NASA & World Space Exploration...News, Views, Photos & videos

Miragedriver

Miragedriver

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The European Space Agency is preparing to land the Rosetta probe on comet 67P/C-G. Using the CIVA camera on Rosetta’s Philae lander, the spacecraft has snapped a ‘selfie’ at comet 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko from a distance of about 16 km from the surface of the comet. The image was taken on 7 October and captures the side of the Rosetta spacecraft and one of Rosetta’s 14 m-long solar wings, with the comet in the background. The 7 October selfie is the last image from Philae before the lander separates from Rosetta on 12 November.
Picture: ESA/Rosetta/Philae/CIVA


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Miragedriver

Miragedriver

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Mars colonists 'would die after 68 days'
Scientists at MIT conclude a human colony on the Red Planet is "not feasible" with current technology
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Mars colonisation "not feasible" Photo: mars-one.com
Humans could only survive on Mars for 68 days according to a new study which throws doubt on ambitions to colonise the Red Planet.

Scientists at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) concluded that with current technology a permanent settlement on Mars is "not feasible".

They analysed the Dutch-based Mars One project which is aiming to colonise the planet starting in 2024.
Mars One wants to send a group of people on a one-way trip and film the project for a reality television show.

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Nasa's Mars Curiosity rover

The MIT researchers simulated the conditions of living on Mars and identified the main problem as the plan for colonists to grow and eat their own crops, which they said was not practical with current technology.
In a 35-page report they said: "The first crew fatality would occur approximately 68 days into the mission.
"Some form of oxygen removal system is required, a technology that has not yet been developed for space flight."
Scientists also said the amount of spare parts that would have to be brought in to keep the colony functioning could also make the cost prohibitive.

Mars is 34 million miles from Earth and it would take at least seven months to get there.
The MIT study concluded: "We look forward to the day when humanity becomes an interplanetary species.
"We have great respect for the enthusiasm for space exploration that the Mars One program has generated and our goal is not to detract from this, but rather to drive it forward, towards enabling affordable, sustainable Mars colonisation."
Mars One chief executive Bas Lansdorp said the researchers had used incomplete data and it was possible for the colonists to grow their own food.

He said: "While oxygen removal has never been done in space I disagree that the technology is not mostly ready to go to Mars."
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What a bunch of poppycock!

1) Russian and American Astronauts have been on the international space station for up to 300 day with no “oxygen removal”.

2) Mars is 34 million miles from Earth'.

No it isn't.

The closest Mars can approach Earth is 34 million miles, but that is a very, very rare event. It happened in 2003. It won't happen again until 2287.
Mars has an orbit averaging 142 million miles from the sun. Its orbit is also very eccentric, being more eliptical than almost any other planet. Earth's average is 93 million miles, which means that the average closest distance Mars can approach Earth is 49 million miles. Sometimes its closest approach is as much as 64 million miles.
The only time in each orbit that Mars is on its closest pass (opposition) occurs only once every 880 days, but it's as likely to be 64 million miles as it is to be 34 million miles and it's very brief.
Most of the time it is much further than that and for half the time it is getting further away, so it's harder to catch up. What a bunch of @#$% in the article


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Miragedriver

Miragedriver

Brigadier
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NASA astronauts repair a failed power regulator outside the International Space Station. Flight Engineers Reid Wiseman and Barry Wilmore of Expedition 41 had to replace the regulator, known as a sequential shunt unit, which failed in May. 'The unit regulates power from the 3A solar array,' NASA said in a statement.
Picture: NASA/AP



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TerraN_EmpirE

TerraN_EmpirE

Tyrant King
John Batchelor Show, ABC radio October 15,2014 "Hotel Mars" segment Joint with The Space Show, Co Host Dr. David Livingstone AKA Doctor Space. Interview with MIT students and Instructor subject: Viability of Mars one Colony concept,
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D

delft

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TerraN_EmpirE said:
Oh that's funny Just last week I was on
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Theorizing about what a war with mars would look like and my idea was a artillery cannon and tanks, As the Atmosphere would not support fixed wing or rotary wing air support.
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Winged aircraft are possible. For some unmanned ones preliminary designs have been prepared that would deploy from a re-entry vehicle. The piston engine would use a propeller and hydrazine fuel.
A manned vehicle would probably be a flying wing but using what kind of engine?
 
TerraN_EmpirE

TerraN_EmpirE

Tyrant King
Hmmm... Seems legit. And good for exploration but in that context we were discussing military which would me a larger pay load and armor so questions start up again. Anyway that is for the other thread.
 
Miragedriver

Miragedriver

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The Ariane 5 lifts-off carrying the Argentine made ARSAT-1 geostationary communications satellite, from Kourou, French Guiana. According the Argentine authorities the satellite will offer Internet, cell phone and television signals for the next 15 years for Argentina, Uruguay and Chile
Picture: AP


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TerraN_EmpirE

TerraN_EmpirE

Tyrant King
US Air Force's shadowy space plane lands after 674 days in orbit
By: DAN PARSONSWASHINGTON DC Source: Flightglobal.com 14 hours ago
The US Air Force’s mysterious robotic space plane landed at Vandenberg AFB, California, on 17 October after nearly two years in orbit.

Completion of the recent 674-day mission – the programme’s third ‑ extends the total time an X-37B orbital test vehicle (OTV) has spent outside the earth’s atmosphere to a total 1,367 days. The air force has built two examples of the reusable, unmanned spacecraft. OTV-3 was the longest the vehicle has yet spent in space at a time.

Still, the air force has given precious few details about what the program is meant to achieve because the programme remains classified.

X-37B, which was developed by Boeing, is managed by the air force rapid capabilities office, which “performs risk reduction, experimentation and concept of operations development for reusable vehicle technologies,” the service says. It is the newest and most advanced re-entry spacecraft, according to the air force.

"The landing of OTV-3 marks a hallmark event for the programme," Col Keith Balts, X-37B programme manager and commander of USAF 30th Space Wing, says in a prepared statement. "The mission is our longest to date and we're pleased with the incremental progress we've seen in our testing of the reusable space plane."

The Air Force plans to launch the fourth X-37B mission in 2015 from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida.
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Miragedriver

Miragedriver

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Comet C/2013 A1, also known as Siding Spring, is seen before and after filtering as captured by Wide Field Camera 3 on Nasa's Hubble Space Telescope. Comet Siding Spring passed just 87,000 miles (140,000 km) from Mars on Sunday - less than half the distance between Earth and the moon and 10 times closer than any known comet has passed by Earth, Nasa said.
Picture: REUTERS/NASA/ESA


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A close-up view of Saturn's disk captures the transit of several moons across the face of the gas giant planet. The giant orange moon Titan, larger than the planet Mercury, can be seen at upper right. The white icy moons close to the ring plane are, from left, Enceladus, Dione, and Mimas, at right edge of the plaent. The dark band running across the face of the planet slightly above the rings is the shadow of the rings cast on the planet. The dark dots as the shadows cast by Enceladus and Dione.
Picture: AP/Nasa




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