Space stuff thread

[Anak]

X-37B Landing

Video posted by the Air Force from a runway camera showed the winged craft whiz overhead, touch down on wheels on the runway's north end and race down the three-mile, concrete strip before rolling to a stop in daylight. Official landing time: 7:47 a.m.

Source: Air Force's X-37B space plane lands at KSC with a boom

Longer version of video at above link:

Close up of landing:

 

[Anak]

Busy week:

• Aug. 14: SpaceX will launch a Falcon 9 rocket carrying the Dragon CRS-12 cargo craft on the 12th cargo delivery mission to the International Space Station from Kennedy Space Center in Florida at 12:31 p.m. EDT (1631 GMT). Watch Live
  

• Aug. 14: A United Launch Alliance Atlas 5 rocket will launch a classified payload for the U.S. National Reconnaissance Office (NROL-42) from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California. Launch window: 3:01-7:00 a.m. EDT (0701-1100 GMT).

• Aug. 16: NASA TV will air live coverage of the rendezvous, grapple and installation of the SpaceX Dragon CRS-12 cargo spacecraft at the International Space Station starting at 5:30 a.m. EDT (0930 GMT). Grappling is scheduled for 7 a.m. EDT (1100 GMT). Watch Live
  

• Aug. 17: Expedition 52 cosmonauts Fyodor Yurchikhin and Sergey Ryazanskiy will exit the International Space Station for a spacewalk beginning at 10:45 a.m. EDT (1445 GMT). The spacewalk is expected to last about 6 hours. Watch Live
  

• Aug. 18: A United Launch Alliance Atlas 5 rocket will launch NASA's Tracking and Data Relay Satellite (TDRS-M) from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida.

Source: https://www.space.com/32286-space-calendar.html

 

[ICIT2LOL]

A must have app I got via an email yesterday NASA’s Eyes

It has some fantastic views and features and something I have been looking for a for a long time the app opens in half screen size just hit the max button for full screen

 

[Anak]

Venus and Mars Kiss at Dawn...

On Thursday morning, October 5th, they'll almost touch, when Venus passes just ¼° north of Mars.That's a tight sight and worth setting the alarm to see. The pair rises about 5:15 a.m. and is well-placed for viewing from about 5:45–6:15 a.m. some 90 minutes to an hour before sunrise.

http://www.skyandtelescope.com/observing/venus-and-mars-kiss-at-dawn/

 

[chefduane]

Longer version of video at above link:

Close up of landing:

0:43 looks like the shuttle is next in line for takeoff!

 

[A Guy]

Physicists Will Be Announcing An "Unprecedented Discovery" On Monday - Here's How To Watch Live

In the space of just a few weeks, the LIGO and VIRGO collaborations have announced the fourth detection of gravitational waves and three of their most prominent physicists received a Nobel Prize for their work.

And on Monday they will announce something new. Everyone is being very tight-lipped on the nature of this big announcement but it is beyond doubt a huge affair.

Physicists Will Be Announcing An s How To Watch Live | IFLScience

NASA to Host News Conference on Discovery Beyond Our Solar System

NASA will hold a news conference at 1 p.m. EST Wednesday, Feb. 22, to present new findings on planets that orbit stars other than our sun, known as exoplanets. The event will air live on NASA Television and the agency's website.


Details of these findings are embargoed by the journal Nature until 1 p.m.

NASA to Host News Conference on Discovery Beyond Our Solar System | NASA

A Guy

 

[Anak]

December Solstice

Winter arrives 11:27am EST - 4:27GMT

https://London | www.timeanddate.com/calendar/seasons

 

[Brink]

SpaceX Falcon Heavy Test Flight - Windows 10 Forums

 

[ICIT2LOL]

SpaceX Falcon Heavy Test Flight - Windows 10 Forums

hmm amazing when you think those booster units were down range ?? Technically just amazing.

What was the car bit about though that is the only thing that has got me baffled

 

[Anak]

In an unusual twist, Musk has decided to load the rocket with a Tesla electric car blasting out David Bowie’s classic Space Oddity, explaining that normal test flights are too “boring”.

