever to check in using Foursquare on another planet. Tonight, however, the Mars rover will make an appearance at tonight’s New Year’s celebrations in New York City’s Time Square, where millions will watch the ball drop. The rover is planning to deliver a “special message” on the big screens.
Curiosity announced the news via her Twitter account, where she tells her followers to “look for a special message from Mars on the giant Toshiba screens” in Times Square in New York City. Sadly, that’s all the information that we were given, other than it’ll be a “video greeting” and if you can’t make it to NYC for New Year’s, the rover will tweet the greeting later today anyway.
We’re not sure exactly what Curiosity has up her sleeve for tonight. It could be a live stream of Mars or just a quick pre-recorded video of the rover prancing around on the Red Planet. It would be awesome if NASA used the opportunity to announce a new discovery of the planet, but we’re guessing that the “special message” will merely just be a cheesy greeting from the rover.
The Toshiba big screens in Times Square will display the official New Year’s Eve countdown, since they’re the exclusive sponsor for the Official Countdown of the Times Square 2013 New Year’s Eve Celebration, and the company estimates that more than one billion people around the world will be tuning into the broadcast this evening.
NASA’s Curiosity Mars rover will deliver a “special message” in Times Square tonight is written by Craig Lloyd & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.
Everyone imagines what it would be like to live in the International Space Station for a few months, but many don’t take the noise level into consideration — we kind of assume that since it’s in space, things are a bit quieter, even with all of the machinery and gadgetry that surround the astronauts, but it’s actually quite the contrary.
Commander Chris Hadfield recorded 16 seconds of ambient noise aboard the ISS, and it sounds like a data center full of servers and cooling equipment — in other words, it’s not as quiet as you’d expect. Then again, it’s not too surprising since there’s a ton of equipment on board, like all sorts of machinery, computers, and testing equipment.
Hadfield notes that the quietest places in the ISS are the astronauts’ sleep stations (obviously), since they’re essentially “small insulated pods” that can close up to block out most noise. However, Hadfield also notes that the bathroom is the loudest place on the ISS, so if you really want your privacy and a quiet place to go to, don’t resort to the toilet.
Much of the noise comes from the fans and air pumps necessary to keep the astronauts breathing, so we don’t think many of the astronauts on the ISS complain about it. Hadfield says that the ISS is pressurized to sea level pressure, since the thicker air helps keep all the machinery cooler and “is more natural” for the astronauts.
ISS releases audio clip of ambient noise inside orbiting laboratory is written by Craig Lloyd & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.
Tonight NASA will be pushing twin lunar-orbiting spacecraft down towards our moon in order to crash them out with one final mission after nearly a full Earth-year’s work. This final mission will have Gravity Recovery and Interior Laboratory (GRAIL) mission probes “Ebb” and “Flow” rammed purposefully into an unnamed moon mountain using up the remaining fuel reserves on both units. This final mission will help NASA engineers validate models outlining fuel consumption so as to improve future mission fuel needs.
The two craft still flying above the heavenly body as this article is published have reached a point at which their usefulness is no longer greater than their potential for giving us information on remaining fuel supplies. At the moment its also true that the exact amount of fuel that either craft has inside it is not known precisely, this knowledge being part of the endgame of the crash.
The image you see above is of the moon (surprise!) showing “Lunar Heritage Sites” as well as the final mile the GRAIL team will be flying along – starting down there at the South of the moon and crashing right up near the top, circled in red. Below you’ll see just about as detailed a look as you’re going to get of the impact site – the actual crash won’t be visible as it’ll be in relative dark as it happens. Images from NASA/GSFC.
The crashes will occur in order with Ebb reaching solid moon surface at approximately 2:28:40 p.m. PST. The craft known as Flow will reach the surface right around 20 seconds after Ebb has landed. Both craft have been flying “in formation” according to NASA since January 1st, 2012.
“Our lunar twins may be in the twilight of their operational lives, but one thing is for sure, they are going down swinging. Even during the last half of their last orbit, we are going to do an engineering experiment that could help future missions operate more efficiently.” – GRAIL project manager David Lehman of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California
The final descent that these craft will be making will have depletion burn of their fuel reserves in a way that makes them skim the surface of the moon until “the elevated terrain of the target mountain gets in their way.” In other words, yes, they will literally be crashing into a moon mountain. Lehman continued, “We’ve had our share of challenges during this mission and always come through in flying colors, but nobody I know around here has ever flown into a moon mountain before. It’ll be a first for us, that’s for sure.”
