NASA’s method of paying for its giant rocket belongs in the Apollo era
New Scientist | NASA
by Legacy content author
5y ago
HOW much does a rocket launch cost? It depends who you ask. Boeing, the firm making NASA’s gigantic Space Launch System (SLS), can’t tell you. According to an internal NASA audit, a maze of contracts means the agency has no way of knowing just how much it is paying to build and launch an individual vehicle. By contrast, SpaceX will tell you exactly how much its Falcon Heavy rocket costs: $90 million per ride. It is right there on its website. This dichotomy is partly responsible for the Trump administration’s frustration with NASA. For its wildly ambitious push to land ..read more
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Sorry, but NASA probably isn’t sending astronauts to the moon in 2024
New Scientist | NASA
by Legacy content author
5y ago
Will US astronauts return to the moon in 2024?NASA Orion By Chelsea WhyteTHE countdown has begun. Last week, US vice president Mike Pence announced that NASA is being directed to put astronauts on the moon by 2024 – the final year of president Donald Trump’s tenure, should he win re-election. It is an ambitious goal and there are several obstacles to clear before we will see new bootprints in the lunar soil. Most crucially, reaching the moon requires a heavy-lift launch vehicle – a rocket that can boost 20 to 50 tonnes into low Earth orbit – to carry ..read more
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NASA cancels first all-women spacewalk due to spacesuit size issue
New Scientist | NASA
by Leah Crane
5y ago
Christina Koch (centre) assists fellow astronauts Nick Hague (left) and Anne McClain to prepare for a spacewalk last weekNASA By Leah CraneThe first all-women spacewalk has been cancelled. NASA astronauts Christina Koch and Anne McClain were scheduled to stroll into the vacuum of space on 29 March to change the batteries for some of the International Space Station’s solar panels. Now Nick Hague will replace McClain, because there wasn’t time to put together a spacesuit that would fit her. Spacesuits are modular, with the torso, legs and arms all sized separately and then fitted together in the ..read more
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NASA’s photo archives reveal 60 years of space travel
New Scientist | NASA
by Legacy content author
5y ago
Apollo 1 crew relaxing after “water egress” trainingCourtesy of NASA By Jon WhiteWHEN it comes to illustrating humanity’s achievements in space, NASA’s back catalogue is as good as it gets. The images here are all part of a book tracing the agency’s 60 years of existence using more than 400 photographs. The big launches, moon landings, starscapes and Martian panoramas all make the cut, alongside plenty of striking views from behind the scenes, images that give a human scale to NASA’s vast technological endeavours. “Of course, many of the well-known shots were too beautiful to leave out, but we ..read more
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We’ve hacked the Curiosity rover to learn how mountains form on Mars
New Scientist | NASA
by Leah Crane
5y ago
By Leah Crane Hacking NASA’s Curiosity rover let it measure Martian gravity, even though it has no scientific instruments designed to do so. The measurements revealed a surprise at Gale crater. We can use gravity to probe the interior structure of a planet because the gravitational pull of a particular area depends on the type and density of the rocks there. On Earth, this is used both for science and to find valuable substances like oil underground. On Mars, it could help us understand the planet’s climate history, but the Curiosity rover has no gravimeter — the type of instrument that measur ..read more
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Ultima Thule is a snowman-shaped rock covered in weird ice
New Scientist | NASA
by Leah Crane
5y ago
Strange snowmanNASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Southwest Research Institute By Leah CraneWe’ve just gotten our first good look at a tiny, distant world called 2014 MU69. The small space rock, nicknamed Ultima Thule or simply MU69, is 6.6 billion kilometres away, making it the most distant object we’ve ever explored. Early on New Year’s Day, NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft hurtled past MU69, passing within 3500 kilometres of the small rock’s surface at a speed of 14 kilometres per second, taking a flurry of pictures and science data as it passed. The first pictures ..read more
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Spacecraft to study marsquakes lands on Mars after 7 minutes of terror
New Scientist | NASA
by Chelsea Whyte
5y ago
Mars, as seen by NASA’s InSight landerNasa/JPL-Caltech By Mika McKinnonThe newest robotic resident of Mars defied the odds and landed safely on the surface, despite the thin atmosphere and strong gravity. On 26 November, Mars InSight faced six and a half minutes of terror, charring its heat shield, flinging its parachute out at supersonic speeds, and finally burning thrusters to set down gently at the end of its six-month journey from Earth. Unlike every other spacecraft that has visited Mars, InSight won’t explore the surface – this time it’s a mission to explore what’s inside Mars. “Mars has ..read more
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Our best planet-hunting telescope has come to the end of its mission
New Scientist | NASA
by Leah Crane
5y ago
The Kepler Space Telescope’s planet-hunting days are overNASA By Leah CraneThe Kepler Space Telescope’s planet-hunting days are over. NASA announced on 30 October that the spacecraft has run out of fuel and will soon be shut down completely. Since its launch in 2009, the observatory has found more than 2600 confirmed planets beyond our solar system and many more exoplanet candidates that have yet to be confirmed. Kepler worlds account for about 70 per cent of the total exoplanets we’ve confirmed. “Before Kepler, we didn’t know if planets were common or rare in our galaxy,” says NASA astrophysi ..read more
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The Sun review – a shiny blockbuster for London’s Science Museum
New Scientist | NASA
by liz.else@newscientist.com
5y ago
Entrance to The Sun: Living with our star © Jody KingzettCourtesy of the Science Museum Group By Sumit Paul-ChoudhuryT­he sun is a star, and not a particularly remarkable one. This everyday observation conceals a powerful contradiction in our daily experience. For us Earth-dwellers, it is not just any old star, it is our star, the star which utterly dominates existence on our planet. Whatever their vital statistics, all the other stars in the sky are mere extrapolations of it: our sun literally outshines them all. And yet for most of human history the sun has been an ineffable ..read more
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Row with Russia and SpaceX delays could leave NASA unable to reach ISS
New Scientist | NASA
by Legacy content author
5y ago
Astronaut Paul W. Richards in 2001 during work to build the ISSNASA By Leah CraneIF NASA wants to send humans to space, it has to stay friends with Roscosmos, its Russian counterpart. In turn, if Roscosmos wants to keep the International Space Station (ISS) running, it has to stay friends with NASA. But the US-Russia relationship in space has reached a critical point. On 10 October, newly appointed NASA administrator Jim Bridenstine and Roscosmos director general Dmitry Rogozin will meet in person for the first time. This meeting was sparked by a drill hole found last month ..read more
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