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The Orion spacecraft with European Service Module (left), Earth (middle) and the Moon (right) are captured in this ‘family portrait’ by Orion’s solar array camera during the spacecraft’s closet approach to the lunar surface.
Six days into the 25-day Artemis I mission, the Orion spacecraft performed a key manoeuvre: just a little more than 130 km from the lunar surface, the main engine on the European Service Module – a repurposed Space Shuttle engine that is now on its 20th spaceflight – fired for just under 150 seconds to push the spacecraft and head towards a lunar orbit using the Moon’s gravity to reduce fuel consumption.
The manoeuvre, known as the Outbound Powered Flyby, was another success for the Artemis I mission, whose goal is to test the mission profile, the spacecraft, and the people operating it in preparation for flights with astronauts on future missions.
The European Service Module is powering Orion around the Moon and back, providing propulsion, temperature control, electricity as well as storage and delivery for essential supplies such as fuel, water and air.
Mission control for Orion is at the Johnson Space Center in Houston, USA, where European engineers are on hand at all times to offer in-depth expertise on the finer details of the service module. The mission evaluation room based at ESA’s technical heart in The Netherlands also has personnel round the clock in direct communication with their US and European colleagues in mission control in Houston.
“Operationally the spacecraft is performing perfectly and the international collaboration with this new spacecraft with new flight rules is great to see,” says ESA’s Programme Manager for the European Service Modules, Philippe Deloo, “The teams across both sides of the Atlantic are showing exemplary skills, knowledge and teamwork leading humankind forward to the Moon.”
Stunning new imagery of Earth from a human-rated spacecraft such as this image is also important to the mission, bringing the wonder of space exploration to the public some 50 years after the last Apollo mission.
This photo was taken by a Go-Pro fastened to the end of one of four 7 m-long solar array, and connects to the spacecraft over a wireless network. The solar arrays provide enough electricity to power two households on Earth.
Find the latest updates on Artemis I on the ESA Orion blog and on Twitter @esaspaceflight.
Credits: NASA
Engineers successfully tested the parachutes for NASA's Orion spacecraft at the U.S. Army Yuma Proving Ground in Arizona Wednesday, March 8. This was the second test in a series of eight that will certify Orion's parachutes for human spaceflight.
The test, which dropped an Orion engineering model from a C-17 aircraft at 25,000 feet, simulated the descent astronauts might experience if they have to abort a mission after liftoff.
Orion, which will launch atop NASA's Space Launch System rocket from the agency's Kennedy Space Center in Florida, is built to take astronauts farther into the solar system than ever before. The spacecraft will carry crew to space, provide emergency abort capabilities, sustain the crew during their mission and provide safe re-entry through Earth's atmosphere.
Image Credit: NASA
" So then we have a deal then Mercenary ? Sure, we have a deal as long as it doesn't involve those two watchdogs behind your back miss .....? No, need for names Mercenary, just do as you where hired for ...."
In the year 2552 it is most common to go shopping for mercenaries, adventures and other scum to do the dirty work, most people(read people with money) go for this rather unusual type of groceries to the Great Zyphiaran Trade Market on the planet Zyphia.The ship you see here is owned by former Captain Kane Archten of the sixth squadron of Zyphia, Captain Archten was "thanked" after the long war for his services, and ever since he performs all kinds of unsavory jobs to survive, but as always with char that can not bear the light there are competitors on the horizon.......
"Biomutant"
• In-game Photomode
• ReShade Framework
• Console Unlocker by Sunbeam (Freecam, Custom FOV).
Human spaceflight and operations image of the week for 27 October 2015: All Hallows’ Eve celebrates the cycle of destruction and rebirth, which our Cluster mission knows well.
This is a high-resolution scan of a debris fragment recovered after the launch loss of the first Cluster mission, in 1996.
It was included in an art installation displayed at ESA’s ESOC operations centre in September, as part of the celebration of 15 years in orbit for the second set of Cluster satellites.
On 4 June 1996, the maiden flight of the Ariane 5 rocket ended in a spectacular explosion just seconds after liftoff from ESA’s Spaceport in Kourou, French Guiana, at a height of 3500 m. The failure was later determined to be an error in the control software. Debris was scattered over many square kilometres of swamp, ocean and savanna.
Ariane was carrying the four satellites of the new Cluster mission, set to investigate Earth’s magnetic environment and its 3D interaction with the solar wind.
The mission was considered so crucial that the satellites were rebuilt and, in 2000, Cluster was relaunched, becoming the first with four identical spacecraft flying in formation to study the Sun–Earth interaction. Today, the quartet continues to unravel the secrets of the invisible particles and magnetic fields that envelop our planet.
