SPACE: WHERE ARE WE GOING? : ORION SPACECRAFT PICTURE

Sunday, January 29, 2012

THE ORION SPACE VEHICLE

01/24/2012 12:00 AM EST

The Multi-Purpose Crew Vehicle (MPCV), or Orion, being assembled and tested at Lockheed Martin's Vertical Testing Facility in Colorado. Drawing from more than 50 years of spaceflight research and development, Orion is designed to meet the evolving needs of our nation's space program for decades to come. As the flagship of our nation's next-generation space fleet, Orion will push the envelope of human spaceflight far beyond low Earth orbit. Orion may resemble its Apollo-era predecessors, but its technology and capability are light years apart. Orion features dozens of technology advancements and innovations that have been incorporated into the spacecraft's subsystem and component design. A test version of the Orion spacecraft makes a stop at the Science Museum Oklahoma in Oklahoma City today, giving residents the chance to see a full scale test version of the vehicle that will take humans into deep space. Image Credit: Lockheed Martin

The above excerpt and picture are from the NASA website:

Wednesday, January 18, 2012

ORION SPACECRAFT TO GO ON TOUR

The above picture and following excerpt is from the NASA website:

NASA'S ORION SPACECRAFT TO LAND IN OKLAHOMA, TEXAS AND ALABAMA

W”ASHINGTON -- A test version of NASA's Orion spacecraft soon will make
a cross-country journey, giving residents in three states the chance
to see a full scale test version of the vehicle that will take humans
into deep space.

The crew module will make stops during a trip from the White Sands
Missile Range in New Mexico to the Kennedy Space Center in Florida.
The planned stops include Jan. 23-25 at Science Museum Oklahoma in
Oklahoma City; Jan. 27-29 at Victory Park and the American Airlines
Center in Dallas; and, Jan. 31-Feb. 2 at the U.S. Space and Rocket
Center in Huntsville, Ala. Engineers, program officials, astronauts
and NASA spokespeople will be available to speak with the media and
the public.

The full-scale test vehicle was used by ground crews in advance of the
launch abort system flight test that took place in New Mexico in
2010.

Media interested in seeing the spacecraft or scheduling interviews
should contact Dan Huot at daniel.g.huot@nasa.gov or by calling the
newsroom at NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston at 281-483-5111.

Orion will serve as the vehicle that takes astronauts beyond low-Earth
orbit. The first orbital flight test is scheduled for 2014.”

STAR FLASH

What caused this outburst of V838 Mon? For reasons unknown, star V838 Mon's outer surface suddenly greatly expanded with the result that it became the brightest star in the entire Milky Way Galaxy in January 2002. Then, just as suddenly, it faded. A stellar flash like this had never been seen before -- supernovas and novas expel matter out into space. Although the V838 Mon flash appears to expel material into space, what is seen in the above image from the Hubble Space Telescope is actually an outwardly moving light echo of the bright flash. In a light echo, light from the flash is reflected by successively more distant rings in the complex array of ambient interstellar dust that already surrounded the star. V838 Mon lies about 20,000 light years away toward the constellation of the unicorn (Monoceros), while the light echo above spans about six light years in diameter. Image Credit: NASA, ESA

THE SPIDERWEB GALAXY

Looking like a spider's web swirled into a spiral, Galaxy IC 342 presents its delicate pattern of dust in this image from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope. Seen in infrared light, faint starlight gives way to the glowing bright patterns of dust found throughout the galaxy's disk. At a distance of about 10 million light-years, IC 342 is relatively close by galactic standards, however our vantage point places it directly behind the disk of our own Milky Way. The intervening dust makes it difficult to see in visible light, but infrared light penetrates this veil easily. IC 342 belongs to the same group as its even more obscured galactic neighbor, Maffei 2. IC 342 is nearly face-on to our view, giving a clear, top-down view of the structure of its disk. It has a low surface brightness compared to other spirals, indicating a lower density of stars (seen here as a blue haze). Its dust structures show up much more vividly (red). Blue dots are stars closer to us, in our own Milky Way. New stars are forming in the disk at a healthy rate. The very center glows especially brightly in the infrared, highlighting an enormous burst of star formation occurring in this tiny region. To either side of the center, a small bar of dust and gas is helping to fuel this central star formation. Data from Spitzer's infrared array camera are shown in blue (3.6 microns), green (4.5 microns) and red (5.8 and 8.0 microns). Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

JUMPING TO WARP SPEED

This cockpit view of a hypothetical spacecraft traveling at eight-tenths the speed of light shows the visual distortions that would be experienced at such high speeds. The star field is actually being wrapped toward the front of the craft in addition to being significantly blue-shifted. NASA Glenn leads the Breakthrough Propulsion Physics Project, NASA's primary effort to produce near-term, credible, and measurable progress toward the technology breakthroughs needed to revolutionize space travel and enable interstellar voyages. NASA Lewis (now Glenn) Research Center, Cleveland, Ohio.

OBSERVATION FROM THE SPACE STATION