SQUAD

Everyday Astronaut is attempting the #KSP Reddit challenge to dock two asteroids together! This should be fun!

Recreate SpaceX’s feat of landing the Falcon 9 main booster in this cool mission! Your task is to launch a Falcon 9 into orbit and land it next to the KSC, simple enough, right? - By Rookie https://bit.ly/2KiNpDr

Welcome to KSP Weekly! Recently, a team of researchers from the National Institute of Astrophysics (INAF) in Rome presented evidence of a vast subglacial liquid water reservoir on Mars’ South Pole. The team, led by Dr Roberto Orosei used data collected by a radar instrument, the Mars Advanced Radar for Subsurface and Ionosphere Sounding (MARSIS), on board ESA’s Mars Express spacecraft. The data showed that there was a source of liquid water spanning about 20 kilometers across in a region called Planum Australe, about 1.5 kilometers below the surface. It was detected by sending 29 sets of radar pulses under the surface, with reflections showing a radar signal almost identical to that from lakes of liquid water found beneath the ice of Antarctica and Greenland on Earth, heavily suggesting it is liquid water. The exact nature of the water is unclear though. The characteristics of this suspected water are complicated by the conditions it is in. On Earth, subglacial lakes reach temperatures of about -60°C. But the intense pressure of the ice above lowers the melting point of the water, to the point where it exists as a liquid in large freshwater lakes. However, under this region on Mars, it’s thought the temperatures drop to about -68°C. In order for the water to remain liquid here, it is probably full of salts like magnesium, calcium, and sodium. On Earth, a handful of subglacial lakes have been drilled into and we have found bacteria within them, so this discovery is considered as a major step in the hopes of finding past or present life on Mars. A few years ago, scientists found evidence for water trickling on the surface, known as recurring slope lineae (RSL). However, these features are short-lived, with the water quickly evaporating in the low-pressure environment on the Martian surface. It’s long been theorized, though, that there may be more stable bodies of liquid beneath the surface, as evidenced in this research. To answer this, researchers hope to use more data from Mars Express over the next years. Although there is still much to learn and an actual drilling operation is still out of our reach, this is a very exciting discovery. On Earth, liquid water almost always means life. Coupled with the recent discovery of the building blocks of life on Mars, we might end up finding that life is much more common than we thought in the universe. [Development news start here] Yesterday we released Patch 1.4.5 and with it, various improvements and bug fixes for both the base game and the expansion have been included. For instance, we have incorporated a quality-of-life feature that lets you dismiss pop-up dialogs with the ESC button. We also fixed several issues regarding the Steam Workshop in-game incorporation, and included a subscribe/unsubscribe button to the Mission Play dialog for Steam shared files on the Community tab for your convenience. Click here to see the full release notes. In addition to all the work that even a small release like 1.4.5 entails, we have kept ourselves occupied with other exciting tasks. KSP continues to be a great platform to be improved upon and we are dedicated to continue providing updates to the game and making it the best experience possible for all of our players. We will continue to keep our players updated on upcoming developments here on KSP Weekly. Remember that you can also share and download missions on Curse, KerbalX, the KSP Forum and the KSP Steam Workshop. That’s it for this week. Be sure to join us on our official forums, and don’t forget to follow us on Twitter and Facebook. Stay tuned for more exciting and upcoming news and development updates! Happy launchings! *Information Source: (n.d.). Retrieved from https://marsed.asu.edu/mep/ice/polar-caps/planum-australe Anderson, G. (2015, September 28). NASA Confirms Evidence That Liquid Water Flows on Today’s Mars. Retrieved from https://www.nasa.gov/press-release/nasa-confirms-evidence-that-liquid-water-flows-on-today-s-mars Bartels, M. (2018, July 25). Mars’ South Pole May Hide a Large Underground Lake. Retrieved from https://www.space.com/41272-mars-liquid-water-below-ice-cap.html E. (n.d.). Mars Express. Retrieved from https://www.esa.int/Our_Activities/Space_Science/Mars_Express O`Callaghan, J. (2018, July 26). A Huge Lake Of Liquid Water Has Been Found On Mars. Retrieved from http://www.iflscience.com/space/weve-finally-found-actual-liquid-water-on-mars/all/ Orosei, R., Lauro, S. E., Pettinelli, E., Cicchetti, A., Coradini, M., Cosciotti, B., … Seu, R. (2018, July 25). Radar evidence of subglacial liquid water on Mars. Retrieved from http://science.sciencemag.org/content/early/2018/07/24/science.aar7268

Due to his unwitty nature, Bob jettisoned the Tylo Lander’s booster stage too early during his ascent from this Joolian Moon. Now, he hasn’t enough fuel to get into orbit for his rendezvous with the Joolseeker starship… It is up to you to save Bob’s life in this fun and challenging mission. Don’t forget to share your score! - By Snark https://bit.ly/2LLR2TV

