Posts Tagged ‘space’
Iran Indefinitely Suspends Plans to Launch a Monkey into Space
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China Launches Its First Space Station Module Into Orbit
The 8.5-metric-ton Tiangong 1 (it means “heavenly palace”) is slated to stay in orbit for two years. During that time, China will launch three missions to rendezvous with the orbital lab. Shenzou 8 and Shenzou 9, launching in November and early in 2012 respectively, will be unmanned missions meant to test various rendezvous and docking technologies. Shenzou 10, also slated for sometime in 2012, could be a manned mission if the first two go smoothly. It could also carry China’s first female astronaut, Chinese space officials said.
There are two ways to view this achievement. The more cynical view says that China is only just now doing what America and Russia were doing in the 1970s (Tiangong is way smaller than Skylab and Mir, and America was rendezvousing in orbit during the Gemini days), and that projects like the ISS are light years ahead of the Chinese.
And that’s certainly true. But when you look at the window in which China has ticked these technologies off its checklist, the pace is impressive to say the least. Like nearly everything in China over the past decade or two, its space program is modernizing at a seriously ambitious pace. China launched its first man into space in 2003. Today it put its first space station in orbit, and by 2020 it aims to have a full-blown 60-ton manned orbiting station in place--the only space station belonging to a single sovereign entity.
And this is just the first step for China, whose space ambitions reach all the way the moon and beyond it to Mars. China plans to put a robot on the moon in 2014 followed by a manned lunar base sometime beyond that. And in 2013 a joint Russian-Chinese mission hopes to put a robotic rover on Mars. As the nomenclature of its booster rockets suggests, China is developing a long reach into space.
But all that depends, for now, on the success of Tiangong 1 and the three technology testing missions that follow. And how you feel about this initiative probably has a lot to do with how you feel about China. One reason China generally goes it alone in space rather than collaborating with other spacefaring nations like Japan or the U.S. is that China’s space program is closely tied into its military and therefore shrouded in secrecy. Should China become a dominant player in space over the next century--and given its current trajectory, it certainly could--the balance of power in orbit and beyond could begin shifting. Starting this morning.
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Kepler Analysis Projects One-Third of Sun-Like Stars Have an Earth-Like Planet Orbiting
If that turns out to be the case, that’s big news of course. The habitable zone, or the “goldilocks zone” as it’s often known (not to close to the star, not too far away), is the orbital range where it’s possible for liquid water to exist. Thus, it’s the range where life as we know it could feasibly take root.
The planet-hunting Kepler observatory is designed specifically to seek out planets orbiting distant stars, and thus far its been a boon for exoplanetary science. In 136 days it has scanned some 150,000 target stars looking for the signature wobble exerted on those stars by orbiting satellites. In doing so, it has found 1,235 potential planets.
It’s from that data that Traub has extracted his conclusion. He looked particularly at the stars that are most like our sun--those classified F, G, or K. He then looked at the kinds of planets that are most often found orbiting them and at what ranges they orbit. In his analysis, he notes many interesting (and somewhat expected) things, like the fact that nearly a third of the planets Kepler has found orbit their stars in less than 42 days, putting them too close to be in the habitable zone (this is also because planets closer to their stars are easier for Kepler to see).
Larger terrestrial planets out there in the habitable zone are harder for Kepler to spot, but that doesn’t mean they’re not there. And Traub says his number crunching allows us to get a pretty good idea of how many there should be. Using some math we don’t pretend to understand, he plugged in the numbers for longer orbits--orbits in the habitable zone--into his analysis. The finding: "About one-third of FGK stars are predicted to have at least one terrestrial, habitable-zone planet."
That’s not to say they are inhabited, or that they do have liquid water, or that they even exist. But Traub’s math suggests that they should exist, at least until more data changes the equation. And for now, that spells a lot of potential goldilocks planets. Read the full paper via .
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NASA’s Falling UARS Satellite Found in Remote South Pacific
Maybe next time, Canada
See our gallery of the space race's greatest falls to Earth. (List compiled by .)
NASA has been tracking UARS for some time now as the decommissioned satellite’s orbit has been decaying. Much of the satellite was expected to burn up on re-entry, but experts estimated that roughly two-dozen pieces of the massive satellite would survive and could potentially be a threat to people or objects on the ground. Given UARS’s speed and the many variables involved (this is a decommissioned satellite, after all, so re-entry was completely uncontrolled) there was no telling exactly when or where UARS might land.