In 2015, ESA celebrates 15 years of teamwork, extraordinary flight operations and the wealth of scientific discoveries returned by Cluster.
To mark this anniversary, artist Sascha Mikloweit was invited to work with some of the original Cluster debris. His installation, All Parts of the Subsystem are Present, was displayed at ESOC and comprised debris fragments, very-high-resolution image scans and video.
“All Hallows’ Eve reminds us of destruction and birth, perhaps the most essential cycle in our Universe, whether applied to galaxies, stars, rocketships or humans,” says Sascha.
“This image symbolises that cycle, celebrating the loss, rebirth and now 15 years of scientific success that is the Cluster mission.”
More information via the artist’s website: www.mikloweit.net
Something simple to get the gears spinning again. Need to break away from this design pattern eventually.
Interplanetary Cruiser
A “big” Lego space cruiser I have built this week. You might notice that the shape is quite unusual:
==> The main structure is obtained with bent 32x16 blue base plates as you can see in the picture if you zoom in on the front or the rear part of the spaceship.
In addition to an original shape this technique provides a very robust design. Something you really appreciate during the building and when you have to manipulate/move the model.
The Orion Spacecraft of the Artemis I mission is due to make its return to Earth in just a few hours, so with a nod to that event I'm posting this photo from just a few hours before it left Earth.
The Orion spacecraft is seen here atop the Space Launch System (SLS) and the Artemis I mission. This photo was looking out to Launch Complex 39B at Kennedy Space Center in Florida. We were at the Banana Creek Launch Viewing Area and the reflection here is from Futch Cove in Banana Creek between us and the launch pad.
The Artemis I mission took the Orion spacecraft out to the moon, remaining in orbit there for several days, and then returning to Earth.
I exported this for print on 11x17 300dpi. When I uploaded, I didn't realize the EXIF data was stripped. This was taken with a 400mm lens on a Canon 6D. In my travels I failed to bring a tripod, but I did have a monopod. With the monopod attached to the lens collar, I propped the camera body on a nearby fence and used a remote shutter release to keep it as still as possible. Not ideal, and many of the shots had some blur, but I did manage to get a few that I was happy to have as a souvenir of this historic occasion.
La saison des aurores australes est de retour ! Ou plutôt, notre orbite et le vent solaire nous ont permis d’en observer à nouveau, personne ne va s’en plaindre 😍 Un détail quand même : le Soyouz qui photobombe les images n’est plus celui d’Oleg : c’est le vaisseau d’Anton :)
Aurora season is back! Our orbits and the solar wind have made the aurora visible again. No one is complaining! 😍 One thing has changed... the Soyuz in the foreground is now Anton's, and no longer Oleg's :)
Credits: ESA/NASA–T. Pesquet
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Colloquially referred to as the "bunny ears" of any assigned task force, the Yutu class serves as the FNC's latest surveillance and reconnaissance vessel. Iterating from observations of the Anansi's effectiveness as a requisitioned military asset during crisis scenarios, the Yutu offers a dedicated, combat-worthy platform for extreme-range sensory operations.
While only equipped with minimal torpedo capabilities, the Yutu's excessively powerful sensor apparatus allow it to provide a vast detection blanket for any friendly vessels within a significant range. Due to the high radiological output of said sensors, however, the vessel cannot safely operate in civilian space, or in close proximity to unshielded vessels. Despite this, the Yutu has proven itself a valuable asset when delving into uncertain territory, especially when used in conjunction with larger, carrier-based strike groups.
I need to get back into making hero shots.
The most recent departure from the International Space Station was not our friends from Crew-1, but some… trash, on a Progress resupply ship. This workhorse of the International Space Station programme, like its equivalents launched from the US, Japan's HTV and Europe's ATV (until 2015) bring us all we need to perform our missions, and burn up on re-entry, ridding us of our trash in the process. Their very practical function doesn’t make them less beautiful when they fly close to the Space Station.
Juste avant le Crew-1, un autre ami nous a quitté fin avril : le vaisseau cargo russe Progress. Bon, c'est difficilement comparable puisqu'il s'agit... de nos déchets. Il est essentiel à l'approvisionnement de l'ISS, comme ses équivalents états-uniens (Cygnus, Dragon), japonais (HTV) et même européen jusqu'en 2015 (ATV). À l'aller, ils nous apportent tout ce dont nous avons besoin pour réaliser nos missions. Au retour, ils se désintègrent en brûlant dans l'atmosphère, emportant nos ordures avec eux. Cette fonction très terre-à-terre ne les empêche pas d'être extrêmement gracieux quand ils naviguent à proximité de la Station spatiale.
