US News A Graveyard of Giant Spacecraft Spins Through Space

11:45 28 january 2020

11:45 28 january 2020 Source: msn.com

SpaceX aims to launch astronauts this spring after Crew Dragon escape test success

The first crewed flight of SpaceX's new astronaut taxi is likely just a few months away, now that a critical safety test is in the rearview mirror. SpaceX's Crew Dragon capsule aced an in-flight abort test Sunday morning (Jan. 19), successfully jetting away from its Falcon 9 rocket less than 90 seconds after liftoff and ultimately splashing down softly under parachutes in the Atlantic Ocean, about 20 miles (32 kilometers) off the Florida coast.The uncrewed test demonstrated the spacecraft's ability to keep astronauts safe in the event of a launch emergency, marking a big step on the path toward crewed flight.

a close up of a star filled sky: The Spitzer space telescope’s infrared view of the Milky Way

A collection of defunct spacecraft, their mission to chronicle the wonders of the universe long ended, glide silently in Earth’s vicinity. This week, NASA will turn off another, the Spitzer telescope, which has spent 16 years observing the cosmos. The telescope trails the Earth, looping around the sun, and little by little, it has drifted away from us.

The growing expanse, now hundreds of millions of miles wide, has made it trickier for engineers to operate Spitzer and point it at the right places—the sun, to charge itself; Earth, to transmit data; and the dusky universe beyond, to collect even more. So they’ve decided to junk it.

The Biggest Celestial Event of the Year Could Happen Tomorrow

or, well, maybe not for 100,000 yearsYou’d be seeing the light from a supernova—the final, powerful flash of a dying star.

Objects in space, even very expensive, prized telescopes, are considered debris when they no longer have a purpose or function. Some, like Spitzer, were lofted into high altitudes or special orbits, and will stay out there for anywhere from hundreds to millions of years.

An artist's conception of the Spitzer Space Telescope.

Kepler, the NASA telescope that discovered thousands of planets before it ran out of fuel in 2018, coasts along behind Earth. Herschel and Planck, two observatories from the European Space Agency, ceased operations in 2013, but still hang a million miles away at a spot in space where a quirk of gravitational forces maintains objects in stable orbits, almost as if by magic. The Galaxy Evolution Explorer, a NASA telescope that did exactly as its name suggests until 2012, is expected to circle Earth for nearly 60 more years before burning up in the atmosphere. Copernicus, one of NASA’s earliest observatories, is still up there after ending its X-ray observations in 1981, going round and round Earth. The list goes on.

Kerry woman exhumed and reburied after being buried in wrong grave following mix-up

Kerry County Council has refused to comment on the matter.The woman has been exhumed.

Together, these expired spacecraft add up to more than a pile of space junk. They are a floating record of years’ worth of scientific inquiry, launched from the minds of explorers who couldn’t fly there themselves. “Each one tells a story about the state of knowledge at the time it was launched,” Alice Gorman, an archaeologist who studies space exploration, told me.

A supernova captured by the Kepler telescope in 2004.

Spitzer—named for Lyman Spitzer, the American astrophysicist who called for space telescopes long before anyone had even launched a satellite—is designed to detect sources of light in infrared wavelengths. In the 1960s, scientists curious about seeing the cosmos in this way attached infrared telescopes to balloons and lofted them into the sky. They needed to get past Earth’s atmosphere, which absorbs this kind of radiation. (“Trying to see faint infrared sources from the ground,” NASA explains, “is like trying to observe stars while the sun is up.”) A National Academy of Sciences report in 1979 encouraged the deployment of infrared telescopes, saying that in recent years “the sensitivity of instruments used for infrared astronomy has been improved by more than two orders of magnitude,” leading to exciting findings about neighboring planets and distant stars. By the 1990s, NASA was working on Spitzer.

Space-time is swirling around a dead star, proving Einstein right again

The way the fabric of space and time swirls in a cosmic whirlpool around a dead star has confirmed yet another prediction from Einstein's theory of general relativity, a new study finds. That prediction is a phenomenon known as frame dragging, or the Lense-Thirring effect. It states that space-time will churn around a massive, rotating body. For example, imagine Earth were submerged in honey. As the planet rotated, the honey around it would swirl — and the same holds true with space-time.