On Saturday, when the final descent began, previous calculations had placed the crash window across a large swath of northwestern North America. The Internet rumor machine fired up and sightings across Canada and the Pacific Northwest proliferated. But by that point updated U.S. Air Force calculations placed the satellite thousands of miles away in another hemisphere, and NASA has confirmed those calculations. UARS is now resting peacefully in the South Pacific, somewhere southwest of Christmas Island were small islands are scattered across a lot of water.
The difference between Seattle and Samoa? Just a few minutes. NASA said UARS came in for its rough landing several minutes earlier than they had projected. What they won’t say is how they know this--they referred those questions to the USAF, which also isn’t talking. Were DoD missile tracking assets employed in tracking UARS? The Air Force would rather not say at this point, but one would think something like this would be good practice.
UARS is to come crashing back to Earth, and it won’t be the last. In late October or early November a German astronomy satellite will make its uncontrolled final plunge back to Earth. Though smaller than UARS, more pieces are expected to survive re-entry (a total of 30 are expected, possibly including sharp pieces of mirror). Let’s hope that one finds a nice stretch of uninhabited ocean as well.
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The Sunspots That Kicked Off This Week’s Solar Storm May be Just Warming Up
AR1302 unleashed a massive coronal mass ejection on Saturday that struck a glancing blow off Earth’s atmosphere yesterday, triggering brilliant auroras across the Northern Hemisphere. So far, the storm hasn’t caused any serious trouble here on the ground. Saturday’s solar explosion didn’t connect with a direct hit, and it is expected to do nothing more than continue to provide electrifying light shows to sky-gazers in Europe and Asia this evening.
But AR1302 is also not slowing down, and as the week wears on it will turn to face Earth more directly. An SWPC bulletin yesterday warned that for the next 3-5 days, we’re squarely in the solar storm’s sights. Another blast like Saturday’s and we may feel it here on Earth in the form of disrupted communications. A larger blast could do even more damage to the power grid and other infrastructure.
Just another thrilling week in the buildup to 2013’s solar maximum. See the sun as NOAA’s GOES-15 sees it today below.
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Listen to StarTalk Live, Featuring Neil deGrasse Tyson, Eugene Mirman, Alan Alda, and More
Tyson co-hosted with comedian Eugene Mirman--it was during the somewhat cheekily-named Eugene Mirman Comedy Festival--with guests Kristen Schaal (of The Daily Show and Flight of the Conchords), Scott Adsit (of 30 Rock), and Alan Alda (of being Alan Goddamned Alda). Topics ranged from how we're all going to die, what aliens might look like, and what dark matter tastes like to the movie Galaxy Quest and how long it would take to cook a frozen pizza on Venus. , via RSS, MP3, and streaming, and the second part will be posted next Monday. Enjoy! (I sure did.)
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Simulation Suggests There May Have Been a Fifth Gas Giant in Our Solar System
The formation of Uranus and Neptune has puzzled astronomers for years. The assumed disc of gas and dust that formed the two gas giants would have been too thin at their current locations to form the icy planets. It’s more likely that the two, and Jupiter and Saturn, were closer together in the earlier days of our solar system, and spread out once the disc was depleted. The “five great gravitational bullies of the solar system, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune” jockeyed for position after being formed. According to past simulations, which only included the current planets, either Uranus or Neptune at least should have been jettisoned into deep space. “People didn’t know how to resolve that,” says David Nesvorny of the Southwest Research Institute. He offers a new explanation: “A sacrificial ice giant between Saturn and Uranus.”
The existence of this new planet, who some of Nesvorny’s colleagues are calling Hades, is supported by the results of 6,000 computer simulations. Previous simulations only included Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune in the outer solar system. But these new simulations also included models with five planets, testing different starting position scenarios. In 90 percent of the four planet models, the simulations ended with only three planets left in the outer system. But in half of the five planet simulations, four planets in very similar positions to our current solar system resulted. The results with the most similar positions started with a fifth planet between Saturn and Uranus, and ended with this planet cast out after an encounter with Jupiter.
These results also suggest that Jupiter “jumped” to its current position from one that was closer to the sun. This occurred in the simulations that allowed the four inner planets, including Earth, to survive the clash of the gaseous titans. “This jumping Jupiter theory is very difficult to achieve for the four-planet system. But it’s a natural consequence of the five-planet system,” says Nesvorny.
The planetary battle could also explain the heavily cratered surface of the moon caused during the “late heavy bombardment.” The Kuiper Belt and Oord Cloud were not fully formed, and the disturbance could have flung debris from these regions of proto-planets beyond Neptune towards the inner system.
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