India has successfully put a satellite into orbit around Mars, becoming the fourth country to do so.
The Mangalyaan robotic probe, one of the cheapest interplanetary missions ever, will soon begin work studying the Red Planet’s atmosphere.
A 24-minute engine burn slowed the probe down enough to allow it to be captured by Mars’ gravity.
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi said the country had achieved the “near impossible”.
Speaking at the mission control centre in the southern city of Bangalore he said: “The odds were stacked against us. Of 51 missions attempted in world only 21 have succeeded. We have prevailed.”
Only the US, Europe and Russia have previously sent missions to Mars, but India is the first country to succeed on its first attempt.
The latest US satellite, Maven, arrived at Mars on Monday.
US space agency Nasa congratulated its Indian counterpart, the Indian Space and Research Organization (Isro), on Wednesday’s success.
-BBC
Tagged with
India,
India Mars mission,
Isro,
Mangalyaan,
Mars,
Narendra Modi,
NASA,
World News
Nasa's next Martian rover will attempt to make oxygen on the surface of the red planet when it lands there in 2021. The rover will carry seven scientific projects, aimed at paving the way for future manned missions, seeking evidence of life and storing samples to be brought back in the future.
Among them is a device for turning the CO2 that dominates the thin Martian air into oxygen, this could support human life or make rocket fuel for return missions.
The rover will also carry two cameras and an experimental weather station among its 88lb (40kg) of instruments.
Tagged with
2021,
Mars,
Martian rover,
NASA,
Oxygen,
red planet,
Science,
Technology
NASA, which is scheduled to plummet a flying saucer-like test vehicle towards Hawaii in a bid to assist future human expeditions to Mars, has unveiled a "faster than light," Star Trek-like spaceship that could make interstellar travel a reality.
The space agency's "warp ship" was cleverly crafted by NASA engineer and physicist Harold White, and "Star Trek" graphic artist Mark Rademaker. Images of the prototype design were revealed at a SpaceVision 2013 conference, and have been posted on Rademaker's Flickr page and Facebook account. Titled as "NASA's New Design for a Warp Drive Ship," it's no surprise that the images almost immediately went viral.
"The Flickr views went from 119 yesterday to 2 million today," Rademaker told NBC News.
Rademaker based his creation off the concept known as Alcubierre warp drive, an idea first put forth by Mexican physicist Miguel Alcubierre, which suggests that faster-than-light travel might be achieved by manipulating spacetime both in front of and behind a spacecraft.
What was supposed to be a contribution to the Star Trek Ships of the Line 2014 calendar has now been altered to a ring-ship design that could provide means for manned missions to Mars or other worlds.
"I could have walked away, but I wanted this to be really good, so I put in an extra three months of spare time, with the new images as the result," Rademaker said.
The hypothetical design, dubbed IXS Enterprise, includes a sleek ship nestled at the center of two enormous rings, which create the warp bubble. According to White, iO9 reports, space vehicles equipped with warp drives could attain such remarkable speeds by making the empty space behind a starship expand rapidly, pushing the craft in a forward direction - passengers would perceive it as movement despite the complete lack of acceleration.
White speculates that the innovative concept could take a spacecraft to the star Alpha Centauri in a mere two weeks - even though the system is 4.3 light-years away.
These ambitions have yet to be considered realistic, as scientists still haven't found a way to warp spacetime. However, according to The Space Reporter, NASA officials at Johnson Space Center said last year that White and his team could soon create a warp-drive interferometer capable of finding tiny warp bubbles in spacetime.
Tagged with
Faster than light,
light,
NASA,
NASA Spaceship,
Science,
Space,
Spaceship
NASA will test out new space exploration technology – including some used for asteroid landings – by having its teams live on the ocean floor off Florida coast for extended periods of time in two upcoming summer missions.
The so-called ‘aquanauts’ will only get down to about 19 meters below, but that is enough to perform the crucial task of assessing new gear that will help the agency’s astronauts live in orbit more comfortably and even assist future asteroid landings and explorations.
The missions will include extra-vehicular activities (EVAs), simulated spacewalks and other activities – all performed underwater, about 10km off the coast of Key Largo, Florida.
Aside from the primary objectives, the assignments will also test for health and behavioral issues, as well as evaluate the usefulness of ‘telementoring’, in which the astronaut is given instructions by voice or video.
The Extreme Environment Mission Operations program (NEEMO) has taken charge of organizing the upcoming missions. Its project Manager at the Johnson Space Center in Houston, Bill Todd, has admitted to journalists in a statement that, “It is both challenging and exciting for our astronaut crews to participate in these undersea missions in preparation for spaceflight.”
Todd explained that only the closest-matching conditions that accurately replicate the conditions astronauts are to face in space are good enough for the task, as “the extreme environment of life undersea is as close to being in space as possible.”
The EVAs, according to NASA officials commenting on the NEEMO 18 and NEEMO 19 missions, will“focus on evaluating man-machine work systems and EVA tools and techniques for exploration tasks in varying levels of gravity ranging from that of asteroids to the gravity of Martian moons and Mars itself.”
The NASA missions will actually be an international effort comprising Japanese, European and Canadian astronauts from their respective space agencies – all professionals and occupying key positions in their scientific fields.
Tagged with
Health,
NASA,
Science,
Space,
USA
.gif){kind=small}
.gif){kind=small}
