NASA Unveils the Orion Spacecraft

NASA has plans for the space exploration, despite the fact that the Shuttle program is over.  NASA's new spacecraft, the Orion, has just been unveiled during the 50th anniversary celebration of the Kennedy Space Center. Orion, in conjunction with the private industry SpaceX Dragon spacecraft, will ensure that NASA has its hands in space exploration for years to come.

The Orion photo above shows the different parts of the spacecraft. On top, a launch abort system is in place if the spacecraft needs to quickly separate from the rocket in case of emergency. The crew module is where the crew hangs out, and the service module has support equipment. It bears a striking resemblance to the old Apollo spacecraft that we used to get to the moon. This reflects NASA's new mission of single purpose, focused spacecraft, as opposed to the one-use-for-everything Space Shuttle.

According to SpaceFlightNow the plans are for a test flights in 2014 in 2017, followed by a flight with a crew of up to four astronauts in 2021. 

#ScienceLooksGood: Carl Sagan is the Man

My good friend Monika Brooks alerted me to this wonderful PBS post that challenges scientists to explain concepts to a group of 11 year olds. The topic, as shown in the video below, is "What Is a Flame?"

The contest is appropriately named after one of my heroes - Carl Sagan. He was an astronomer with an uncanny ability to explain complex terms in a normal way. 

Hey Carl!

This was best exemplified in his book and TV series Cosmos, which defined space exploration for many folks in the 80s. I didn't discover Cosmos until 2002, and I immediately fell in love with it.  Check out the Cosmos intro below:

#ScienceLooksGood: Bringing Light to the Dark Universe

The Kennedy Space Center (KSC) is celebrating its 50th anniversary this week. It previously served as the staging area for the Space Shuttle program.  This has helped us to bring light to previously unknown things about the universe, and has enabled us to launch everything from satellites to parts of the International Space Station (ISS) to the Hubble Telescope.

The European Space Agency (ESA) is looking to bring light to the darkness by clearing a mission to  launch the Euclid telescope in 2020. All of the things that we can see with our weak human eyes - planets, stars, people, etc - make up about 4% of the actual universe. The rest of the universe is known as "dark matter" - a substance that only a power telescope can begin to detect.

The telescope will capture images for six years - check out the main mission site here.

Mars: Five Minutes of Funk (Almost)

NASA previously launched the Curiosity Rover to help further explore the terrain of Mars. It's scheduled to land on August 5th and will begin "a two-year study of whether the landing vicinity ever offered an environment favorable for microbial life."

One of the most important parts is the actual landing sequence when Curiosity will approach from space, enter the Martian atmosphere, descend toward the desired target, and land successfully. This is known as "Seven Minutes of Terror", and is the most painful time for the engineers involved as well as space geeks such as myself.  There are plenty of redundant systems on any spacecraft in case there is an electronic failure, but just about everything has to go correct. In honor of "Seven Minutes of Terror", I present "Five Minutes of Funk"

This post on Planetary.org gives a nice summary on the different phases of this sequence, known as EDL (Entry, Descent, Landing). Discovery also has a nice profile, and mentions the following:

Now think about this: the rover weighs — get this — 890 kilograms, nearly a ton. The Mars air is thick enough that engineers have to deal with it, but too thin to bring Curiosity all the way to the surface safely. So they need a heat shield to slow it initially, a parachute to brake even more, and then rocket motors to drop it the rest of the way.

 Check out the video below for more details! 

#ScienceLooksGood - Space Theme for Your Computer

Lifehacker has an amazing space desktop theme available for Windows, MaC, and Linux.  Check out their post here. It includes the above wallpaper plus customized skins and icons to make your desktop look like Spaaaaace! The following are included for Windows:

The Goodnight Tale wallpaper from DeviantArt
The Rainmeter system management and configuration utility for Windows
The Encoded skin for Rainmeter to get the date and weather
The Enigma suite for Rainmeter for the system stats on the right side of the screen
The Google bar for Rainmeter for the search bar in the upper right
StarDock's ObjectDock to replace the Windows taskbar
The Token icon set for the dock at the bottom

Check it out at Lifehacker!