An artist's conception of the Kepler Space telescope. © Nasa/Reuters An artist's conception of the Kepler Space telescope. Spitzer’s sensitivity to infrared light allows it to see very faint cosmic objects. Its discoveries stretch from our own solar system to the edges of the universe. Spitzer found a ring around Saturn made of dust particles too spread out for other telescopes to see, and caught the light that left galaxies billions of years ago, not long after the Big Bang. By the end of its life, Spitzer was contributing to an area of study that barely existed when engineers were first laying out its blueprints: exoplanets. Spitzer detected chemical elements and even weather patterns in the atmospheres of distant planets orbiting other stars.

Once decommissioned, space missions aren’t expected to come back from the dead, but it has happened: Last year, a NASA spacecraft launched to study Earth’s magnetosphere miraculously resurrected itself 13 years after it was presumed broken, but, sadly, it never returned to full operations. (It’s still orbiting Earth, though.)

Spitzer is expected to remain in orbit for many, many years, along with its silent brethren. Spitzer and Earth will remain in a strange little dance as they move around the sun. According to NASA, Earth will catch up to Spitzer in 2051, approaching from behind. The encounter will push Spitzer into an orbit closer to the sun, where it will travel faster, leaving Earth to trail after it until their next close approach.

A Russian satellite seems to be tailing a US spy satellite in Earth orbit

A Russian satellite has positioned itself uncomfortably close to an American spy satellite in orbit around Earth, leading space trackers to speculate that the foreign vehicle is doing some spying of its own. The Russian spacecraft is meant to inspect other satellites, and experts in the space community believe it may now be keeping a watchful eye on the secretive US vehicle. But the motivation behind this in-space stalking is still unknown.All January, amateur satellite trackers have been keeping tabs on the weird behavior of this Russian probe, known as Kosmos 2542.

Gallery: An exploration of the planets in our solar system (Photos)

1/25 SLIDES © Getty Images

From Mercury to Jupiter, here’s a look at all the planets in our solar system, how they were discovered, and the various space expeditions undertaken so far to explore these other worlds.
2/25 SLIDES © MPI/Getty Images

Mercury

Named after the Roman god of commerce and travel, the earliest records of the existence of Mercury date to the Sumerian era around 3,000 B.C. On Nov. 7, 1631, French astronomer Pierre Gassendi first observed Mercury through a telescope as it made a transit across the sun. In total, it makes 13-14 transits in a century.
(Pictured) Mercury, as seen from the exploratory spacecraft Mariner 10 on March 29, 1974.
3/25 SLIDES © MPI/Getty Images

On March 29, 1974, Mariner 10 became the first probe to fly past Mercury. The spacecraft photographed almost half of the planet's moon-like surface in three flybys. With the help of radar observations in 1991, it was revealed that the planet might have ice locked in its polar regions.
(Pictured) A 1973 simulation of NASA's Mariner spacecraft arriving at its destination, Mercury.
4/25 SLIDES © NASA/Johns Hopkins/Carnegie/REX/Shutterstock

After Mariner 10, NASA launched a second mission named MESSENGER to the planet on Aug. 3, 2004. Making three flybys, the spacecraft settled in the orbit on March 17, 2011, to study the planet's composition, the structure of its core, the magnetic field and the materials at the poles. In Europe's first mission to the planet, the European Space Agency (ESA) and Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) sent BepiColombo to Mercury in 2018.

What the Hell Is China Doing on the Dark Side of the Moon?

What the Hell Is China Doing on the Dark Side of the Moon?It was the first probe to land on the side of the moon that permanently faces away from Earth as both bodies circle around the sun. And if Beijing realizes its ambitions in coming years, it won’t be the last time it makes history—and threatens U.S. dominance in space.

