Mars One ‘Ticket To Rise’ campaign offers suborbital spaceflight prize

An announcement from Mars One:

Mars One Announces Chance To Win Two-Way Trip to Space 

Mars One launches the Ticket To Rise Campaign to aid the
2015 Earth mission and 2018 Mars missions.

Amersfoort, 4th September 2014 – Today Mars One announces their Ticket To Rise campaign (http://urgencynetwork.com/marsone) to give space-enthusiasts a chance to win a private trip to space. Participants earn entries into the space trip drawing in exchange for joining the campaign.

The campaign will provide funding for a 2015 Earth mission, which is a simulation project to replicate the future Mars human settlement here on Earth, as well as the 2018 Mars mission to Mars. 

The Mars One Ticket To Rise campaign will reside on the Urgency Network platform, in partnership with Motherboard, VICE Media’s science and tech channel. The Urgency Network provides campaign supporters opportunities to earn entries to win incredible experiences, purchase reward items, and complete actions like donating, watching videos, and sharing content.  

“We are enthusiastic about the Ticket To Rise campaign and the opportunity to send a lucky participant to space aboard the XCOR Lynx Mark II spacecraft”, commented Bas Lansdorp, Co-founder and CEO of Mars One. “This campaign fits well into our strategy of building awareness and momentum for space travel. Most importantly, it gives our passionate community a free chance to win a space flight and spread the word to others about our mission to the Red Planet.”

“We’ve always been motivated by projects that seek to accomplish the impossible,” added Urgency Network Co-founder, Brandon Deroche. “In our eyes, there is no greater opportunity on Earth than giving people the chance to leave it, so we’re honored to support Mars One’s mission to colonize the Red Planet through Ticket To Rise.”

Ticket To Rise will introduce brand new, never-before-seen Mars One gear and products throughout the campaign. To earn an entry into the contest, participants can visit http://urgencynetwork.com/marsone and choose to donate or purchase Mars One items. 

About Mars One

Mars One is a not-for-profit foundation that will establish permanent human life on Mars. Human settlement on Mars is possible today with existing technologies. Mars One’s mission plan integrates components that are well tested and readily available from industry leaders worldwide. The first footprint on Mars and lives of the crew thereon will captivate and inspire generations. It is this public interest that will help finance this human mission to Mars. For more information about Mars One, go to www.mars-one.com

About Urgency Network

The Urgency Network is an engagement platform where fans complete cause-benefitting actions to win once-in-a-lifetime experiences & other rewards. Since July 2013, Urgency Network has launched campaigns with influencers like Paul McCartney, Richard Branson, Hugh Jackman, and Thom Yorke, along with nonprofits such as Greenpeace, David Lynch Foundation, Carbon War Room & Music For Relief. For more general information about the Urgency Network, go to www.urgencynetwork.com.  

About Motherboard

Motherboard is an online magazine and video channel from VICE that explores technology and the intersection of culture technology. Through short and long-form documentaries, photography, editorial and community participation, Motherboard provides a refreshing voice in the tech media landscape, filling the gap between more sterile gadget review sites, and industry news. Whether it’s gaming, art, sports, or food, Motherboard is there telling the story of technology’s role. For more info visit www.Motherboard.vice.com

Video: Time lapse of launch campaign for Europe’s ATV-5 cargo module

Here’s an interesting time lapse video from the European Space Agency (ESA) showing the preparations up to the time of the launch of the last ATV module that delivered cargo to the International Space Station: ATV-5 Launch Campaign

Description:

This time-lapse video shows the ATV-5 Georges Lemaitre loading process and its integration on the Ariane 5 launcher before its transfer and launch to the International Space Station from Europe’s Spaceport in Kourou, French Guiana on 29 July 2014.

The fifth in the series of the largest spacecraft ever built in Europe is also the heaviest load an Ariane 5 has ever launched. ATV-5 is set to carry almost 6.6 tonnes of supplies to the orbital outpost, including a record amount of dry cargo: around 2682 kg.