Credits: ESA/NASA–T. Pesquet
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The ESA/JAXA BepiColombo mission captured this beautiful view of Mercury’s rich geological landscape on 23 June 2022 as the spacecraft flew past the planet for a gravity assist manoeuvre.
The image was taken at 09:49:22 UTC by the Mercury Transfer Module’s Monitoring Camera 2, when the spacecraft was within about 920 km from the surface of Mercury. Closest approach of about 200 km took place shortly before, at 09:44 UTC. In this view, north is roughly towards the top right.
The cameras provide black-and-white snapshots in 1024 x 1024 pixel resolution. The image has been interpolated to 2048 x 2048 pixels to sharpen the details. Some imaging artefacts such as horizontal striping are also visible.
Parts of the Mercury Planetary Orbiter can also be seen, notably the magnetometer boom running from bottom left to top right, and a small part of the medium-gain antenna at bottom right. The magnetometer boom roughly follows the ‘terminator’– the boundary between the night and day side of the planet. The lighting conditions in this image are different to any recorded by NASA’s MESSENGER mission to Mercury for this region, enhancing the differences between smooth terrains and older rough terrains. Large impact craters, including a 200 km wide multi-ringed basin partly hidden by the magnetometer boom can also clearly be made out along with other geological features.
Survey ship
One prominent, straight sunlit scarp runs from the bottom of the image and towards the magnetometer boom. It is about 200 km long – of which 170 km can be seen in this image – and stands 2 km high, and is part of Mercury’s global pattern of geologic faults. Previously unnamed, the International Astronomical Union Working Group for Planetary System Nomenclature assigned it the name ‘Challenger Rupes’ earlier this month, in anticipation of it being well seen in MCAM images during this swingby. This continues the convention of naming Mercury’s escarpments after scientific expeditions and ships used in voyages of discovery; in this case after HMS Challenger, whose 1872-1876 survey of the Atlantic and Pacific oceans and their floors laid the foundations of the modern science of oceanography.
To the right of Challenger Rupes is a 140 km wide unnamed crater which catches the eye thanks to the bright spot at about the one o’clock position just inside the rim, which is relatively fresh ejecta from a small young impact crater. The large crater’s floor is covered by lavas that extend into the surrounding smooth plains (Catuilla Planum). The crater floor is also cut by two prominent fault scarps roughly parallel to Challenger Rupes. The pattern of faults in this region, probably related to a fault system called Beagle Rupes (in darkness and also hidden by the magnetometer boom), surely has a fascinating story to tell about Mercury’s tectonic history – a key aspect of the science BepiColombo will explore once in orbit around the planet and carrying out its main mission from 2026.
Another eye-catching crater is the 130 km-wide Eminescu crater towards the top right of the image, its bright central peak feature catching the sunlight with this viewing angle. This will be a particularly interesting crater for BepiColombo to study as it contains ‘hollows’, geological features unique to Mercury.
The bright streaks radiating from the 24 km-wide Xiao Zhao crater at the right of the image also stand out against the darker background. These ‘rays’ are formed from material ejected during the impact event that carved out the crater, and fade away within a few hundreds of millions of years. This tells us that Xiao Zhao is one of the more recent impact craters on Mercury.
Tantalizing taste
This brief glimpse is a tantalizing taste of the rich geology that BepiColombo is set to study in more detail from orbit. The gravity assist manoeuvre was the second at Mercury and the fifth of nine flybys overall. During its seven-year cruise to the smallest and innermost planet of the Solar System, BepiColombo makes one flyby at Earth, two at Venus and six at Mercury to help steer on course for Mercury orbit in 2025.
The Mercury Transfer Module carries two science orbiters: ESA’s Mercury Planetary Orbiter and JAXA’s Mercury Magnetospheric Orbiter, which from complementary orbits will study all aspects of mysterious Mercury from its core to surface processes, magnetic field and exosphere, to better understand the origin and evolution of a planet close to its parent star.
More images will be released tomorrow, 24 June, with a complete set of flyby images available in the Planetary Science Archive on Monday 27 June. Follow @bepicolombo on Twitter for updates.
ESA/BepiColombo/MTM, CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO
This image, taken by the JunoCam imager on NASA’s Juno spacecraft, highlights a feature on Jupiter where multiple atmospheric conditions appear to collide.
This publicly selected target is called “STB Spectre.” The ghostly bluish streak across the right half of the image is a long-lived storm, one of the few structures perceptible in these whitened latitudes where the south temperate belt of Jupiter would normally be. The egg-shaped spot on the lower left is where incoming small dark spots make a hairpin turn.
