To Mars and back - in just tank fill of fuel

Graphical illustration of how an ion thruster works by hurling particles backwards so that a spacecraft can be propelled forwards

A Ph D student at University of Sydney Australia has come up with an idea that may revolutionise space travel - specially man's quest to travel to distant planets like Mars.

Paddy Neumann has created a new type of ion space drive that could take humans to Mars and back on a single tank of fuel and believes his ion space drive Nasa's shatters current fuel efficiency record. 

The Neumann ion drive works by bombarding the fuel source with electric arcs, which causes ions be discarded. 

The innovative part of Neumann's drive is the type of fuel that was used. While HiPEP system runs on xenon gas, Neumann's ion drive can instead run on various metals many of which can be found in space junk.

Via | Source

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NASA releases a mind-blowing 'The Largest Photo' ever taken

Andromeda galaxy as shot by NASA's Hubble telescope

How big can be a photo if one is left to imagine? Well NASA has come up with a photo that is much beyond our imagination and bounds. 

Scroll down for the video

The photo recently revealed is a 1.5 billion pixel image (as large as 69, 536 x 22, 230 - and requires about 4.3 GB disk space) of the Andromeda galaxy, which is our nearest galactic neighbor. This mind blowing photo contains over 100 million stars and spans more than 40,000 light years – and mind you that’s just a section of the galaxy.

This image, created from a mosaic of 411 Hubble pictures, was then used by YouTuber daveachuk to create this incredible fly-through video. Combined with gorgeous music from the band Koda, it’s an awe-inspiring – and humbling – experience.

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China Launches Three Into Space Aboard Shenzhou-10

People's Republic of China has successfully launched three "taikonauts" into space Tuesday, in its fifth manned space launch since 2003.

In its 15-day journey, the spacecraft will dock with the orbiting space lab Tiangong-1 twice, once through automatic operation and the other manual, and a lecture will for the first time be given on board of the assembled orbiter to a group of students on the ground.

Two men – Nie Haisheng and Zhang Xiaoguang – and one woman, Wang Yaping are aboard the Shenzhou-10 spacecraft, which was launched by a Long March-2F rocket around 5:38 p.m. local time.

A see-off ceremony was held at the center hours before the launch. Chinese President Xi Jinping, who just returned from his visit to the United States, attended the ceremony and extended good wishes to the three astronauts.

"The mission's members carry a space dream of the Chinese nation, and represent the lofty aspirations of the Chinese people to explore space," said Xi who watched the launch process in Jiuquan.

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International trio takes shortcut to space station

An international trio flying in a Russian capsule docked with the International Space Station on Wednesday with a busy schedule full of space walks and an encounter with a pioneering US cargo craft.

The six-month mission of Russian commander Fyodor Yurchikhin and his two flight engineers — Karen Nyberg of NASA and Italian Luca Parmitano of the European Space Agency — began once their craft sidled up to the orbiting lab six hours after blasting off from the Moscow-owned Baikonur space centre in Kazakhstan.

The Soyuz took a shortcut that slashed the travel time from the usual 48 hours thanks to a special orbit that catapaults the astronauts directly to their destination.

Read more about it at: Brisbane Times
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Top-secret US spaceplane OTV-1 'relaunched' for another classified mission

It is reported by The Register that the US Air Force has relaunched the first of its super-secret X-37B space planes, the OTV-1, sending it on another mysterious mission in space. OTV-1's first mission was back in 2010.

US Secret space plane X37B OVT-1 [Photo: Raumfahrt]

The experimental unmanned spaceship headed off from Cape Canaveral yesterday, just a few months after the second X-37B, OTV-2, made an autonomous landing at Vandenberg Air Force Base. The OTV-2 touched down on 11 June, after a record 469 days in space.

