NASA’s DART spacecraft is supposed to change an asteroid’s orbit by crashing into it going 6 kilometers per second.NASA/JOHNS HOPKINS APL

BY ADAM MANN

Intentional crash of robotic probe will test way to avert asteroid impacts on earth.

In the name of planetary defense, NASA is set to launch a robotic probe next week that in late 2022 will hurtle into a sizable space rock in the hopes of nudging its orbit. Although the celestial target of the Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) poses no danger to our planet, the mission will assess the feasibility of deflecting potentially hazardous objects away from Earth.

“DART is such a fricking cool mission,” says Peter Schultz, a geologist at Brown University who studies impacts in the Solar System. The $325 million mission may launch as early as 24 November on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California.

Continue reading… “NASA’s first planetary defense mission will nudge an asteroid”

Illustration of the Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) mission and its target, Dimorphos, a moonlet of the asteroid Didymos. Credit: NASA/Johns Hopkins APL/Steve Gribben

By Robin George Andrews 

Our planet is vulnerable to thousands of “city-killer” space rocks. If—when—one is found on a collision course with Earth, will we be ready to deflect it?

Back when Andy Rivkin was in college, he had a few friends in medical school. “I was like, oh man, I don’t want do anything that has too much responsibility,” he says. Instead, he looked to the stars. “Astronomy seemed pretty safe.” And, for a while, it was. Rather than having to make decisions about someone’s root canal or abdominal surgery, he watched worlds flit about in the darkness.

But Rivkin, a planetary astronomer at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) in Baltimore, has found himself with more responsibility than he expected. Along with hundreds of others, he is part of the Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) mission, an ambitious effort led by NASA and the APL to slam an uncrewed spacecraft into an asteroid to change its orbit. This is a dry run for the real deal: one day, a technological descendant of DART could be used to deflect a planet-threatening space rock, saving millions—perhaps billions—of lives in the process.

On November 23, DART will launch on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from California’s Vandenberg Space Force Base. Sometime next fall, it will smash into its target at 24,000 kilometers per hour. Ground-based astronomers like Rivkin will watch the rendezvous unfold with bated breath, hoping to see the telltale signs of success: a dust cloud, and an asteroid dancing to humanity’s tune for the very first time. Will it work?

Continue reading… “NASA’s DART Mission Could Help Cancel an Asteroid Apocalypse”

Northrop Grumman’s lunar vehicle will help map the moon’s south pole.

By  Chris Young

Northrop Grumman will design the electric and autonomous Lunar Terrain Vehicle (LTV) for NASA’s Artemis astronauts, who are due to land on the moon in 2025, a press statement reveals.

The aerospace and defense firm announced a partnership with AVL, Intuitive Machines, Lunar Outpost, and Michelin to work on the project, which will help to take humans to the lunar south pole for the first time in an expedition that could uncover ice and water resources for future missions.

Continue reading… “Astronauts Will Traverse the Moon in 2025 Using an Autonomous Buggy”

By Aria Alamalhodaei

SpinLaunch, a startup working on a kinetic space launch system, has successfully completed its first prototype flight. It’s a major milestone for the seven-year-old company as it works toward a test of its full-scale system.

The concept behind that system is pretty wild: Essentially, SpinLaunch wants to get to orbit by using a large, vacuum-sealed chamber and a hypersonic tether to spin a spacecraft at a high enough velocity — up to 5,000 miles per hour — to escape the atmosphere. That means no rocket, no rocket engines. It’s a markedly different way of thinking about spaceflight, much more akin to a giant rail gun rather than a conventional launch system.

According to SpinLaunch, such a system is now possible thanks to advances in small electronics and high-strength materials like carbon fiber, which can harden both the launch vehicle and small satellites to high-G forces.

Continue reading… “SPINLAUNCH COMPLETES FIRST PROTOTYPE FLIGHT USING KINETIC LAUNCH SYSTEM”

By Kaitlyn Kubrick 

In addition to the Artemis project, which NASA introduced last year, it will shed light on today’s problems with the Wi-Fi it will create on the Moon.

The Artemis program, introduced by NASAlast year, aims to land a human on the Moonfor the first time since 1972. Another detail about this exciting operation has emerged. According to the study, which we have just learned to be developed, NASA aims to fluctuate Wi-Fi signals on the Moon for many purposes.

Continue reading… “NASA is trying to build a Wi-Fi network on the Moon!”

A group of “analog astronauts” will spend four weeks on a simulated version of Mars to prepare for the challenging environment on the Red Planet.- Advertisement –

The mission, hosted by the Israel Space Agency, will take place in the Negev desert, and will be managed by ‘Mission Control’ at the Austrian Space Forum with a 10-minute delay to simulate the time difference between Mars and Earth.

They will be placed in a habitat similar to the design astronauts will use on future missions to Mars. Geologically, the composition of the Negev Desert is very similar to that of Mars, making it an ideal setting for testing practices, the researchers say.

“This is our first mission where our analog astronauts will live and work completely independent in their habitat for three weeks. A small on-site support team is available for technical problems and maintenance,” said Dr. Gernot Grömer, director of the Austrian Space Forum. but will not be allowed to interact with analog astronauts.

The simulation, known as AMADEE-20, will see five men and one woman wearing “detailed space suit prototypes” as they step outside or drive the rover.

Continue reading… “‘Analog astronauts’ isolate on fake Mars desert to prepare humans for future missions”

Mission is ‘first test for planetary defence’, says space agency

Nasa has announced plans to send a spacecraft hurtling into an asteroid at 15,000mph to change its path in the US space agency’s first “planetary defence” test. 

The mission, known as a Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART), will be the Nasa’s “first use of the kinetic impactor technique” in which “a large, high-speed spacecraft is sent into an asteroid’s path to change its motion”, reported CBS News.

Nasa has called the mission “the first test for planetary defence”, and will send the spacecraft on a collision course “to hit the binary near-Earth asteroid Didymos and its moonlet, Dimorphos” on 24 November. 

The mission will “assess if it is possible to divert an incoming celestial body”, The Telegraph said, in the hope that we can “avoid a mass extinction event like the one that wiped out the dinosaurs, and most life on Earth, 66 million years ago”. 

Scientists have already identified at least 26,000 “near-Earth objects”, 4,700 of which meet Nasa’s classification as “potentially hazardous objects”. These are objects in space that are “larger than 500ft across, pass within 4.7 million miles of the planet, and would cause devastating damage if they hit” the Earth, the paper added. 

The Didymos system, the target for the DART demonstration, is made up of two bodies. Didymos, the primary body, is roughly 780 metres across according to Nasa, while its moonlet is about 160 metres in diameter. The space agency hopes to hit the moonlet, which is “more typical of the size of asteroids that could pose the most likely significant threat to Earth”.

Continue reading… “‘Armageddon-style’ spacecraft to crash into asteroid”

Concept: China’s space exploration startup Origin Space has launched a robot prototype ‘NEO-01’ into low orbit Earth with a large net that can scoop up debris or waste left behind by other spacecraft. The 30kg robot was launched alongside other satellites on the Chinese government’s Long March 6 rocket. The aim is to forge new paths to the future of technology capable of mining elements on asteroids.

Continue reading… “Origin Space’s Robot can Capture Space Debris”