Welcome to KSP Weekly! On this day, in 1969, Neil Armstrong and pilot Buzz Aldrin landed the Lunar Module Eagle on the Moon’s surface during the legendary Apollo 11 mission, and so fulfilled a national goal proposed in 1961 by U.S. President John F. Kennedy. This mission effectively ended the Space Race and remains unparalleled as one of, if not the greatest achievement ever accomplished by humankind. Apollo 11 was launched by a Saturn V rocket from Kennedy Space Center on Merritt Island, Florida, on July 16 at 13:32 UTC and was the fifth manned mission of NASA’s Apollo program. The Apollo spacecraft had three parts: a command module (CM) with a cabin for the three astronauts, and the only part that returned to Earth; a service module (SM), which supported the command module with propulsion, electrical power, oxygen, and water; and a lunar module (LM) that had two stages – a descent stage for landing on the Moon, and an ascent stage to place the astronauts back into lunar orbit. After being sent to the Moon by the Saturn V’s third stage, the astronauts separated the spacecraft from it and traveled for three days until they entered into lunar orbit. On July 20, 1969, the Lunar Module Eagle separated from the Command Module Columbia. Pilot Michael Collins, alone aboard the command module, inspected Eagle as it pirouetted before him to ensure the craft was not damaged. As the descent began, Armstrong and Aldrin found that they were passing landmarks on the surface four seconds early and reported that they were “long”; they would land miles west of their target point. Five minutes into the descent burn, and 1,800 m above the surface of the Moon, the LM navigation and guidance computer distracted the crew with the first of several unexpected “1202” and “1201” program alarms. The program alarms indicated “executive overflows”, meaning the guidance computer could not complete all of its tasks in real time and had to postpone some of them. After analyzing the situation, the Mission Control Center at Houston greenlit the descent. When Armstrong again looked outside, he saw that the computer’s landing target was in a boulder-strewn area just north and east of a 300-meter diameter crater (later determined to be West crater, named for its location in the western part of the originally planned landing ellipse). Armstrong took semi-automatic control and, with Aldrin calling out altitude and velocity data, landed at 20:17:40 UTC on Sunday July 20 with about 25 seconds of fuel left. Charles Duke, CAPCOM (Capsule Communicator) during the landing phase, acknowledged their landing by saying “We copy you down, Eagle.” The astronauts used Eagle’s upper stage to lift off from the lunar surface and rejoin Collins in the command module on July 21, at 23:41 UTC. They jettisoned the module before they performed the maneuvers that blasted them out of lunar orbit on a trajectory back to Earth. They returned to Earth and splashed down in the Pacific Ocean on July 24 after more than eight days in space. The landing was broadcast on live TV to a worldwide audience. Armstrong stepped onto the lunar surface and described the event as “one small step for [a] man, one giant leap for mankind.” [Development news start here] Yesterday we released the second patch of KSP Enhanced Edition on both PS4 and Xbox One! Within this patch many bug fixes and improvements were packed, as well as a few quality-of-life features. Click here to see the full release notes. On the PC development front, this week we continued polishing and preparing the final details for the upcoming 1.4.5 patch. If you have been following our weekly updates you’ll know that this minor patch contains several bug fixes related to the in-game implementation of Steam Workshop, plus other bug fixes for the base game and the Making History Expansion. If you are wondering if we’ve only been doing maintenance and support work lately, you’d be wrong, but you’ll need to be patient, we’ll reveal more details after 1.4.5 is out. By the way, with the intention of providing more guidance for new players regarding the Making History Expansion, and the Mission Builder in particular, we started a new section in the KSP Wiki. We included the foundations to create a Manual, but we want to encourage the community to participate in the enrichment of this section, so feel free to add any content you believe that needs to be expanded upon. Remember that you can also share and download missions on Curse, KerbalX, the KSP Forum and the KSP Steam Workshop. That’s it for this week. Be sure to join us on our official forums, and don’t forget to follow us on Twitter and Facebook. Stay tuned for more exciting and upcoming news and development updates! Happy launchings! *Information Source: Apollo 11 Mission. (n.d.). Retrieved from https://www.lpi.usra.edu/lunar/missions/apollo/apollo_11/ Dunbar, B. (2015, February 19). July 20, 1969: One Giant Leap For Mankind. Retrieved from https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/apollo/apollo11.html Loff, S. (2015, April 17). Apollo 11 Mission Overview. Retrieved from https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/apollo/missions/apollo11.html

