Frida Space

Thanks Kryten for pointing that out, it's actually a very important detail, as I imagine many people will be following the event around that day or so. Also, does anyone know how to make the images smaller? They are really massive lol

Kurtjmac. Didn't even try the demo, I paid it straight away. I think it was around 0.17

But KSP could well become a bit more realistic without ruining the fun. I mean, adding a stock version of Deadly Reentry? Fairings? A bit more aerodynamics? That doesn't sound like a ruiner.

After an exhaustive two-minute search, I couldn't find a thread on New Horizons' Pluto encounter, so I thought someone had to remedy. I guess all of you know what New Horizons is, given that, along with Dawn, it's gonna be the big event of this brand new year. However, here are a few key events so far, in case you missed any: Launch occurs on Jan 19th, 2006, with an 8-day delay due to technical/weather issues, at 19:00 UTC. Pluto was still a planet back then! After the separation of the third stage, New Horizons becomes the fastest ever manmade object, travelling at a whopping 16,26 km/s! The probe crosses Mars' orbit on Apr 7th, 2006, travelling at 21 km/s. A few months later, on Jun 13th, it flies 101 867 km past asteroid 132524 APL (2002 JF56). New Horizons' data reveal that the asteroid is 2,3 km wide and is an S-type body. On Feb 28th, 2007, New Horizons performs a gravity slingshot at Jupiter, which gives her 4+ km/s of DeltaV for free! On Aug 25th, 2014, exactly 25 years after Voyager 2, New Horizons crosses Neptune's orbit and starts getting ready for the approach. On Dec 6th, 2014, New Horizons wakes up from its 18th and final hibernation before the Pluto encounter. No more sleeping now! F.A.Q.s (feel free to suggest any new ones) How/When will New Horizons encounter Pluto? New Horizons' closest approach to Pluto will be at 7:49:59 a.m. EDT (11:49:59 UTC) on July 14th, 2015. The spacecraft will zip past Pluto, coming as close as 9600 km (6000 miles) from its surface, so close its cameras could distinguish a house if there were one on the surface! It will reach a minimum distance from Charon of about 27000 km (17000 miles), but note that these stats could change a lot (skip a few questions to see why). Why not orbit? It's a bummer that we won't be able to get a Dawn-like survey of Pluto and Charon, but New Horizons would have to carry 1000 times more fuel than it actually does in order to reduce its relative speed of 43000 km/h by 90% and achieve orbit... so yea, not a viable option. Could New Horizons hit any debris/undiscovered moon/rings? Rings and small debris are a concern for the mission, but not small moons, which would be discovered well in advance. However, small moons can be quite a problem as they could potentially be sources of debris. Undiscovered small particles (pea size or even smaller) could pose a threat to the mission. The area where New Horizons will be flying should not have stable orbits of small particles. However, scientists want to be prepared for any contingency. On approach, New Horizons will be searching for small (undiscovered) moons. If it does find something that increases the risk to the mission, NASA has contingency plans that could be implemented. These contingency plans include the possibility of changing where in the Pluto system New Horizons will have its closest approach or flying antenna first to give some protection from impacts. However, the final trajectory must be chosen 13 days before the encounter. As the team said, "Our last chance to change anything is at P-13, where we can choose a different (already written) sequence." What will New Horizons do after Pluto? New Horizons' RTG will generate power at least until 2030. If NASA approves its extended mission, New Horizons will consume 35% of its remaining fuel and reach in Jan 2019 PT1 (1110113Y), a 30-45 km wide object orbiting at 43,4 AU and photographed 4 times by Hubble this summer. How will New Horizons prepare for the approach? Scientists are currently taking data with the plasma instruments to characterize the solar wind at these distances and the dust detector to learn about the concentration of dust particles in this part of space. They will be doing some calibration and test observations with the UV spectrometer (Alice) and in late January New Horizons will begin another series of optical navigation images using the LORRI instrument, a black and white high resolution camera (the first optical navigation campaign was last summer). The team is preparing with detailed planning including operational readiness tests and building science tools to analyze the data they will receive. How much of Pluto's surface will we see? New Horizons will watch Pluto & Charon rotating in the days before the encounter. It will map one hemisphere in really high resolution, and hopefully Charon will be bright enough to light up the other hemisphere, so New Horizons can at least map it in low res. After flyby, to get some more of the surface, each day New Horizons will be taking a few pictures where Pluto will be a crescent with about 15 degrees of the surface visible. [D.W.A. - Desktop Wallpaper Alert!] When will the encounter images be relesead? As Kryten said, don't expect much from encounter day itself. However, New Horizons' team plans to realease at least some of the images right as they come down. All of the other images will come back in a lossy format by mid-November. Then we will get all of them back in a lossless format over the next year or so. New Horizons fun facts! As already mentioned, NH is the fastest manmade object ever launched: it reached the Moon in just 8h35mins! NH carries an ounce of Pluto-discoverer Clyde Tombaugh's ashes. He will become the first "human" to leave the solar system. On Dec 2nd, 2011, New Horizons became the closest ever manmade object to Pluto. Obviously, it has been getting even closer since then. NH receaves 1/1000th of sunlight compared to Earth! Pretty pictures Launch Jupiter's clouds Yes, that's an eruption on Io! Pluto and Charon's ballet

Thank you everyone for your contributions! Are you talking about Elena Serova? She's the first Russian woman to visit the ISS, but she's definitely not the first one in space. Totally agree. MOM really is the "living" proof that you don't need to spend billions to achieve great things in space. I agree, but it seemed as if all those artist renderings and animations would have always remained such, and instead they actually led to something real happening. That's what I find cool about it. As you may have understood, this list focuses a bit more on spaceflight than actual "space science". However, those two events were really exciting and I'm certainly going to add them.

totally agree! It will be like rediscovering a new "planet"! With New Horizons, Dawn and Rosetta's extended mission 2015 will be a great year for minor bodies!

