Latest Space technology Stories
NASA A rocket-powered, vertical-landing space-access technology demonstrator reached its highest altitude and furthest distance to date March 25 at the Mojave Air and Space Port in Mojave, Calif., using a developmental navigation system designed to land a space vehicle on other celestial bodies. Masten Space Systems’ XA-0.1B “Xombie” suborbital rocket lifted off the launch pad for an 80-second flight while being controlled by Charles Stark Draper Laboratory’s Guidance Embedded...
Lee Rannals for redOrbit.com – Your Universe Online A unique find beneath frozen Alaskan sand dunes suggests that liquid water may still exist on the Red Planet. Scientists from Southwest Research Institute (SwRI) performed field studies of the Great Kobuk Sand Dunes and found the presence of liquid water during Arctic winter there, suggesting that liquid water could be temporarily stable at frost-covered sand dunes on Mars. They conducted fieldwork in Kobuk Valley National Park,...
RICHMOND, BC, March 28, 2013 /CNW/ - MacDonald, Dettwiler and Associates Ltd. ("MDA" or the "Company") (TSX: MDA), a global communications and information company, announced today that it has signed a contract with the Canadian Space Agency valued at CA$81 million (excluding GST/PST) to provide sustaining engineering and operational support for its robotic elements on the International Space Station (ISS) through December 2015. MDA's robotic systems played a critical role in the...
Motor will be used for NASA Commercial and Government Launch Vehicles ARLINGTON, Va., March 28, 2013 /PRNewswire/ -- ATK (NYSE: ATK) successfully tested its newly developed CASTOR® 30XL upper stage solid rocket motor today at the U.S. Air Force's Arnold Engineering Development Complex (AEDC) in Tennessee. (Photo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20130328/CG85062) The test was the final qualification for the ATK commercial motor, which was jointly developed by ATK and Orbital...
NASA Science [ Watch the Video ScienceCasts: Collision Course? ] Over the years, the spacefaring nations of Earth have sent dozens of probes and rovers to explore Mars. Today there are three active satellites circling the red planet while two rovers, Opportunity and Curiosity, wheel across the red sands below. Mars is dry, barren, and apparently lifeless. Soon, those assets could find themselves exploring a very different kind of world. "There is a small but non-negligible chance...
Lynx Cub Payload Carrier Being Developed at Texas A&M COLLEGE STATION, Texas, March 28, 2013 /PRNewswire/ -- A new payload carrier promises to dramatically reduce the cost of access to space for small scientific and education payloads. The Lynx Cub Payload Carrier was announced today by the United States Rocket Academy. The Lynx Cub Carrier will fly on the XCOR Lynx space plane, now under construction at the Mojave Air and Space Port, and carry up to 12 experiments on each...
NASA [ Watch the Video Flight Hardware for Space Launch System, Orion ] Welding engineers at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala., have had an extremely busy winter assembling adapters that will connect the Orion spacecraft to a Delta IV rocket for the initial test flight of Orion in 2014. The adapter later will attach Orion to NASA's Space Launch System (SLS), a new heavy-lift rocket managed and in development at the Marshall Center that will enable missions farther...
NASA [ Watch The Video A Super-speed Look at Webb Telescope Progress ] NASA released a new sped-up, 32-second video that shows engineers working on some of the James Webb Space Telescope's flight components to integrate them together to ensure they will work perfectly together in space. The "NASA Webb Clean Room at Super-speed" video was filmed in the giant clean room at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., and produced at Goddard. Testing of the two flight...
redOrbit Staff & Wire Reports - Your Universe Online Using instruments on board the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO), NASA officials were able to detect mercury and hydrogen in the gas plumes that arose following the impact of the twin Gravity Recovery and Interior Laboratory (GRAIL) spacecraft last December, the US space agency announced on Tuesday. The LRO’s Lyman Alpha Mapping Project (LAMP) also measured the time evolution of those gases as they rapidly expanded into the...
MOJAVE, Calif., March 26, 2013 /PRNewswire/ -- XCOR Aerospace today announced a first in aviation and space history, the firing of a full piston pump-powered rocket engine. This breakthrough is the foundation for fully reusable spacecraft that can fly multiple times per day, every day. It is a game changing technology that has the power to fundamentally alter the way we as a society view, visit, and utilize the abundant resources around our planet and in our solar system. (Photo:...
Latest Space technology Reference Libraries
The Pioneer Program is a series of American unmanned space missions designed for planetary exploration. The program included a number of missions, but the most well-known missions were Pioneer 10 and Pioneer 11. Both Pioneer 10 and 11 explored the outer planets and left our solar system. Both probes carry a gold plaque, depicting a man and a woman and information about the origin of the probes and their creators. The Pioneer probe was named by Stephen A. Saliga, who was chief designer of Air...
Project Constellation is a spaceflight program run by NASA (the National Aeronautics and Space Administration). The program goals are to continue significant operations away from Earth's environment, to develop technologies needed for expanding exploration of space, and to continue conducting fundamental science. Project Constellation was developed by the Exploration Systems Architecture Study, which established how NASA would pursue the goals from the Vision for Space Exploration and the...
Wernher von Braun (March 23, 1912 - June 16, 1977) was one of the leading figures in the development of rocket technology in Germany and the United States. His work on the Nazi rocket program made him a controversial figure. The controversy was captured in a song by satirist Tom Lehrer, who described him as "A man whose allegiance is ruled by expedience". He was born on in Wirsitz, Posen, Germany and his mother gave him a telescope upon his Lutheran confirmation. His interest in astronomy...
NEAR-Shoemaker Mission -- The Near Earth Asteroid Rendezvous - Shoemaker (NEAR Shoemaker), renamed after its launch in honor of Gene Shoemaker, is an unmanned spacecraft designed to study the near-Earth asteroid Eros from close orbit over a period of a year. The primary scientific objectives of NEAR were to return data on the bulk properties, composition, mineralogy, morphology, internal mass distribution and magnetic field of Eros. Secondary objectives include studies of regolith...
Terraforming -- Terraforming (literally, "Earth-shaping") is the process of modifying a planet, moon or other body to a more habitable atmosphere, temperature or ecology. The term was first used in a science fiction novel, 'Seetee Shock' (1940?) by Jack Williamson, but the actual concept is older than that. An example in fiction is 'First and Last Men' by Olaf Stapledon in which Venus is modified, after a long and destructive war with the original inhabitants, who naturally object to the...
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