Dawn Spacecraft Begins Approach to Dwarf Planet Ceres

• Dawn has entered its approach phase toward Ceres
• The spacecraft will arrive at Ceres on March 6, 2015

NASA's Dawn spacecraft has entered an approach phase in which it will continue to close in on Ceres, a Texas-sized dwarf planet never before visited by a spacecraft. Dawn launched in 2007 and is scheduled to enter Ceres orbit in March 2015.
Dawn recently emerged from solar conjunction, in which the spacecraft is on the opposite side of the sun, limiting communication with antennas on Earth. Now that Dawn can reliably communicate with Earth again, mission controllers have programmed the maneuvers necessary for the next stage of the rendezvous, which they label the Ceres approach phase. Dawn is currently 400,000 miles (640,000 kilometers) from Ceres, approaching it at around 450 miles per hour (725 kilometers per hour).
The spacecraft's arrival at Ceres will mark the first time that a spacecraft has ever orbited two solar system targets. Dawn previously explored the protoplanet Vesta for 14 months, from 2011 to 2012, capturing detailed images and data about that body.
"Ceres is almost a complete mystery to us," said Christopher Russell, principal investigator for the Dawn mission, based at the University of California, Los Angeles. "Ceres, unlike Vesta, has no meteorites linked to it to help reveal its secrets. All we can predict with confidence is that we will be surprised."
The two planetary bodies are thought to be different in a few important ways. Ceres may have formed later than Vesta, and with a cooler interior. Current evidence suggests that Vesta only retained a small amount of water because it formed earlier, when radioactive material was more abundant, which would have produced more heat. Ceres, in contrast, has a thick ice mantle and may even have an ocean beneath its icy crust.
Ceres, with an average diameter of 590 miles (950 kilometers), is also the largest body in the asteroid belt, the strip of solar system real estate between Mars and Jupiter. By comparison, Vesta has an average diameter of 326 miles (525 kilometers), and is the second most massive body in the belt.
The spacecraft uses ion propulsion to traverse space far more efficiently than if it used chemical propulsion. In an ion propulsion engine, an electrical charge is applied to xenon gas, and charged metal grids accelerate the xenon particles out of the thruster. These particles push back on the thruster as they exit, creating a reaction force that propels the spacecraft. Dawn has now completed five years of accumulated thrust time, far more than any other spacecraft.
"Orbiting both Vesta and Ceres would be truly impossible with conventional propulsion. Thanks to ion propulsion, we're about to make history as the first spaceship ever to orbit two unexplored alien worlds," said Marc Rayman, Dawn's chief engineer and mission director, based at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California.
The next couple of months promise continually improving views of Ceres, prior to Dawn's arrival. By the end of January, the spacecraft's images and other data will be the best ever taken of the dwarf planet.
The Dawn mission to Vesta and Ceres is managed by JPL, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington. UCLA is responsible for overall Dawn mission science.

The space station orbits onward

it may not sound like the most dramatic news. But as Charles Fishman points out in an outstanding new feature in the Atlantic, the International Space Station has now been occupied for nearly 5,200 days since its 2009 completion. We don't pay it much attention, but as he writes, "in the past decade, America has become a truly, permanently spacefaring nation."

The ISS hasn't produced any huge scientific discoveries or technologies — mainly, it's an exercise in figuring out how humans can adapt to living in space. In March, astronaut Scott Kelly will head to the ISS for NASA's first ever year-long mission, twice as long as most astronauts spend in orbit. The surreal sunrise timelapse above, captured by the European Space Agency's Alexander Gerst, shows what astronauts spend much of their time on the ISS staring at: the Earth, spinning swiftly underneath them day and night.

Curiosity keeps finding evidence that Mars was once habitable

Layers of sedimentary rock in Gale Crater photographed by Curiosity, which serve as evidence of an ancient lakebed. (NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS)

In 2014, the Curiosity probe's big Mars discoveries kept coming. Most recently, in December, it discovered evidence of an ancient lakebed, as well as organic molecules and mysterious plumes of methane gas. Together, these findings and other data have many scientists convinced that Mars was once warmer and wetter than it is today — and perhaps even home to life.
In 2015, the rover will climb a giant mountain called Mount Sharp, sampling a succession of rock layers that will help us learn more about the planet's geologic and atmospheric history.

NASA tests its Orion capsule for the first time

The Orion capsule, after its December 2014 test flight. (U.S. Navy via Getty Images)

In December, NASA carried out a successful test of its Orion capsule — a spacecraft that it hopes to use to carry astronauts into deep space. Plans are still uncertain, but NASA's stated goal for Orion is to eventually use it to put humans on Mars.
This first test, with an uncrewed capsule, was a success, with the craft making two orbits of the Earth, including one at an altitude of 3,600 miles. This is more than ten times higher up than the International Space Station, and farther away from Earth than any crewable craft has traveled since 1972.

