Hasta La Gadget!

An extremely rare and out of this world treasure was discovered recently. One that has many asking questions about why and how it went missing in the first place. Multiple priceless vials of Moon dust collected by the one and only Apollo 11, the late Neil Armstrong, and Buzz Aldrin have been found after missing nearly 40 years.

These vials of Moon dust have been missing for nearly 40 years, and apparently have just been sitting safely in storage all this time out in California. A local archivist by the name Karen Nelson, of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in California, made the discovery earlier this month according to Fox News.

These rare and important vials of Moon dust were from the Apollo 11 and were brought back to Earth by the first men to step foot on the moon. So instantly many are wondering just how they managed to get “lost” in storage all this time. It’s being reported that Nelson was going over random tucked away in storage artifacts and was shocked when she stumbled upon the vials.

This isn’t just one or two that could of easily gone missing. She came across almost 20 vials complete with handwritten labels dated “24 July 1970,” which were safely packed in vacuum-sealed glass jars. Along with the discovery was an academic paper discussing the Proceedings of the Second Lunar Science Conference in 1971. Apparently that paper was titled “Study of carbon compounds in Apollo 11 and Apollo 12 returned lunar samples.”

“We don’t know how or when they ended up in storage…They were surprised we had the samples”

The above statement was all the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory had to say. The questions remains as to how and why something of this nature was lost to begin with, but Space agency officials assume that the unaccounted for vials were destroyed in testing. In reality they should have been returned to NASA instead of ending up in a storage container for 40 years. One day these could be used again in lab testing, but for now are safely in NASA’s sample vault.

Apollo 11 Moon dust found after missing for 40 years is written by Cory Gunther & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

Mars rover Curiosity might be the talk of the town currently, but NASA‘s older Opportunity rover is still kicking it in high gear on the red planet. In fact, Opportunity has now traveled 22.22 miles, breaking a 40-year-old driving distance record of 22.21 miles when Apollo 17 astronauts traversed the Moon on a Lunar Roving Vehicle in 1972.

However, it’s important to note that this is a NASA record. The world record for the longest driving distance on another planet goes to the Soviet Union, who piloted a Lunokhod 2 rover in 1973, which traveled 23 miles on the Moon. Opportunity has been traveling Mars for over nine years now, and its still collecting rock samples and conducting experiences, even if Curiosity’s fame is overshadowing it all.

Opportunity broke the NASA record on its 3,309th Martian day by traveling 263 feet along the western rim of the Endeavour Crater. The rover first landed on Mars in January 2004 and has so far traveled 22.22 miles, meaning that the rover averaged a speed of 0.00028 miles per hour (roughly). Of course, 22 miles isn’t long at all for us humans, but it’s quite the trek for a robot.

Based on these numbers, Curiosity hasn’t even left the driveway yet. The new rover is just over a year old, but if NASA really puts it to work, Curiosity could break Opportunity’s record at a quicker pace, as well as the possibility of breaking the world record and taking the honor away from the Soviet Lunokhod 2.

Of course, Curiosity has already been the victim of a couple mishaps. One of its onboard computers ended up failing, resulting in a pause of operations that would delay experiments for a couple of weeks. While the rover eventually got back on its feet, it lost precious time that could’ve been used for collecting samples and taking images of the red planet.

VIA: CNET

SOURCE: NASA

Mars rover Opportunity breaks space driving distance record is written by Craig Lloyd & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

After an ammonia leak was discovered on the International Space Station last night, NASA and the ISS crew are working together to come up with a fix. It’s been decided that an emergency spacewalk will be conducted to inspect the leak and attempt to fix it before matters get worse. The leak is on the outside, so it isn’t immediately life-threatening, but the supply will run out if the leak continues.

The ISS’s power relies on ammonia coolant, so if that supply runs out, the space station would go dark and all the vital equipment needed for survival would stop working, which at that point the crew would be in grave danger. According to ISS Commander Chris Hadfield, the leak appears to have been stabilized, but there still needs to be a solid fix.

