Monday, February 27, 2012

Fifth ATV named following Georges Lemaitre


Georges Lemaitre teaching at the Catholic University of Leuven, Belgium. In 1927, Georges Lemaitre exposed a family of solutions to Einstein's relativity equations that describe an expanding Universe quite than a static one, and provide the first observational opinion of the Hubble steady. The theory later became much improved known as the Big Bang theory. Identification ESA's fifth Automated Transfer Vehicle after Belgian scientist Georges Lemaitre continue the custom of drawing on great European visionaries to reflect Europe's bottomless roots in science, technology and culture. Credits: Katholieke Universiteit Leuven.

ESA's Automated Transfer Vehicles (ATVs) are a necessary contribution by Europe to organization the International Space Station. Naming the fifth after Belgian scientist Georges Lemaitre continues the custom of drawing on great European visionaries to reflect Europe's deep roots in science, technology and culture.

The first Automated Transfer Vehicle (ATV), which made a flawless flight in 2008, was sname after French science fiction author Jules Verne. It was follow in 2011 by ATV-2, named in honor of German mathematician and astronomer Johannes Kepler.

It will be the twist of the third ATV, name following the Italian physicist and space pioneer Edoardo Amaldi, to head towards the Space Station on 9 March.ATV-4, aim for launch in early 2013, carries the name of Albert Einstein.Naming the last vehicle of the family, ATV-5, after Belgian physicist Georges Lemaitre, father of the Big Bang theory, continue this approach.

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Monday, February 20, 2012

NuSTAR mate to Its Rocket


NuSTAR will search the newest, densest and most energetic objects in space, counting black holes and the remnants of exploded stars. It will be the primary space telescope to imprison sharp images in high-energy X-rays, giving astronomers a innovative tool for sympathetic the great side of our universe.

NuSTAR is a little Explorer mission led by the California Institute of Technology and managed by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, both in Pasadena, Calif., for NASA's Science Mission Directorate. The spacecraft was build by Orbital Sciences Corporation, Dulles, Va. Its instrument was built by a consortium including Caltech; JPL; Columbia University, New York; NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md.; the Danish Technical University in Denmark; the University of California, Berkeley; and ATK Aerospace Systems, Goleta, Calif. 

NuSTAR will be operated by UC Berkeley, with the Italian Space Agency as long as its equatorial ground station located at Malindi, Kenya. The mission's outreach program is based at Sonoma State University, Calif. NASA's Explorer Program is managed by Goddard. JPL is managed by Caltech for NASA.

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Monday, February 13, 2012

Astronauts seen as well as heard


Seeing ESA astronaut Andre Kuipers on the International Space Station is a regular incidence these days. You turn on your TV or check Twitter and there he is. Since present are no cable sprawling from the Station to Earth, just how does this come about?

The reply, of course, is via satellite. While the reply may be simple, the method is more complex. Behind Andre's smiling face is a compound system of jargon-filled amplifiers, multiplexers, antennas, nodes and signal modulation.

Thanks to satcoms, the team can directly take delivery of emails on the Space Station, they can create private calls via IP phones, and we can see them during televise video conference.

The Station is airborne in a low orbit - around 400 km up - which income that shortest communications can happen only when it passes over a ground station. In its place, signals from the Station are primary sent to 'geostationary' satellites balanced 36 000 km above the equator.

Geostationary satellites take precisely a day to circle Earth, creation them appear stationary in our skies. This allows continuous contact with ground stations; enable them to communicate the Station's signals to a middle ground station on Earth additional often.The procedure is upturned when sites such as the Columbus control centre in Munich, Germany, send signal up to the Station.

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Monday, January 30, 2012

Goddard Director Leaving for Ball Aerospace

Robert Strain will leave as director of  NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., to turn out to be chief operating officer of Ball Aerospace & Technologies Corp. Strain’s last day at Goddard will be March 4, NASA spokesman Mark Hess said. damage, who has detained the top post at Goddard for more than three years, announced his acceptance Jan. 30.

 NASA has not yet selected a substitute for Strain, Hess said.

 At Boulder, Colo.-based Ball, Strain will be accountable for day-to-day operation of the company’s Civil and Operational Space, Tactical Solutions, National Defense, and system Engineering Solutions units. He will report in a straight line to David Taylor, president and chief executive of Ball Aerospace.

 Before taking the wheel of Goddard in 2008, Strain was the head of the Space Department at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Lab in Laurel, Md. Prior to joining Hopkins in 2004, Strain exhausted 10 years at Dulles, Va.-based satellite and rocket maker Orbital Sciences Corp., where he was decision-making vice president of space systems.

Ball is working on more than a few big projects being managed by Goddard. Among these is the Joint Polar Satellite System (JPSS), the next-generation of U.S. civil polar-orbiting weather satellites.

Ball is the prime contractor for the JPSS-1 spacecraft, which NASA is procuring for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric management. Ball has a $248 million fixed-price contract to build JPSS-1, and a separate $82.4 million contract to construct a clone of the Ozone map and Profile Suite instrument.

The 2012 budget for JPSS is $924 million.

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Wednesday, January 25, 2012

NASA'S J-2X locomotive kick Off 2012 With Power pack test


A innovative sequence of tests on the locomotive that will help take humans to bottomless space will begin next week at NASA's Stennis Space Center in southern Mississippi. The test on the J-2X engine bring NASA one pace closer to the first human-rated liquid oxygen and liquid hydrogen rocket train to be urbanized in 40 years.

Tests will center on the power pack for the J-2X. This extremely well-organized and versatile higher rocket engine is being intended to power the upper stage of NASA's Space Launch System, a new heavy-lift launch vehicle capable of missions beyond low-Earth orbit. The power pack comprise components on the top portion of the engine, including the gas generator, oxygen and fuel turbo pumps, and related ducts and valves that bring the propellants jointly to make burning and make thrust.



"The J-2X upper stage engine is vital to achieve the full open ability of the heavy-lift Space Launch System," said William Gerstenmaier, NASA's associate manager for the Human examination and Operations Mission Directorate. "The testing today will help ensure that a key force element is ready to support exploration across the solar system."

About a dozen power pack tests of unreliable length are slated now from side to side summer at Stennis' A-1 Test Stand. By unraveling the engine mechanism the thrust chamber assembly, counting the main combustion chamber, main injector and needle engineers can more with no trouble push the various components to function over a wide variety of conditions to ensure the parts' integrity, show the safety margin and better appreciate how the turbopumps operate.

"By anecdotal the pressures, temperatures and flow rates, the power pack test series will evaluate the full range of operating circumstances of the engine components," said Tom Byrd, J-2X engine lead in the SLS Liquid Engines Office at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala. "This will enable us to verify the components' design and validate our analytical models against performance data, as well as ensure structural stability and verify the combustion stability of the gas generator."

This is the second power pack test series for J-2X. The powerpack 1A was tested in 2008 with J-2S engine turbo machinery originally developed for the Apollo Program. Engineers tested these heritage components to obtain data to help them modify the design of the turbomachinery to meet the higher performance requirements of the J-2X engine.

"The test engineers on the A-1 test team are excited and ready to begin another phase of testing which will provide critical data in support of the Space Launch System," said Gary Benton, J-2X engine testing project manager at Stennis.J-2X is being developed for Marshall by Pratt & Whitney Rocketdyne of Canoga Park, Calif.

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