Space stuff (NASA, UKSA, CSA, ESA, etc)

The moon is a LADEE killer:

http://www.planetary.org/blogs/emily-lakdawalla/2014/an-extended-mission-for-ladee.html

After extending the mission another month, a minor miracle of careful fuel usage in itself, the LADEE is set to impact the moon near the end of April.

LADEE spends most of her days checking out the chemical composition of the atmosphere and dust surrounding the moon. In her last month she will come closer to the moon to check out what the atmosphere is like at newer, lower altitudes, practically skimming the surface at 5km high. Prior to this new phase, she was performing her science at altitudes of 20-60km.

As she comes closer and closer, she will eventually be unable to maintain orbit, and bury herself deep into the surface of the moon.

They are somewhat worried about the possibility of her crashing into or near one of the several Apollo sites, which is undesirable for reasons of historical and political value. Perhaps they will accidentally deorbit her on top of the Chinese rover...

Notably, this is the first mission to employ a laser communications device, which attained a communications rate of over 600megabits per second, though the error free rate was more sedate at 20 megabits per second. Note that this was from a spacecraft orbiting the moon to a ground station on earth. No small feat. Future missions, particularly manned missions, will no doubt employ laser communications for the purpose of faster data transmission. The next technology demonstration of laser communications will occur in 2017 as a satellite is put into orbit as a laser relay, providing not only significantly faster communications for the same power and weight requirements on a spacecraft, but also providing communications to other satellites and spacecraft in orbit around earth that might not be in direct line of site of the ground station.
 

GasBandit

Staff member
Hell, 20 megabit is more bandwidth than I get at home :p Wonder what the latency is. The speed of light at that distance should get travel time slightly over a second, but that's probably not the only factor.

They are somewhat worried about the possibility of her crashing into or near one of the several Apollo sites, which is undesirable for reasons of historical and political value. Perhaps they will accidentally deorbit her on top of the Chinese rover...
If Kerbal Space Program has taught me anything, it's that it's damn near impossible to get one thing onto the moon within 1km of another thing on the moon without trying really really really hard and being able to do correction burns on the way down.
 
If Kerbal Space Program has taught me anything, it's that it's damn near impossible to get one thing onto the moon within 1km of another thing on the moon without trying really really really hard and being able to do correction burns on the way down.
However, when you don't want it, I'm sure the odds reduce significantly.

--Patrick
 
Well I thought we had a thread about it, but searches aren't working for me.

The spacecraft originally known as ISEE-3 (International Sun-Earth Explorer), then, because it was still working at the end of that mission, was re-tasked as ICE (International Cometary Explorer) is coming close to earth again, near its 36 year anniversary of being launched.

NASA decommisioned it in 1997, but found it hadn't fully shut down when they listened to it in 1999, and that all but one of its sensors and experiments were still operational. Further, it had enough propellant for a short burn. However, all the equipment used to talk to it decades ago had been decommissioned in 1997, and NASA has no current way to give it commands.

A group of scientists and enthusiasts got together, came up with a trajectory that would recapture it in Earth's gravitational field so it would begin to orbit us again. They successfully raised the minimum $125,000[USD], and are now in the process of setting the equipment up to communicate with the spacecraft and initiate a burn near the end of this month or beginning of the next.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Cometary_Explorer (wikipedia article about the spacecraft)

http://www.rockethub.com/42228#description-tab Crowdfunding campaign (they met the goal, but have stretch goals now)

http://spacecollege.org/isee3/ Project updates
 
Tomorrow morning an interesting satellite is launching at 5:50am EDT. It's going into the a-train, a fascination flying formation of earth and environmental satellites following one after the other in the same orbit, separated by only 12 to 15 second each. In order to get this CO2 mapping satellite into the a train formation, the launch window is only 30 seconds.

