Recent content by newtons_laws

The article says "That strength is measured to have been at least 15 microtesla (mT), which is comparable to Earth's field strength of 30 mT today." mT is incorrect; the internationally recognised prefix 'm' stands for for milli (one thousandth), the correct way of expressing a microtesla is μT...

The article says "The agency also plans to do more in the future to guard against space debris issues in orbit." Well of course one thing the Chinese could do in future to guard against space debris is to conduct no more anti-satellite tests like the one they did in 2007 that created more than...

Is it definite that SLS will be used for the launch of Dragonfly, could the Falcon Heavy be a suitable alternative? Wikipedia gives the Falcon Heavy maximum payload capacity to Mars as 16.8 t and to Pluto as 3.5 t, so the max payload to Titan will be somewhere between those values.

According to this site https://dragonfly.jhuapl.edu/Why-Titan/ the surface atmosphere of Titan (which incidentally is 94% Nitrogen) is approx 4 times the density of Earth's, and the surface gravity is 1/7 that of Earth's. So taking the two factors together means that it's a lot easier to have a...

There was little doubt that given the time and location of the debris that crashed through the Florida resident's home it was (as NASA has now confirmed) part of the jettisoned battery pallet. As a humorous aside, looking at the photo of the inconel stanchion that survived re-entry, why does...

A successful 3rd test of starship, achieving most if not quite all of its intended goals. (Super Heavy landing burn engines failed to ignite and Starship appears to have broken up on re-entry). As regards the re-entry the on board video from around 45 minutes after lift off appears to show a...

Whilst the SLS may have some use in pre-positioning equipment on the surface of Mars prior to a crewed landing (and Starship even more so) then if NASA are serious about taking humans to Mars then in order to reduce the journey times and consequent potentially harmful radiation exposure and zero...

You have a good point there, but of course NASA has spent $Billions on developing the SLS and Orion systems, so if they aren't used in the Artemis missions then politically they risk becoming a white elephant.

The article says "Just hours before touchdown, the mission team discovered that Odysseus' laser rangefinders, which were supposed to give the craft its altitude and horizontal-velocity readouts during the descent, weren't functioning. So, they devised a workaround, pressing into service an...

The article says China aims to launch its Mars sample-return mission in the 2028-2030 timeframe. If they stick to that timeframe presumably it will be a close race with NASA's Sample Return Mission to see who returns a sample first? ;)

It's good that ESA has plans for continued involvement in a space station after the end of the ISS.

Although the Space.com article makes no mention of it, in order to split water into oxygen and hydrogen you of course need an input of energy, since when hydrogen and oxygen combine to form water the reaction is exothermic (i.e energy is released), so by conservation of energy you have to put...

Quote from article: "Fresh analysis of the bits of our moon, brought home by Apollo 17 astronauts, has suggested our moon is 40 million years older than we previously thought. That suggests the moon is 4.46 billion years old, rather than 4.52 billion years old as previously estimated." Those...

The idea of using aerobraking in the atmosphere of a moon of the outer planets is an ingenious way of achieving orbit around the planet without having to have massive amounts of fuel/propellants on board to achieve the required braking. Good idea, hope this proposal comes to fruition.

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