Georges Lemaîtres will deliver experiments, equipment, spare parts, water, air and even artwork to the six astronauts living in space.

ESA astronaut Alexander Gerst will be responsible for docking and unloading the cargo when ATV arrives at its destination around two weeks after launch.

ESO: Lupus 4 cloud will one day shine with new stars

An announcement from the European Southern Observatory (ESO):

Cosmic Forecast: Dark Clouds Will Give Way to Sunshine

Lupus 4, a spider-shaped blob of gas and dust, blots out background stars like a dark cloud on a moonless night in this intriguing new image. Although gloomy for now, dense pockets of material within clouds such as Lupus 4 are where new stars form and where they will later burst into radiant life. The Wide Field Imager on the MPG/ESO 2.2-metre telescope at ESO’s La Silla Observatory in Chile captured this new picture.

The Dark Cloud Lupus 4

The Wide Field Imager (WFI) on the MPG/ESO 2.2-metre telescope at the
La Silla Observatory in Chile captured this view of dark cloud Lupus 4
blotting out background stars. Lupus 4 is a dense pocket of gas and dust
where new stars are expected to form. The cloud is located about 400
light-years away from Earth, on the border between the constellations
of Lupus (The Wolf) and Norma (The Carpenter’s Square).

Lupus 4 is located about 400 light-years away from Earth, straddling the constellations of Lupus (The Wolf) and Norma (The Carpenter’s Square). The cloud is one of several affiliated dark clouds found in a loose star cluster called the Scorpius–Centaurus OB association. An OB association is a relatively young, yet widely dispersed grouping of stars [1]. The stars likely had a common origin in a gigantic cloud of material.

Because the association, and its Lupus clouds, form the closest such grouping to the Sun, they are a prime target for studying how stars grow up together before going their separate ways. The Sun, along with most stars in our galaxy, is thought to have started out in a similar environment.

American astronomer Edward Emerson Barnard is credited with the earliest descriptions of the Lupus dark clouds in the astronomical literature, back in 1927. Lupus 3, neighbour to Lupus 4, is the best studied, thanks to the presence of at least 40 fledgling stars formed over the last three million years, and which are on the cusp of igniting their fusion furnaces (eso1303). The main energy source in these adolescent stars, known as T Tauri stars, is the heat generated by their gravitational contraction. That is in contrast to the fusion of hydrogen and other elements which powers mature stars such as the Sun.

Zooming in on the dark cloud Lupus 4:

Loading player…

Observations of the cold darkness of Lupus 4 have turned up only a few T Tauri stars. Yet promisingly for Lupus 4 in terms of future star formation is a dense, starless core of material in the cloud. Given a few million years, that core should develop into T Tauri stars. Comparing Lupus 3 and Lupus 4 in this way suggests that the former is older than the latter, because its contents have had more time to develop into stars. How many stars might eventually start to shine within Lupus 4? It is hard to say, as mass estimates for Lupus 4 vary. Two studies agree on a figure of around 250 times the mass of the Sun, though another, using a different method, arrives at a figure of around 1600 solar masses. Either way, the cloud contains ample material to give rise to plenty of bright new stars. Rather as earthly clouds make way for sunshine, so, too, shall this cosmic dark cloud eventually dissipate and give way to brilliant starlight.

Notes
[1] The “OB” refers to the hot, bright, short-lived stars of spectral types O and B that are still shining brilliantly within the widely dispersed cluster as it travels through the Milky Way galaxy.

Links
Photos of the MPG/ESO 2.2-metre telescope
Other photos taken with the MPG/ESO 2.2-metre telescope
Photos of La Silla

NASA invites public to submit messages for time capsule on asteroid sampling mission

Submit a prediction about the future of spaceflight. along with an image, and it may be chosen to ride on the Bennu asteroid aboard the OSIRIS-REx probe in a TimeCapsule that will be opened after the spacecraft returns with samples of the asteroid in 2023: Submit Predictions to Fly in an Asteroid Time Capsule – The Planetary Society.

