Dec 06
ynaNASA, News Curiosity, InSight, Mars Curiosity, MArs exploration, Mars rover, Mars Science Laboratory, MAVEN, NASA, NASA MAVEN, nasa model, NASA spacecraft model, spacecraft models
Following the success of the landing of Curiosity spacecraft on Mars, NASA announces an extensive multi-year Mars program highlighted by a new Mars rover to be launched on 2020.
The new rover will follow the design of the Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) architecture, which successfully transported Curiosity to Martian surface. By basing the new rover’s design on the MSL, the cost and risk can be maintained as low as possible. The design of the new rover will be essential the same as Curiosity but it will carry a different set of science instruments. The specific payload and science instruments for the 2020 rover mission will be openly competed.
“The challenge to restructure the Mars Exploration Program has turned from the seven minutes of terror for the Curiosity landing to the start of seven years of innovation,” NASA’s associate administrator for science, and astronaut John Grunsfeld said. “This mission concept fits within the current and projected Mars exploration budget, builds on the exciting discoveries of Curiosity, and takes advantage of a favorable launch opportunity.”
The missions included in the Mars program are the 2013 launch of the MAVEN that will study the upper Martian atmosphere, the Interior Exploration using Seismic Investigations, Geodesy and Heat Transport (InSight) mission, which will study the deep interior of Mars; and participation in ESA’s 2016 and 2018 ExoMars missions, including providing “Electra” telecommunication radios to ESA’s 2016 mission and a critical element of the premier astrobiology instrument on the 2018 ExoMars rover.
Fuel your fascination with space exploration with spacecraft models from Warplanes. Warplanes also have a wide range of handcrafted model ships and scale model helicopters that you can choose from.
News Source: www.nasa.gov
Oct 23
ynaNASA, News Caltech, Curiosity, Mars Curiosity, MArs exploration, Mars rover, Mars spacecraft, NASA, nasa models, NASA spacecraft, spacecraft model
The Mars Rover ingest its first sample of Mars soil using the Chemistry and Mineralogy instrument of the spacecraft. It will analyze the solid sample to determine the minerals it contains.
“We are crossing a significant threshold for this mission by using CheMin on its first sample,” said Curiosity’s project scientist, John Grotzinger of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena. “This instrument gives us a more definitive mineral-identifying method than ever before used on Mars: X-ray diffraction. Confidently identifying minerals is important because minerals record the environmental conditions under which they form.”
The martian soil is about as much as a baby aspirin. Curiosity’s robotic arm scooped it out of a windblown patch of dusty sand called “Rocknest,” then delivered it to rover’s inlet funnel on October 17th. It is the third scoop of Martian soil by Curiosity. The first scoop was used for cleaning, to remove any residue carried from Earth. The second scoop was discarded because of small bits of light toned material that scientist suspected to be debris from the spacecraft, but later assessed to be native Martian material.
“We plan to learn more both about the spacecraft material and about the smaller, bright particles,” said Curiosity Project Manager Richard Cook of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena. “We will finish determining whether the spacecraft material warrants concern during future operations. The native Mars particles become fodder for the mission’s scientific studies.”
Curiosity has a two-year mission on Mars. It will use its 10 instruments to determine whether the planet has ever offered suitable conditions to support micro-biological life.
Fuel you love for space exploration with spacecraft models from Warplanes. Choose your favorite NASA models and display it at your home.
News source: www.azorobotics.com
Aug 29
ynaNASA, News Curiosity, Curiosity rover, Curiosity spacecraft, Mars Curiosity, MArs exploration, Mars rover, NASA Curiosity, nasa models, NASA space craft, rover spacecraft
Curiosity, the Mars rover spacraft, has been on the red planet for almost a month. It has been sending back pictures enthralling pictures of the surface of Mars and beaming back to Earth Will.I.Am’s new single. The rover spacecraft had also uploaded a new “surface” software fit and replaced the code it used for its 354 million miles journey and complicated landing on Mars. Now, it is time to actually explore.
