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OUTSIDE THIS WORLD | What's Up In Space – The greatest news coming from the world's space
Scott Sutherland
Meteorologist / Scientific Editor
On Wednesday, October 31, 2018 at 19:48 – Canadian astronaut David Saint Jacques now seems to be heading into space much earlier than planned, after the Russian authorities completed their investigation of the October 11 Soyuz accident. In addition, the Kepler Space Telescope officially pbades the torch of exoplanet hunting and NASA launches a cool new way to communicate the adventures of the Mars InSight lander. That's what's new in the space!
READY FOR LAUNCH
On Wednesday, according to the Russian news agency TASS, an official of the Russian space company Roscosmos said that the Soyuz rocket accident had been caused by a faulty sensor .
The Soyuz An MS-10 spacecraft carrying the crew of US astronaut Nick Hague and Russian cosmonaut Alexey Ovchinin takes off from the launch pad of the Baikonur Cosmodrome, Kazakhstan, on October 11, 2018 Source: REUTERS / Shamil Zhumatov / File Photo
This sensor, said Roscosmos Executive Director of Crew Programs, Sergey Krikalev, was responsible for following the separation of the 1st and 2nd stages of the rocket. His failure resulted in the separation of one of the solid 1st floor boosters. at the wrong time. The solid propellant then struck the second-stage fuel tank, causing a failure that forced the rocket safety systems to eject the crew module.
The full official results of the Roscosmos report are to be published on Thursday.
According to the report. Ars Technica:
The Russians quickly investigated this failure, which occurred on October 11, and concluded it within three weeks. They were pushed to do so because the Soyuz probe is currently the only way that NASA, Russia and their international partners have to bring people to the station.
As noted earlier this month, the urgency of this investigation is urgent.
First, American astronaut Nick Hague and Russian cosmonaut Alexey Ovchinin were forced to interrupt their space voyage on October 11, with only three crew members. the members were left on the station. Although this, in itself, does not pose a problem, the station can be managed effectively by a crew of three people, these three "spacelings" – Serena Aunon, Chancellor of NASA, Alexander Gerst of ESA and Sergey Prokopyev of Roscosmos – have been officially back on Earth scheduled for December 13th.
Although no one has replaced them, this landing was suspended indefinitely during the investigation.
The Soyuz capsule that they will eventually use to return to Earth, however, its "shelf life" is limited.
According to NASA, every Soyuz spacecraft that launches into space is logged for 200 days. Once this time has elapsed, its use is no longer considered safe. The registration of the current Soyuz at the station, the Soyuz MS-09, will expire on December 25. It is therefore particularly interesting to return Aunon-Chancellor, Gerst and Prokopyev to Earth before or on that date.
David Saint-Jacques. Source: Canadian Space Agency
The original flight of Canadian astronaut David Saint Jacques, NASA astronaut Anne C. McClain and Roscosmos cosmonaut Oleg Kononenko was scheduled to be launched on the 20th. December.
The investigation being completed, the launch of December 20 was postponed until December 3 at the earliest. Meanwhile, the return of Aunon-Chancellor, Gerst and Prokopyev from space will be postponed to December 20 in order to give the new crew time to handle the space station's operations without any problem.
ABOUT KEPLER
Thousands of extraterrestrial planets in the galaxy, NASA's Kepler Space Telescope finally ran out of fuel during its nine-year mission.
NASA's Kepler Space Telescope follows behind the Earth, in its orbit around the Sun, while searching for tail "transits" indicating the presence of planets around other stars. Source: NASA
During the first four years of Kepler's mission as he stared at the Milky Way's local arm, the telescope leaned on so-called "reaction wheels" to maintain his mirror. perfectly stable. This stability was necessary because Kepler focused on a specific set of 150,000 stars to monitor the transits – proof that the planets traversed the faces of these stars – because the telescope would need to maintain the best possible resolution.
The use of the wheels being worn out, the Kepler team developed a new plan to maintain Kepler's balance using sunlight. With the hexagonal shape of the telescope, NASA discovered that it could simply tilt Kepler so that sunlight fell on the facets of the telescope shell at all times, and that the pressure exerted by the photons striking the hull kept the stable telescope. . The only problem was that the telescope had to change position as it circled the Sun, which required it to use fuel to reorient itself.
The "K2" mission was maintained for five years before Kepler's fuel tanks were completely emptied. [19659000] According to NASA:
Before removing the space shuttle, scientists pushed Kepler to its full potential, successfully completing multiple observation campaigns and downloading valuable scientific data, even after the first low warnings fuel consumption. The latest data, from Campaign 19, will complement NASA's latest planetary hunter, Transiting Exoplanet Survey, launched in April. TESS builds on Kepler's founding with new data sets to search for planets gravitating around 200,000 of the world's brightest and closest stars, worlds that can be explored later by missions like the telescope NASA's James Webb Space. 19659012] "We know that the spacecraft retreat is not the end of Kepler's discoveries," NASA's Jessie Dotson, Kepler's project scientist, told NASA. "I am excited about the various discoveries of our data and how future missions will build on Kepler's results."
NEW PODCAST FOR INSIGHT
On November 26, NASA's new lander on the Mars, InSight, is expected to have the red planet lying on the surface of the red planet.
As this mission gets closer and closer to its destination, NASA is launching a new way to communicate insight's progress: a podcast.
"On a Mission" is a new series of eight-episode podcasts from NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, which follows the InSight mission. The robotic explorer goes to Mars to land on November 26th. Credits: NASA / JPL-CaltechAccording to NASA:
Narrated by science facilitator and journalist Leslie Mullen and members of the InSight team, each episode mixes humor and captivating narrative to dig the Lander's trip and people who have spent years working there. New episodes, lasting 20 to 30 minutes, will be published weekly as InSight approaches. The last episode will cover what will happen when the team tries to pose InSight on the red planet.
The first two episodes of the "On a Mission" podcast are available on the NASA website, on SoundCloud, and on iTunes. [19659009] Sources: Ars Technica | TASS | NASA | NASA | With files from The Weather Network
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