All About Space
Discussing news and questions around space flight, space science and astronomy. Beware, flat-earthers might get banned.
Open Loop 177
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Mission engineers will track NASA's Lucy spacecraft nonstop as it prepares to swoop near Earth on Oct. 16 to use this planet's gravity to set itself on a course toward the Jupiter Trojan asteroids.
But they also will be closely tracking something else: more than 47,000 satellites, debris, and other objects circling our planet. A greater than 1-10,000 chance that Lucy will collide with one of these objects will require mission engineers to slightly adjust the spacecraft's trajectory.
https://phys.org/news/2022-10-nasa-lucy-thousands-earth-gravity.html -
NASA says the Artemis I mission will be ready to launch in one month
"A little more than two weeks have passed since NASA prudently rolled its Space Launch System rocket and Orion spacecraft inside the massive Vehicle Assembly Building at Kennedy Space Center to protect the hardware from Hurricane Ian."
https://arstechnica.com/science/2022/10/nasa-targets-mid-november-for-its-third-artemis-i-launch-attempt/ -
"A spacecraft that plowed into a small, harmless asteroid millions of miles from Earth succeeded in shifting the orbit of the space rock, Nasa said on Tuesday, announcing the results of its first such test."
Sound like success to me!
https://www.theguardian.com/science/2022/oct/11/nasa-dart-spacecraft-asteroid-successful -
"Despite its modest overall achievements, India's Mars Orbiter Mission is one of the more notable successes of the modern spaceflight era. Launched in 2013, it was the first Mars mission built by an Asian country to reach orbit around the red planet—only the United States, Soviet Union, and European Space Agency had done so before."
https://arstechnica.com/science/2022/10/after-an-amazing-run-at-mars-india-says-its-orbiter-has-no-more-fuel/ -
"NASA announced Thursday that it plans to study the possibility of using SpaceX's Crew Dragon vehicle to boost the aging Hubble Space Telescope into a higher orbit.
The federal agency has signed a "Space Act Agreement" with SpaceX to conduct a six-month study to determine the practicability of Dragon docking with the 32-year-old telescope and boosting it into a higher orbit. The study is not exclusive, meaning that other companies can propose similar concepts with alternative rockets and spacecraft."
https://arstechnica.com/science/2022/09/nasa-and-spacex-are-studying-a-hubble-telescope-boost-adding-15-to-20-years-of-life/ -
"The crashing of a spacecraft is, for once, a cause for celebration. The Dart (Double Asteroid Redirection Test) mission on Tuesday marked humanity’s first ever attempt at moving an asteroid in space."
https://www.theguardian.com/science/2022/sep/28/this-ones-for-the-dinosaurs-how-the-world-reacted-to-nasas-asteroid-smashing-success -
“The joint statement noted NASA and ESA cooperation on human space flight activities such as the International Space Station, Gateway, and the ESA-provided European Service Module for the Orion capsule, and highlighted ongoing discussions on future collaboration on the Moon,” NASA stated.
https://spacenews.com/nasa-and-esa-sign-lunar-cooperation-statement/