Oops.. totally forgot about it, and it just happened two days ago! I even watched it live, wow is my memory getting worse

It's that time of the year.... So, I was making a list of this year's top events in space exploration (where "top" doesn't necessarily mean positive). This is what I can recall so far: Beginning of private space "race" (first Cygnus resupply mission) Last ATV resupply mission Antares launch failure First Italian woman in space Hayabusa 2 launch Rosetta reaches comet Philae lands on comet Chang'e 5T1 returns from moon voyage Cassini's 10th birthday around Saturn + multiple Titan flybys MAVEN and MOM reach Mars LADEE crashes into the moon Virgin Galactic spaceplane tragedy Other events suggested by users below: As you may have noticed most of these events are spaceflight-related, but let's not forget about the sciency part of space exploration! What have been, in your opinion, the most remarkable events this year in space? Feel free to contibute to this list, I have very very probably forgotten about something. My favorite events so far have been the Philae landing and the first Italian woman in space (I'm Italian myself, so they both make me extremely proud), but I would have to include Virgin Galactic's tragedy too in this year's most important space-related events, as it is a major setback for private space exploration. - - - Updated - - - Oops, this was meant to be a poll... Oh well, I guess it won't.

Latest science update: MUPUS failed to penetrate into the ground, however it did collect some interesting data.

Rest in peace, Philae. I was born 30 years after the Apollo landing, but now I've had my own Apollo experience. Thank you so much.

yes, that would explain the fluctuations in the radio signals and in the amount of light received by the solar panels.

Ooops.. now that's embarassing... lol

now check this out!

the very last pic before touchdown! scientists are now focusing on the harpoons and on the signal issues.

That's what I meant by "a pretty stable orbit". After all, no orbit is 100% stable, anywhere: even the orbits of satellites around the Earth slowly decade.

When it came down <30 km from the comet, Rosetta entered a pretty stable orbit. The only manouvers it did since then where to actually change orbit, not to keep it stable. The triangular orbits were before the 30 km mark.

Philae had some troubles sending the telemetry data back to Rosetta yesterday night (here in Europe), but everything has been fixed now and the lander is operating well. go philae!

Building a permanent base, even on the moon, probably won't happen soon. There are so many challenges to overcome (life support technologies, astronaut psychology, protection from radiation...) and so much testing to do that it definitely won't be before the next decade or so that we see something really happening out there. If you're interested, in 2017 NASA will launch a probe called Lunar Flashlight to investigate the moon's water ice deposits. Here is the thread about it: http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/96697-NASA-s-Lunar-Flashlight-Mission But that mission will be the furthest NASA has gone in developing life support technologies. I know a few people who work at NASA, and they say too that a moon base is far from happening. I think the rumors you heard are probably false. Plus, NASA will have to put a lot of effort in getting the SLS program funded by the new Congress, so I guess a moon base is really the last thing they'll be thinking of.

When the range safety officers see that something is wrong with the rocket, they either (1) command the rocket to shut-down its propulsion system or (2) they trigger the Flight Termination System (FTS). The FTS had redundant transceivers in the launch vehicle that can receive a command to self-destruct by setting off charges in the launch vehicle to combust the rocket propellants at altitude. (Source Wikipedia) It's interesting to note that the safety officers, at least for the very first seconds after liftoff, don't look at any data, they just use their eyes. That's because there is too much interference on the ground coming from trees and nearby structures for radar and other monitoring systems to be accurate. If the rocket crosses one of the guide wires the officers use, they know it's veering off course and send an abort call. (Source National Geographic)

Hi everyone, I just wanted to share with you this cool discovery, in case you missed it: ESO's La Silla Observatory has found 500+ comets orbiting another star, Beta Pictoris! The quality of the data obtained is so high that scientis have been able to divide these comets into two different families. One of these families is controlled by the gravity of a massive planet, 4 to 11 times more massive than Jupiter. Full story: http://www.eso.org/public/news/eso1432/

Following a very early analysis of the data, the NTSB reports that SpaceShipTwo's crash might have been because of the "premature extension of the tail stabilizers." According to SpaceflightNow.com, "a camera mounted inside SpaceShipTwo’s cockpit showed Alsbury [the copilot] move a handle to unlock the feather system as the rocket plane passed Mach 1  the speed of sound. Such action on a SpaceShipTwo flight is not expected until the rocket plane reaches Mach 1.4." Why did the copilot make such a big mistake? Is it possible that he wanted to commit suicide? The fact that he was found dead still sitting in his seat, while the pilot managed to escape, would support this view. That said, I'm just throwing it out, I haven't even read the full article. I could be totally wrong, but I was just curious. I do not want to start a huge moral fight. Thanks!

The source of SS2's crash: http://spaceflightnow.com/2014/10/31/virgin-galactics-spaceshiptwo-suffers-anomaly-during-test-flight/ However, it doesn't speak of injuries/deaths yet.

Scanner traffic from local first responders indicates wreckage from a crashed aircraft in the area. Reports say parachutes were spotted in the air.

I confirm. I'm following the story on Twitter too (@b0yle)

Thanks! Didn't know that. But do you know if the LADEE impact created any kind of quake?