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Space Exploration

NASA to send people to Mars and explore Europa thanks to new budget increase

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Nasa Mars, Europa missions

The good folks over at NASA are constantly working on new and ambitious projects that more often than not require large sums of money to turn into reality. Although the space agency has a pretty substantial budget, it’s not quite enough to fund all these projects. Fortunately, the Obama administration recently decided to give NASA a “little” boost of $500 million for the fiscal year 2016, which amounts to a total budget of $18.5 billion. That’s certainly quite a lot of money, but the agency will put it all to good use according to NASA Administrator Charles Bolden.

Bolden broke the good news on Monday during a state of the agency conference held at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida where he also revealed some new details regarding NASA’s plans for the future. One of the first orders of business will be to continue the work on the project that will send people to Mars in the next decade. Though the first humans are not expected to set foot on the Red Planet before 2024, the Orion deep space vehicle that will take them there already underwent its first successful flight test back in December of 2014. “NASA is firmly on a journey to Mars,”Bolden said. “Make no mistake, this journey will help guide and define our generation.” Speaking of the Red Planet, NASA will use some of the funds to continue their work on the improved Mars Rover that’s expected to be launched in July 2020.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HFYGh83hueE

NASA also announced a mission with the goal of exploring Europa, one of Jupiter’s largest moons. Researchers have been trying to come up with the best way of approaching this project for a while now and they will finally be ready to take the next important step later this year. “Looking to the future, we’re planning a mission to explore Jupiter’s fascinating moon Europa, selecting instruments this spring and moving toward the next phase of our work,” Bolden explains. The current mission concept goes by the name Europa Clipper and involves an unmanned spacecraft that will orbit around Jupiter and attempt several flybys of Europa over a period of three year. The goal here is to map the surface of the moon similar to how the Cassini probe did with Saturn’s moon Titan. However, this particular mission is of more interest to NASA as Europa is believed to hold oceans of liquid water beneath its icy crust and it is there where we might find the first signs of life outside our own planet.

Needless to say, these are some very interesting projects, but NASA has a few more in the works. These include launching the James Webb Space Telescope (successor to the Hubble telescope) in 2018, sending commercial crew vehicles to the ISS via its commercial partners Boeing and SpaceX by 2017, and further developing the ambitious Asteroid Redirect Mission, which has the goal of bringing a small asteroid into lunar orbit for research purposes.

Although George has many hobbies, he likes nothing more than to play around with cameras and other photography equipment.

Space Exploration

Starship could make its first orbital voyage in December thanks to SpaceX

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The initial test orbital flight of the Starship has previously been postponed numerous times.

The first test orbital flight of the Starship might occur as soon as next month. The information was disclosed by Mark Kirasich, a senior NASA official in charge of the Artemis moon program’s development, during a live-streamed NASA Advisory Council meeting. Reuters reported that Kirasich stated NASA keeps tabs on four significant Starship flights, the first of which is scheduled to take place in the first part of December.

According to the previously disclosed plans, SpaceX’s Boca Chica facility in Texas will serve as the launch site for the Starship spaceship and its Super Heavy launcher. Three minutes into the journey, the launcher will separate and splash down in the Gulf of Mexico, while the Starship vehicle itself will enter orbit before reentering the atmosphere and landing on the ocean close to Hawaii. The test flight’s total duration is anticipated by the business to be 90 minutes.

Since the middle of 2021, SpaceX has been planning Starship’s first orbital voyage, but it kept getting postponed for various technical and legal reasons. For instance, the environmental evaluation for the launch facility owned by the space business in Boca Chica was just just approved. Even so, the FAA demanded more than 75 adjustments from the corporation before approving a launch license for the site to lessen the impact of its flights on the environment.

The FAA will issue the business a launch license “only when SpaceX produces all outstanding information and the agency can fully review it,” a representative for the organization told Reuters. Prior to the flight, SpaceX must also carry out and pass further tests, including a static fire test of all 33 Raptor engines on the Super Heavy booster, according to SpaceNews.

The Starship’s static fire test in July went horribly wrong when propellants under the booster caught fire. The company’s subsequent effort in August was successful, however only one Raptor engine was ignited on the Super Heavy. Starship also needs to go through a full wet dress rehearsal, which involves a rocket that is loaded with propellants going through the launch countdown but not really lifting off.

 

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Astronomy

NASA’s DART probe successfully collided with an asteroid.

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At the time of impact, the impactor vehicle, about the size of a vending machine, was moving at about 14,000 mph.

After traveling for over a year, NASA‘s Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) mission, which attempted to provide answers, “Could a specially crafted satellite be used to divert an asteroid from its planet-destroying course? How about a number? “has effectively impacted the Dimorphos asteroid. However, NASA ground control has confirmed that the DART impact vehicle has intercepted the target asteroid. The results and data from the collision are still being received. Yes, Dimorphos is about the size of a football stadium, but space is very big, extremely dark, and both the asteroid and the spaceship were traveling rather quickly at the time.

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“It’s been a successful completion of the first part of the world’s first planetary defense test,” NASA Administrator Bill Nelson said after the impact. “I believe it’s going to teach us how one day to protect our own planet from an incoming asteroid. We are showing that planetary defense is a global endeavor and it is very possible to save our planet.”

In an effort to investigate the employment of defensive satellites as a method of planetary defense against Near Earth Objects, NASA launched the DART mission in November 2021. Nearly 68 million miles from Earth, the DART impactor vehicle, about the size of a vending machine, tragically crossed Dimorphos’ path while traveling at about 14,000 MPH.

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It remains to be seen if future generations of a planetary defense system will be packed with satellites ready to go full June Bug vs. Chrysler Windshield against real planet-killer asteroids. Dimorphos is one of two asteroids that are gravitationally entangled; its parent rock is more than five times larger than Dimorphos itself, but both are dwarfed by the space rock that struck Earth 66 million years ago and destroyed 75% of the planet’s multicellular life while gouging out the Gulf of Mexico.

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Industry and Service

Aurora Station, The First Luxuxry Hotel Experience in Space

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Aurora

Living in space has been the dream of a lot of people. Some just really want to see what wonders the Final Frontier has to behold. As such, the moment we get updates about life in space, a lot of people’s heads tend to turn and some eyebrows rise.

This time, we’re going to see the first ever luxury space hotel which was introduced during the Space 2.0 Summit in San Jose, California. The Aurora Station is being developed by Orion Span and a group of space industry veterans.

The exclusive hotel will host six people at a time – including two crew members. Space travelers will enjoy a completely authentic, once-in-a-lifetime astronaut experience with extraordinary adventure during their 12-day journey, starting at $9.5 million USD per person.

Yeah, I forgot to say that the price is a little bit high for a lot of people, this is a luxury hotel, after all. And hey, right now those who read this article and have the money to fork over the experience, deposits are now being accepted for a future stay in the station.

The Station aims to launch in late 2021, with the capability to host its first guests the year after that. Those who can spare the coin have to pay up $80,000 USD per person online which is fully refundable.

So, users who are going to stay at the Aurora Station will have the absolutely incredible experience of living in a zero-gravity environment. Not only that but they can also be part of the experiments going on in the station such as growing food while in orbit.

Now, considering I am scared of Space because games like Dead Space have told me that it’s bad. I’d rather stay on the floor for a while longer. However, those interested into their own space experience can go and make their reservations here.

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