More in this NASA announcement:

NASA Invites Public to Submit Messages for Asteroid Mission Time Capsule

AsteroidTimeCapsule

 

NASA’s OSIRIS-REx mission launches Asteroid Time Capsule — a mission
to collect ideas from the public about space exploration 10 years
from now. Image Credit: Heather Roper/University of Arizona/OSIRIS-REx

NASA is inviting the worldwide public to submit short messages and images on social media that could be placed in a time capsule aboard a spacecraft launching to an asteroid in 2016.

Called the Origins-Spectral Interpretation-Resource Identification-Security-Regolith Explorer (OSIRIS-REx), the spacecraft will rendezvous with the asteroid Bennu in 2019, collect a sample and return the cache in a capsule to Earth in 2023 for detailed study. The robotic mission will spend more than two years at the 1,760-foot (500-meter)-wide asteroid and return a minimum of 2 ounces (60 grams) of its surface material.

Topics for submissions by the public should be about solar system exploration in 2014 and predictions for space exploration activities in 2023. The mission team will choose 50 tweets and 50 images to be placed in the capsule. Messages can be submitted Sept. 2 – 30.

OSIRIS_REX_14-235b

This is an artist’s concept of NASA’s OSIRIS-REx spacecraft
preparing to take a sample from asteroid Bennu.
Image Credit: NASA/Goddard

“Our progress in space exploration has been nothing short of amazing,” says Dante Lauretta, OSIRIS-REx principal investigator at the University of Arizona, Tucson. “I look forward to the public taking their best guess at what the next 10 years holds and then comparing their predictions with actual missions in development in 2023.”

This event is the second of NASA’s efforts to engage space enthusiasts around the world in the OSIRIS-REx mission, following the agency’s January invitation to participate in Messages to Bennu, which asked the public to submit their names to be etched on a microchip aboard the spacecraft.

“It is exciting to think that some people may formulate predictions then have the chance to help make their prediction a reality over the next decade,” said Jason Dworkin, OSIRIS-REx project scientist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland.

When the sample return capsule returns to Earth in 2023 with the asteroid material, the mission team will open the time capsule to view the messages and images, at which time the selected submissions will be posted online at:

www.asteroidmission.org/timecapsule

“OSIRIS-REx has to take many years to perform a complex asteroid sample return,” said Bruce Betts, the director of science and technology at The Planetary Society in Pasadena, California, a public outreach partner on the asteroid mission. “A time capsule capitalizes on the long duration of the mission to engage the public in thinking about space exploration — where are we now, and where will we be.”

The OSIRIS-REx mission is focused on finding answers to basic questions about the composition of the very early solar system and the source of organic materials and water that made life possible on Earth. The mission also will contribute to NASA’s Asteroid Redirect Mission (ARM) and support the agency’s efforts to understand the population of potentially hazardous near-Earth objects and characterize those suitable for future asteroid exploration missions.

NASA’s ARM is a first-ever mission to identify, capture and redirect a near-Earth asteroid to a stable orbit around the moon, where astronauts will explore it in the 2020s, and return with samples. The mission will advance the new technologies and spaceflight experience needed for humans to explore Mars in the 2030s.

NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center will provide overall mission management, systems engineering and safety and mission assurance. The University of Arizona, Tucson, is the principal investigator institution. Lockheed Martin Space Systems of Denver will build the spacecraft. OSIRIS-REx is the third mission in NASA’s New Frontiers Program. NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, manages New Frontiers for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate in Washington.

For details on procedures and rules for submitting a message and image, visit: www.asteroidmission.org/timecapsule

More information is available online about Messages to Bennu, at: www.planetary.org/get-involved/messages/bennu/

For more about the OSIRIS-REx mission, visit: www.nasa.gov/osiris-rex