He said: “Test flights of new rockets usually contain mass simulators in the form of concrete or steel blocks. That seemed extremely boring.

“Of course, anything boring is terrible, especially companies, so we decided to send something unusual, something that made us feel.

“The payload will be an original Tesla Roadster, playing Space Oddity, on a billion year elliptic Mars orbit.”

https://Space X launch | www.express.co.uk Did you get to see they had a dummy astronaut in the drivers seat

Hi John, I had posted over on 10F with a larger quote: post #223

 

[ICIT2LOL]

Hiyya Steve my immediate thought was how much drag that car would have caused unless it was in pod of some sort.

Suppose it was just as well it was an electric car otherwise they would had a heck of a job staring it up:roflmao:

Will take a quick look over in 10 to see your post. Haven't used 10 for some time now as I am not really fan of it so don't get to seeing much of what is happening there.

 

[Anak]

Yea, it was inside a launch pod there's five more photos here, scroll down to about the middle of the article.

You've probably seen my post about the failure off the middle booster to land on the barge.

 

[ICIT2LOL]

Yep Steve just amazing and I wonder why we haven't heard much about the Falcon on TV seems a shame as the technology certainly has progressed since the previous launch systems.

That thing must be really so powerful it isn't funny. So is this a government funded project as I thought some bureaucrats would have frowned on the car being inside.

 

[Anak]

I'm going to answer your questions in the reverse order that you've asked.

I heard during the launch it is rated at 5.1 million pounds of thrust.
No, this is not government funded it is entirely backed by Elon Musk although I wouldn't doubt that he's getting for lack of a better term "considerations for his efforts", such as he didn't have to build the launch pad or ancillary buildings he rents them.

Because it is let's say a semi-private organization most news organizations will tape it for later broadcasting. The only live showing that I could find was on one of our cable channels MSNBC, and they cut to a commercial break at T- 3:00 and didn't come back until T- 0:58,

It's the way the world spins anymore John, money talks, bullshite walks.

 

[A Guy]

This landing rockets shouldn't get old



Looks like a SciFi movie effect

A Guy

 

[ICIT2LOL]

It's the way the world spins anymore John, money talks, bullshite walks.

I agree 100% Steve and there is plenty of that right now eh??

 

[mjf]

Elon Musk walks the walk. This launch was very impressive. The 2 side rockets landing for reuse was also very impressive. The middle rocket had some landing engine failures so it hit the water. This was after all a test flight and they will learn from this one failure.
I think the Tesla roadster payload rather than a chunk of concrete was great marketing.

 

[z3r010]

The middle one was the only one that hadn't landed before, maybe next time they should use three proven rockets.

 

[Layback Bear]

I saw the launch and landing 'live' on Fox News.
I don't really get into rocket launches but that was amazing.
I car was a sales pitch for the car Elon Musk also makes and also probably a tax deductible.

Smart move.

Jack

 

[Anak]

First Light...

Surprises in signal from cosmic dawn also hint at presence of dark matter.

Astronomers have for the first time spotted long-sought signals of light from the earliest stars ever to form in the Universe — around 180 million years after the Big Bang.

The signal is a fingerprint left on background radiation by hydrogen that absorbed some of this primordial light. The evidence hints that the gas that made up the early Universe was colder than predicted. This, physicists say, is a possible sign of dark matter’s influence. If confirmed, the discovery could mark the first time that dark matter has been detected through anything other than its gravitational effects.

“This is the first time we’ve seen any signal from this early in the Universe, aside from the afterglow of the Big Bang,” says Judd Bowman, an astronomer at Arizona State University in Tempe who led the work, which is published in Nature1 on 28 February. “If it’s true, this is major news,” says Saleem Zaroubi, a cosmologist at the University of Groningen in the Netherlands. Other teams will need to confirm the signal but, so far, the finding seems to be robust, he says. “It’s very exciting stuff. This is a period in the Universe’s history we know very little about.”

Astronomers detect light from the Universe’s first stars