Space flight – Leonardo Times

10Mar

By LeonardoTimesNo Comments

Featured, Space flight

Starship’s Story

The development of a highway to Mars Authors : Marcos Talocchi and Lisanne Vermaas, Editors Leonardo Times Render of Starship in orbit during stage separation The future of spaceflight is, in short, defined by one word: sustainability. And what other way to achieve it other than leaving single use launchers in the past and embrace reusable rockets? This is what SpaceX proposes with Starship, the first 100% reusable space launcher. Space Exploration Technologies Corporation, or SpaceX in short, was founded by Elon Musk in 2002. His plans to colonize Mars in order to make mankind a multiplanetary species stems from even before SpaceX was founded. After generating his initial capital as co-founder of PayPal, Musk joined the board of the Mars Society and announced Mars Oasis:...

NASA finds a Solar System similar to our own

19Dec

By LeonardoTimesNo Comments

Astronomy and planetary sciences, News

NASA finds a Solar System similar to our own

Kepler Space Telescope launched by NASA in 2009 to find Earth-sized planets orbiting other sun-like stars has recently discovered a new planet orbiting the Kepler-90 star. This brings the number of planets around the star to eight, the same as the number of planets in our solar system. The star and the system in which the new planet is located is about 2,545 light years away from our planet. There could be more planets in the system which have not yet been spotted. The discovery came as a result of a team effort from NASA and Google Artificial Intelligence. A machine learning algorithm trained to look for signals that might belong to planets played a part in the discovery of the new planet known as Kepler0-90i. Paul Hertz, the director of the Astrophysics Division of NASA, says “By ap...

7Dec

By LeonardoTimesNo Comments

News, Operations, Propulsion, Space engineering, Space flight, Uncategorized

Revival of Voyager 1 after 37 years

The backup thrusters on the Voyager 1 spacecraft fired up after staggering 37 years. It took 19h and 35 min through space for the signal to reach an antenna in Goldstone, California, US, which is a part of NASA’s Deep Space Network. Voyager 1 was launched by NASA on September 5, 1977, 16 days after its twin, Voyager 2. Both these spacecraft are a part of the Voyager program to study the outer Solar System. On August 25, 2012, Voyager 1 became the first spacecraft to cross the heliosphere and thereby making it the farthest a man-made object has ever traveled. Voyager 1 traveling past the edge of the Solar System. Source: https://www.nasa.gov/ After staying in dormant for 13 billion miles, on November 28, the spacecraft’s four backup Trajectory Course Manoeuvring thrusters were...

Cassini to perform final series of daring maneuvers

26Apr

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News, Space flight

Cassini to perform final series of daring maneuvers

The Cassini spacecraft, part of the international Cassini-Huygens mission, is due to start a series of 22 orbits in between Saturn and its rings today, the 26th of April. The ring plane passages pose the final challenge of the mission: having orbited the planet for the last 12 years the spacecraft is set to enter Saturn’s atmosphere on September 15th. The data gathered in the revolutionary maneuvers are expected to further expand our understanding of the Saturnian environment and the origin of the planet and its rings and moons. Already in 2005 the Huygens probe touched down on the Saturnian moon Titan, which has lead to the insight into its many atmospheric and internal processes. From the combination of the in-situ data recovered by the Huygens probe and remote observations performed...

26Apr

By LeonardoTimesNo Comments

Space engineering, Space flight

ExoMars: Journey of the Unknown

Author: Nora Sulaikha, Editor at Leonardo Times, TU Delft Article published in Leonardo Times Magazine, Edition of January 2017. Space exploration may be considered a relatively new venture, having gone into full speed only a little over fifty years ago. However, the knowledge that a great unknown existed outside of what human beings can see with their bare eyes is timeless. From our small world, we have gazed upon the cosmic oceans for untold centuries. In 750 BC, the Babylonians invented the first ever almanac-tables that charted the movements of the Sun, the Moon, and other planets. Science flourished during the renaissance, and in the 17th century, astronomers pointed a new device called the “telescope” at the heavens and made discoveries that made them realize we were all ...

