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Archive for the ‘space travel’ category: Page 350

Nov 18, 2018

How the InSight Mission to Mars Will Confirm Its Landing to NASA

Posted by in category: space travel

NASA’s InSight mission aims to send a lander to Mars to study the crust, mantle, and core of the red planet. Launched in May this year, InSight is now nearly at its destination and will soon be touching down on the surface of Mars.

NASA has shared details on how it will monitor the touching down of the lander at the end of its 91 million mile journey. The first tools it will use are radio telescopes, which can pick up simple radio signals. As the lander descends into the Mars atmosphere, it will send out radio signals that researchers back home at NASA can pick up. Two locations will be listening out for the signal: one at the National Science Foundation’s Green Bank Observatory in Green Bank, West Virginia and one at the Max Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy’s facility at Effelsberg, Germany. These radio signals cannot give data about what the lander finds, but they can be used to work out basic information like what at speed the lander is descending thanks to the Doppler effect in which the frequency of a sound wave is affected by the movement of the source relative to the observer.

More detailed information about the lander will be gathered using two small spacecraft called Mars Cube One (MarCO). The MarCOs are each about the size of a briefcase and are an experimental technology that should fly behind the InSight lander and relay data back to Earth in real-time. They may even be able to capture an image of the surface of Mars as soon as the lander touches down.

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Nov 18, 2018

Days Away From Mars, NASA Awaits ‘The Seven Minutes Of Terror’

Posted by in category: space travel

The InSight spacecraft is ready to rumble.

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Nov 18, 2018

Tesla Model 3 protects owner from unsafe air even without Bioweapon Defense Mode

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, Elon Musk, space travel, sustainability

Amidst the ongoing threat of the California wildfires, a Tesla Model 3 owner has posted a brief demonstration of the electric sedan’s capability to maintain the air quality inside its cabin, despite the vehicle not being equipped with the Model S and X’s hospital-grade HEPA filter or a dedicated “Bioweapon Defense Mode.”

Elon Musk took to Twitter last week to offer the Model S and Model X as vehicles that can be used to transport people away from the ongoing CA wildfires. The Model S and X are capable of scrubbing the air inside the car, thanks to their large HEPA filters that are fitted with separate acid and alkaline gas neutralization layers. Later social media updates and anecdotes from Model S and X owners driving through the CA area indicate that Bioweapon Defense Mode helped maintain the air quality inside their vehicles.

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Nov 18, 2018

Jeff Bezos, The World’s Richest Man, Says He Will Use His $131 Billion Fortune To Fund Space Travel And Create Human Settlements Beyond Earth

Posted by in category: space travel

The world’s richest person Jeff Bezos already liquidates $1 billion (£0.7 billion) of his fortune in space travel every year. That figure is only set to increase as he now says he thinks the best use of his astonishing $131 billion (£96 billion) wealth is getting man into the space.

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Nov 18, 2018

NASA Image of Merging Galaxy Clusters Looks Suspiciously Like the USS Enterprise

Posted by in categories: physics, space travel

Two possibilities: Either the image captures two massive galactic clusters in the process of colliding, or NASA is covering up the existence of a starship so big it’s several million light years long.


Humanity’s current understanding of physics may suggest faster-than-light travel is impossible, but researchers here on Earth can still observe happening in places much too far away to ever actually visit (and generally only what they looked like in the distant past). One of them is a galactic collision that, at least from our planetary vantage point, looks an awful lot like a craft going where no man has ever gone before.

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Nov 18, 2018

Rocket Science in 60 Seconds: EM-1 and the Power Needed to Get to the Moon and Beyond

Posted by in categories: science, space travel

Click on photo to start video.

NASA’s Rocket Science in 60 Seconds gives you an inside look at work being done to explore deep space. In the latest episode you can hear Rob Stough, payload utilization manager for our NASA’s Space Launch System, talk about the power we needed to boost the rocket into space and send NASA’s Orion Spacecraft to the Moon. Watch: https://youtu.be/0VB9aI3xVFs

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Nov 18, 2018

Elon Musk says a ‘radical change’ is coming to SpaceX’s monster Mars rocket design

Posted by in categories: Elon Musk, robotics/AI, space travel

  • In a tweet, Musk revealed that “radical change” was coming to the design of the Big Falcon Rocket (BFR), which is meant to go to Mars.
  • The tweet appeared to indicate that the second stage of the Falcon 9 will now be used for component tests for the BFR, and that the company is abandoning plans to make the second stage of Falcon 9 reusable.
  • Musk has said that his “aspirational” goal is to launch an unmanned cargo mission to Mars by 2022.

In a tweet, Saturday, SpaceX founder Elon Musk announced that “radical change” was coming to the design of the Big Falcon Rocket (BFR), that is being made in an attempt to go to Mars.

Musk left out any specifics of his plan, simply announcing that “SpaceX is no longer planning to upgrade Falcon 9 second stage for reusability” and would be “Accelerating BFR instead.” Musk called the new design “very exciting” and “delightfully counter-intuitive.”

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Nov 18, 2018

Marvel at The Plans For Japan’s Futuristic New Space Research Center

Posted by in categories: futurism, space travel

The architectural design behind Japan’s new space research center is mind-boggling. The futuristic building will incorporate elements of spacecraft design, which emphasize light weight and high functionality.

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Nov 16, 2018

News: On the evening of Thursday, Nov. 15, NASA’s Kepler space telescope received its final set of commands to disconnect communications with Earth

Posted by in category: space travel

The “goodnight” commands finalize the spacecraft’s transition into retirement, which began on Oct. 30 with NASA’s announcement that Kepler had run out of fuel and could no longer conduct science.

Coincidentally, Kepler’s “goodnight” falls on the same date as the 388-year anniversary of the death of its namesake, German astronomer Johannes Kepler, who discovered the laws of planetary motion and passed away on Nov. 15, 1630.

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Nov 15, 2018

The most incredible technology you’ve never seen

Posted by in categories: futurism, space travel

There’s money to be made and lives to be saved with the tiny stuff that’s all around us.

Saving the world (or some subset of people in it) is in vogue among the world’s wealthiest.

Jeff Bezos has a rocket company, Blue Origin. Bezos believes our future is extraterrestrial, and his rocket company exists because he thinks the price for getting anything off this rock is too damn high.

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