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The Air Force never reveals the exact purpose of each mission of these little reusable space vehicles, only saying that in general they run experiments on the craft that can then be returned to Earth. These include projects in advanced guidance, navigation and control, thermal protection systems, avionics, high temperature structures and seals, conformal reusable insulation, lightweight electromechanical flight systems and autonomous orbital flight, re-entry and landing.

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Ice found on Mercury: NASA

NASA scientists have confirmed a vast amount of ice at the north pole — on Mercury, the closest planet to the sun.

The ice is thought to be at least 1½ feet (0.3 meters) deep — and possibly as much as 65 feet (20 meters) deep.

The findings are from NASA's Mercury-orbiting probe, Messenger, and the subject of three scientific papers released Thursday by the journal Science.

The frozen water is located in regions of Mercury's north pole that always are in shadows, essentially impact craters. It's believed the south pole harbors ice as well, though there are no hard data to support it. Messenger orbits much closer to the north pole than the south.

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"If you add it all up, you have on the order of 100 billion to 1 trillion metric tons of ice," said David Lawrence of the Applied Physics Laboratory at Johns Hopkins University. "The uncertainty on that number is just how deep it goes."

Read more about it at: USA Today
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Watch Live the Undocking of Dragon - first-ever commercial cargo mission to the International Space Station

The private Dragon spacecraft is set to return to Earth Sunday (Oct. 28), wrapping up the first-ever commercial cargo mission to the International Space Station.

The unmanned Dragon capsule, built by the California-based firm SpaceX, is scheduled to undock from the orbiting lab at 7:55 a.m. EDT (11:55 GMT) Sunday, then be released by the station’s huge robotic arm about 90 minutes later.

If all goes according to plan, Dragon will splash down in the Pacific Ocean off the California coast at 3:20 p.m. EDT (19:20 GMT) Sunday, where SpaceX personnel will retrieve it with a crane-equipped boat.

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You can watch the Dragon’s undocking live on NASA TV here beginning at 7:00 a.m. EDT (11:00 GMT).

Read more about Dragon's journey at Mashable

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Mystery Over Shiny Particles On Mars

NASA's Curiosity rover had been on Mars 61 days when she gathered her first scoop of soil.

Before the one-ton robot could finish sifting through her first small bucket of dust, however, all the excitement shifted to a shiny object found in the sand near the rover.

They saw that a light-toned particle was embedded in a clump of Martian soil, leading researchers to believe that the material could be native to Mars. This find completely overturned their original argument: These mystery particles are not something from the rover.

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Following the discovery, a third scoop of soil was collected. This sample will now be run through Curiosity's Chemistry and Mineralogy (CheMin) instrument to figure out what it's made of, and hopefully find out what's making the sand so shiny.   

Read more: Business Insider

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SpaceX makes first supply launch to ISS

SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket blasted off on Sunday, launching the cargo-laden Dragon capsule into Earth’s orbit on its way to the International Space Station (ISS) for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s (Nasa) first privately-run supply mission.

The engine fires traced a bright trail across the night sky over Nasa's Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida, the site of many launches into space after the on-time lift off at at 8.35pm (8.35am Singapore time).

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Read more/See photo: ST

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Australia launches world's fastest radio telescope to study the origins of the universe

Australia has launched world's fastest radio telescope in the remote Australian outback, which will exponentially increase astronomers' ability to survey the universe, mapping black holes and shedding new light on the origins of galaxies.

The Australia Square Kilometre Array Pathfinder (Askap), with an array of 36 antennas each 40 feet across, started peering into the universe on Friday from a far-flung cattle station in Western Australia state.

The A$152 million (£96m) telescope will "listen" to radio waves from the cosmos that might give astronomers insights into the beginnings of the universe.

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Using new "radio cameras" called phased array feeds, the telescope will be able scan the sky much more rapidly than existing radio telescopes and will give the telescope a field of view about 150 times the area of the full Moon.