NASA revealed that Curiosity’s first destination is an area around its Gale Crater landing site, where three kinds of terrain fused together in such an interesting way. It was three different rock formation that scientist believe can help them understand the history of the crater and of Mars as a whole. The site is named Glenelg, after a rock formation in northern Canada. The travel to Glenelg, which is about 1,600 feet the landing site, will take about a month or more depending on how many stops the spacecraft takes.
“Probably we’ll do a month worth of science there, maybe a little bit more,” lead mission scientist John Grotzinger told reporters during a conference call Friday. “Sometime toward the end of the calendar year, roughly, I would guess then we would turn our sights toward the trek to Mount Sharp.”
Mount Sharp is the rover’s primary mission. It is a three-mile high mound with layers of exposed rock that possibly has the building blocks of Mar’s microbial life.
Fuel your love for space exploration with spacecraft models from Warplanes. Choose from our wide range of NASA models and other spacecraft.
News source: www.washingtonpost.com
Aug 17
ynaNASA, News Apollo 17, Curiosity, LRO spacecraft, Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, lunar spacecraft, Mars, Mars Curiosity, NASA Curiosity, NASA LRO, NASA spacecraft, spacecraft model
Curiosity on Mars is not the only NASA spacecraft discovering something new in the outer space.
The Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter detected helium from the moon’s tenuous atmosphere. The spacecraft sniffed out the helium from above with an onboard spectrometer. This discovery confirmed the observations made four decades ago by Lunar Atmosphere Composition Experiment (LACE) deployed by the Apollo 17 when they walked on the moon in 1972.
“The question now becomes, does the helium originate from inside the moon — for example, due to radioactive decay in rocks — or from an exterior source, such as the solar wind?” Alan Stern of the Southwest Research Institute in Boulder, Colo., said in a statement. Stern is principal investigator of LRO’s Lyman Alpha Mapping Project spectrometer, or LAMP.
More observations will help the scientists figure out where the helium is coming from.
“If we find the solar wind is responsible, that will teach us a lot about how the same process works in other airless bodies,” Stern added.
The data from the LACE observations in 1972 showed that helium increase as the night progressed, a result that could be explained by night cooling. Researchers said, LAMP can add to these findings by figuring out how helium abundances vary with latitude.
LRO is as big as a Mini Cooper and it carries seven instruments to observe the moon. It circles the moon in a polar orbit at about 31 miles from the moon’s surface. During the first year of its mission, LRO scouted the moon to help plan future lunar explorations for NASA, but after that the spacecraft’s mission became purely scientific, discovering new information about the moon. LRO was launched in 2009
Space exploration had never been more exciting! Get your NASA models and other spacecraft replica models from Warplanes.
News source: www.msnbc.msn.com
Aug 07
ynaNASA, News Curiosity, Curiosity rover, Mars, Mars Curiosity, MArs exploration, Mars rover, NASA, NASA Curiosity, NASA exploration, nasa models, space craft models, spacecraft models
Jubilant cheers filled erupted from NASA crews in Pasedena and from everyone watching the live stream on the Internet as Curiosity, Nasa’ Mars science rover landed on Martian surface.
On Monday, August 6, 2012, approximately at 1:32, Eastern Time, Curiosity touched down in an ancient crater on Mars to start its two year expedition. Its mission is to search for key ingredients for life that the Red Planet might have.
The car-sized spacecraft model survived a complicated descent with zero margin for error. It involved the Curiosity to be lowered at the end of 25-foot cables from a hovering rocket. The successful landing marked the end of the 154 mile journey that begun on November 26, 2011.
“There are many out in the community who say NASA has lost its way, that we don’t know how to explore — we’ve lost our moxie. I want you to look around tonight, at those folks with the blue shirts and think about what we’ve achieved.” John M. Grunsfeld, associate administrator for NASA’s science mission directorate, said during a post-landing news conference.
After the transmitting the signals of its successful landing, Curiosity followed it up with its first pictures from Mars:
Fuel your love for space exploration with spacecraft models from Warplanes. Choose from our wide range of NASA models and other spacecraft.
News source: darkroom.baltimoresun.com, www.nytimes.com
RSS
Following the success of the landing of Curiosity spacecraft on Mars, NASA announces an extensive multi-year Mars program highlighted by a new Mars rover to be launched on 2020.