5Apr

By scriptcieNo Comments

Aviation, Propulsion, Space engineering, Space flight

The Airbus Zephyr

Authors: Rens van der Zwaard & Max Aalberse, MSc Students Aerospace Engineering, TU Delft Article published in Leonardo Times Magazine, Edition of January 2017. The Zephyr 8 is a compromise between Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) and satellites. It has the ability to fly autonomously in the stratosphere, above all weather and air traffic, the advantage being that it can perform its functions without having to take unexpected weather changes into account. Its endurance at this altitude is in the order of weeks. Therefore, the Zephyr can do the job of a satellite while flying sufficiently close to the surface to make high-resolution images and is inexpensive to use, relative to developing and launching a satellite. Another advantage is that the Zephyr can always stay focused on th...

SpaceX relaunches a used rocket making history

1Apr

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News, Space engineering, Space flight

SpaceX relaunches a used rocket making history

On March 30, 2017, SpaceX made spaceflight history by reusing a rocket that was used for a previous launch. Their Falcon-9 rocket that was previously used for a mission eleven months earlier, was used to launch the SES-10 satellite. This satellite is intended to provide TV, internet, telephone and radio coverage for South America. The rocket, once launched at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida, deployed its payload successfully about half an hour later. Following this, it was autonomously guided back to a droneship called “Of Course I Still Love You” that was stationed in the Atlantic and landed safely. SpaceX has been on the path toward using reusable rockets and this launch marked a milestone for them. In the past year, they have managed to recover the first stage of nine o...

30Mar

By LeonardoTimesNo Comments

News, Space engineering, Space flight

Boeing X-37 Mystery Mission

The U.S. Air Force's unmanned space plane X-37 is one of the most mysterious spacecraft ever. It is known as the Orbital Test Vehicle and its primary objective is to test advanced spacecraft technologies. The program is classified, therefore it remains a secret what the tested technologies are. The X-37B was launched on 20 May 2015, this is the fourth X-37 mission and it is still in progress. The X-37B space plane has been in orbit for almost two years now and broke an orbital record when it hit 675 days in orbit around Earth on March 25th 2017. Concept of U.S. Air Force's X-37B in orbit [NASA Marshall Space Flight Center] The X-37 program began as a NASA project in 1999 after which it was transferred to the U.S. Department of Defence in 2004. The X-37B spacecraft...

22Mar

By LeonardoTimesNo Comments

Astronomy and planetary sciences, News, Space flight

NASA’s EO-1 Retires After 17 Years

Earth Observing-1 (EO-1), one of NASA’s pathfinder Earth satellites, was launched back in 2000 as part of their New Millennium Program. Its original mission was designed to last one year and it was designed to operate for about 1.5 times that duration. Seventeen years later, we can safely say that it has far exceeded expectations. Now EO-1 is finally set to retire on March 30, 2017. Some of its achievements include being the first to map active lava flows, track re-growth in the Amazon and measure a methane leak at a facility from space. During its operation, more than 1500 papers were published based on EO-1 research. Fig. Methane emissions detected by EO-1’s Hyperion (Source: earthobservatory.nasa.gov) Two of the instruments on board the EO-1 that made this possible are the Adva...

28Sep

By LeonardoTimesNo Comments

Astronomy and planetary sciences, Space flight

Reality Check!

From Einstein’s theory of relativity to the remarkable discovery of gravitational waves, a century-long ride. Intro 100 years after it was first published, Einstein’s theory of relativity has emerged copiously triumphant in the wake of the recent direct detection of gravitational waves. Einstein said that everything is relative. Gravity isn’t exactly a downward force, time is not absolute and it’s all about ‘spacetime’. Was Isaac Newton entirely mistaken? We hear ‘general relativity’ and we think ‘ E=mc2 ’, Albert Einstein’s gift to humanity. The general theory of relativity was published by Albert Einstein in 1916. A century later, in late 2015, the very first direct detection of the ‘gravitational waves’ as predicted by general relativity has ensued. Thanks to the brilliant LI...