Today the intrepid group trying to resurrect isee3 attempted communication, and succeeded in several commands, but were not able to start the burn in the time slot they had available. They will try again tomorrow. Project updates on their twitter feed:

https://mobile.twitter.com/isee3reboot
 
The spacecraft ... ICE (International Cometary Explorer) is coming close to earth again ... A group of scientists and enthusiasts got together, came up with a trajectory that would recapture it in Earth's gravitational field so it would begin to orbit us again.
And it appears that this attempt is a failure. While they will still try a few more things, their best guess is that the tanks of propellant are actually empty or otherwise nonfunctional.

From the project updates: "Our troubleshooting today eliminated some suspected causes of propulsion system problems. We do not think any of the valves are malfuctioning. Right now we think there is a chance that the Nitrogen used as a pressurant for the monopropellant Hydrazine propulsion system may have been depleted. That said, we still have a number of troubleshooting options yet to be explored. We have a DSN pass scheduled for Friday that will allow us to recalibrate our location information and trajectory plans for ISEE-3. Even if the L-1 halo orbit is no longer an option, we do have plans to use ISEE-3 for science in other locations within the inner solar system after the lunar flyby on 10 August."

They are, at minimum, going to turn on the instruments and collect data as it flies by, and as the above quote mentions they have a few more thoughts on methods to try, but it may be the last time we will ever see this spacecraft. Sounds like they'll leave it alive, though, and perhaps in the future we'll have powerful enough radio capability to at least receive it and check up on it occasionally like we do with Voyager (who, incidentally, has definitely left the solar system).
 

GasBandit

Staff member
Man, such a nailbiter. When the propellant remaining started ticking down from 60 seconds to empty while still 100 feet off the ground, that's some serious pucker factor there.
 

GasBandit

Staff member
MAN MADE BIOLOGICAL OXYGEN-PRODUCING LEAF, MOFOS



Who needs stupid carbon filters now? These bad boys take in light, CO2 and H20... and produce oxygen! It's important because apparently terrestrial plant life doesn't grow as well in zero gravity.
 
Did you watch the video?
Yes. He has divorced the organelles (chloroplasts) from the organism and put them to work for his intended purpose, a bit like pearls from oysters. He suspends them in a matrix of some sort of rendered silk product, which is probably chemically very similar to gelatin (protein v. protein). I just want to know the purported benefits over algae. Lower water usage, maybe? Do the chloroplasts still need to be "alive" in order for this to function (if not, this would mean better shelf life). Is there a reason this couldn't be algae suspended in thin sheets of agar?

Also I was unclear on how they would be "recharged."

--Patrick
 

GasBandit

Staff member
It's been a rough week for american spaceships. First the Antares rocket explodes seconds after liftoff, and now Virgin Galactic SpaceShipTwo has crashed in the Mojave desert and the crew is MIA.
 

GasBandit

Staff member
I'm no forensics expert, but the lack of a smoking crater and the large pieces of spacecraft close together makes me think whatever went wrong went wrong in the air that resulted in a loss of control, and the spacecraft did the falling-leaf thing to the earth instead of augered in on a ballistic trajectory, breaking in half on impact. The crew wears parachutes. No word on if they jumped or rode it all the way in.[DOUBLEPOST=1414783690,1414783367][/DOUBLEPOST]Looking at a picture of SS2 (here pictured attached to the craft that carries it up to 50k feet), the photo above might just be that of a single tailfin, no idea about the rest of the ship.

 

GasBandit

Staff member
Investigators are saying the "feathering" system (not sure how that works in a rocket engine, I'm only familiar with "feathering" in the case of propellers) deployed prematurely before the craft broke up in flight. Not specified if it was causal or symptomatic of the cause.
 
The Feathers is when the wing moves into a 90 degree angle to slow the space plane down so it can do reentry with out needing a heat shield. So the co-pilot hit the brakes under full throttle and it ripped the wings off.
 
I'm only familiar with "feathering" in the case of propellers
Watch the movie. They explain the whole design and how it works, and why the feathering system means they don't have to pack a chute.
(If you're at all interested in flight/space explo, then I recommend you watch it anyway. It's a great documentary)

--Patrick
 
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