(Pictured) Caloris basin on Mercury on Feb. 25, 2015, as captured by MESSENGER spacecraft. The image is enhanced-color composite overlain on a monochrome mosaic.
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Venus

The brightest object in the sky after the sun and the moon, Venus was named after the Roman goddess of love and beauty. Italian astronomer Galileo Galilei documented the changing phases of Venus in an astronomical pamphlet titled "The Starry Messenger" in 1610.
(Pictured) Venus is seen in the night sky over the White Desert southwest of Cairo, Egypt, on May 15, 2015.
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The first spacecraft to have visited Venus was NASA's Mariner 2 in 1962. In 1970, Soviet Union's Venera 7 successfully explored the surface of the planet, transmitting data on atmospheric pressure and temperature for 23 minutes.
(Pictured) Launching of the rocket carrying the Venera 7 towards Venus on Aug. 17, 1970.
7/25 SLIDES © Lee Corkran/Sygma via Getty Images

NASA’s Magellan mission entered the planet’s orbit on Aug. 10, 1990, going on to map 98 percent of its surface and showing evidence of lava flows, tectonic movement, surface winds and domes.
(Pictured) The Magellan probe's mapping radar captures western Eistla Regio, Gula mons volcano and Cunitz crater on the surface of Venus.
8/25 SLIDES © Stocktrek Images/Getty Images

Mars

Early observers, including the Babylonians, Egyptians, Greeks and Romans, associated the planet with wars because of its resemblance to red – the color of blood. In an incredible feat, Tycho Brahe (1546-1601) calculated the position of Mars 20 years before the invention of the telescope at his observatory in Hven, an island near Copenhagen.

Spectacular rainbow cloud in space spawned by cosmic showdown between stars

A stunning rainbow-colored cloud of gas surrounds a pair of stars that duked it out a few hundred years ago. Using the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA), astronomers observed the binary star system called HD101584, revealing a peculiar gas cloud that is believed to be the result of a confrontation between the two stars, according to a statement from the European Southern Observatory. Data from ALMA and the Atacama Pathfinder EXperiment (APEX) shows that one of the stars grew so large that it engulfed the other.
9/25 SLIDES © Time Life Pictures/NASA/The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images

NASA’s Mariner 4 was the first spacecraft to fly by the planet, on July 14, 1965, and the first to send back black and white images of the Martian surface. In 1976, two spacecraft named Viking 1 and 2 landed on Mars to study its rock structures and soil patterns and process information about its atmosphere.
(Pictured) A 110-degree color panorama image of Mars taken by Viking I.
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NASA's Spirit and Opportunity rovers found evidence that water once existed on Mars when they found minerals that can only be found in water. NASA plans to send another rover by 2020.
(Pictured) In this handout released by NASA, a portion of the first color image of Mars that was taken by the panoramic camera on the Mars Exploration Rover Spirit is seen on Jan. 6, 2003.
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Jupiter

Jupiter was named after the king of the Roman gods in mythology. Italian astronomer Galileo Galilei made the first detailed observation of the planet in January 1610 with a small telescope and discovered four of its largest moons – Io, Europa, Ganymede, and Callisto. A gas giant composed mostly of hydrogen and helium, Jupiter is most famous for its Great Red Spot, which is a giant spinning storm in its atmosphere.
(Pictured) NASA's undated handout of Jupiter's Great Red Spot with the moon Io (L).
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Launched in 1972, Pioneer 10 was the first mission to Jupiter. Flying past it, the probe took the first images of the largest planet of our solar system on Dec. 4, 1973. The giant rings of Jupiter were discovered by NASA's Voyager 1 spacecraft in 1979. From 1979 to 2007, eight NASA spacecraft, including Voyager 2 and Ulysses, were sent to study the planet’s atmosphere, moons and rings.

His tale of crossing Antarctica was riveting. But how much was fiction?

Colin O’Brady says he crossed Antarctica alone and “unassisted.” Polar experts say he’s embellishing his accomplishments in pursuit of fame.While skiing across Antarctica, American Colin O’Brady, the self-proclaimed first person to ski alone and unassisted across the frozen continent, came to what he describes in his new book The Impossible First, as “a hellish stretch...one of the hardest places on the continent to get across.” A polar wind he estimates at “fifty or even sixty miles an hour” lashed him as he entered a precarious area that was “off the map—unreachable and inaccessible.