This mod adds details for the creation of the Saturn V rocket! #KSP By DECQ

Welcome to KSP Weekly! Yesterday, scientists at the US National Science Foundation (NSF) made an announcement to reveal exciting findings from its IceCube observatory at the South Pole. IceCube – opened in 2010 – is designed to detect neutrinos from elsewhere in the cosmos that make their way to Earth. It uses 86 strings of detectors stretching 2.5 kilometers (1.6 miles) below the Antarctic ice to hunt for these particles. If a neutrino strikes an atom in the ice, it explodes in a shower of secondary particles, detected by the observatory, which then works out where the neutrino came from. Now for first time ever, an international team of astronomers has found the origin of some of these high-energy particles coming from the distant universe! A neutrino is a fundamental subatomic particle just as tiny as an electron, but without any charge. Scientists know neutrinos have a tiny bit of mass, but they can’t pin down exactly how little, because neutrinos don’t interact with their surroundings very often, which makes them difficult for scientists to spot. However, on September 22, 2017, the IceCube observatory detected an incoming high-energy neutrino. This advanced detector has a real-time alert system, and broadcasted the coordinates of the detection to astronomers around the world just 43 seconds after its discovery. About 20 observatories including NASA’s orbiting Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope responded to the alert, and trained their views on the skies to try to work out where it was coming from. The process was possible because neutrinos, like photons of light, can cross extremely large distances in the universe in straight lines, without being pulled off course. Other types of high-energy particles can’t do that because they are charged. The combined observations traced the neutrino’s origin to an already-known blazar called TXS 0506+056, which lies about 4 billion light-years from Earth. Blazars are active galactic nuclei with a relativistic jet (a jet traveling at nearly the speed of light), in which the jet is directed very nearly toward the Earth, emitting gamma rays along other particles. Physicists hope that by studying these particles, they can find clues about some of the biggest mysteries in the cosmos. One of those cosmic mysteries could include an explanation for dark matter. Dark matter has a gravitational pull on regular matter, and it has shaped the cosmic landscape throughout the history of the universe. Some theorists think dark matter could even be a new type of neutrino. We are now in an exciting new era of astronomy where we can study objects not just in electromagnetic radiation, but in the other particles they emit too. Incredible! [Development news start here] With an upcoming 1.4.5 patch about to come out of the oven, this week had the team performing various polish-related tasks. The QA team was particularly busy, testing and pushing to the limits all the fixes performed by the devs last week. Meanwhile, the devs had also their good share of work. For instance, the version checking system has been fully established. This versioning system will trigger a warning dialog whenever there’s a problem with a save, craft or mission file due to incompatibility. Users will be able to load their files anyways, but at their own risk of course. The work on KSP Enhanced Edition is also at a similar stage. BlitWorks has been performing a great deal of bug fixes, improvements, and feedback-based additions for an upcoming patch for the console versions of KSP, and we’re getting really close to its launch. So stay tuned to learn more about the patch and its official release date! Remember that you can also share and download missions on Curse, KerbalX, and the KSP Forum. That’s it for this week. Be sure to join us on our official forums, and don’t forget to follow us on Twitter and Facebook. Stay tuned for more exciting and upcoming news and development updates! Happy launchings! *Information Source: Collaboration, I. (2018, July 13). Neutrino emission from the direction of the blazar TXS 0506 056 prior to the IceCube-170922A alert. Retrieved from http://science.sciencemag.org/content/361/6398/147 HAWC, Liverpool Telescope, Subaru, & VERITAS. (2018, July 13). Multimessenger observations of a flaring blazar coincident with high-energy neutrino IceCube-170922A. Retrieved from http://science.sciencemag.org/content/361/6398/eaat1378 O`Callaghan, J. (2018, July 12). Incredible ‘Ghost Particle’ Discovery Heralds A New Era In Astronomy. Retrieved from http://www.iflscience.com/space/incredible-ghost-particle-discovery-heralds-a-new-era-in-astronomy/ Bartels, M. (2018, July 12). Here’s Why IceCube’s Neutrino Discovery Is a Big Deal. Retrieved from https://www.space.com/41142-what-are-neutrinos-why-they-matter.html Wall, M. (2018, July 12). High-Energy 'Ghost Particle’ Traced to Distant Galaxy in Astronomy Breakthrough. Retrieved from https://www.space.com/41146-neutrino-source-blazar-cosmic-rays.html

At a loss for words here…

Prepare the Ultimate Fried Chicken by frying it up near the Sun and bringing it back to Kerbin. Not even the Colonel can make chicken this good! - By flart https://bit.ly/2KOcKKu