Read more: The Telegraph

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Endeavour's dramatic final voyage

A few days back, in one of our news posts, we mentioned about the last chance to see the space shuttle Endeavour riding on the back of shuttle carrier 747 - and the day arrived much to the enthusiasm of tourists and onlookers yesterday.

Flying as low as 1,500 feet around some of California's most distinctive landmarks, the space shuttle Endeavour completed its final voyage Friday to cheers and many photos.

Photo: LA Times

After taking off from Edwards Air Force Base on Friday morning, Endeavour headed north, buzzing the state Capitol in Sacramento, circling the Bay Area and soaring over a Golden Gate Bridge packed with onlookers.

As the sound of the plane's engines drowned out the traffic on the bridge and tourists ran to get the best vantage point, screams of “Whooo!” could be heard as the shuttle flew over the suspension bridge.

“It was unbelievable. Did you hear all the clapping? I can't even believe we're here!” said Polly Lestikow, of Centennial, Colo., who just happened to be bicycling across the bridge Friday morning, unaware of NASA's planned show Friday.

Read more: LA Times

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Uncertainty lingers on NASA's Mars program

Photo NASA

This week’s arrival of NASA’s Mars rover Curiosity set the stage for a potentially game-changing quest to learn whether the planet most like Earth ever had a shot at developing life, but follow-up missions exist only on drawing boards.

The United States had planned to team up with Europe on a trio of missions beginning in 2016 that would culminate in the return of Mars soil and rock samples to Earth, an endeavor the National Research Council considers its top priority in planetary science for the next decade.

Citing budget concerns, the Obama administration terminated NASA’s participation in Europe’s ExoMars program earlier this year, spurring the U.S. space agency to re-examine its options before another flight opportunity comes and goes. Earth and Mars favorably align for launches about every 26 months.

The situation is complicated by massive budget overruns in the $2.5-billion US Curiosity mission, intended to determine if Mars could now or ever have supported microbial life, and in the $8 billion James Webb Space Telescope, a successor to the Hubble observatory.

Read details: Toronto Sun

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NASA's latest Mars adventure provides spectacular glimpses of alien landscape

NASA's latest adventure to Mars has given the world more than just glimpses of a new alien landscape.

This photo provided by NASA shows a full-resolution version of one of the first images taken by a rear Hazard-Avoidance camera on NASA's Curiosity rover, which landed on Mars the Sunday evening, Aug. 5, 2012. The image was originally taken through a "fisheye" wide-angle lens, but has been "linearized" so that the horizon looks flat rather than curved. A Hazard-avoidance camera on the rear-left side of Curiosity obtained this image. Part of the rim of Gale Crater, which is a feature the size of Connecticut and Rhode Island combined, stretches from the top middle to the top right of the image. One of the rover's wheels can be seen at bottom right. (AP Photo/NASA/JPL-Caltech)

It opened a window into the trip itself, from video footage of the landing to a photo of the rover hanging by a parachute to a shot of discarded spacecraft hardware strewn across the surface. And the best views — of Mars and the journey there — are yet to come.

"Spectacular," mission deputy project scientist Joy Crisp said of the footage. "We've not had that before."

Since parking itself inside an ancient crater Sunday night, the Curiosity rover has delighted scientists with views of its new surroundings, including the 3-mile(4.8-kilometer)-high mountain it will drive to. It beamed back the first color picture Tuesday revealing a tan-hued, pebbly landscape and the crater rim off in the distance.

Read details: Phil Star

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Chinese Astronauts return home from space

Three Chinese astronauts have returned to Earth after China's most complex and longest mission in orbit.

CHINA'S FIRST FEMALE ASTRONAUT LIU YANG WAVES AS SHE COMES OUT OF THE CHARRED RE-ENTRY CAPSULE OF THE SHENZHOU-9 SPACECRAFT. PICTURE: AP / XINHUA AP

They were hailed as heroes yesterday after taking vital steps in the country's effort to build a space station by 2020.

