Aerospace

Beyond Earth: Humankind aiming higher

[space-pics]

Hello, world. My first look at my forever home. - NASA’s Perseverance Mars Rover

[aerospaceage]

Awesome short video by Mark Felton about Nazi Germany‘s rocket technology, targeting United States (which fortunately failed) through space. Wernher von Braun „ironically“ was working for NASA after the end of WW2, making USA being the first nation to put a man on the moon. https://youtu.be/1AQIyXV5nGI

[wonders-of-the-cosmos]

Ten interesting facts about Saturn

Saturn is sometimes called “The Jewel of the Solar System.” It is a planet that is nothing like our own. Humans have been gazing up at Saturn for a long time. They have been wondering about it for thousands of years.

Here are some fun facts about the Ringed Planet.

Saturn is huge. It is the second largest planet in our Solar System. Jupiter is the only planet that is bigger.

The rings are huge but thin. The main rings could almost go from Earth to the moon. Yet, they are less than a kilometer thick.

Four spacecraft have visited Saturn: Pioneer 11, Voyager 1 and 2, and the Cassini-Huygens mission have all studied the planet. 

Saturn has oval-shaped storms similar to Jupiter’s: The region around its north pole has a hexagonal-shaped pattern of clouds. Scientists think this may be a wave pattern in the upper clouds. The planet also has a vortex over its south pole that resembles a hurricane-like storm.

Saturn is made mostly of hydrogen and helium: It exists in layers that get denser farther into the planet. Eventually, deep inside, the hydrogen becomes metallic. At the core lies a hot interior. (click the image for a better resolution).

Saturn has 62 moons: Some of these are large, like Titan, the second largest moon in the Solar System. But most are tiny – just a few km across, and they have no official names. In fact, the last few were discovered by NASA’s Cassini orbiter just a few years ago. More will probably be discovered in the coming years.

Saturn orbits the Sun once every 29.4 Earth years: Its slow movement against the backdrop of stars earned it the nickname of “Lubadsagush” from the ancient Assyrians. The name means “oldest of the old”.

In Saturn there is aurora: Photographic composition made by the Hubble Space Telescope showing the occurrence of aurora in the southern hemisphere of Saturn at intervals of two days.The aurora is visible only in the ultraviolet.

Saturn spins on its axis very fast. A day on Saturn is 10 hours and 14 minutes.

You can see Saturn with your own eyes: Saturn appears as one of the 5 planets visible with the unaided eye. If Saturn is in the sky at night, you can head outside and see it. To see the rings and the ball of the planet itself, you’ll want to peer through a telescope. But you can amaze your friends and family by pointing out that bright star in the sky, and let them know they’re looking at Saturn.

sources: nasa.gov, universetoday.com and solarsystem.nasa.gov

[nasa]

Our Space Launch System Rocket’s “Green Run” Engine Testing By the Numbers

We continue to make progress toward the first launch of our Space Launch System (SLS) rocket for the Artemis I mission around the Moon. Engineers at NASA’s Stennis Space Center near Bay St. Louis, Mississippi are preparing for the last two tests of the eight-part SLS core stage Green Run test series.

The test campaign is one of the final milestones before our SLS rocket launches America’s Orion spacecraft to the Moon with the Artemis program. The SLS Green Run test campaign is a series of eight different tests designed to bring the  entire rocket stage to life for the first time.

As our engineers and technicians prepare for the wet dress rehearsal and the SLS Green Run hot fire, here are some numbers to keep in mind:

212 Feet

The SLS rocket’s core stage is the largest rocket stage we have ever produced. From top to bottom of its four RS-25 engines, the rocket stage measures 212 feet.

35 Stories

For each of the Green Run tests, the SLS core stage is installed in the historic B-2 Test Stand at Stennis. The test stand was updated to accommodate the SLS rocket stage and is 35 stories tall – or almost 350 feet!

4 RS-25 Engines

All four RS-25 engines will operate simultaneously during the final Green Run Hot Fire. Fueled by the two propellant tanks, the cluster of engines will gimbal, or pivot, and fire for up to eight minutes just as if it were an actual Artemis launch to the Moon.

18 Miles

Our brawny SLS core stage is outfitted with three flight computers and special avionics systems that act as the “brains” of the rocket. It has 18 miles of cabling and more than 500 sensors and systems to help feed fuel and direct the four RS-25 engines.

773,000 Gallons

The stage has two huge propellant tanks that collectively hold 733,000 gallons of super-cooled liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen. The stage weighs more than 2.3 million pounds when its fully fueled.

114 Tanker Trucks

It’ll take 114 trucks – 54 trucks carrying liquid hydrogen and 60 trucks carrying liquid oxygen – to provide fuel to the SLS core stage.

