NASA News For October 2014

Two days after the SpaceX Dragon cargo ship left the ISS (International Space Station) and came back to us, a ship by a different company was being made ready for the trip, it was Orbital Science Corporation’s Cygnus spaceship (which blew up after the writing of this article). The Cygnus carries about 5,000 pounds of supplies. This ship is launched from Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia aboard an Antares rocket. The Dragon capsule had carried a little more than 3,000 pounds of cargo but these included scientific samples. SpaceX has a contract for eight more trips to the station while Orbital Science has a contract for five more missions to the space station. Crew transportation contracts were given to SpaceX and Boeing. These contracts call for the building of spacecraft to transport astronauts from Cape Canaveral to the space station and back. The idea is to end our dependence on the Russians for launches and transportation.

NASA is asking for proposals to develop and manufacture ultra-lightweight materials for space vehicles to be used in future structures. The idea is to replace honeycomb and foam cores which are used in a sort of composite sandwich. The sandwich structure is usually two very thin skins with a core of foam. NASA is looking for a light weight core which will have half or less of the area density. They want materials which can create flat and curved structures. It is believed the lighter material will increase the ability for space exploration. The problem I see is we seem to be all talk when referring to human exploration of space and little substance. No amount of material modifications will kick off our manned space program, it has to be wanted.

On December 3rd, 2014 NASA is going to have a social event at ten of its centers. This will be to celebrate the launch of the Orion spacecraft. It will be launched on an Alliance Delta IV Heavy rocket. The liftoff is targeted for 4:05 am PST on December 4th, 2014. A discussion will be conducted about sending humans to Mars. Wow I think we may have talked this to death already. There will also be a tour of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory and NASA's Armstrong Flight Research Center.

NASA has a new service, it is NASA’s SoundCloud page. There are downloadable audio snippets from the 56 years of NASA history. One of the snippets is the famous words of Neil Armstrong which are, “That’s one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.” Appropriately this was the first post by NASA. There are some famous snippets from the Apollo Missions also such as the famous words by Jack Swigert, “Houston, we’ve had a problem.” There are also space sounds such as lightning on Jupiter and interstellar plasma sounds.

A fake news story credited NASA. It states there will be six days of total darkness in December of this year. The story goes on to say this will happen from Tuesday 16 December 2014 to Monday 22 December 2014. It was said this would be caused by a solar storm which would cause dust and debris to block 90% of the sunlight. The article went on to say Charles Bolden the head of NASA made the announcement which said the storm would be the largest in the last 250 years.

In the 1960s Huntsville became known as American’s “Rocket City.” It is now being talked about as the launching area for American’s human Mars’ missions. It is amazing to me how we keep dragging out the fact we are going to go to Mars. Now the talk is the missions will start in the 2030s, but it is a known political ploy to talk about doing things in the distant future when the person talking about it will no longer be held responsible. It is a sort of way of getting credit for doing nothing. NASA feels if they turn over low Earth orbit transportation to private companies they can concentrate on more ambitious missions. NASA is hoping the development of their new heavy lift rocket will be the cause for some new firsts such as a manned flight to an asteroid, first crew to fly further than the moon, first humans to set foot on Mars and maybe the first crew to grow their own food in space.

NASA has reported the comet which is the target for the Rosetta spacecraft has begun streaming gas and dust. The comet is 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko. The Rosetta spacecraft and the comet are still 280 million miles from the sun. On November 12, 2014 a lander will approach the comet. The area where the lander is scheduled to touchdown seems to be quiet even though other areas of the comet are quite active. Rosetta was launched in 2004 and was put into hibernation and reactivated in January of this year, 2014. What always amazes me is the fact how fast technology is proceeding. The technology on Rosetta is now very old.

NASA created a virtual telescope using two different satellites. Two tiny cubesats were used. A cubesat is a satellite which fits into a volume of one liter. This way many of them can be deployed since they are so small and easily fit onto a spacecraft. As technology shrinks electronics each cubesat becomes more capable. The virtual telescope is a coronagraph which will study the outer layer of the sun. A lot of other virtual telescope systems have been proposed, but since the procedure is so complicated they have been rejected for funding. This system works cheaply relatively speaking.

NASA has announced what has been called a groundbreaking discovery. They have said large patches of trace gases have been seen shining near the north and south poles on Saturn’s moon Titan during dusk and dawn. This was discovered by a NASA led team of researchers. They were investigating the chemical make-up of the moon’s atmosphere.

NASA has sent a drone into the eye of a hurricane. The drone flew into hurricane Edouard and it measured the upper-level wind shear affecting the storm. The drone was a Global Hawk and was sent in at least six different times. This helped scientists investigate the formation and intensity change of the hurricane.