Welcome to KSP Weekly! Fan-favorite astrophysicist, Neil deGrasse Tyson, predicts that the world’s first trillionaire will be an asteroid miner. Asteroids are leftover material from the formation of the solar system and range from around a meter to hundreds of kilometers in diameter. Being the primordial building block of rocky planets, asteroids are very rich in mineral resources. If we are to sustainably keep growing economically and technologically, we will have to look up to this natural resource that has never been touched, is effectively inexhaustible, and has a value large enough to disrupt entire economies. There are three main types of asteroids in our solar system: Type C-type (carbonaceous) are the most abundant, accounting for more than 75 percent of known asteroids. These types of asteroids probably consist of clay and silicate rocks, and are dark in appearance. They are among the most ancient objects in the solar system. S-type (silicaceous) asteroids follow in second place accounting for about 17 percent and are mostly made up of metallic iron mixed with iron- and Magnesium-silicates. Finally, there are M-type (metallic) asteroids, which are composed mainly of nickel, iron and other heavy elements. These are leftover cores of larger asteroids that were destroyed by collisions. If an asteroid is big enough it will undergo a process called differentiation. A process that happens during an asteroid’s formation when the heavier elements sink to its center. Although all these materials are plentiful on Earth, metals in particular are more accessible in asteroids, since the differentiation process happened in Earth as well, putting most of those valuable resources deep within our planet’s core. Asteroid mining is not a simple endeavor: it would take years of work by dedicated engineers and scientists and billions of dollars to extract useful and profitable asteroid material. While all asteroids are potentially profitable, the right combination of valuable contents, mission essential resources, and accessibility is key. A perfect asteroid to mine has a decent amount of water, a high abundance of valuable materials, and is large enough to be worth the effort and accessible by an economical spacecraft. With this in mind, the first asteroid miners will probably look for a near-earth asteroid. Identifying the ERO (Easily Recoverable Object) is the current focus of effort of companies like Planetary Resources and Deep Space Industries, who are developing robotic prospector spacecraft for this purpose. The extraction of platinum group elements and rare earths from asteroids might be the most lucrative. Both are essential in the production of electronic components, batteries and fuel cells, magnets, as chemical catalysts and reagents, and a huge range of advanced materials. Iron, nickel, aluminum and titanium, on the other hand might not be cost effective to bring back to Earth, but could be useful for the mining process itself as it could go into building infrastructure in space, including more asteroid mining facilities. Water is also abundant in asteroids, which can be dissociated into hydrogen and oxygen, becoming rocket fuel. In the long haul, there are even proposals to farm on asteroids, as it could end up being more cost efficient to provide food for long term missions, and “c-type” asteroids are known to be packed with organic compounds and soluble nutrients. Once the enterprise proves to be profitable, we could see a real development and economic explosion, and maybe in a few decades there will be various mining outposts in the Asteroid Belt. Kerbals realized this a while ago and Kerbodyne even developed the “Drill-O-Matic” Mining Excavator with this in mind. How many asteroids have you mined so far? [Development news start here] This week the team focused mainly on bug-fixing tasks. With the help of the community, the focus group team and QA testing teams identified various issues that needed attention and several have been solved and are ready to be merged into an upcoming patch. Some solved issues are related to Steam Workshop. We talked about a couple of them last week, and in the past few days, the team managed to solve a couple more, among which there was a bug that prevented some ships from being selected in the VAB Steam Tab, forcing players to subscribe via the Steam Workshop page. There was another one that impeded the prompt update of Steam item statuses or showed incorrect information. Although a part of the problem can be attributed to delays with remote servers, there was indeed a conflict that was luckily identified and corrected. Likewise, the team also solved some Making History Expansion issues. Among these, the team fixed a bug related to the Mission Award system, which prevented the “Boldly Going” award to show up and caused the “Homesick” award to appear when it shouldn’t. The problem for this one was that the node distance checking never started because it asked the vessel to launch, then land, and then launch again in order to meet a certain distance from the target. Additionally, the team fixed a NullReferenceException issue that was triggered after using “Vessel Explode” node on an unfocused craft within physics range, as well as a bug that prevented users to delete missions from the in-game interface. The “Landed Vessel” node also presented some issues, as it didn’t mark the node completion when some facilities were set as the landing location. Moreover, we managed to fix a bug that froze the game when the Mini Settings window was closed using the “Esc” key. Similarly, there was a game freeze problem that occurred when certain node connection configuration was made and the mission was saved in that state. Issues related to the base game were also addressed. For instance, and as requested by the community, we adjusted the offset engine shrouds. Coupled with that, within the technology tree some part icons weren’t being displayed correctly. That’s fixed now too. Some of you might have also encountered a bug that made your crafts immediately float away and off the surface when loading into the Exploring Gilly scenario. That was solved as well. There were some wheel related issues looked into as well. One of which caused landed vessels to jump when rovers attempted to dock with them. In like manner, a bug that caused wheel suspensions to explode when two vessels attempted to dock was fixed. Work was put into improving suspension and wheel performance particularly oscillations, bouncing and overloaded wheels. Parallel to our work, BlitWorks has continued their maintenance work on KSP Enhanced Edition. Our testers have been continuously testing builds and helping to ensure that we can pack as many fixes and adjustments needed in these versions. We know it has taken us a while to release this patch, but it’ll be worth the wait. Remember that you can also share and download missions on Curse, KerbalX, and the KSP Forum. That’s it for this week. Be sure to join us on our official forums, and don’t forget to follow us on Twitter and Facebook. Stay tuned for more exciting and upcoming news and development updates! Happy launchings! *Information Source: Shaw, S. (n.d.). Astronomy Source. Retrieved from http://www.astronomysource.com/tag/rare-earth-metals-from-asteroids/ In Depth | Asteroids – Solar System Exploration: NASA Science. (2017, December 19). Retrieved from https://solarsystem.nasa.gov/small-bodies/asteroids/in-depth/ Providing Resources to Fuel Industry and Sustain Life in Space. (n.d.). Retrieved from https://www.planetaryresources.com/ Deep Space Industries. (n.d.). Retrieved from http://deepspaceindustries.com/ Mautner, M. N. (n.d.). In situ biological resources: Soluble nutrients and electrolytes in carbonaceous asteroids/meteorites. Implications for astroecology and human space populations. Retrieved from http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.1007.6002&rep=rep1&type=pdf Asteroid soil could fertilise farms in space. (n.d.). Retrieved from https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg22430004-900-asteroid-soil-could-fertilise-farms-in-space/