The image was taken on March 27, 2017, at 2:06 a.m. PDT (5:06 a.m. EDT), as the Juno spacecraft performed a close flyby of Jupiter. When the image was taken, the spacecraft was 7,900 miles (12,700 kilometers) from the planet.
Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/SwRI/MSSS/ Roman Tkachenko
A UFO spacecraft hovers over Devil's Tower, Wyoming at night as people look in awe
Prompt: an ultra-realistic image of a UFO with mysterious lights hovering above Devil's Tower, Wyoming, at night, highly detailed, high resolution
BepiColombo appears to ‘hug’ Mercury in this image taken by the ESA/JAXA BepiColombo mission on 19 June 2023 as the spacecraft sped by for its third of three gravity assist manoeuvres at the planet.
The image was taken at 20:29 UT (22:29 CEST) by the Mercury Transfer Module’s monitoring camera 3, when the spacecraft was 11 780 km from the planet’s surface. Closest approach took place at 19:34 UT (21:34 CEST) on the night side of the planet at about 236 km altitude. The back of the Mercury Planetary Orbiter’s high-gain antenna and part of the spacecraft’s body is also visible in front of Mercury in this image.
Numerous fascinating geological features are identified on the surface of Mercury.
The dark spot near the top edge of Mercury marks Atget crater. Atget excavated ancient, dark material from deep within Mercury’s subsurface and deposited it on top of younger, brighter volcanic plains within the vast 1550-km-wide Caloris basin, the largest well-preserved impact basin on the planet. Scientists use such observations to understand the order in which different rock types formed during a planet’s evolution. This dark material might represent remnants of Mercury’s initial crust that was later buried underneath lava plains. Atget is named after the French photographer Eugène Atget (1857–1927).
By contrast, Xiao Zhao crater is centred on a bright, star-like pattern of impact ejecta more centrally within this image. These bright crater rays formed immediately after the impact as material was ejected from the crater, but fade into the background over time. This means Xiao Zhao is one of the most recent impact craters on Mercury. Xiao Zhao (active 1130–1162) was a Chinese painter.
At the bottom of Mercury’s globe, dawn is breaking over the eastern rim of the Rembrandt basin, seen here as a dark arc. After Caloris, Rembrandt is the second largest well-preserved impact basin on Mercury with a diameter of 716 km. This colossal impact created some linear scarps that radiate from the basin centre, some of which can be seen in these MCAM images. It is apt that a giant impact basin on Mercury is named after one of the giants of art history, the Dutch artist Rembrandt (1606–1669).
The cameras provide black-and-white snapshots in 1024 x 1024 pixel resolution. The image has been lightly processed to best bring out the details of the planet’s surface.
Some imaging artefacts such as horizontal striping are also visible. In this view, north is to the upper left corner.
The gravity assist manoeuvre was the third at Mercury and the sixth of nine flybys overall. During its seven-year cruise to the smallest and innermost planet of the Solar System, BepiColombo makes one flyby at Earth, two at Venus and six at Mercury to help steer on course for Mercury orbit in 2025. The Mercury Transfer Module carries two science orbiters: ESA’s Mercury Planetary Orbiter and JAXA’s Mercury Magnetospheric Orbiter. They will operate from complementary orbits to study all aspects of mysterious Mercury from its core to surface processes, magnetic field and exosphere, to better understand the origin and evolution of a planet close to its parent star.
Click here for an annotated version of this image.
Credit: ESA/BepiColombo/MTM, CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO
Et voici l’amarrage, après un ballet complexe entre l’humain et la machine. Megan s’est occupée de piloter le Canadarm 2 et je l’ai secondée en surveillant les systèmes du Cygnus durant la phase d’approche.
👀 ✈️
And the docking. A complex choreography between human and machine. As Megan grappled Cygnus with Canadarm2, I acted as co-pilot – monitoring Cygnus's systems throughout its approach.
Credits: ESA/NASA–T. Pesquet
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The Orion spacecraft with integrated European Service Module sit atop the Space Launch System, imaged at sunrise at historic Launchpad 39B at Kennedy Space Center in Florida, USA on 27 August.
The Flight Readiness Review has deemed the trio GO for launch, marking the dawn of a new era in space exploration.
The first in a series of missions that will return humans to the Moon, including taking the first European, Artemis I is scheduled for launch no earlier than Monday 29 August, at 14:33 CEST.
This mission will put NASA’s Orion spacecraft and ESA’s European Service Module to the test during a journey beyond the Moon and back. No crew will be on board Orion this time, and the spacecraft will be controlled by teams on Earth.
