OrbitalHub

NASA dixit:

“The unpiloted SpaceX/Dragon cargo craft departed the International Space Station July 2 bound for a parachute-assisted splashdown in the Pacific Ocean southwest of Long Beach, California. Loaded with valuable science samples and other hardware, Dragon was robotically released by Expedition 52 Flight Engineers Jack Fischer and Peggy Whitson, who operated the station’s Canadarm2 robotic arm from the cupola work station. The Dragon, which was launched from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket June 3, delivered more than three tons of scientific investigations and supplies for the station’s residents.”

Video credit: NASA

NASA dixit:

“March 4, 2010. Saturn’s moon Dione dwarfs the moon Telesto in this Cassini spacecraft image. Dione (1123 kilometers, 698 miles across) is the fourth largest of Saturn’s moons, and it dominates this view. Tiny Telesto (25 kilometers, or 16 miles across) can be seen below and to the left of Dione. This view looks toward the anti-Saturn side of Dione. North on Dione is up. The image was taken in visible light with the Cassini spacecraft narrow-angle camera. The view was acquired at a distance of approximately 477,000 kilometers (296,000 miles) from Dione and at a Sun-Dione-spacecraft, or phase, angle of 72 degrees. Scale on Dione is 3 kilometers (2 miles) per pixel.”

“After almost 20 years in space, NASA’s Cassini spacecraft begins the final chapter of its remarkable story of exploration: its Grand Finale. Between April and September 2017, Cassini will undertake a daring set of orbits that is, in many ways, like a whole new mission. Following a final close flyby of Saturn’s moon Titan, Cassini will leap over the planet’s icy rings and begin a series of 22 weekly dives between the planet and the rings.

No other mission has ever explored this unique region. What we learn from these final orbits will help to improve our understanding of how giant planets – and planetary systems everywhere – form and evolve.

On the final orbit, Cassini will plunge into Saturn’s atmosphere, sending back new and unique science to the very end. After losing contact with Earth, the spacecraft will burn up like a meteor, becoming part of the planet itself.

Cassini’s Grand Finale is about so much more than the spacecraft’s final dive into Saturn. That dramatic event is the capstone of six months of daring exploration and scientific discovery. And those six months are the thrilling final chapter in a historic 20-year journey.”

Image credit: NASA

Wikipedia dixit:

“Parker Solar Probe is a planned NASA robotic spacecraft to probe the outer corona of the Sun. It will approach to within 8.5 solar radii (5.9 million kilometers or 3.67 million miles) to the ‘surface’ (photosphere) of the Sun. The project was announced as a new mission start in the fiscal 2009 budget year. On May 1, 2008 Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory announced it will design and build the spacecraft, on a schedule to launch it in 2015. The launch date has since been pushed back to 2018, with the Delta IV Heavy as the launch vehicle. On May 31, 2017 the probe was renamed after solar astrophysicist Eugene Parker. According to NASA, this was the first time in history a space vessel was named after a living person.

The Parker Solar Probe mission design uses repeated gravity assists at Venus to incrementally decrease the orbital perihelion to achieve multiple passes of the Sun at approximately 8.5 solar radii, or about 6 million km (3.7 million mi; 0.040 AU). The mission is designed to survive the harsh environment near the Sun, where the incident solar intensity is approximately 520 times the intensity at Earth orbit, by the use of a solar shadow-shield. The solar shield, at the front of the spacecraft, is made of reinforced carbon-carbon composite. The spacecraft systems and scientific instruments are located in the shadow umbra of the shield, where direct light from the sun is fully blocked. The primary power for the mission will be by use of a dual system of photovoltaic arrays. A primary photovoltaic array, used for the portion of the mission outside 0.25 AU, is retracted behind the shadow shield during the close approach to the Sun, and a much smaller secondary array powers the spacecraft through closest approach. This secondary array uses pumped-fluid cooling to maintain operating temperature. As the probe passes around the Sun, it will achieve a velocity of up to 200 km/s (120 mi/s) making it by any measure, the fastest manmade object ever, almost three times faster than the current record holder, Helios 2.”

Video credit: NASA