Philae touches down on the comet 67P/C-G

In November, the European Space Agency's Philae because the first spacecraft ever to land on a comet. the photos was taken by Philae upon landing.
The landing didn't go exactly as planned — the lander actually took a series of large bounces because its harpoons didn't fire upon landing — but the mission was still a huge success. Data from both Philae and Rosetta (the spacecraft that brought it to the comet and is still orbiting it) have already provided new information about comets, which could help us better understand the formation of the solar system.

Virgin Galactic's SpaceShipTwo crashes over California

Wreckage from the SpaceShipTwo crash. (Sandy Huffaker/Getty Images)

In October, Virgin Galactic's SpaceShipTwo — a space plane that the company intends to use to carry tourists into low Earth orbit — crashed during a test flight in California, killing one pilot. The accident came just days after another private spaceflight disaster: the explosion of an uncrewed rocket, owned by the Orbital Sciences Corporation, which was heading to the International Space Station for a cargo resupply mission.
The cause of the Virgin accident still hasn't been fully determined, but it comes after experts had previously criticized the company's cavalier attitude towards safety. Still, Virgin says it will proceed with its plans to carry tourists into space.

The most detailed map yet of our place in the universe

An illustration of the Laniakea supercluster, home to the Milky Way and hundreds of thousands of other galaxies. (Nature)

In September, scientists released a truly awe-inspiring map: one that shows our galaxy's place among hundreds of thousands of others, as part of a giant supercluster of galaxies called Laniakea.

The enormous structure is an estimated 500 million light years across, and is home to more than 100,000 galaxies. Each of these galaxies, meanwhile, contains billions or perhaps even trillions of stars. And our supercluster, the scientists found, borders another, similarly large one called Perseus-Pisces.

SpaceX's new Dragon V2 capsule debuts

The Dragon V2 capsule, which SapceX hopes to use to transport astronauts to and from the International Space Station. (Robyn Beck/AFP/Getty Images)

Just weeks after the Russia news, however, SpaceX debuted its new Dragon V2 capsule — an upgraded version of its current space capsule that's capable of carrying humans.

Later, NASA formally announced that both the Dragon and Boeing's CST-100capsule were selected to go forward in the plan to transport astronauts to the ISS. If all goes as planned, that will begin in 2017.

Tensions between the US and Russia reach the space station

The International Space Station. (Photo by Paolo Nespoli - ESA/NASA via Getty Images)

In May, tensions between the US and Russia over the latter's invasion of Crimea threatened to affect the two countries' chief partnership: the International Space Station (ISS). In response to economic sanctions, Russia threatened to stop ferrying NASA astronauts to the ISS beginning in 2020.

Tensions have cooled slightly, and Russia has appeared to back off that threat, but it does expose a huge liability in NASA's crewed space program. After the retirement of the space shuttle, the agency put a plan in the works to hand off transport to the ISS to private companies, but delays have forced NASA to be entirely reliant on Russia for human transport. SpaceX and others are currently delivering cargo to the ISS, but they won't be ready to carry humans until 2017 at the earliest.

Scientists find gravitational waves. Or wait, maybe not.

In March, a group of astrophysicists announced one of the biggest discoveries in the field in decades: using a telescope at the South Pole, they'd found evidence of gravitational waves in space. These would have confirmed a crucial part of the Big Bang theory — and solidified our understanding of the formation of the universe.
Except, as it turned out, the discovery was probably wrong. Subsequent work has shown that the signal originally detected was likely the effect of dust scattered throughout the galaxy. The debate hasn't been settled yet, but in all likelihood, scientists will have to keep searching for gravitational waves.

The Kepler telescope finds hundreds of distant planets

An illustration of Kepler-186f, a potentially habitable exoplanet discovered in April. (NASA-Ames/SETI Institute/JPL-CalTech

Prior to 2014, scientists had confirmed the existence of about 1,000 exoplanets (planets that orbit other stars). But in a single announcement in February, scientists announced that using data from the Kepler telescope, they'd found an additional 715 new planets. Soon afterward, in April, astronomers announced that 500 light years away, they'd found a roughly Earth-sized one (illustration above) that might be the right temperature for liquid water.
These planets are mostly too far away for us to learn much more about, but over the next decade, a new generation of telescopes will search for closer planets and allow us to analyze their atmospheres. Some scientists think that within a generation, we may even be able to spot signs of distant alien life.