In order for the ammonia-based coolant system to operate normally, it needs a certain amount of ammonia in the tanks. However, based on the rate of the leak, the levels in the tanks could drop below that sweet-spot level within 48 hours, at which point the system would be at risk of shutting itself down due to a lack of ammonia. Of course, the station can operate on a broken cooling system, but it would take some clever thinking to prevent ISS components from overheating.

Luckily, the astronauts on board are fairly confident as far as where the leak is coming from, so once they begin their spacewalk, they’ll hopefully be able to go right to the leak and immediately begin repairing it. The spacewalk is being planned as we speak (with a live stream of the whole thing), and astronauts Chris Cassidy and Tom Marshburn are getting their spacesuits prepared for the spacewalk, which will take place at some point tomorrow.

In a similar but unrelated note, the United States Alliance has switched over the ISS’s computer systems from Windows to Linux to make sure that they’re “stable and reliable.” Specifically, the ISS was running Windows XP (not even Windows 7?), and they have now started to switch to Debian 6. For what it’s worth, however, some computers on the ISS have already been running various versions of Linux, including RedHat and Scientific Linux.

SOURCE: Chris Hadfield and ExtremeTech

NASA planning emergency spacewalk to fix ISS ammonia leak is written by Craig Lloyd & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

SpaceX is looking for a new domain to continue its testing of the Grasshopper reusable rocket, and it looks like they’ve settled on New Mexico’s Spaceport America, a facility that Virgin Galactic also uses for various space-related purposes. SpaceX has signed a three-year deal with Spaceport America to allow the private space company to test its Grasshopper rocket on location.

The move to New Mexico will allow SpaceX to test out its Grasshopper reusable rocket at higher altitudes. The last launch of the Grasshopper resulted in the rocket reaching a record altitude of 820 feet before slowly making its way back down and landing right where it launched in a perfectly upright position.

Spaceport America is owned by the state of New Mexico, so Elon Musk and company will pay the state $25,000 for each launch of the Grasshopper, as well as a $6,600 monthly “lease” fee to use a mobile mission control facility. However, this isn’t nearly as much as the $1 million-a-year fee that Virgin Galactic pays to use the facilities.

It’s not said what SpaceX’s plans are after the three-year deal is up, but we wouldn’t be surprised if the company built their own spaceport eventually. There’s been talks about it in the past, but nothing solid has been said about it yet. We can only assume that Musk has high hopes for the company in the future.

SpaceX signs Spaceport America deal to test Grasshopper rocket is written by Craig Lloyd & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

Around the planet Earth you’ll find no shortage of bits and pieces of matter – quite a bit of it metal – left there by humans in their efforts to explore space. NASA this week is bringing on the newest in a line of warnings about the danger of said space junk, this time showing a near-crash of two metal bodies, one of them being a $690 million dollar space telescope. The other, a 1.5-ton Russian reconnaissance satellite, narrowly avoided smashing the first in what would have been a very costly error.

The video you’re about to see was created by NASA as an accurate approximation of the paths that these two heavenly bodies followed. As is the norm with this sort of situation with more than one country’s hardware in the mix, this event has been under wraps for some time. The actual near-crash occurred on April 3rd of 2012, just over a year ago.

NASA has made clear that the hit was avoided only due to the quick action of engineers working to dodge disaster with a blast of the craft’s thrusters. The NASA craft, otherwise known as the Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope, and the Russian craft would have passed the same point in space within 30 milliseconds of one another if it had not been for engineer action on the ground.

Though the Russian craft was traveling at approximately 27,000 miles per hour (43,452 km/h) in relation to Fermi, ended up avoiding a crash by 6 miles (9 km) when they’d have otherwise hit. According to NASA, the actual move was relatively easy, when it came down to it.

“The maneuver, which was performed by the spacecraft itself based on procedures we developed a long time ago, was very simple, just firing all thrusters for one second. There was a lot of suspense and tension leading up to it, but once it was over, we just sighed with relief that it all went well.” -Eric Stoneking, attitude control lead engineer for Fermi at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center

Below you’ll find a second video, this one emphasizing the importance of relieving our near-earth space junk in the near future. The European Space Agency has held six conferences thus far dedicated solely to fighting the space junk threat, and several countries have begun tests of space junk destruction for the future.

[via Space]

NASA continues call for space junk removal with near-collision video is written by Chris Burns & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.