The 13-day voyage also saw China send a woman into space for the first time, and the nation's leaders celebrated as soon as the crew members emerged from their cramped return capsule smiling and seemingly in good health.

The charred return capsule of the Shenzhou-9 spacecraft, which means Divine Vessel in Chinese, hit the ground in a remote area of northern China and rolled over yesterday morning after an approach slowed by a large parachute.

Read more: Herald Sun

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China astronauts mark first manual space docking

China completed its first-ever manual docking between a manned spacecraft and an orbiting lab module on Sunday, putting it a step closer in an ambitious campaign to build a space station.

The Shenzhou 9 and its three-person crew, including the country's first woman in Space Liu Yang, separated about 400 metres from the Tiangong (Heavenly Palace) 1 module for about two minutes before re-connecting under the manual control of the astronauts, with state television covering the event live.

Rendezvous and docking exercises between the two vessels are an important hurdle in China's efforts to acquire the technological and logistical skills to run a full space lab that can house astronauts for long periods.

Read more: NDTV

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500,000-mile Moon round-trip for £100million

Are you ready to go for a 500,000 miles Moon round trip for 'just' £100million?

Round trip to moon - are you ready? [photo: EPA / Daily Mail]

Well if you do, good news is that you can actually 'fly' to Moon for just £100million, as a British company is offering seats to adventurers willing to go the extra mile on a historic journey to the moon.

The first 500,000-mile round trip in a converted Soviet-era space station could take place as early as 2015.

Art Dula, founder and chief executive of Isle of Man-based Excalibur Almaz, told a space tourism meeting in London: 'We're ready to sell the tickets.'

Read details / see more photos: Daily Mail

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China's first female astronaut to fly on space docking mission

The first female Chinese astronaut will be among the crew launching on the nation's first manned docking mission this month, state media sources say.


The upcoming Shenzhou 9 mission is expected to launch in mid-June, possibly as early as June 16, to dock with China's first space station test module, Tiangong 1, which is already in orbit.

One of the three Chinese astronauts (called taikonauts) on the flight will be chosen from two women candidates — Liu Yang and Wang Yaping — according to Chinese state news agency Xinhua. Both candidates are members of the Chinese Air Force's Wuhan Flight Unit.

Read more: msnbc

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Private space venture aborted at last second

A new private supply ship for the International Space Station remained stuck on the ground Saturday after rocket engine trouble led to a last-second abort of the historic flight.

All nine engines for the SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket roared to life Saturday morning. But with a half-second remaining before liftoff, the onboard computers automatically shut everything down. So instead of blasting off on a delivery mission to the space station, the rocket stayed on its launchpad amid a plume of engine exhaust.

Even NASA's most seasoned launch commentator was taken off-guard. "Three, two, one, zero and liftoff," announced commentator George Diller, his voice trailing as the rocket failed to budge. "We've had a cutoff. Liftoff did not occur."


Read more: Philadelphia Inquirer 

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Documentary on Russia's famous spaceman - Yuri Gagarin

He was the first man to fly in space and the heroism of Yuri Gagarin is still celebrated in Russia 51 years after the momentous event.

One town south of Moscow has been renamed Gagarin after the Soviet cosmonaut.

Documentary-maker Vladimir Kozlov has been there to film 'Gagarinland', a documentary which provides revealing insights into the cult of Gagarin and the state of the Russian provinces.

Watch the video: BBC News

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North Korea long-range rocket launch fails after one minute

North Korea has launched a long-range rocket that disintegrated shortly after blast-off, South Korean authorities say. South Korea's Defence Ministry said the rocket was launched at 7.39am (8.39am AEST) today, but failed shortly after.

"A few minutes after the launch, the rocket disintegrated into several pieces and lost its altitude," Defence Ministry spokesman Kim Min-Seok told journalists. 

This will be North Korea's second consecutive failure to get a satellite into orbit, although it claimed success with a 2009 launch.

Read more: Brisbane Times

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