The crew module, however, won’t be empty. Two mannequins, named Helga and Zohar, will occupy the passenger seats. Their female-shaped plastic bodies are filled with over 5600 sensors each to measure the radiation load during their trip around the Moon. The specially trained woolly astronaut, Shaun the Sheep, has also been assigned a seat.
The spacecraft will enter lunar orbit using the Moon’s gravity to gain speed and propel itself almost half a million km from Earth – farther than any human-rated spacecraft has ever travelled.
The second Artemis mission will see four astronauts travel around the Moon on a flyby voyage around our natural satellite.
Mission duration depends on the launch date and even time. It will last between 20 to 40 days, depending on how many orbits of the Moon mission designers decide to make.
This flexibility in mission length is necessary to allow the mission to end as intended with a splashdown during daylight hours in the Pacific Ocean, off the coast of California, USA.
Two more dates are available if a launch on 29 August is not possible. The Artemis Moon mission can also be launched on 2 September and 5 September. Check all the possible launch options on ESA’s Orion blog.
Orion is the only spacecraft capable of human spaceflight outside Earth orbit and high-speed reentry from the vicinity of the Moon. More than just a crew module, Orion includes the European Service Module (ESM), the powerhouse that fuels and propels Orion.
ESM provides for all astronauts’ basic needs, such as water, oxygen, nitrogen, temperature control, power and propulsion. Much like a train engine pulls passenger carriages and supplies power, the European Service Module will take the Orion capsule to its destination and back.
Watch launch coverage on ESA Web TV starting at 12:30 CEST here. Follow @esaspaceflight for updates and live Twitter coverage.
Credits: ESA-A. Conigli
This ship is yet another MOC that started off life as a rather interesting table scrap. The rear thruster is a little Technic doohickey I was experimenting with for some time. Naturally, it was either going to be part of a robot or a spaceship. I went with ship this time. Although, it would look pretty cool on a robot...
Maybe after SHIPtember.
Tablescrap distraction. Am seriously thinking of scaling this up tho 100 studs...
Sorry for the poor quality photos.
On Friday 23 June, Euclid was secured to the adaptor of a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket. Engineers fastened the satellite to the adaptor that will be placed on the upper stage of the Falcon 9 rocket, which will launch Euclid into space. ESA’s new cosmological mission Euclid is getting ready for lift-off with a target launch date of 1 July 2023 from Cape Canaveral in Florida (USA).
ESA's Euclid mission is designed to help us uncover the great cosmic mystery of dark matter and dark energy. The space telescope will observe more than a third of the sky with unprecedented sensitivity and accuracy. It will chart the shape, position and movement of billions of galaxies out to 10 billion light-years to create the largest, most accurate 3D map of the Universe across space and time. This will reveal how matter is distributed across immense distances and how the expansion of the Universe has evolved over cosmic history, enabling scientists to pin down the properties of dark energy and dark matter and uncover their elusive nature.
Find out more about Euclid in ESA’s launch kit
Credit: SpaceX
The spacecraft will launch in August 2022 and travel about 1.5 billion miles (2.4 billion kilometers) over three and a half years to get to the asteroid, which scientists believe may be part of the core of a planetesimal, the building block of an early rocky planet. Once in orbit, the mission team will use the payload of science instruments to investigate what this unique target can reveal about the formation of rocky planets like Earth.
The spacecraft will rely on the large chemical rocket engines of the Falcon Heavy launch vehicle to blast off the launchpad and to escape Earth’s gravity. But the rest of the journey, once Psyche separates from the launch vehicle, will rely on solar electric propulsion. This form of propulsion starts with large solar arrays that convert sunlight into electricity, providing the power source for the spacecraft’s thrusters. They’re known as Hall thrusters, and the Psyche spacecraft will be the first to use them beyond the orbit of our Moon.
For propellant, Psyche will carry tanks full of xenon, the same neutral gas used in car headlights and plasma TVs. The spacecraft’s four thrusters will use electromagnetic fields to accelerate and expel charged atoms, or ions, of that xenon. As those ions are expelled, they create thrust that gently propels Psyche through space, emitting blue beams of ionized xenon.
In fact, the thrust is so gentle, it exerts about the same amount of pressure you’d feel holding three quarters in your hand. But it’s enough to accelerate Psyche through deep space. With no atmospheric drag to hold it back, the spacecraft eventually will accelerate to speeds of up to 124,000 miles per hour (200,000 kilometers per hour) relative to Earth.
Because they’re so efficient, Psyche’s Hall thrusters could operate nearly nonstop for years without running out of fuel. Psyche will carry 2,030 pounds (922 kilograms) of xenon in its tanks; engineers estimate that the mission would burn through about 15 times that amount of propellant if it had to use traditional chemical thrusters.