Russian scientists 'map' water vapor in Martian atmosphere

by Staff Writers Moscow (SPX) Dec 24, 2014

This graphs shows the latitudinal distribution of humidity in Mars' atmosphere during the year according to data collected by the SPICAMInfrared instruments. Image courtesy Alexander Trokhimovsky.

Russian scientists from the Space Research Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences and the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology (MIPT), together with their French and American colleagues, have created a 'map' of the distribution of water vapour in Mars' atmosphere.
Their research includes observations of seasonal variations in atmospheric concentrations using data collected over ten years by the Russian-French SPICAM spectrometer aboard the Mars Express orbiter. This is the longest period of observation and provides the largest volume of data about water vapour on Mars.
The first SPICAM (Spectroscopy for Investigation of Characteristics of the Atmosphere of Mars) instrument was built for the Russian Martian orbiter Mars 96, which was lost due to an accident in the rocket launcher.
The new updated version of the instrument was built with the participation of the Space Research Institute as part of the agreement between RosCosmos and the French space agency CNES for the Mars Express orbiter.
The apparatus was launched on June 2, 2003 from the Baikonur Cosmodrome using a Russian Soyuz rocket launcher with a Fregat propulsion stage. At the end of December 2003, Mars Express entered a near-Mars orbit and since then has been operating successfully, collecting data on the planet and its surroundings.
Staff of the Space Research Institute and MIPT, including Alexander Trokhimovsky, Anna Fyodorova, Oleg Korablyov and Alexander Rodin, together with their colleagues from the French laboratory LATMOS and NASA's Goddard Center, have analysed a mass of data obtained by observing water vapour in Mars' atmosphere using an infrared spectrometer that is part of the SPICAM instrument over a period of five Martian years (about 10 Earth years as a year on Mars is equal to 1.88 Earth years).
Conditions on Mars -- low temperatures and low atmospheric pressure -- do not allow water to exist in liquid form in open reservoirs as it would on Earth. However, on Mars, there is a powerful layer of permafrost, with large reserves of frozen water concentrated at the polar caps. There is water vapour in the atmosphere, although at very low levels compared to the quantities experienced hereon Earth.
If the entire volume of water in the atmosphere was to be spread evenly over the surface of the planet, the thickness of the water layer would not exceed 10-20 microns, while on Earth such a layer would be thousands of times thicker.
Data from the SPICAM experiment has allowed scientists to create a picture of the annual cycle of water vapour concentration variation in the atmosphere. Scientists have been observing the atmosphere during missions to Mars since the end of the 1970s in order to make the picture more precise, as well as traceits variability.
The content of water vapour in the atmosphere reaches a maximum level of 60-70 microns of released water in the northern regions during the summer season. The summer maximum in the southern hemisphere is significantly lower -- about 20 microns.
The scientists have also established a significant, by 5-10 microns, reduction in the concentration of water vapour during global sandstorms, which is probably connected to the removal of water vapour from the atmosphere due to adsorption processes and condensation on surfaces.
"This research, based on one of the longest periods of monitoring of the Martian climate, has made an important contribution to the understanding of the Martian hydrological cycle -- the most important of the climate mechanisms which could potentially support the existence of biological activity on the planet," said co-author of the research Alexander Rodin, deputy head of the Infrared Spectroscopy of Planetary Atmospheres Laboratory at MIPT and senior scientific researcher at the Space Research Institute.

Countdown to China's new space programs begins

by Staff Writers Beijing (XNA) 

Development and manufacture of major space products are at key stages, including the second space lab Tiangong-2, the Tianzhou-1 cargo ship, Long March-7 rockets and Shenzhou-11 spacecraft. The core module and two space labs will be tested soon, Lei said.

