OrbitalHub

Taurus is a four-stage, inertially guided, all solid fuel, ground launched vehicle, designed and built by Orbital Sciences Corporation. In a typical mission, Taurus can inject a 1,350 kg payload in low Earth orbit (LEO).

Taurus is well suited for LEO missions to a wide range of altitudes. Different orbital profiles can be attained through launches from more than one launch site. An additional fifth stage can boost the performance of the launch vehicle, making possible high energy and geosynchronous transfer orbit (GTO) missions.

Read more about Taurus…

Greetings from Toronto! Welcome to the second edition of the Carnival of Space hosted by OrbitalHub.

Credits: Karen Wehrstein

For this edition of the carnival, Centauri Dreams sends Prospects for Red Dwarf ‘Earths’. Paul Gilster analyzes a new paper by Greg Laughlin and Ryan Montgomery that looks at whether Earth-class planets might be found in the habitable zone around red dwarfs. These stars make up over 70 percent of the galactic population, so such a result would mean vast numbers of potentially habitable planets.

At Astroblog, Ian Musgrave presents another chapter from Galileo’s The Starry Messenger. Ian has published a series of posts in honor of the International Year of Astronomy, and the 400th anniversary of Galileo peering through a telescope at the heavens.

The Lounge of the Lab Lemming warns us about a new speculative market in The habitable planet bubble. Read about how certain characteristics of the terrestrial planets determine the price of these planets. The post has an interesting conclusion: ‘Compared to this planetary overvaluation, the housing bubble is imperceptible.’

Ethan Siegel at Starts With A Bang! presents The Hunt for Planet X: New Worlds and the Fate of Pluto. This is a very detailed book about the Solar System, its history, and the neighborhood around our Sun. Thank Ethan for sharing this with us!

At Dynamics of Cats, Steinn Sigurdsson presents discoveries made by the Fermi Gamma-ray Telescope and the implications they have for astrophysics research.

We also have a post from Chandra’s blog. Check out the post for an update on the From Earth to the Universe project.

It seems that Big Bang Needs Your Help. Shortcomings with the Big Bang Theory have led to fixes like inflation and ‘dark energy.’ Other ideas include a cyclic Universe and even a changing speed of light. Read all about it at A Babe in the Universe.

At The Spacewriter’s Ramblings, discover what you can find in the skies if you look deep in A Space Oddity. Read an interesting analysis of an image released by the European Southern Observatory.

Credits: NASA

Philip Plait a.k.a. the Bad Astronomer presents a snapshot of a galactic doom. NGC 6240, which used to be two galaxies, is now in the process of becoming one. The message is clear… stay away from the colliding cores of two merging galaxies.

Paul Scott Anderson, from The Meridiani Journal, tells us that the Opportunity MER has caught its first glimpse of the Endeavour crater. Opportunity is now about twelve kilometers away from the crater. A 3-D image, captured by Opportunity and showing in great detail the small crater Resolution, is up at The Road To Endeavour.

Everybody was so excited about the launch of Space Shuttle Discovery STS-119, especially after many postponements of the mission. The S6 truss segment with the remaining solar arrays made it to the International Space Station. But this was not the highlight! Ian O’Neill from astroENGINE has all the details for you. A bat attached itself to the external tank of the Space Shuttle. The bat also got a name… Brian, and there is a foundation set up in its memory.

There are many speculations about the fate of this unfortunate little guy. My guess is that it got its tongue stuck on the external tank… triple bat dare! What a way to go.

Credits: NASA

Planned for launch in 2013, the James Webb Space Telescope is the next generation space telescope, the successor of Hubble. Nancy Atkinson, writer for Universe Today, has an Q&A with Dr. John Mather on JWST. Dr. Mather is co-recipient of the 2006 Nobel Prize in Physics for his work with the Cosmic Background Explorer (COBE).

Down to Earth now…

Bruce Cordell at 21st Century Waves presents Public Attitudes and Prospects for Global Temperature Control.

Brian Wang at Next Big Future gives an update on research done by General Fusion. The goal of the company is to build small fusion reactors that can produce around 100 megawatts of power. The company claims plants would cost around US$50 million, allowing them to generate electricity at about four cents per kilowatt-hour.

Music of the Spheres reports on Space Expo 2009, an upcoming event that may be of interest to New England space enthusiasts. It will be held at Bradley Airport, Connecticut on March 29.

Ryan Anderson at Martian Chronicles has been blogging about astrogeology. At Martian Chronicles, you can read an interesting post about the geology of the Grand Canyon, among other posts.

From Astropixie, Amanda Bauer describes the tides on the Thames river in London.

Alice at AstroInfo tells us how to get a set of Planets Cards and discusses the challenges faced by someone who is teaching science.

Thanks to everyone who submitted entries to this edition of the Carnival of Space. For more details on the Carnival of Space and past editions, you can check out the Carnival of Space page at Universe Today.

Credits: Orbital

Taurus is a four-stage, inertially guided, all solid fuel, ground launched vehicle, designed and built by Orbital Sciences Corporation. In a typical mission, Taurus can inject a 1,350 kg payload in low Earth orbit (LEO).

