1.
Tempel 1
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Tempel 1 is a periodic Jupiter-family comet discovered by Wilhelm Tempel in 1867. It completes an orbit of the Sun every 5.5 years, Tempel 1 was the target of the Deep Impact space mission, which photographed a deliberate high-speed impact upon the comet in 2005. It was re-visited by the Stardust spacecraft on February 14,2011, Tempel 1 was discovered on April 3,1867, by Wilhelm Tempel, an astronomer working in Marseille. At the time of discovery, it approached perihelion once every 5.68 years and it was subsequently observed in 1873 and in 1879. Photographic attempts during 1898 and 1905 failed to recover the comet, in fact, its orbit had changed. Tempel 1s orbit occasionally brings it close to Jupiter to be altered. This occurred in 1881, lengthening the period to 6.5 years. Perihelion also changed, increasing by 50 million kilometres, rendering the far less visible from Earth. Tempel 1 was rediscovered 13 orbits later in 1967, after British astronomer Brian G. Marsden performed precise calculations of the orbit that took into account Jupiters perturbations. These approaches moved Tempel 1 into its present libration around the 1,2 resonance with Jupiter, despite an unfavorable 1967 return, Elizabeth Roemer of the Catalina Observatory took several photographs. A single image does not allow a computation, so the next return had to be awaited. Roemer and L. M. Vaughn recovered the comet on January 11,1972, the comet became widely observed, reached a maximum brightness of magnitude 11 during May, and was last seen on July 10. Since that time the comet has been seen at every apparition and its orbital period is 5.515 years. Tempel 1 is not a comet, its brightest apparent magnitude since discovery has been 11. Its nucleus measures 7.6 km ×4.9 km, measurements taken by the Hubble Space Telescope in visible light and the Spitzer Space Telescope in infrared light suggest a low albedo of only 4%. A two-day rotation rate was also determined, on 4 July 2005 at 05,52 UTC, Tempel 1 was deliberately struck by one component of the NASA Deep Impact probe, one day before perihelion. The impact was photographed by the component of the probe. The impact was observed by earthbound and space telescopes, which recorded a brightening of several magnitudes
2.
NASA
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President Dwight D. Eisenhower established NASA in 1958 with a distinctly civilian orientation encouraging peaceful applications in space science. The National Aeronautics and Space Act was passed on July 29,1958, disestablishing NASAs predecessor, the new agency became operational on October 1,1958. Since that time, most US space exploration efforts have led by NASA, including the Apollo Moon landing missions, the Skylab space station. Currently, NASA is supporting the International Space Station and is overseeing the development of the Orion Multi-Purpose Crew Vehicle, the agency is also responsible for the Launch Services Program which provides oversight of launch operations and countdown management for unmanned NASA launches. NASA shares data with various national and international such as from the Greenhouse Gases Observing Satellite. Since 2011, NASA has been criticized for low cost efficiency, from 1946, the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics had been experimenting with rocket planes such as the supersonic Bell X-1. In the early 1950s, there was challenge to launch a satellite for the International Geophysical Year. An effort for this was the American Project Vanguard, after the Soviet launch of the worlds first artificial satellite on October 4,1957, the attention of the United States turned toward its own fledgling space efforts. This led to an agreement that a new federal agency based on NACA was needed to conduct all non-military activity in space. The Advanced Research Projects Agency was created in February 1958 to develop technology for military application. On July 29,1958, Eisenhower signed the National Aeronautics and Space Act, a NASA seal was approved by President Eisenhower in 1959. Elements of the Army Ballistic Missile Agency and the United States Naval Research Laboratory were incorporated into NASA, earlier research efforts within the US Air Force and many of ARPAs early space programs were also transferred to NASA. In December 1958, NASA gained control of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, NASA has conducted many manned and unmanned spaceflight programs throughout its history. Some missions include both manned and unmanned aspects, such as the Galileo probe, which was deployed by astronauts in Earth orbit before being sent unmanned to Jupiter, the experimental rocket-powered aircraft programs started by NACA were extended by NASA as support for manned spaceflight. This was followed by a space capsule program, and in turn by a two-man capsule program. This goal was met in 1969 by the Apollo program, however, reduction of the perceived threat and changing political priorities almost immediately caused the termination of most of these plans. NASA turned its attention to an Apollo-derived temporary space laboratory, to date, NASA has launched a total of 166 manned space missions on rockets, and thirteen X-15 rocket flights above the USAF definition of spaceflight altitude,260,000 feet. The X-15 was an NACA experimental rocket-powered hypersonic research aircraft, developed in conjunction with the US Air Force, the design featured a slender fuselage with fairings along the side containing fuel and early computerized control systems
3.