Above: Ebb and Flow points of impact on both of their friendly moon mountain resting places. Image from NASA/JPL-Caltech/MIT/GSFC.
The original set of tasks set forth for Ebb and Flow included capturing gravity field maps of the moon, they having generated the highest-resolution gravity field map of any celestial body to date. Congratulations, Ebb and Flow! You did well! Now it’s time for you to crash into a moon mountain at 3,760 mph (1.7 kilometers per second) – have fun!
Why NASA wants the next Moon landing to crash (but not burn) is written by Chris Burns & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.
NASA has announced today that the Curiosity rover currently putzing around on Mars has conducted its first, extensive test that analyzed soil samples that the rover dug up previously. The results found a “complex chemistry” in the soil. Water, sulfur and chlorine-containing substances were discovered, along with a few other ingredients.
The soil sample was dug up at a site called “Rocknest” that lies in a relatively flat part of Gale Crater, but still miles away from the rover’s main destination on the slope of a mountain called Mount Sharp. NASA selected Rocknest as the first scooping site because it has fine sand particles that are well-suited for “scrubbing interior surfaces of the arm’s sample-handling chambers.”
The rover’s examination of the dirt samples found that the composition is made up of about “half common volcanic minerals and half non-crystalline materials.” Furthermore, the water that was discovered during testing doesn’t mean that the sample was wet by any means. Water molecules were simply bound to grains of sand, and it’s not unusual, but the quantity that was discovered was higher than anticipated.
Of course, nothing is final yet. NASA says that this is just the beginning of sampling soil on Mars, and the team plans to obviously conduct tons of further tests over the next two years in order to see if Mars once was inhabited with life forms, but the discovery of water molecules is definitely a good sign, and is a step forward for the Mars Curiosity team.
Mars Curiosity rover conducts first soil sample test, finds water, sulfur and chlorine is written by Craig Lloyd & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.
Elon Musk, the founder and CEO of the private spaceflight company SpaceX, is aiming his sights towards starting a Mars colony of up to 80,000 people. To do this, Musk wants to ferry people to Mars at an estimated cost of $500,000 per person. Of course, this isn’t the first time that Musk has talked about taking humans to Mars, but his plans are becoming more and more detailed as time goes on.
Musk’s vision includes starting off with a pioneering group of around 10 people or less, and they would get to the Red Planet aboard a huge reusable rocket powered by liquid oxygen and methane. Going along for the ride would be large amounts of equipment, including machines to make fertilizer, methane, and oxygen. The machines would use the atmospheric nitrogen and carbon dioxide, as well as the planet’s subsurface water ice as resources.
Musk estimates that the cost of a ticket to Mars would be around $500,000. Obviously, there’s not a huge pool of people who can afford that, but Musk says that out of the eight billion people that will be living on Earth by the time the colony is possible, around one in 100,000 could afford to go (and would be willing to do so), which equates to potentially 80,000 people who could colonize Mars.
Musk is the billionaire founder behind a few well-known companies. He helped start up PayPal, and then moved on to establish Tesla Motors. Now, he’s the founder and CEO of SpaceX, which recently completed a supply mission to the International Space Station. Musk’s envisions his plans for the future of space flight as something that has never been done before, and he hopes to create a completely reusable spacecraft for as little as money as possible. The Dragon capsule was a good start, but Musk says he wants to create a better spacecraft for human flight.
[via Discovery]
Image via Flickr
SpaceX founder Elon Musk wants to start a Mars colony is written by Craig Lloyd & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.
Welcome back to Mars, ladies and gentlemen, as the NASA Curiosity mission continues its epic journey across the planet’s surface with a news note that they have found radiation levels totally safe for human beings. This finding is entirely encouraging for the future of Mars exploration as far as actually sending human beings there goes, and certainly doesn’t send a negative mark back on the possibility of us living there someday. Of course if you’re a fan of the original Total Recall, you don’t care one way or another simply for the safety of your eyeballs, but still.
Of special note here is the fact that this is the very first time radiation has been measured from the surface of another planet – besides Earth, that is. This is done with the rover’s RAD, or Radiation Assessment Detector, and has shown the radiation levels on the ground as rather similar to what the astronauts on the International Space Station experience daily. RAD Principal Investigator Don Hassler of the Southwest Research Institute’s Boulder, Colorado branch noted the findings as encouraging.
