Lifeboat Foundation

Researchers will use NASA’s upcoming James Webb Space Telescope to study Beta Pictoris, an intriguing young planetary system that sports at least two planets, a jumble of smaller, rocky bodies, and a dusty disk. Their goals include gaining a better understanding of the structures and properties of the dust to better interpret what is happening in the system. Since it’s only about 63 light-years away and chock full of dust, it appears bright in infrared light – and that means there is a lot of information for Webb to gather.

Beta Pictoris is the target of several planned Webb observing programs, including one led by Chris Stark of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center and two led by Christine Chen of the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, Maryland. Stark’s program will directly image the system after blocking the light of the star to gather a slew of new details about its dust. Chen’s programs will gather spectra, which spread light out like a rainbow to reveal which elements are present. All three observing programs will add critical details to what’s known about this nearby system.

Solar sails have been receiving a lot of attention lately. In part that is due to a series of high profile missions that have successfully proven the concept. It’s also in part due to the high profile Breakthrough Starshot project, which is designing a solar sail powered mission to reach Alpha Centauri. But this versatile third propulsion system isn’t only useful for far flung adventures – it has advantages closer to home as well. A new paper by engineers at UCLA defines what those advantages are, and how we might be able to best utilize them.

The literal driving force behind some solar sail projects are lasers. These concentrated beams of light are perfect to provide a pushing force against a solar sail. However, they are also useful as weapons if scaled up too much, vaporizing anything in its path. As such, one of the main design constraints for solar sail systems is around materials that can withstand a high power laser blast, yet still be light enough to not burden the craft it is attached to with extra weight.

For the missions that graduate student Ho-Ting Tung and Dr. Artur Davoyan of UCLA’s Mechanical Engineering Department envision that weight is miniscule. They expect any sailing spacecraft to weigh less than 100 grams. That 100 grams would include a sail array that measures up to 10 cm square.

In 1970, scientists detected amino acids in a meteorite. Fifty years later, a variety of chemical ingredients for life have been found in other space rocks.

Shortly thereafter, China National Space Agency (CNSA) shared the first images taken by the Tianwen-1 lander.

By May 22, the Zhurong rover descended from its lander and drove on the Martian surface for the first time. Since then, the rover has spent 63 Earth days conducting science operations on the surface of Mars and has traveled over 450 meters (1475 feet).

On Friday, July 9, and again on July 15, the CNSA released new images of the Red Planet that were taken by the rover as it made its way across the surface.

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Before Saturday, Ingenuity had already flown nearly one mile in total, so its 10th flight helped it hit that threshold.

The flight should have lasted about 2 minutes, 45 seconds. During that time, Ingenuity is expected to have visited 10 distinct waypoints, snapping photos along the way.

Continue reading “NASA’s Mars helicopter nailed its 10th flight — double what engineers had hoped Ingenuity would do” »

The now iconic spacecraft’s 35th three-hour flyby of Jupiter comes close to the 10th anniversary of its launch. Here are the best and newest phots from its JunoCam imager.

Ingenuity, the helicopter that arrived on the Red Planet on the Mars Perseverance rover, has made nine flights on Mars.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pzVQ_R0BZaY

On July 20th, 2021 NASA’s Perseverance Mars Rover transmitted new images from Red Planet trying to collect first sample. Rover currently studying geological features of “Crater Floor Fractured Rough” area. While the rocks located in this geologic unit are not great time capsules for organics, NASA’s scientists believe they have been around since the formation of Jezero Crater and incredibly valuable to fill gaps in our geologic understanding of this region – things we’ll desperately need to know if we find life once existed on Mars. Photo of tube located in Mars rock was taken by Perseverance Rover on Sol 148.

Credit: nasa.gov, NASA/JPL-Caltech, NASA/JPL-Caltech/ASU

Continue reading “Perseverance Rover left this in Mars rock trying to get first sample on Red Planet” »

The search for life beyond Earth is on.

NASA’s newest Mars rover is getting ready to collect its first rock sample from the surface of Mars and stow it away for a future return mission to Earth, where NASA will test it for signs of ancient microbial life.

Continue reading “Perseverance’s hunt for ancient life reveals 2 Red Planet discoveries” »