(Pictured) In this Dec. 7, 1995, image, the released Galileo probe enters the turbulent upper atmosphere of Jupiter with its heat shield below and a parachute above. Behind it is the Galileo Orbiter, which remains above the cloud level to observe the Jupiter system from above.
13/25 SLIDES © Universal History Archive/UIG via Getty Images

A new spacecraft called Juno is currently orbiting Jupiter. The NASA spacecraft was launched in 2011 and entered Jupiter’s orbit on July 4, 2016. The goal of Juno is to look beneath the clouds and study the planet's formation, evolution and structure, and help scientists better understand planetary movements.
(Pictured) Photo of Jupiter's south polar region, captured by the JunoCam imager on NASA's Juno Orbiter on Feb. 2, 2017, reveals an arc of white oval storms.
14/25 SLIDES © Science & Society Picture Library/SSPL via Getty Images

Saturn

Saturn is adorned with thousands of rings that consist of chunks of ice and rock. The ancient Romans named it in honor of their god of sowing or seed. In July 1610, Galileo Galilei mistook it as a “triple planet” because of the rings, but in 1655, Dutch mathematician Christiaan Huygens discovered Saturn's rings and its largest moon – Titan.
(Pictured) This photo taken by Voyager 2 shows the planet and three of its moons, Tethys, Dione and Rhea, with one casting a shadow on the planet.
15/25 SLIDES © Space Frontiers/Getty Images

The planet was first probed by NASA’s Pioneer 11 mission on Sept. 1, 1979. Other significant missions by the space agency were Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 that flew by the planet in 1980 and 1981, respectively. They revealed more detailed images documenting the thinness of some of the rings and the intricate structure of the ring system.
(Pictured) An artist's impression of the Pioneer 11 probe emerging from the shadow of Saturn.
16/25 SLIDES © Universal History Archive/UIG via Getty Images

The Cassini–Huygens spacecraft has been orbiting Saturn and its moons since 2004. It descended through Titan's atmosphere in January 2005, collecting data on the surface. The Cassini Equinox Mission investigated the rings during Saturn's autumnal equinox, when the Sun was shining directly on the equator, from 2008 through 2010. On Sept. 15, 2017, Cassini ended its exploration of the planet.
(Pictured) A 2005 image showing the cracks in Saturn's moon, Enceladus, taken by the Cassini spacecraft.
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Uranus

The planet was discovered on March 13, 1781, by British astronomer William Herschel with the help of a telescope, although initially he mistook it for a star or a comet. It was two years later that the object was universally accepted as a new planet following observation by German scientist Johann Elert Bode. The planet was named Uranus – the Greek god of the sky.
18/25 SLIDES © Heritage Space/Heritage Images/Getty Images

Just like for Saturn, rings were discovered encircling Uranus on March 10, 1977, by scientists at the Kuiper Airborne Observatory and the Perth Observatory in Australia.
(Pictured) Uranus from Voyager 2 spacecraft, circa 1980s, with two images: one in true and one in false color.
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On Jan. 24, 1986, NASA's Voyager 2 made the first and only flyby of Uranus and the probe revealed 11 new moons, two new rings and a magnetic field stronger than that of Saturn.
(Pictured) This Very Large Telescope (VLT) near-infrared image of the planet Uranus and several of its moons was taken by the European Southern Observatory (ESO) Paranal Observatory in Chile on Nov. 19, 2002.
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Neptune

Neptune was recorded as a fixed star by Galileo in the 15th century, but it was German astronomer Johann Gottfried Galle who first discovered the planet on Sept. 23, 1846, with the aid of predictions from French mathematician Urbain Le Verrier.
(Pictured) Photograph of Neptune taken through the green and orange filters on the Voyager 2 in 1989.
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In 1989, NASA’s Voyager 2 became the first and only spacecraft to visit Neptune. It helped track a large, oval-shaped, dark storm in Neptune's southern hemisphere called the Great Dark Spot.
(Pictured) The Great Dark Spot on the surface of Neptune, as observed by the Voyager 2 spacecraft in 1989.
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On July 12, 2011, Neptune completed its first 165-year orbit of the sun since its discovery in 1846.
(Pictured) The south pole of Neptune, as seen by the Voyager 2 spacecraft in August 1989.
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Pluto

