More exciting space news

[Escadrille Ecosse]

In case you have seen. ESA (European Space Agency) are heavily involved in the Orion mission to return to the moon and are providing the crew module and service module for the mission.

First test flight of this module on NASA's SLS is getting close (at last). For the first flight there will be only one crew member on board and ESA has just announced who this will be. And they will be the first British astronaut to circle the moon.

https://www.aardman.com/latest-news/shaun-the-sheep-esa-artemis-i

Bloody brilliant

The UK was the third country to put a satellite into space and the third country to do so on domestically designed and built rocket. Sadly but also sadly typical we were also the first and so far only country to abandon a domestic space programme after achieving success.

[JohnD]

And I was about to say that Tim Peake can twiddle his thumbs as he won't be chosen to fly on Orion, on a European spacecraft.

 

[Escadrille Ecosse]

8 minutes ago, JohnD said:

And I was about to say that Tim Peake can twiddle his thumbs as he won't be chosen to fly on Orion, on a European spacecraft.

 

Yeah. The 'gift' that keeps giving. Rubbish.

[JohnD]

And, I thought, Shaun the Sheep, on an ESA space craft?    Come on, Aardman are having a larf.

But No!    I have the BBC R4 programme "Inside Science" on the wireless (!) https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0019rcp  And sure enough, the first trial shot that will orbit The Moon, WILL carry Shaun the Sheep, and as it is BBC R4, interviewing no less than Philippe Deloo, the manager for ESA of the Service Module that ESA are contributing to the NASA mission who confirmed that, it MUST be true!  Wow!

John

Edited August 4, 2022 by JohnD

[Escadrille Ecosse]

Oh absolutely real, if only in the sense that it is true. Which I think is just splendid.

The first sheep in space and the first to go to the moon. And it's Shaun

[JohnD]

Rather than start a new thread, may I add to yours, Colin, with more Exciting Space News?

DART has succeeded!   The Double Asteroid Redirection Test mission purposely crashed into a small body that orbited a larger asteroid, to find out more about how such a project could deviate another dinosaur-killer asteroid on course for Earth.   I suspect that this declared objective is more PR than science or even engineering.     The Chicxulub impact was 66 million years ago, and we ain't seen nothing like it since, so fairly unlikely again.     But we will learn a lot about how asteroids are made.

DART was a medium-sized probe, 610 kg (1,340 lb) and the impact was at the relative speed of 6 kilometres/sec!   This changed the orbit of Dimorphos around Didymos from 11 hours and 55 minutes to 11 hours and 23 seconds.   Previous calculations suggested that the maximum change would be only a few tens of minutes, so almost an hour is enormous!   It's suggested that the cloud of ejected debris added to the energy of the actual impact which indicates that Dimorphos is one of the 'flying rubble pile' type of asteroids, rather than a solid body.

A smaller probe, LICIA, flew with DART and was ejected before impact to image the event:

The rectangles are due to different processing of successive images.

John

PS If you don't believe me that the impact could do this, enter "DART Project" into Google, press return and watch your screen!

Edited October 14, 2022 by JohnD

[Escadrille Ecosse]

Love the 'space news'.

Quite remarkable achievement. Even just getting it to the asteroid let alone the seeing and analysing the outcome. 

[Sprint95m]

When I read the topic heading, my first thought was
you have acquired a larger garage

 

 

whoops,

Ian