“We see a definite pattern related to the daily thermal tides of the atmosphere. The atmosphere provides a level of shielding, and so charged-particle radiation is less when the atmosphere is thicker. Overall, Mars’ atmosphere reduces the radiation dose compared to what we saw during the flight to Mars.” – Hassler
NASA has also added that the overall goal for this mission is to use 10 instruments on Curiosity “to assess whether areas inside Gale Crater ever offered a habitable environment for microbes.” This mission has been followed by tech blogs, science publications, and everywhere in-between simply because of the rarity of a Mars mission of this magnitude. We’ve seen tiny findings that mean little to us average citizens as well as lovely photos taken from the surface, perfectly suitable for wallpapers for your smartphone.
Above: The header image in this article shows five scoopfulls of material from what NASA describes as a patch of dusty sand called “Rocknest.” This set of five “bite-marks” shows how little NASA needs to analyze the surface – each mark is about 2 inches (5 centimeters) wide.
Have a peek at the timeline below of just a small sample of the goings-on around the Curiosity mission and consider the implications of the impact this NASA action is having on the future of space exploration. We’re hoping that science will prevail, allowing here more funding for NASA so that we can continue to expand our space-loving minds through the rest of our lifetimes and beyond – make it happen, public!
[via NASA]
Curiosity Mars rover finds radiation levels safe for humankind is written by Chris Burns & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.
Entrepreneur Elon Musk has been around the block a few times. He helped start PayPal, the popular online payment system, and is even a founder of Tesla Motors. Musk’s most recent endeavor, however, is his space travel project, SpaceX, which recently completed its first successful supply mission to the International Space Station. Wired Magazine sat down with Musk and discussed original plans for SpaceX, the process of building and launching the rockets, and the possibility of a truly reusable spacecraft.
Musk mentioned that he thought about a manned mission to Mars in the early 2000s, and imagined building a small greenhouse on the surface of Mars, which would be packed with dehydrated nutrient gel that could be hydrated on landing. Musk said the rockets to get there would’ve cost $130 million alone, and he says the reason why there hasn’t been a manned mission to mars is because there isn’t cheap enough rocket technology.
However, Musk mentions that SpaceX is getting better at bringing the cost of rockets down significantly, almost by a factor of 10. Specifically, the company’s Dragon spacecraft, which was recently sent to the ISS, is actually an early prototype of the spacecraft that may one day head to Mars. Musk says that the current Dragon spacecraft wouldn’t have been able to land on Mars, but he says that the 2nd-generation capsule, which is expected to be completed in three years or so, is aiming to have that capability.
Musk also discusses reusable spacecrafts. He says “it’s the fundamental thing that’s necessary for humanity to become a space-faring civilization. America would never have been colonized if ships weren’t reusable.” He mentions that the Space Shuttle wasn’t actually truly reusable, since the main fuel tank was always thrown away and a new one was used for every launch. Musk is dedicated to building and improving on a truly reusable spacecraft, where every part of the ship can be reused, which Musk says will significantly reduce cost-per-launch factors.
[via Wired]
Image via Flickr
SpaceX founder Elon Musk talks about future of space flight is written by Craig Lloyd & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.
NASA and the European Space Agency have announced they have successfully tested an internet-like interplanetary communications protocol, called Disruption Tolerant Networking (DTN), between astronauts on the International Space Station and a Lego-built robot in Germany. Over 225 miles separate the two.
NASA and the ESA said yesterday that DTN could one day allow “internet-like communications” with spacecrafts and help support infrastructure on other planets. The experiment took place late last month, and it involved remotely operating a small Lego rover-like robot from the International Space Station.
The Lego robot was located at the European Space Operations Centre in Darmstadt, Germany and it was being operated and driven by US astronaut Sunita Williams who used a laptop that was designed by NASA. A command sent from the laptop would start a script to control the Lego rover, which is also actually a prototype designed for use in the ESA’s future missions.
NASA space communications chief Badri Younes says that once the protocol gets past the experimental stage, DTN could be useful for controlling robots on Mars from either a manned orbiting spacecraft or from Earth using satellites as relay stations. DTN is slightly comparable to the Internet Protocol in terms of functionality. However, the big difference is that IP relies on a continuous connection, while DTN allows for more disconnections and errors.
[via ZDNet]
NASA and ESA test internet-like communication protocol using Lego robot is written by Craig Lloyd & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.
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