Latest Space technology Stories
[ Watch the Video: Pioneer 11 Animation and Archive Footage ] Michael Harper for redOrbit.com – Your Universe Online NASA is celebrating the 40th birthday of the Pioneer 11 spacecraft. For the past four decades, Pioneer has been hurtling through space, capturing satellite images of the planets Jupiter and Saturn. As its predecessor, Pioneer 10 had launched just over a year before and was the first spacecraft to not only leave the inner Solar System, but make the trip to Jupiter as...
WASHINGTON, April 3, 2013 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- NASA has selected 295 research and technology proposals from 216 American small businesses for negotiations that may lead to contract awards worth a combined $38.7 million. (Logo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20081007/38461LOGO) The proposals are part of NASA's Small Business Innovation Research Program (SBIR) and Small Business Technology Transfer (STTR) Program. SBIR addresses specific technology gaps in agency missions while...
NASA For more than a year, NASA's crawler-transporter (CT) 2 has been undergoing a major tuneup in the Kennedy Space Center's Vehicle Assembly Building (VAB). Recent work has included preparations to install upgraded components that will enable the crawler to carry the greater loads anticipated with the agency's new rocket designed to take astronauts beyond low-Earth orbit for the first time since the early 1970s. The crawler-transporter modifications are part of NASA's Ground Systems...
NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory Photos from NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter show how the parachute that helped NASA's Curiosity rover land on Mars last summer has subsequently changed its shape on the ground. The images were obtained by the High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. Seven images taken by HiRISE between Aug. 12, 2012, and Jan. 13, 2013, show the used parachute shifting its shape at least twice in response to wind....
NASA is seeking innovative, early-stage space technology proposals from accredited U.S. universities that will enable NASA's future missions and America's leadership in space. Proposals are sought for science instruments, cryogenic propellant storage for long-duration space exploration, optical coatings for astrophysical pursuits, oxygen recovery for life support systems, and to improve our understanding of and protection from near-Earth asteroids. Each of these space technology areas...
NORTH LOGAN, Utah and HONG KONG, April 3, 2013 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Asia Satellite Telecommunications Company Limited (AsiaSat) and GeoMetWatch Corp today announced that the two companies have entered into a strategic partnership to host the first of six Sounding & Tracking Observatory for Regional Meteorology (STORM(TM)) instruments on board a new satellite planned to be launched by AsiaSat in 2016. "We are pleased to have reached this cooperation agreement with...
First Space Hacker Workshop to Take Place in Silicon Valley MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif., April 2, 2013 /PRNewswire/ -- Are you a hardware hacker? Do you have the Right Stuff to become a citizen scientist or citizen astronaut? Here's your chance to find out. Citizen scientists and hardware hackers will learn how to do "space on the cheap" at the first Space Hacker Workshop for Suborbital Experiments. Participants at the two-day workshop will learn how they can build and fly experiments in space,...
HAMPTON, Va., April 1, 2013 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Humans may step on the interstellar gas pedal some day and "Boom!" goes the engine. (Logo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20081007/38461LOGO) On Tuesday, April 2, at NASA's Langley Research Center, theoretical physicist Friedwardt Winterberg will present, "To Mars in Weeks by Thermonuclear Micro-Bomb Propulsion," at 2 p.m. in the Reid Conference Center here. Winterberg will be available to answer questions from the media...
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,...
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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