This mod is an expansion for Real Solar System that adds several new confirmed exoplanets. All of these exoplanets are real, and all of the planetary systems are located exactly where they are in real life, they have accurate characteristics and the visual appearance and texturing of all exoplanets are based off of our current understanding of planetary science! #KSP By AndrewDrawsPrettyPictures

How fast can you fly trough The Big River and with the least amount of fuel possible? Find out in this fun yet challenging course. Share your results and let’s determine who the fastest pilot is… - By luizopiloto https://bit.ly/2u4WlpQ

ShadowZone already sent a huge statue to Eeloo before,he thought he should revisit this fun interplanetary adventure to the icy plant on the edge of the solar system! #KSP

Welcome to KSP Weekly! We’re just a day away from Asteroid Day, so it’s a good time to talk about a planetary defense mission. Back in 2016, the ESA pulled out from the Asteroid Impact and Deflection Assessment (AIDA) mission. The groundbreaking AIDA mission would have seen an ESA-built spacecraft, the Asteroid Impact Mission (AIM), launch towards an asteroid called Didymos in October 2020. Then, in October 2022, a NASA-built spacecraft called the Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) would have slammed into a small moonlet of the asteroid, called Didymoon, and AIM would have observed changes in the moonlet’s orbit. Back then, NASA stated that they were going to push ahead with its part of the AIDA mission, and now the ESA is proposing a new mission to contribute to this ambitious planetary defense experiment. Named after the Greek goddess of marriage, Hera, the reborn mission would launch towards the Didymos binary asteroid in 2023, arriving in 2026. Hera would focus on the smaller Didymoon, taking high-resolution pictures and mapping the asteroid with lasers and radio waves. In October 2022, NASA’s DART mission will slam into Didymoon and attempt to change its orbit very slightly. Observatories on Earth will track the subsequent change in the asteroid’s orbit. Hera, when it arrives, will see how much the orbit has changed up close. Despite arriving four years later than originally planned, the mission is very exciting, and it could let us test if an impactor is a viable method to push an asteroid out of our path. [Development news start here] The team has constantly worked on fixing and improving upon the KSP experience. This past patch included a wide array of improvements and fixes that we have talked plenty about, but there were some fixes we didn’t mention and are quite noteworthy. For example, the team squashed a bug that started appearing in version 1.4.0 that was not occluding Kerbals in cargo/materials bays/fairings, consequently producing huge amounts of drag and increasing the risk of exposure to re-entry heat. There were also some issues related to the RoveMax M1-F Rover Wheels that the team managed to fix: The unfolding animation was tweaked, jittering reduced and the squishy suspension was improved. But even with a fresh patch release, we are already working on more improvements and fixes. There were a few things we wanted to include in the last patch, but we had to hold back to work on them more. For instance, some new and replacement parts were missing the Test Subject Modules, something that gives modders the ability to create contracts for those specific parts. But you can bet this will be merged into the next patch. This week the team worked on a number of bugs, one of which was pretty hilarious to experience. It involved the EVA parachute animations and could be triggered by Quicksaving with a Kerbal falling. Check this tweet by Million_Lights to see what we are talking about. The team also worked on adjusting the MapNode behavior that was changed in 1.4.4 based on your feedback. Many considered that the MapNodes were too transparent and the text too hard to read when these were behind a Celestial Body, so we improved the behavior for pinned nodes and when you mouse over. Furthermore, with the next patch’s release, it will be possible for the user to adjust the node transparency via the game settings file. There are a few bugs related to the newly integrated Steam Workshop that we are already working on fixes for. These include a bug that prevented crafts to be selected in the VAB Steam tab, another one was causing blank titles in the menu when foreign characters were used in the name, and also an error that prevented uploads if custom mission banners were larger than 1MB. All of these have been solved, so you won’t need to worry about them soon. In other news, our friends at BlitWorks and our QA team are also working on KSP Enhanced Edition. Builds come in every week, and every one of them is better than the last. Although we don’t have a release date yet, we are getting closer. Finally, we want to invite you all to join us tomorrow, June 30 on our very first Steam Broadcast! We’ll be celebrating the integration of the Steam Workshop together with Scott Manley and RocketPCGaming, starting at 9:00am PDT. You’ll be able to watch us here, directly on our Steam store page, and on Twitch at KSPTV. Check the Stream Schedule here. Remember that you can also share and download missions on Curse, KerbalX, and the KSP Forum. That’s it for this week. Be sure to join us on our official forums, and don’t forget to follow us on Twitter and Facebook. Stay tuned for more exciting and upcoming news and development updates! Happy launchings! PS: Kerbal Space Program and the Making History Expansion are included in the Steam Summer Sale! With discounts of 60% and 30% respectively, this is one of the biggest discount ever for the base game, and the biggest ever for Making History. So now is a fantastic opportunity to get your copy and/or have your friends join you in space. We are also matching these discounts on the KSP Store. *Information Source: E. (n.d.). Earth’s first mission to a binary asteroid, for planetary defence. Retrieved from http://www.esa.int/Our_Activities/Space_Engineering_Technology/Hera/Earth_s_first_mission_to_a_binary_asteroid_for_planetary_defence O`Callaghan, J. (2018, June 28). This Reborn ESA Spacecraft Will Find Out If We Can Save Earth From An Asteroid. Retrieved from http://www.iflscience.com/space/this-reborn-esa-spacecraft-will-find-out-if-we-can-save-earth-from-an-asteroid/ If an asteroid is travelling on a path to collide with Earth, how could we change its course? (n.d.). Retrieved from http://dart.jhuapl.edu/