“Even in the beginning, when we were first designing the mission in 2012, we were talking about solar electric propulsion as part of the plan. Without it, we wouldn’t have the Psyche mission,” said Arizona State University’s Lindy Elkins-Tanton, who as principal investigator leads the mission. “And it’s become part of the character of the mission. It takes a specialized team to calculate trajectories and orbits using solar electric propulsion.”
A series of AI-generated pictures of a futuristic spacecraft interior in different art styles.
To be continued.
Pictures made with Midjourney.
I'm always happy to accept invites to groups as long as I can see their content.. Should I see "this group is not available to you", my pictures/photos won't be made available to that group. Thanks for your understanding.
SuperDracos will power the Crew Dragon spacecraft's revolutionary launch escape system, the first of its kind. Should an emergency occur during launch, eight SuperDraco engines built into Dragon's side walls will produce up to 120,000 pounds of axial thrust to carry astronauts to safety.
SpaceX has test-fired this Crew Dragon Propulsion Module 27 times, in addition to test-firing SuperDraco engines individually over 300 times, to refine the design for the demands of operational missions carrying astronauts to the International Space Station.
More info: blogs.nasa.gov/commercialcrew/2015/11/10/crew-dragon-prop...
In its attempt to leapfrog Tesla and Virgin, Electrolux introduced its low cost spacecraft solution. Electrolux has configured a 'capsule for the masses' by welding three of its best-selling industrial-sized front-loading washing machines together. Herein, is displayed the artist's conception of its extra-orbital vehicle prototype, dubbed Washer I, docking with the International Space Station (ISS) 150 miles above the earth.
A team working on NASA’s Psyche spacecraft transitioned it from a vertical to a horizontal test configuration during prelaunch processing inside the Payload Hazardous Servicing Facility at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida on May 9, 2022. The mission is targeting an Aug. 1 launch atop a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket from Launch Complex 39A at Kennedy. The spacecraft will use solar-electric propulsion to travel approximately 1.5 billion miles to rendezvous with its namesake asteroid in 2026. The Psyche mission is led by Arizona State University. NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, which is managed for the agency by Caltech in Pasadena, California, is responsible for the mission’s overall management, system engineering, integration and testing, and mission operations. Maxar Technologies in Palo Alto, California, provided the high-power solar electric propulsion spacecraft chassis. NASA’s Launch Services Program (LSP), based at Kennedy, is managing the launch.
Image Credit: NASA
#SolarSystemandBeyond #NASAMarshall #jpl #psyche #asteroid
The Sentec Aerospace Bureau S-18 (Sparrow) was designed to ferry small shipments between major shipping ports. With minimal space for its crew of two, the shuttle devotes much of the aft cavity for cargo.
The Sparrow is also equipped with twin 20mm rotary cannons (just fore of the cockpit) which are protected from re-entry conditions by retracting behind hull panels.
The craft is capable of re-entry and planetary landing, although requires a space elevator in order to escape orbit.
Notable design features include the directional antenna at the front, full 3D vernier RCS, and gold-tinted canopy.
It also features fully retractable landing gear and weapons (but I forgot to photograph these).
The SpaceX Inspiration 4 spacecraft traveling across the moonlit sky on September 16, 2021. This was the first all-civilian crew of astronauts (four) to travel into orbit. They had launched the day before on September 15. The spacecraft appears as a series of streaks traveling from low in the SW (at right of centre here) to higher in the SE (at left), flying above the bright Moon, and Jupiter to the left of the Moon. Saturn is the brightest object just above the Moon. The path is of the spacecraft is broken into dashes by stacking of several 30-second exposures. I shot this from home in southern Alberta with the Canon 15-35mm lens at f/2.8 on the Canon R6 at 400.
NASA’s Dawn spacecraft is maneuvering to its lowest-ever orbit for a close-up examination of the inner solar system’s only dwarf planet.
In early June, Dawn will reach its new, final orbit above Ceres. Soon after, it will begin collecting images and other science data from an unprecedented vantage point. This orbit will be less than 30 miles (50 kilometers) above the surface of Ceres -- 10 times closer than the spacecraft has ever been.
Dawn will collect gamma ray and neutron spectra, which help scientists understand variations in the chemical makeup of Ceres’ uppermost layer. That very low orbit also will garner some of Dawn’s closest images yet.
This picture is one of the first images returned by Dawn in more than a year, as Dawn moves to its lowest-ever and final orbit around Ceres. Dawn captured this view on May 16, 2018 from an altitude of about 270 miles (440 kilometers).