6 Propellant Barges

A series of barges will deliver the propellant from the trucks to the rocket stage installed in the test stand. Altogether, six propellant barges will send fuel through a special feed system and lines. The propellant initially will be used to chill the feed system and lines to the correct cryogenic temperature. The propellant then will flow from the barges to the B-2 Test Stand and on into the stage’s tanks.

100 Terabytes

All eight of the Green Run tests and check outs will produce more than 100 terabytes of collected data that engineers will use to certify the core stage design and help verify the stage is ready for launch.

For comparison, just one terabyte is the equivalent to 500 hours of movies, 200,000 five-minute songs, or 310,000 pictures!

32,500 holes

The B-2 Test Stand has a flame deflector that will direct the fire produced from the rocket’s engines away from the stage. Nearly 33,000 tiny, handmade holes dot the flame deflector. Why? All those minuscule holes play a huge role by directing constant streams of pressurized water to cool the hot engine exhaust.

One Epic First

When NASA conducts the SLS Green Run Hot Fire test at Stennis, it’ll be the first time that the SLS core stage operates just as it would on the launch pad. This test is just a preview of what’s to come for Artemis I!

The Space Launch System is the only rocket that can send NASA astronauts aboard NASA’s Orion spacecraft and supplies to the Moon in a single mission. The SLS core stage is a key part of the rocket that will send the first woman and the next man to the Moon through NASA’s Artemis program.

Make sure to follow us on Tumblr for your regular dose of space: http://nasa.tumblr.com

[aerospaceage]

Life on Venus? Phosphine gas has been detected in the cloud decks of our nearest neighbour, Venus. The presence of this gas is seen as „biosignature" i.e. an indicator of the possible presence of life. It has been detected in a region within the atmosphere that is considered to be potentially habitable. Check out the source for more information.

[aerospaceage]

Nazis in Space? The truth by Mark Felton. https://youtu.be/3Z6EqhF0xgg

[aerospaceage]

1945-1952 - Space Station by Wernher von Braun - Von Braun was a leading aerospace engineer first in Germany until 1945, and after being captued by U.S. forces in the same year, he continued working for NASA in U.S. He made United States able to develop the Saturn/Apollo program, making humans landing on the moon. The pictures here by NASA show one of Wernher von Braun’s fantastic plans, designing a space station for humans. NASA said that “(Wernher von Braun is) without any doubt the greatest rocket scientist in history”. For further details on the space station, please study the following link, adding a lot of details to this concept: http://www.astronautix.com/craft/vonation.htm. The following quote is as well from that website: “In the first 1946 summary of his work during World War II, Wernher von Braun prophesied the construction of space stations in orbit. The design, a toroidal station spun to provide artificial gravity, would be made very familiar to the American public over the next six years. The design was elaborated at the First Symposium on Space Flight on 12 October 1951 at the Hayden Planetarium in New York City. The design was popularized in the series in Colliers magazine, illustrated with gorgeous Chesley Bonestell painting, in 1952. The 1946 version used 20 cylindrical sections, each about 3 m in diameter and 8 m long, to make up the toroid. The whole station was about 50 m in diameter and guy wires connecting and positioning the toroid to the 8 m-diameter central power module. This was equipped with a sun-following solar collector dish to heat fluid in a ball-shaped device. The heated fluid would run an electrical generator. Presumably visiting spacecraft would dock or transfer crew at the base of the power module.”

[humanoidhistory]

Astronaut Ed White walks in space, June 3, 1965.

(ASU/NASA)

[brieflyinstantruins]

[aerospaceage]

NASA Space Shuttle NASA space shuttle ‘Endeavour’ on onw of its mission in space.

[aerospaceage]

Bumper V-2 Launch  (July 24, 1950) A new chapter in space flight began in July 1950 with the launch of the first rocket from Cape Canaveral, Florida: the Bumper 8. Shown above, Bumper 8 was an ambitious two-stage rocket program that topped a V-2 missile base with a WAC Corporal rocket. Or in other words, it was a German V2 Rocket just without the warhead but with measurement equipment instead, e.g., a photo camera (which made the first picture of the Earth from space in history of humankind). The upper stage was able to reach then-record altitudes of almost 400 kilometers, higher than even modern Space Shuttles fly today. Launched under the direction of the General Electric Company, Bumper 8 was used primarily for testing rocket systems and for research on the upper atmosphere . Bumper rockets carried small payloads that allowed them to measure attributes including air temperature and cosmic ray impacts. Seven years later, the Soviet Union launched Sputnik I and Sputnik II, the first satellites into Earth orbit. In response, in 1958, the US created NASA . *Image Credit*: NASA Image Number: 66P-0631

[aerospaceage]

Peenemunde Rocket Facility where the V2 (and further weapons) have been created. Picture taken in current days with a “fake” V2 model to demonstrate the size of the roughly 15 meters rocket.