Discovered by American astronomer Clyde Tombaugh on Feb. 18, 1930, the planet was named by 11-year-old girl from England, Venetia Burney. Interested in classical mythology, Burney suggested the name of the Roman god of the underworld for the new planet after her grandfather read out the news about Tombaugh's celestial finding.
(Pictured) Two photographs of Pluto in March 1930.
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In 2005, Eris (pictured) – the largest member in the Kuiper Belt of icy objects beyond Neptune – was found to be bigger than Pluto. This led the International Astronomical Union (IAU) to define the term "planet," which resulted in Pluto being stripped of its title. Pluto has been classified by NASA as a "dwarf planet."
25/25 SLIDES © NASA/APL/SwRI via Getty Images

Since July 2015, NASA’s New Horizons space probe has been sending data back to Earth. Through the data collected, it has been revealed that Pluto has been geologically active for some time and some areas like the Sputnik Planum (smooth heart-shaped region) have become active recently.
(Pictured) New Horizons’ Long Range Reconnaissance Imager (LORRI) were combined with color data from the Ralph instrument to create this sharper global view of Pluto.

The long afterlife of these spacecraft presents an intriguing question for Gorman. Years from now, there may be many more space archaeologists, and some of them might be curious about what their ancestors left behind in the space near and around Earth. “If a future observer was trying to get an idea of the state of terrestrial science, could they infer it from the age of the spacecraft and the nature of the instruments on board?” Gorman says.

It’s certainly possible. In some cases, future researchers could tell what defunct spacecraft used to do just by looking at them. Different kinds of equipment are required to study different wavelengths, and space archaeologists could work out the meanings of the hardware from dusty documents on Earth and compare them to their views of the spacecraft. The hardware for gamma- and X-ray-detecting spacecraft, for example, is quite distinctive, according to Fiona Panther, an astronomer at the University of New South Wales at Canberra. Some spacecraft might hang onto traces of samples, says Michael Busch, an astronomer at the SETI Institute. Future archaeologists equipped with spaceship technology could sidle up to dead spacecraft and discover that their instruments were designed to collect grains of space dust.

With enough observations and fieldwork—at historic sites that zoom through space at nearly 17,000 miles per hour—future generations of researchers could trace the technical development of space science in the 20th and 21st centuries. Studying the changes in space telescopes—the evolving technology, the new questions they were designed to answer—would be analogous to studying the progression from the Wright brothers’ airplanes to commercial airliners, Gorman said.

Gallery: Fascinating asteroids (Photos)

1/17 SLIDES © NASA/JPL-Caltech/PA Archive/Press Association

Asteroids, also referred to as minor planets, are small, rocky bodies floating mostly in the asteroid belt – between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter. They are mainly made of materials (metal or rock) left over from the formation of the inner solar system.
2/17 SLIDES © NASA/JPL-Caltech/GSSR/NSF/GBO

Asteroid 2003 SD220

Part of the Aten group, the asteroid was discovered in September 2003 by astronomers of the Lowell Observatory Near-Earth-Object Search at Anderson Mesa Station near Flagstaff, Arizona, U.S. Its radar images revealed its shape to be like "a hippopotamus wading in a river." It flew past Earth on Dec 22, 2018 – its closest approach until 2070.
3/17 SLIDES © ASA/JPL-Caltec/Getty Images

Vesta

Asteroid Vesta was discovered by the German astronomer Heinrich Wilhelm Olbers in 1807. It’s roughly about the length of the U.S. state of Arizona and its surface is made of frozen lava.
4/17 SLIDES © Universal History Archive/Universal Images Group/Getty Images

A giant crater on the asteroid's south pole – 285 miles (460 kms) across and eight miles (13 kilometers) deep – has piqued the interests of scientists world over. According to NASA, the debris from the crash that gouged out the crater contributes to nearly five per cent of all meteorites found on Earth.
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Ceres and Vesta (pictured) are the two biggest asteroids in this belt. Vesta is rocky, while Ceres is believed to contain massive quantities of ice.
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6/17 SLIDES © Bernard Weil/Toronto Star/Getty Images

A display at the Royal Ontario Museum (ROM) in Canada houses as many as 30 diverse specimens from Vesta, making it the most comprehensive collection of Vesta meteorites.
(Pictured) A technician at the ROM inspects a slice of meteorite that likely came from the asteroid Vesta.
7/17 SLIDES © (ESA 2010 MPS for OSIRIS Team/Getty Images)