Image credit: Credits: NASA/JPL-Caltech/UCLA/MPS/DLR/IDA
Found flying two moons from Senu, a star fighter called Rigzo Z1, its origin is unknown and not seen in common airspace.
It may look as though Saturn's moon Mimas is crashing through the rings in this image taken by NASA's Cassini spacecraft, but Mimas is actually 28,000 miles (45,000 kilometers) away from the rings. There is a strong connection between the icy moon and Saturn's rings, though. Gravity links them together and shapes the way they both move.
The gravitational pull of Mimas (246 miles or 396 kilometers across) creates waves in Saturn's rings that are visible in some Cassini images. Mimas' gravity also helps create the Cassini Division (not pictured here), which separates the A and B rings.
This view looks toward the anti-Saturn hemisphere of Mimas. North on Mimas is up and rotated 15 degrees to the right. The image was taken in green light with the Cassini spacecraft narrow-angle camera on Oct. 23, 2016.
The view was acquired at a distance of approximately 114,000 miles (183,000 kilometers) from Mimas and at a Sun-Mimas-spacecraft, or phase, angle of 29 degrees. Image scale is 3,300 feet (1 kilometer) per pixel.
The Cassini mission is a cooperative project of NASA, ESA (the European Space Agency) and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington. The Cassini orbiter and its two onboard cameras were designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The imaging operations center is based at the Space Science Institute in Boulder, Colorado.
For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission, click here.
Warm-up build for the impending SHIPtember. Not sure if I'll be able to find time for the event proper, but still nice to grind some rust off the gears.
A hangar to display some of my Sci-Fi mocs in, built to fit in an IKEA display cabinet in our LEGO room. This is my first adventure in the world of greebles and snot - I missed so much during my dark age!
I must add, the inspiration for this build came from some of the beautiful work of Legoloverman
In this rare image taken on July 19, 2013, the wide-angle camera on NASA's Cassini spacecraft has captured Saturn's rings and our planet Earth and its moon in the same frame. It is only one footprint in a mosaic of 33 footprints covering the entire Saturn ring system (including Saturn itself). At each footprint, images were taken in different spectral filters for a total of 323 images: some were taken for scientific purposes and some to produce a natural color mosaic. This is the only wide-angle footprint that has the Earth-moon system in it.
The dark side of Saturn, its bright limb, the main rings, the F ring, and the G and E rings are clearly seen; the limb of Saturn and the F ring are overexposed. The "breaks" in the brightness of Saturn's limb are due to the shadows of the rings on the globe of Saturn, preventing sunlight from shining through the atmosphere in those regions. The E and G rings have been brightened for better visibility.
Earth, which is 898 million miles (1.44 billion kilometers) away in this image, appears as a blue dot at center right; the moon can be seen as a fainter protrusion off its right side. An arrow indicates their location in the annotated version. (The two are clearly seen as separate objects in the accompanying narrow angle frame: PIA14949.) The other bright dots nearby are stars.
This is only the third time ever that Earth has been imaged from the outer solar system. The acquisition of this image, along with the accompanying composite narrow- and wide-angle image of Earth and the moon and the full mosaic from which both are taken, marked the first time that inhabitants of Earth knew in advance that their planet was being imaged. That opportunity allowed people around the world to join together in social events to celebrate the occasion.
This view looks toward the unilluminated side of the rings from about 20 degrees below the ring plane.
Images taken using red, green and blue spectral filters were combined to create this natural color view. The images were obtained with the Cassini spacecraft wide-angle camera on July 19, 2013 at a distance of approximately 753,000 miles (1.212 million kilometers) from Saturn, and approximately 898.414 million miles (1.445858 billion kilometers) from Earth. Image scale on Saturn is 43 miles (69 kilometers) per pixel; image scale on the Earth is 53,820 miles (86,620 kilometers) per pixel. The illuminated areas of neither Earth nor the Moon are resolved here.
Consequently, the size of each "dot" is the same size that a point of light of comparable brightness would have in the wide-angle camera.
The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter and its two onboard cameras were designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The imaging operations center is based at the Space Science Institute in Boulder, Colo.
For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit www.nasa.gov/cassini and saturn.jpl.nasa.gov.
Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Space Science Institute
After investigating the upper atmosphere of the Red Planet for a full Martian year, NASA’s MAVEN mission has determined that the escaping water does not always go gently into space.
Sophisticated measurements made by a suite of instruments on the Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution, or MAVEN, spacecraft revealed the ups and downs of hydrogen escape – and therefore water loss. The escape rate peaked when Mars was at its closest point to the sun and dropped off when the planet was farthest from the sun. The rate of loss varied dramatically overall, with 10 times more hydrogen escaping at the maximum.