China hopes to put a rover on Mars around 2020, complete a manned space station around 2022 and test a heavy carrier rocket around 2030, a top space scientist revealed Sunday.
Lei Fanpei, chairman of the China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation (CASC), the main contractor for the space program, revealed the details in an interview with Xinhua after the launch of CBERS-4, a satellite jointly developed with Brazil, from the Taiyuan base, by a Long March-4B rocket.
It was the 200th flight of the Long March variants since April 1970 when a Long March-1 carried China's first satellite, Dongfanghong-1, into space.
MARS PROBE 2020 A feasibility study on the country's first Mars mission is completed and the goal is now to send an orbiter and rover to Mars.
There has been no official announcement about a Mars probe yet, but Lei expects a Long March-5 carrier, still at the development stage, to take the orbiter into a Martian orbit around 2020 from a new launch site on south China's island province of Hainan.
China's space scientists have had their eyes on the Red Planet as their next destination since the successful soft landing on the moon late last year.
Last month, an actual-size model of a possible Mars rover was on display at Airshow China 2014, the first glimpse of how the vehicle might turn out.
China made an unsuccessful attempt to reach Mars in 2011 aboard a Russian rocket, but failed to complete the mission because of an accident during orbital transfer.
SPACE STATION 2022 China's manned space station program is progressing steadily. Various modules, vehicles and ground facilities are nearing readiness.
Development and manufacture of major space products are at key stages, including the second space lab Tiangong-2, the Tianzhou-1 cargo ship, Long March-7 rockets and Shenzhou-11 spacecraft. The core module and two space labs will be tested soon, Lei said.
A new launch center in Hainan, the fourth after Taiyuan, Jiuquan and Xichang, is almost complete and can already launch some spacecraft.
The Tiangong-2 space lab will be launched around 2016 along with the Shenzhou-11 spacecraft and Tianzhou-1 cargo ship. Around 2018, a core experimental module for the station will be put in place.
By around 2022, China's first orbiting space station should be completed. It will consist of three parts -- a core module attached to two labs, each weighing about 20 tonnes.
Tiangong-1 was launched in September 2011. In June 2012, the Shenzhou-9 executed the first manual space docking with Tiangong-1, another essential step in building a space station.
HEAVY ROCKET A powerful carrier rocket is essential for a manned moon landing.
"We hope to make breakthroughs within four or five years on design and key technology for the heavy carrier, a solid foundation for developing such a rocket," he said.
Breakthroughs are needed on the overall design of the rocket, including development of a 460 tonne thrust liquid oxygen and kerosene engine and a 220 tonne liquid hydrogen engine.
"We hope to finish all these within the next 15 years, so the heavy rocket will make its first maiden flight sometime around 2030," Lei said
The rocket is envisaged as having a payload capacity of 130 tonnes to low Earth orbit. Once in service, it will help with missions between 2030 and 2050, and secure China's position in terms of space exploration and technology.

The NACA’s Space Legacy | NASA

The NACA’s Space Legacy | NASA

WHERE WE ARE IN MILKYWAY GALAXY

This is what I've learned so far about where we are in the Milky Way:

1. We are about 26,000 light years from the Galactic Center.

2. We are about 64 light years north of the Galactic Equator (an average based on numerous estimates).

3. The Solar System subtends an angle of only 0.14 degrees from the Galactic Center (tan-1 64/26,000 - less than the portion of the sky occupied by the Sun as seen from Earth - which is about 0.53 degrees).  Illustrations typically greatly exaggerate this angle in their depiction of our sinusoidal path around the Milky Way.

4. We complete one revolution around the Galactic Center once every ~220 million years, with a "vertical period" of about 66 million years (i.e., we pass through the Galactic midplane once every ~33 million years).

5. The sun and planets passed through the Galactic Equator about 2-3 million years ago.

6. Starting with the Earth's North Pole as "up" (or North Celestial Pole), the earth is tilted at 23.4 degrees away from the North Ecliptic Pole, or the sun's axis of rotation.

7. Given this initial frame of reference, the Earth is rotating counterclockwise, and is also revolving counterclockwise in its orbit around the Sun, which is in turn rotating counterclockwise.

8. Starting with the Earth's North Pole as "up," i.e., pointing towards Polaris (the North Star), the Earth is tilted at an angle of 23.4° relative to the Sun's axis of rotation.

9. The Ecliptic Plane, the imaginary disk perpendicular to the Sun's axis of rotation, along which the planets move with relatively small inclinations (except Pluto), is tilted at an angle of about 60.19 degrees above (north of) the Galactic Equator, and is "leaning forward" (although some illustrations show it “leaning back”) in its CLOCKWISE movement around the Milky Way.

10. The orientation of the Earth's axis of rotation relative to the galactic equator is about 27.14 degrees (Galactic Latitude). This is not easy to calculate. You need something called spherical trigonometry to get the answer.

11. The Ecliptic Plane is nearly aligned with the Galactic Center - it's only about 5 degrees away from being bang-on.

It's very difficult to wrap your head around all these different points of view, let alone come up with a decent illustration for all these various perspectives and scales. I'm attaching one that might help.

Orbiter.ch Space News: The ISS crew receives a new tool by email

Orbiter.ch Space News: The ISS crew receives a new tool by email: ISS - International Space Station patch. With a 3D printer, the astronauts on the International Space Station could make some...

Isro lines up 18 missions over the next 15 months | Business Standard News

Isro lines up 18 missions over the next 15 months | Business Standard News