Monthly Archives: May 2015

Contests and Games, Space Arts

ESA to send drawings to space on Cheops exoplanet system observatory

Another chance to send a drawing into space. This time for kids in ESA affiliated countries:

Send your drawing into space with Cheops

6 May 2015:  Do you want to send your art into space on the new Cheops satellite? ESA and its mission partners are inviting children to submit drawings that will be miniaturised and engraved on two plaques that will be put on the satellite.

Cheops – for CHaracterising ExOPlanets Satellite – is a space telescope that will observe nearby stars known to host planets, and is being built as a collaboration between ESA’s Science Programme and Switzerland. The planned launch date is at the end of 2017.

With the data from Cheops, astronomers will be able to characterise the sizes and masses of many extrasolar planets, to gain new insights into the formation of planetary systems.

Children between the ages of 8 and 14 from any ESA member state or cooperating state can be part of this otherworldly enterprise by creating a drawing inspired by the mission.

While it would be great to collect colourful drawings, the artworks can only be in black-and-white, created with a black pencil or felt-tip pen. This is necessary to ensure that the engraving process accurately captures the drawings as they are transferred to the metal plaques.

Up to 3000 drawings will be shrunk down by a factor of about 1000 and engraved on the metal plaques that will fly into space on Cheops. If more than 3000 entries are received, ESA and its partners will organise a lottery to select the drawings for engraving.

To take part in this competition, you will need to download and print out a standard template provided here, make your drawing on it, and complete your contact details. Then send it via letter to either your local Cheops mission partner institution, if there is one in your home country, or to ESA directly.

Entries will be accepted until 31 October 2015, and the postmark will be considered proof of the date of posting.

This competition is an initiative of the University of Bern, Switzerland, the overall coordinator of the activity. Mission partner institutions in the countries that are part of the Cheops consortium (Austria, Belgium, France, Germany, Hungary, Italy, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland and the UK) are also open for entries, as is ESA directly, representing all of its member states.

Full rules, terms, and conditions can be found here.

The standard template for the drawings can be found here.

Contacts and mail addresses for the national competitions here.

Feedback questionnaire about the competition (optional) here.

Education, General, SpaceCasts

Videos: Space Pod reports on spiders in space, spaceplanes, sad Uranus, refractors, & SpaceX test

Yet more Space Pod short video reports from TMRO.tv:

TMRO Space Pods are crowd funded shows. If you like this episode consider contributing to help us to continue to improve. Head over tohttp://www.patreon.com/spacepod for information, goals and reward levels. Don’t forget to check out our weekly live show campaign as well over at http://www.patreon.com/tmro

* Spiders in Space and Dogs on Mars – Space Pod 05/13/15

This week Lisa Stojanovski talks about spidernauts on the space station, and whether we should take man’s best friend to Mars.

Golden Orb Spiders on the International Space Station: http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/sta…

* Spaceplanes Part 2: Rocket Powered Aircraft – Space Pod 05/12/15

In the second part of Space Mike’s analysis of Spaceplanes, the rocket powered precursors to the X-15 are discussed.

* Uranus: the saddest planet in the solar system? – Space Pod 05/11/15

Ariel Waldman gets emo about everyone making fun of Uranus and explains why it’s a really cool planet that deserves more attention.

* Through the Looking Glass: Refractors – Space Pod 05/08/15

TMRO Astronomer Jared Head kicks off a 4-part SpacePod series about finding the right telescope, and takes a closer look at refracting telescopes.

* SpaceX Pad Abort Test Equals 0-345MPH Real Quick! – Space Pod 05/07/15 

SpaceX successfully tested launch abort capability on their Dragon 2 capsule, getting one step closer to being certified to fly astronauts to the Space Station.

DIY space, Rockets

Video: Copenhagen Suborbitals fires the BPM-5 rocket engine

Copenhagen Suborbitals test fired their BPM-5 LOX/Ethanol engine yesterday:

This is the full technical video of the first static test of the BPM-5 rocket engine. The video shows all 3 burns performed on Sunday May 11 2015. It includes footage from all available camera sources High Speed and normal High Definition.

High Speed is filmed with GoPro Hero 4 in 240 fps.

Copenhagen Suborbitals is a non profit open project that aims to build a rocket and put a man into space (above the Karmann Line, 100 km).  Please support our project at www.copsub.com and also check out our other videos on this channel.