[aerospaceage]

The Loon

Also called the JB-2 or KUW-1, the Republic-Ford Loon was an American copy of the German pulsejet-powered V-1 or "Buzz Bomb" of WWII. It was designed to carry a one-ton high-explosive warhead to a range of 240 km and could be launched from the ground, ships, or aircraft. The air-breathing pulsejet motor is the long tube at the rear. Developed in 1944, and planned to be used in the American invasion of Japan (Operation Downfall), the JB-2 was never used in combat. It was the most successful of the US Army Air Forces Jet Bomb (JB) projects (JB-1 through JB-10) during WWII. Post-war, the JB-2 played a significant role in the development of more advanced surface-to-surface tactical missile systems such as the MGM-1 Matador and later MGM-13 Mace. The US Navy's version, the KGW-1, later redesignated LTV-N-2, was developed to be carried on the aft deck of submarines in watertight containers. The first submarine to employ them was USS Cusk (SS-348) which successfully launched its first Loon on 12 February 1947, off Point Mugu, CA. USS Carbonero (SS-337) was also modified to test Loon. The Loon appeared in a 1950 B&W Cold War movie, The Flying Missile, distributed by Columbia Pictures and starring Glenn Ford and Viveca Lindfors. It was made with US Navy cooperation, revealing they had been working on launching missiles from the decks of submarines. Whilst it was the beginning of the American submarine-missile programme, the Loon was cancelled in 1950. The above example was donated to the Smithsonian in 1965 by the US Naval Supply Center. I saw it in the Udvar-Hazy Center in 2012.

United States were able to create a quite good copy of the German-made V1 which was the first drone in human history.

[aerospaceage]

V2 Rocket Engine by Mr Alz On display at La Coupole, France. The first rocket in history reaching space, while the technology looks quite similar even today.

[aerospaceage]

Chile - San Pedro de Atacama Meteorit Museum  Chile - San Pedro de Atacama Meteorit Museum

[aerospaceage]

Фото Ивана Миско. Скульптура полет в космос. Photo by Ivan Misko. Sculpture space flight (27)

Spaceflight (or space flight) is ballistic flight into or through outer space. Spaceflight can occur with spacecraft with or without humans on board. Yuri Gagarin of the Soviet Union was the first human to conduct a spaceflight. Examples of human spaceflight include the U.S. Apollo Moon landing and Space Shuttle programs and the Russian Soyuz program, as well as the ongoing International Space Station. Examples of unmanned spaceflight include space probes that leave Earth orbit, as well as satellites in orbit around Earth, such as communications satellites. These operate either by telerobotic control or are fully autonomous. Spaceflight is used in space exploration, and also in commercial activities like space tourism and satellite telecommunications. Additional non-commercial uses of spaceflight include space observatories, reconnaissance satellites and other Earth observation satellites.

[aerospaceage]

Fold-Out Cover on a 1969 Special Issue of Look Magazine Commemorating "Apollo 11: On The Moon." Painting by Norman Rockwell

Norman Rockwell created this painting specifically for this special issue. Pictured in the top row (left to right) are: The Prime Crew (Cdr. Neil Armstrong, LM Pilot Edwin Aldrin, and CM Pilot Michael Collins); Joe W. Schmitt, Insertion Technician; Dr. Charles A. Berry, Director of Medical Research and Operations; Alan Shepard, Chief, Astronaut Office; George M. Low, Manager, Apollo Spacecraft Program; Dr. Wernher von Braun, Director, Marshall Space Flight Center; Dr. Kurt H. Debus, Director, Kennedy Space Center; Kenneth S. Kleinknecht, Manager, Apollo Command and Service Modules; Dr. George E. Mueller, Associate Administrator, Manned Space Flight; Dr. Robert R. Gilruth, Director, Manned Spacecraft Center; Lt. General Samuel Phillips, Apollo Program Director; Gatha Cottee, Public Information Officer, Kennedy Space Center. Partially obscured faces in the background represent unidentified members of the NASA staff. Pictured in the foreground (left to right) are: The Backup Crew (Cdr. James Lovell, LM Pilot Fred Haise, and CM Pilot William Anders); Chris Kraft, Director, Flight Operations, Manned Spacecraft Center; two unidentified members of the NASA staff; Mrs. Neil Armstrong; Mrs. Edwin Aldrin; and Mrs. Michael Collins; and another unidentified member of the NASA staff.