Taurus lifted off for the first time on March 13, 1994. Since then, Taurus has conducted six of eight successful missions.

Taurus is well suited for LEO missions to a wide range of altitudes. Different orbital profiles can be attained through launches from more than one launch site. An additional fifth stage can boost the performance of the launch vehicle, making possible high energy and geosynchronous transfer orbit (GTO) missions.

Depending on configuration, Taurus can have up to 5 stages.

Stage 0 is an ATK Thiokol Castor 120 Solid Rocket Motor (SRM). Castor 120 is a commercial version of the Peacekeeper first stage. The stage is 9.06 m long and 2.38 m in diameter, with a mass of approximately 49 tons. The first Taurus used the Peacekeeper first stage as Stage 0.

Peacekeeper was an Inter-Continental Ballistic Missile (ICMB) deployed by the United States beginning in 1986. The Peacekeeper ICMB could carry up to ten re-entry vehicles, each armed with a 300-kiloton warhead (just to have an idea about the order of magnitude, that is twenty times the power of the bomb dropped on Hiroshima). The last Peacekeeper was decommissioned in 2005.

Stage 1 is an ATK Orion 50S SRM, 7.53 m long and 1.28 m in diameter, with a mass of approximately 12 tons. In the XL configuration, the stage is 8.94 m long and has a mass of approximately 15 tons. Stage 2 is an ATK Orion 50 SRM, 2.64 m long and 1.28 m in diameter, with a mass around 3 tons. In the XL configuration, the stage is 3.11 m long and almost 4 tons. Stage 3 is an ATK Orion 38 SRM. Stage 3 has a mass of around 800 kg, a length of 1.34 m, and a diameter of 97 cm.

The payload fairing comes in two versions: the 63” diameter fairing, manufactured by Vermont Composites, and the 92” diameter fairing, manufactured by Texas Composites. The fairing encapsulates and protects the payload during ground handling, integration operations, and flight. The payload mating is done late in the launch operations flow, so the designs of both fairings provide for off-line encapsulation of the payload and transportation to the launch site.

Taurus can be assembled in different configurations, depending on the specific requirements of the mission. The configurations are designated using a four-digit code. The first digit indicates the vehicle configuration (1 – SSLV Taurus with Peacekeeper first stage used as Stage 0; 2 – Commercial Taurus Standard with Castor 120 Stage 0 and standard-length Stage 1 and Stage 2; 3 – Commercial Taurus XL with Castor 120 Stage 0 and XL-length Stage 1 and Stage 2), the second digit designates the fairing size (1 for 63” fairing and 2 for 92” fairing), and the third and fourth indicate the Stage 3 motor (0 if there is no Stage 3 in configuration, 1 for Orion 38, and 3 for STAR 37), and the Stage 4 motor (0 if there is no Stage 4 in configuration, and 3 for STAR 37) respectively.

Credits: Orbital

The primary launch site used for Taurus is Site 576E on North Vandenberg Air Force Base (VAFB). Launches from North VAFB provide flight azimuths from 158 to 235 degrees, allowing payload injection on high inclination orbits (60 to 140 degrees).

For other mission profiles, there are a number of alternate sites that Taurus can launch from: South Vandenberg Air Force Base (VAFB), Cape Canaveral Air Force Station (CCAFS) Launch Complex 46, Wallops Flight Facility (WFF), and Reagan Test Site on the Kwajalein atoll in the western Pacific.

Taurus was designed to be launched from minimalist launch sites. The main requirement for the launch site is a 40×40 inch concrete pad that is able to support the weight of the launch vehicle.

For more information about the Taurus launch vehicle, you can visit the dedicated web page on Orbital’s website. There is also a Taurus User Guide available from Orbital. The guide is an exhaustive document, presenting the vehicle performance, the payload interfaces, an overview of the payload integration, among other things.

Constellation Program is NASA’s new generation space transportation system. It is designed to cover a wide range of space missions, such as delivering supplies and human crews to the International Space Station (ISS) and traveling beyond low Earth orbit (LEO). The goal of the program is to establish a permanent human presence on the Moon and then go to Mars and other destinations.

Read more about the Constellation Program…

This afternoon, the Gravity field and steady-state Ocean Circulation Explorer (GOCE) satellite, developed by the European Space Agency (ESA), was injected into a near-Sun-synchronous, low Earth orbit. The launch was provided by Eurokot. A Rockot launch vehicle lifted off from the Plesetsk cosmodrome in northern Russia.

Read more about GOCE…

The crew members of the STS-119 mission are Air Force Col. Lee Archambault as commander, Navy Cmdr. Tony Antonelli as the pilot, and NASA astronauts Joseph Acaba, John Phillips, Steve Swanson, Richard Arnold and Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency astronaut Koichi Wakata as mission specialists.

STS-119 is the 28th shuttle mission to the International Space Station. Discovery also will carry the S6 truss segment to the orbital outpost.