OrbitalHub

Wikipedia dixit:

“The Aerojet Rocketdyne RS-25, otherwise known as the Space Shuttle main engine (SSME), is a liquid-fuel cryogenic rocket engine that was used on NASA’s Space Shuttle and is planned to be used on its successor, the Space Launch System.

Designed and manufactured in the United States by Rocketdyne (later known as Pratt & Whitney Rocketdyne and Aerojet Rocketdyne), the RS-25 burns cryogenic liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen propellants, with each engine producing 1,859 kN (418,000 lbf) of thrust at liftoff. Although the RS-25 can trace its heritage back to the 1960s, concerted development of the engine began in the 1970s, with the first flight, STS-1, occurring on April 12, 1981. The RS-25 has undergone several upgrades over its operational history to improve the engine’s reliability, safety, and maintenance load. Subsequently, the RS-25D is the most efficient liquid fuel rocket engine currently in use.

The engine produces a specific impulse (Isp) of 452 seconds (4.43 km/s) in a vacuum, or 366 seconds (3.59 km/s) at sea level, has a mass of approximately 3.5 tonnes (7,700 pounds), and is capable of throttling between 67% and 109% of its rated power level in one-percent increments. The RS-25 operates at temperatures ranging from −253 °C (−423 °F) to 3300 °C (6000 °F).

The Space Shuttle used a cluster of three RS-25 engines mounted in the stern structure of the orbiter, with fuel being drawn from the external tank. The engines were used for propulsion during the entirety of the spacecraft’s ascent, with additional thrust being provided by two solid rocket boosters and the orbiter’s two AJ-10 orbital maneuvering system engines. Following each flight, the RS-25 engines were removed from the orbiter, inspected, and refurbished before being reused on another mission.”

Video credit: NASA

ESA dixit:

“Since arriving at Mars in October 2016, the ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter has been aerobraking its way into a close orbit of the Red Planet by using the top of the atmosphere to create drag and slow down. It is almost in the right orbit to begin observations – only a few hundred kilometres to go! With aerobraking complete, additional manoeuvres will bring the craft into a near-circular two-hour orbit, about 400 km above the plane, by the end of April. The mission’s main goal is to take a detailed inventory of the atmosphere, sniffing out gases like methane, which may be an indicator of active geological or biological activity. The camera will help to identify surface features that may be related to gas emissions. The spacecraft will also look for water-ice hidden below the surface, which could influence the choice of landing sites for future exploration. It will also relay large volumes of science data from NASA’s rovers on the surface back to Earth and from the ESA–Roscosmos ExoMars rover, which is planned for launch in 2020.”

Video credit: ESA

Wikipedia dixit:

“Progress MS-08, identified by NASA as Progress 69 or 69P, is a Progress spacecraft used by Roscosmos to resupply the International Space Station (ISS). Progress MS-8 launched on 13 February 2018 from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan atop a Soyuz-2.1a rocket and docked on 15 February 2018 with the aft docking port of the Zvezda module. The Progress MS-8 spacecraft carries about 2746 kg of cargo and supplies to the International Space Station. The spacecraft delivered food, fuel and supplies, including 890 kg of propellant, 46 kg of oxygen and air, 420 kg of water.”

Video credit: Roscosmos

NASA dixit:

“The Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) is the next step in the search for planets outside of our solar system, including those that could support life. The mission will find exoplanets that periodically block part of the light from their host stars, events called transits. TESS will survey 200,000 of the brightest stars near the sun to search for transiting exoplanets. The mission is scheduled to launch in 2018.”

Music credit: “Prototype” and “Trial” both from Killer Tracks

Video credit: NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center

NASA dixit:

“Creating a major scientific visualization takes considerable time and expertise. A team of scientists and data visualizers work together to building an artful depiction of hard data – whether it be an animation of sea surface temperature, the paths of hurricanes, or life on Planet Earth. Get a closer look at how the “Living Planet” visualization was made from the perspective of its principle scientists, Gene Feldman and Compton Tucker and SVS data visualizer, Alex Kekesi. “

Video credit: NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center/LK Ward

NASA dixit:

“Explorer 1 showed that the United States was capable of not only launching a satellite but also carrying out scientific research in space. For four months after launch, instruments aboard Explorer 1 measured and sent back data on temperature, micrometeorites and cosmic rays, or high-energy radiation. University of Iowa physicist James Van Allen’s instrument for measuring cosmic rays, a Geiger counter, helped make the first major scientific find of the Space Age: a belt of radiation around Earth that would later be named in Van Allen’s honor.

“Explorer 1 was a beginning. It was the beginning of going beyond our sphere of life out into space,” said Thomas Zurbuchen, NASA associate administrator for science. “At first, quite frankly, space looked like a pretty boring place. But the instrument that Van Allen and his team built showed that space is beautiful.”

On the heels of Explorer 1’s success, the nation entered a new era of discovery on Earth and beyond that continues to this day.

In 1960, NASA launched the world’s first weather satellite, the Television and Infrared Observation Satellite (TIROS). The United States now has an extensive fleet of weather satellites operated by the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) that monitors storms and other natural disasters and provides critical data that helps save lives and protect critical infrastructure.

In 1972, NASA designed and launched Earth Resources Technology Satellite 1, later renamed Landsat 1, as the first spacecraft designed to monitor the planet’s land masses. Subsequent Landsat satellites, now operated by the U.S. Geological Survey, have produced over four decades of continuous data about our changing planet that have been applied to such uses as crop health monitoring, freshwater and forest management and infectious disease tracking.

NASA has a long history of using the vantage point of space to advance our understanding of our complex home planet. The Nimbus-1 satellite launched in 1964 was the first of seven such spacecraft that revolutionized Earth science. Nimbus satellites measured snow cover at the North and South poles, estimated the size of volcanic eruptions and the distribution of phytoplankton in the oceans and confirmed the existence of the annual ozone hole in Antarctica. NASA’s current fleet of more than a dozen Earth-observing missions continues to provide new insights about Earth’s interconnected systems.

Looking beyond Earth’s horizon, in 1962 NASA launched Mariner 2, the first satellite to encounter another planet as the spacecraft flew within 21,000 miles of Venus and sent back information on not only the Venusian atmosphere but also the solar wind. The space agency has since dispatched satellites to explore every planet in the solar system, in addition to the Sun and a number of moons, comets and asteroids.

NASA has also long set its gaze out into the cosmos. From 1966 to 1972, the Orbiting Astronomical Observatory series of satellites provided the first high-quality ultraviolet observations of stars at the edge of the Milky Way. The space agency has continued its groundbreaking research into the mysteries of the universe with the 2004 launch of the Swift Gamma-ray Burst Explorer, which has imaged the most luminous known galaxies in addition to detecting millions of black holes and dwarf stars.

America’s 60 years of space science has yielded profound insights and practical benefits for the nation and the world. And NASA continues to blaze new trails of discovery.”

Video credit: NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center/LK Ward