Scott Manley playing 1.4.4 update that includes Steam workshop support and makes it incredibly easy to share and download craft files and missions for Making History! #KSP

Launch the new Orion Module and head up to International Space Station in this cool mission! Transfer your crew and return safety back to the KSC. - By Rookie https://bit.ly/2JlySel

This mod gives you a reason to put on an escape tower; while stock has a single escape tower, there is wonderful mod called Launch Escape System which adds 4 more towers, for different size vessels. #KSP By linuxgurugamer

Hazard-ish decided to see how far a 3 part rocket can go and return from! #KSP

Welcome to KSP Weekly! Have you ever heard of Project Daedalus? One of the first detailed design studies of an interstellar spacecraft, Project Daedalus was conducted between 1973 and 1977 by a group of 11 scientists and engineers belonging to the British Interplanetary Society. Intended mainly as a scientific probe, the design criteria specified that the spacecraft had to use existing or near-future technology and had to be able to reach its destination within a human lifetime. Alan Bond led a team of scientists and engineers who proposed using a fusion rocket to reach Barnard’s Star 5.9 light years away. The trip was estimated to take 50 years, but the design was required to be flexible enough that it could be sent to any other target star. The proposed design would have been 190 meters long and have weighed about 2400 metric tons; 18x bigger than the largest payload ever launched to orbit. Therefore, it would be constructed in Earth orbit. Daedalus was to be a two-stage spacecraft. The first stage would operate for two years, taking the spacecraft to 7.1% of light speed, and then after it was jettisoned, the second stage would fire for 1.8 years, taking the spacecraft up to about 12% of light speed, before being shut down for a 46-year cruise period. Due to the extreme temperature range of operation required, from near absolute zero to 1600 K, the engine bells and support structure would be made of molybdenum alloyed with titanium, zirconium, and carbon, which retains strength even at cryogenic temperatures. Daedalus would be propelled by a fusion rocket using pellets of a deuterium/helium-3 mix that would be ignited in the reaction chamber by inertial confinement using electron beams. The electron beam system would be powered by a set of induction coils trapping energy from the plasma-exhaust stream. 250 pellets would be detonated per second, and the resulting plasma would be directed by a magnetic nozzle. Due to scarcity of helium-3 on Earth, it was to be mined from the atmosphere of Jupiter by large hot-air balloon supported robotic factories over a 20-year period, or from a more abundant source, such as the Moon. The second stage would have two 5-metre optical telescopes and two 20-metre radio telescopes. About 25 years after launch these telescopes would begin examining the area around Barnard’s Star to learn more about any accompanying planets, the main reason why the star was the chosen target, although we learned later that the star doesn’t have any orbiting planets. This information would be sent back to Earth, using the 40-metre diameter second stage engine bell as a communications dish, and targets of interest would be selected. Since the spacecraft would not decelerate, upon reaching Barnard’s Star, Daedalus would carry 18 autonomous sub-probes that would be launched between 7.2 and 1.8 years before the main craft entered the target system. These sub-probes would be propelled by nuclear-powered ion drives and would carry cameras, spectrometers, and other sensory equipment. The sub-probes would fly past their targets, still traveling at 12% of the speed of light, and transmit their findings back to the Daedalus’ second stage, mothership, for relay back to Earth. Although the concept was far from perfect, it did demonstrate that we might be capable of building an interstellar spacecraft in the near future. And if not, it allows us nerds to at least dream of such a fantastic feat. [Development news start here] This has been an exciting week at the KSPHQ. Patch 1.4.4 was released yesterday, and with it, a wide array of enhancements: from performance and wheel suspension improvements as well as the in-game integration of some really cool