Asteroids & Comets, Space Science

New Dawn images of Ceres and its bright spots

The Dawn probe is now moving to where it can see most all of the dwarf planet Ceres. Here’s the latest image of the dwarf planet and those shiny spots:

Ceres Animation Showcases Bright Spots

PIA19547-home[1]Click for larger image.

This animation shows a sequence of images taken by NASA’s Dawn spacecraft on May 4, 2015, from a distance of 8,400 miles (13,600 kilometers), in its RC3 mapping orbit. The image resolution is 0.8 mile (1.3 kilometers) per pixel.

In this closest-yet view, the brightest spots within a crater in the northern hemisphere are revealed to be composed of many smaller spots. However, their exact nature remains unknown.

The mysterious bright spots on the dwarf planet Ceres are better resolved in a new sequence of images taken by NASA’s Dawn spacecraft on May 3 and 4, 2015. The images were taken from a distance of 8,400 miles (13,600 kilometers). [See animation  above or the bigger version here.

In this closest-yet view, the brightest spots within a crater in the northern hemisphere are revealed to be composed of many smaller spots. However, their exact nature remains unknown.

PIA19547_ip[1][The bright spots that Dawn saw from far away are still there
and still unexplained.] Large image.

“Dawn scientists can now conclude that the intense brightness of these spots is due to the reflection of sunlight by highly reflective material on the surface, possibly ice,” said Christopher Russell, principal investigator for the Dawn mission from the University of California, Los Angeles.

These images offer scientists new insights into crater shapes and sizes, and a host of other intriguing geological features on the surface. The image resolution is 0.8 mile (1.3 kilometers) per pixel.

Dawn has now concluded its first mapping orbit, in which it completed one 15-day full circle around Ceres while making a host of new observations with its scientific instruments. On May 9, the spacecraft powered on its ion engine to begin the month-long descent toward its second mapping orbit, which it will enter on June 6. In this next phase, Dawn will circle Ceres about every three days at an altitude of 2,700 miles (4,400 kilometers) — three times closer than the previous orbit. During this phase, referred to as Dawn’s survey orbit, the spacecraft will comprehensively map the surface to begin unraveling Ceres’ geologic history and assess whether the dwarf planet is active. The spacecraft will pause twice to take images of Ceres as it spirals down into this new orbit.

Dawn is the first mission to visit a dwarf planet, and the first to orbit two distinct solar system targets. It studied giant asteroid Vesta for 14 months in 2011 and 2012, and arrived at Ceres on March 6, 2015.

Dawn’s mission is managed by JPL for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate in Washington. Dawn is a project of the directorate’s Discovery Program, managed by NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama. UCLA is responsible for overall Dawn mission science. Orbital ATK Inc., in Dulles, Virginia, designed and built the spacecraft. The German Aerospace Center, Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research, Italian Space Agency and Italian National Astrophysical Institute are international partners on the mission team. For a complete list of mission participants, visit: dawn.jpl.nasa.gov/mission

More information about Dawn is available at the following sites:

—

Here is brief cartoon explanation of the term Dwarf Planet:

Gas giants Saturn, Jupiter, et al, Multiple media, Space Science

Cassini returns another marvelous view of Saturn

1 Comment

Check out this beautiful view of Saturn as seen by the Cassini probe:

 Serene Saturn

pia18314-1041[1]Click for larger image. 
Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Space Science Institute

From a distance Saturn seems to exude an aura of serenity and peace.

In spite of this appearance, Saturn is an active and dynamic world.  Its atmosphere is a fast-moving and turbulent place with wind speeds in excess of 1,100 miles per hour (1,800 km per hour) in places. The lack of a solid surface to create drag means that there are fewer features to slow down the wind than on a planet like Earth.

Mimas, to the upper-right of Saturn, has been brightened by a factor of 2 for visibility.

In this view, Cassini was at a subspacecraft latitude of 19 degrees North. The image was taken with the Cassini spacecraft wide-angle camera on Feb. 4, 2015 using a spectral filter centered at 752 nanometers, in the near-infrared portion of the spectrum.

The view was obtained at a distance of approximately 1.6 million miles (2.5 million kilometers) from Saturn. Image scale is 96 miles (150 kilometers) per pixel.

The Cassini mission is a cooperative project of NASA, ESA (the European Space Agency) and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate, Washington. The Cassini orbiter and its two onboard cameras were designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The imaging operations center is based at the Space Science Institute in Boulder, Colorado.

For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit http://www.nasa.gov/cassini and http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov. The Cassini imaging team homepage is at http://ciclops.org.