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World biggest telescope in the making

Engineers are now gearing up to cast the first component of what is planned be the world’s largest telescope. When completed, its seven 8.4-metre mirrors will more than quadruple the power of today’s best observatories.

The design makes the telescope’s vision keener than it would be if all seven mirrors remained separate. It will have 10 times the resolving power of the Hubble Space Telescope.

Construction of the mirror’s mould has just been completed, and the oven is now undergoing a pre-firing before technicians carefully load it with 18,000 kilograms of borosilicate glass made from sand gathered on Florida’s Gulf coast.

The glass will be heated for about a week, starting around 18 July. When it reaches 1200°C, the glass will flow like honey into the intricate mould as the 90-tonne apparatus slowly spins. Then it will gradually cool down for about 12 weeks, spinning all the while.

The telescope, planned to be built in northern Chile, is expected to take a decade to complete if it receives the necessary funding. Today, the largest telescopes are the Keck Telescopes in Hawaii. Their 10-meter (32.8 feet) mirrors can gather even the extremely faint light of distant galaxies,

posted by: kyawoo at 20:25 | link | comments (1) |
astronomy

Worst case scenario for space shuttle

As Space Shuttle Discovery is scheduled to blast off between July13 and July 31, NASA officials have drawn up a list of daring maneuvers they could use to help bring astronauts home on a damaged vehicle.

The most dramatic scenarios would require NASA to ignore longstanding flight rules, such as guidelines on when to start re-entry. The new procedures could be used if the shuttle’s heat shield suffered damage, as Columbia’s did. The steps are designed to reduce temperatures on the heat shield:

In the most extreme case, NASA could raise the shuttle’s nose 10 degrees above normal as it hurtles toward the Earth. The maneuver has never been attempted.

While the shuttle is in orbit, the damaged part could be pointed away from the sun and toward the chill of outer space.

An astronaut could throw unneeded items, such as extra spacesuits, overboard or leave them on the International Space Station . Less weight means less heating.

It’s unlikely the options that NASA has devised will be used, says LeRoy Cain, who led the planning. But they could cut the temperatures the heat shield would have to withstand by several hundred degrees. That’s probably enough to make a difference in some cases, he says.

posted by: kyawoo at 21:25 | link | comments |
space shuttle

Juno to Jupiter

NASA is planning to send another space probe to Jupiter. The mission, named Juno, will be the first to perform an in-depth examination of the giant planet. Juno will be the first solar-powered mission to Jupiter. Its seven science instruments are designed to unlock secrets of solar system formation.

The spacecraft will enter polar orbit around Jupiter to investigate the giant planet for one year. As it orbits from pole to pole on a unique path designed to avoid most of Jupiter’s harsh radiation, Jupiter will rotate beneath, allowing the science instruments to produce full-planet maps of gravity, magnetic fields and atmospheric water content as well as studying Jupiter’s auroral particles and fields.

Launch of the $700 million mission will occur no later than June 30, 2010.

posted by: kyawoo at 20:30 | link | comments |
unmanned missions, jupiter

Phoenix to fly to Mars in 2007

NASA has given the green light to launch Phoenix spacecraft in 2007, its next mission to land on the surface of Mars. The lander will touch down in Mars’ northern polar region to explore its climate and geology and to look for signs of life, past or present. The mission may eventually lead to discoveries relating to life on our neighbouring planet. Arriving at Mars in May 2008, Phoenix will be stationary on Mars, in contrast to Nasa’s roving robots Spirit and Opportunity.

The mission is so-named because it carries with it the legacies of two earlier, failed, attempts to explore Mars. The lander was built for the Mars Surveyor mission originally planned for 2001, but mothballed by Nasa’s administration in 2000. And many scientific instruments for Phoenix were built or designed for Mars Polar Lander which was lost as it entered the Martian atmosphere in 1999.

posted by: kyawoo at 00:48 | link | comments |
unmanned missions, mars

$250,000 prize for extracting oxygen from moondust

NASA has offered a $250,000 prize to any scientist who discovers a way of extracting breathable oxygen from moondust. The competition is the latest in NASA’s "Centennial Challenges" series, which aims to stimulate the development of technologies useful to space exploration.

To claim the MoonROx prize, scientists must develop and demonstrate hardware capable of extracting at least five kilograms of breathable oxygen from a simulated lunar soil made from volcanic ash in an eight-hour period. MoonROx stands for Moon Regolith Oxygen — regolith being the loose layer of rocks and debris covering the surface of a planet or moon.

Entrants have until June 1 2008 to collect the prize fund.

posted by: kyawoo at 02:51 | link | comments |
moon