Steam features, this patch is meant to further advance the KSP game experience. Click here to read the full release notes. Any successful release always comes with a broad spectrum of tasks, from last minute fixes and polishing to merging branches, preparing the release candidate, testing it and uploading the final build to all platforms. Any release always has all of the team on its toes. This one was no exception. We are very happy with the results, too. Since the very beginning we have taken feedback from the players very seriously and this patch includes several elements taken directly from community suggestions. For instance, the integration of Steam Workshop will facilitate both craft and mission sharing among Steam users, and let us drive visibility to some of those creations. Cloud Saves for both game saves and missions are also now implemented on Steam (Here’s an example of how you can setup your own Cloud in case you are not a Steam user).You can read more about the newly implemented Steam features here. We are already featuring some cool missions in in this newly born Hub, including a couple of missions made by some of our team. Simple, yet fun, these missions are meant to showcase how anyone can be a Mission Designer. Check them out and let us know your thoughts. We’ll be adding more featured missions in time, so check the Steam Workshop Hub regularly. The improvement and expansion of the controller support for the game via the Steam Controller framework has also been a heavily requested feature. We’ve added two different presets for you to choose from: the Advanced and Simplified Presets. The former is a comprehensive preset that includes all the commands and functions a veteran player would expect. The Simplified Preset is meant to be more approachable to players and be as similar as possible to the Cursor Preset from KSP Enhanced Edition. Click here to see the new controller layouts. KSP Enhanced Edition also has a patch on the way. If you’ve been following us, you’ll know that aside from several bug fixes and improvements, we are also implementing new quality-of-life features taken directly from feedback provided by the community. For instance, BlitWorks managed to include a missing element from the PC version into Enhanced Edition: The Physwarp. The Physwarp allows you to perform warps within atmospheres, but all at your own risk. You’ll be able to enable it from the Radial Menu and speed up time up to x4 to shorten the length of time it normally takes to perform a task. If you’re not a Steam user or you just want to share your creations to everyone regardless of the platform they use to play KSP, don’t forget that you can also share and download missions on Curse, KerbalX, and the KSP Forum. That’s it for this week. Be sure to join us on our official forums, and don’t forget to follow us on Twitter and Facebook. Stay tuned for more exciting and upcoming news and development updates! Happy launchings! PS: Kerbal Space Program and the Making History Expansion are included in the Steam Summer Sale! With discounts of 60% and 30% respectively, this is one of the biggest discount ever for the base game, and the biggest ever for Making History. So now is a fantastic opportunity to get your copy and/or have your friends join you in space. We are also matching these discounts on the KSP Store. *Information Source: Darling, D. (n.d.). Project Daedalus. Retrieved from http://www.daviddarling.info/encyclopedia/D/Daedalus.html Bisbos.com. (n.d.). Retrieved from http://www.bisbos.com/space_n_daedalus.html (n.d.). Retrieved from https://www.webcitation.org/query?url=http://www.geocities.com/TelevisionCity/2049/DAEDALUS.HTM&date=2009-10-25 11:06:11

A 100% recovered/reusable Jool 5 mission without ISRU or Nerva/Ion engines! #KSP By Stratzenblitz75

N1-L3 was a super heavy-lift launch vehicle developed to compete with the United States Apollo-Saturn V to land a man on the Moon, using the same lunar orbit rendezvous method. The basic N1 launch vehicle had three stages, which was to carry the L3 lunar payload into low Earth orbit with two cosmonauts. Its first stage is the most powerful rocket stage ever built. The soviets ultimately failed to perform this mission, so now it’s up to you to land on the Mun and show all of Kerbin what you can achieve! - By AdmiralAndre https://bit.ly/2ll0bXH