Lutetia

Officially termed 21 Lutetia, this asteroid was discovered by Hermann Goldschmidt from the balcony of his apartment in Paris in 1852. Lutetia is Paris' Latin name.
8/17 SLIDES © ESA 2010 MPS for OSIRIS Team/Getty Images

Lutetia, about which little is known, is believed to be about 83.3 miles (134 kms) in diameter.
9/17 SLIDES © NASA/Newsmakers

Eros

Asteroid Eros, the first to be orbited and landed on by a spacecraft, was discovered on Aug. 13, 1898, by German astronomer Gustav Witt at the Urania Observatory in Berlin, Germany. It is named after the god of love in Greek mythology.
10/17 SLIDES © QAI Publishing/Universal Images Group/Getty Images

Ida

Discovered by the Galileo probe in 1993, asteroid Ida is 35-mile (56 kms) long and has a tiny moon, Dactyl.
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The gravitational field on Ida is so weak that an astronaut could jump from one end to the other in a single leap. Also Ida's moon Dactyl (pictured, R) is the first confirmed satellite of an asteroid.
12/17 SLIDES © Corbis/Getty Images

Ida and Gaspra were visited by the Jupiter-bound space probe Galileo as its secondary missions. The mission was in response to a new NASA policy directing planners to consider asteroid flybys for all spacecraft crossing the asteroid belt.
13/17 SLIDES © Time Life Pictures/NASA/The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images

Gaspra

This asteroid is named after a resort on the Crimean peninsula. Interestingly, many of the asteroid's craters have been named for resorts and spas from across the world.
14/17 SLIDES © NASA/JPL-Caltech

Toutatis

First spotted in 1934, Toutatis was lost till French astronomer Christian Pollas rediscovered it on Jan. 4, 1989. Named after a Celtic god, Toutatis zipped past Earth at a distance of 4.3 million miles (6.9 million kms) on Dec. 12, 2012 – its closest approach till 2069.
15/17 SLIDES © NASA Goddard

Bennu

Discovered in 1999, Bennu got its name only in 2012 when a nine-year-old from North Carolina, U.S., won an international contest held to name the asteroid.
16/17 SLIDES © NASA/Goddard/University of Arizona

Bennu is the target of NASA’s OSIRIS-REx mission, which aims to collect samples from the asteroid and return them to Earth for study in 2023.
(Pictured) A combination of images acquired by OSIRIS-REx spacecraft of a region in Bennu’s northern hemisphere.
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Itokawa

Discovered in 1998 and named after Japanese rocket scientist Hideo Itokawa, the asteroid was the first from where samples were collected by a spacecraft and brought to Earth for analysis. The analysis revealed that the bean-shaped Itokawa was part of a larger body which was broken apart by a collision.
(Pictured) This combination image from Nov. 19, 2005, shows Itokawa and its surface (R).

From this perspective, space observatories would someday make great museums, like Smithsonian’s famous Air and Space Museum, only, you know, in actual space. “You can visit terrestrial, conventional museums and you can see old cars, planes, trains, boats,” Stuart Eves, an engineer and an advocate for the creation of space museums, once told me. “It would be a real shame if some of the really iconic spacecraft that have contributed enormously didn’t have some sort of permanent record.”

Space companies today are already experimenting with (and having some success) capturing dead spacecraft in orbit around Earth. They’re doing it as part of an effort to clean up an environment filled with space junk, but similar technology could be used to pull historically significant spacecraft into higher, safer orbits, or even toward one another to create an exhibit. Imagine a little gold plaque orbiting beside Spitzer, explaining to spacefaring visitors how the telescope once showed us more of the universe than we could imagine.

His tale of crossing Antarctica was riveting. But how much was fiction? .
Colin O’Brady says he crossed Antarctica alone and “unassisted.” Polar experts say he’s embellishing his accomplishments in pursuit of fame.While skiing across Antarctica, American Colin O’Brady, the self-proclaimed first person to ski alone and unassisted across the frozen continent, came to what he describes in his new book The Impossible First, as “a hellish stretch...one of the hardest places on the continent to get across.” A polar wind he estimates at “fifty or even sixty miles an hour” lashed him as he entered a precarious area that was “off the map—unreachable and inaccessible.

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