“MAVEN is giving us unprecedented detail about hydrogen escape from the upper atmosphere of Mars, and this is crucial for helping us figure out the total amount of water lost over billions of years,” said Ali Rahmati, a MAVEN team member at the University of California at Berkeley who analyzed data from two of the spacecraft’s instruments.
Hydrogen in Mars’ upper atmosphere comes from water vapor in the lower atmosphere. An atmospheric water molecule can be broken apart by sunlight, releasing the two hydrogen atoms from the oxygen atom that they had been bound to. Several processes at work in Mars’ upper atmosphere may then act on the hydrogen, leading to its escape.
Read more: go.nasa.gov/2dAgAV4
NASA Goddard Space Flight Center enables NASA’s mission through four scientific endeavors: Earth Science, Heliophysics, Solar System Exploration, and Astrophysics. Goddard plays a leading role in NASA’s accomplishments by contributing compelling scientific knowledge to advance the Agency’s mission.
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There it is – the first Orion spacecraft to travel to the Moon is seen here in the Neil Armstrong Operations and Checkout facility at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida, USA.
Already integrated and tested with the first European Service Module that will power and propel the craft and the Crew Module, Orion has now been fitted with the adaptor cone that will connect it to the Space Launch Systems (SLS) rocket. This is one of the final major hardware checkouts before being integrated with SLS for the Artemis I launch to the Moon next year.
Earlier this month at NASA’s Kennedy, the last solar wing for Orion was unfolded, tested and folded for launch. This week, the four solar arrays will be connected to the main structure.
Each 7 m wing are hinged at two points so they can be folded to fit inside the fairing of the SLS rocket. After launch and in Earth orbit the four wings unfold to span 19 m and swivel and rotate to collect solar energy, turning it into electricity for the spacecraft’s systems.
Needless to say, all teams involved – NASA, ESA and the 16 companies in ten European countries supplying the components that make up humankind’s next generation spacecraft for exploration – are over the Moon.
Read more and stay up to date on Orion news via the blog.
Credits: NASA
The Orion spacecraft with integrated European Service Module sit atop the Space Launch System, imaged at sunrise at historic Launchpad 39B at Kennedy Space Center in Florida, USA on 27 August.
The Flight Readiness Review has deemed the trio GO for launch, marking the dawn of a new era in space exploration.
The first in a series of missions that will return humans to the Moon, including taking the first European, Artemis I is scheduled for launch no earlier than Monday 29 August, at 14:33 CEST.
This mission will put NASA’s Orion spacecraft and ESA’s European Service Module to the test during a journey beyond the Moon and back. No crew will be on board Orion this time, and the spacecraft will be controlled by teams on Earth.
The crew module, however, won’t be empty. Two mannequins, named Helga and Zohar, will occupy the passenger seats. Their female-shaped plastic bodies are filled with over 5600 sensors each to measure the radiation load during their trip around the Moon. The specially trained woolly astronaut, Shaun the Sheep, has also been assigned a seat.
The spacecraft will enter lunar orbit using the Moon’s gravity to gain speed and propel itself almost half a million km from Earth – farther than any human-rated spacecraft has ever travelled.
The second Artemis mission will see four astronauts travel around the Moon on a flyby voyage around our natural satellite.
Mission duration depends on the launch date and even time. It will last between 20 to 40 days, depending on how many orbits of the Moon mission designers decide to make.
This flexibility in mission length is necessary to allow the mission to end as intended with a splashdown during daylight hours in the Pacific Ocean, off the coast of California, USA.
Two more dates are available if a launch on 29 August is not possible. The Artemis Moon mission can also be launched on 2 September and 5 September. Check all the possible launch options on ESA’s Orion blog.
Orion is the only spacecraft capable of human spaceflight outside Earth orbit and high-speed reentry from the vicinity of the Moon. More than just a crew module, Orion includes the European Service Module (ESM), the powerhouse that fuels and propels Orion.
ESM provides for all astronauts’ basic needs, such as water, oxygen, nitrogen, temperature control, power and propulsion. Much like a train engine pulls passenger carriages and supplies power, the European Service Module will take the Orion capsule to its destination and back.
Watch launch coverage on ESA Web TV starting at 12:30 CEST here. Follow @esaspaceflight for updates and live Twitter coverage.
Credits: ESA-A. Conigli
This ship is yet another MOC that started off life as a rather interesting table scrap. The rear thruster is a little Technic doohickey I was experimenting with for some time. Naturally, it was either going to be part of a robot or a spaceship. I went with ship this time. Although, it would look pretty cool on a robot...
Maybe after SHIPtember.