This is a minimal reentry pod for use primarily as an escape pod. The parachute and heat shield are independent! #KSP By TiktaalikDreaming

Welcome to KSP Weekly! On Monday the Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope reached its 10th anniversary, so we decided to make a small homage to NASA’s most advanced gamma-ray observatory. Named after Enrico Fermi, the Italian-American physicist and Nobel laureate who suggested in 1949 that cosmic rays (subatomic particles traveling close to the speed of light) may come from supernovas, or violent star explosions, a theory that was confirmed by the space telescope. On June 11, 2008, Fermi was launched aboard a Delta II 7920-H rocket from Florida’s Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, on a mission to study gamma-rays, the highest-energy form of light in the universe. Gamma-rays are invisible to human eyes, but telescopes like Fermi allow astronomers to “see” this type of light, which contains clues about black holes, neutron stars and other mysterious sources of high-energy radiation. The mission is a joint venture between NASA, the United States Department of Energy, and government agencies in France, Germany, Italy, Japan, and Sweden. Its main instrument is the Large Area Telescope (LAT), with which astronomers perform surveys to study astrophysical and cosmological phenomena such as active galactic nuclei, pulsars, other high-energy sources, and dark matter. Another instrument aboard Fermi is the Gamma-ray Burst Monitor (GBM; formerly GLAST Burst Monitor), which is used to study gamma-ray bursts. Fermi detected the most powerful gamma-ray blast astronomers have ever seen: a mysterious source glowing with more energy than 9,000 supernovas. Fermi also discovered the first gamma-ray pulsar and the aptly named Fermi Bubbles: two huge structures “burped out” by the Milky Way’s supermassive black hole and visible in X-ray and gamma-ray light. After the observatory’s initial five-year study, NASA opted to extend the Fermi telescope’s mission for an additional five years. The telescope’s extended mission is scheduled to end this fall. What more will we learn from this amazing spacecraft? [Development news start here] Patch 1.4.4 is coming soon and this means that the team has been performing a great deal of polishing and bug squashing for this upcoming release. Some of the tasks included a bunch of language corrections — particularly in Japanese — drawn directly from our community feedback. We also addressed an existing issue where the activation of the personal parachute on an EVA Kerbal in orbit broke its RCS permanently. As mention in previous entries, this patch will be accompanied by several FX improvements: among these we improved the splashdown effects for small objects, which as some of you probably noticed missed the “foam” in the entry point and the spurt of water it produced was sometimes out of place. We’ve also continued improving the controller support for the game via the Steam Controller framework. In addition to what we mentioned last week, the team has added a supplementary contextual controller set for EVA situations, as well as full support for Xbox 360 and Dualshock 3 controllers, in addition to the ones we confirmed last week. We are also very happy to share with you that coupled with this patch’s release, we’ll be premiering the Official KSP Steam Workshop hub, as well as its in-game integration. We hope that the integration of this platform into the game will facilitate Mission and Craft sharing among KSP players. This feature will allow players to upload their creations to the hub directly from the game, as well as to subscribe to and vote for their favorite missions and craft files. We’ll be sharing even more details on this updated Steam support next week, so stay tuned! BlitWorks, has also been very busy with the upcoming patch for KSP Enhanced Edition. We’ve been regularly receiving builds filled with improvements and bug fixes that will surely please console players. In the latest build, various bugs were fixed, including one that took players to a non-functional KSC screen when they selected “Recover Vessel” during flight Training missions. Similarly, a bug that caused the overlapping of menus when a flag was changed from the Space Center was mercilessly squashed. On top of that, and as suggested by the community, now you’ll be able to disable/enable trimming from your controls. Don’t forget that you can also share and download missions on Curse, KerbalX, and the KSP Forum. That’s it for this week. Be sure to join us on our official forums, and don’t forget to follow us on Twitter and Facebook. Stay tuned for more exciting and upcoming news and development updates! Happy launchings! *Information Source: Weitering, H. (2018, June 13). NASA’s Fermi Space Telescope Celebrates 10 Years of Gamma-Ray Science. Retrieved from https://www.space.com/40871-fermi-gamma-ray-telescope-10th-anniversary.html Garner, R. (2015, February 23). About the Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope. Retrieved from https://www.nasa.gov/content/fermi/overview (n.d.). Retrieved from https://fermi.gsfc.nasa.gov/

Raiz Space try to land Felipe Kerman on Mars, but there is an unexpected power problem! #KSP

Val is stranded on Mun and your space program is on the verge of bankruptcy. Out of money, and with a damaged launch pad, it is up to you to rescue Val! Build a spacecraft capable of performing this mission with limited funds and weight restrictions, let’s just hope everything goes according to plan… By Gaming Kraken https://bit.ly/2GByIuI