Jet Propulsion Laboratory
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The Jet Propulsion Laboratory is a federally funded research and development center and NASA field center in La Cañada Flintridge, California and Pasadena, California, United States. The JPL is managed by the nearby California Institute of Technology for NASA, the laboratorys primary function is the construction and operation of planetary robotic spacecraft, though it also conducts Earth-orbit and astronomy missions. It is also responsible for operating NASAs Deep Space Network and they are also responsible for managing the JPL Small-Body Database, and provides physical data and lists of publications for all known small Solar System bodies. The JPLs Space Flight Operations Facility and Twenty-Five-Foot Space Simulator are designated National Historic Landmarks, JPL traces its beginnings to 1936 in the Guggenheim Aeronautical Laboratory at the California Institute of Technology when the first set of rocket experiments were carried out in the Arroyo Seco. Malinas thesis advisor was engineer/aerodynamicist Theodore von Kármán, who arranged for U. S. Army financial support for this GALCIT Rocket Project in 1939. In 1941, Malina, Parsons, Forman, Martin Summerfield, in 1943, von Kármán, Malina, Parsons, and Forman established the Aerojet Corporation to manufacture JATO motors. The project took on the name Jet Propulsion Laboratory in November 1943, during JPLs Army years, the laboratory developed two deployed weapon systems, the MGM-5 Corporal and MGM-29 Sergeant intermediate range ballistic missiles. These missiles were the first US ballistic missiles developed at JPL and it also developed a number of other weapons system prototypes, such as the Loki anti-aircraft missile system, and the forerunner of the Aerobee sounding rocket. At various times, it carried out testing at the White Sands Proving Ground, Edwards Air Force Base. A lunar lander was developed in 1938-39 which influenced design of the Apollo Lunar Module in the 1960s. The team lost that proposal to Project Vanguard, and instead embarked on a project to demonstrate ablative re-entry technology using a Jupiter-C rocket. They carried out three successful flights in 1956 and 1957. Using a spare Juno I, the two organizations then launched the United States first satellite, Explorer 1, on February 1,1958, JPL was transferred to NASA in December 1958, becoming the agencys primary planetary spacecraft center. JPL engineers designed and operated Ranger and Surveyor missions to the Moon that prepared the way for Apollo, JPL also led the way in interplanetary exploration with the Mariner missions to Venus, Mars, and Mercury. In 1998, JPL opened the Near-Earth Object Program Office for NASA, as of 2013, it has found 95% of asteroids that are a kilometer or more in diameter that cross Earths orbit. JPL was early to employ women mathematicians, in the 1940s and 1950s, using mechanical calculators, women in an all-female computations group performed trajectory calculations. In 1961, JPL hired Dana Ulery as their first woman engineer to work alongside male engineers as part of the Ranger and Mariner mission tracking teams, when founded, JPLs site was a rocky flood-plain just outside the city limits of Pasadena. Almost all of the 177 acres of the U. S, the city of La Cañada Flintridge, California was incorporated in 1976, well after JPL attained international recognition with a Pasadena address
4.
Ball Aerospace & Technologies
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Ball Aerospace & Technologies Corp. is an American manufacturer of spacecraft, components, and instruments for national defense, civil space and commercial space applications. Ball Aerospace began building pointing controls for military rockets in 1956, and later won a contract to one of NASA’s first spacecraft. Over the years, the company has been responsible for technological and scientific projects and continues to provide aerospace technology to NASA. Ball Aerospace also has other products and services for the aerospace industry, including lubricants, optical systems, star trackers. As a wholly owned subsidiary of the Ball Corporation, Ball Aerospace was cited in 2014 as the 88th largest defense contractor in the world, both parent and subsidiary headquarters are co-located in Broomfield, Colorado. The Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer Program, which, over a mission in a polar orbit will map the entire sky in multiple mid-far infrared wavelengths. This crucial mission may find close and cool objects to our sun never before detected and it will also act as a predecessor to the JWST Program. The Opticks remote sensing data visualization application, the Sentinel space observatory, a satellite in Venusian orbit which will scout for hazardous asteroids. The Arizona State University, thermal imaging system for Nasas mission to study the Jupiter moon. DigitalGlobes remote sensing spacecraft, QuickBird, WorldView-1, and WorldView-2 The instrumentation for the Spitzer Space Telescope, Ball Aerospace developed the Cryogenic Telescope Assembly and two of the three science instruments, the Infrared Spectrograph and the Multiband Imaging Photometer. After the servicing mission was completed, all of Hubbles scientific instruments are of Ball Aerospace manufacture, AEROS CALIPSO, a joint NASA and CNES environmental spacecraft CloudSat, a NASA Earth observation spacecraft Deep Impact spacecraft. Ball Aerospace designed and built the spacecraft and all of its instrument packages for NASA
5.
University of Maryland, College Park
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Founded in 1856, the university is the flagship institution of the University System of Maryland. It is a member of the Association of American Universities and competes in athletics as a member of the Big Ten Conference, the University of Marylands proximity to the nations capital has resulted in research partnerships with the Federal government. The operating budget of the University of Maryland during the 2009 fiscal year was projected to be approximately $1.531 billion, for the same fiscal year, the University of Maryland received a total of $518 million in research funding, surpassing its 2008 mark by $118 million. As of December 12,2012, the universitys Great Expectations campaign had exceeded $1 billion in private donations, on March 6,1856, the forerunner of todays University of Maryland was chartered as the Maryland Agricultural College. Two years later, Charles Benedict Calvert, a future U. S. Congressman, Calvert founded the school later that year. On October 5,1859, the first 34 students entered the Maryland Agricultural College, the school became a land grant college in February 1864. During the Civil War, Confederate soldiers under Brigadier General Bradley Tyler Johnson moved past the college on July 12,1864 as part of Jubal Earlys raid on Washington, D. C. By the end of the war, financial problems forced the administrators to sell off 200 acres of land, for the next two years the campus was used as a boys preparatory school. Following the Civil War, in February 1866 the Maryland legislature assumed half ownership of the school, the college thus became in part a state institution. By October 1867, the school reopened with 11 students, in the next six years, enrollment grew and the schools debt was paid off. In 1873, Samuel Jones, a former Confederate Major General, twenty years later, the federally funded Agricultural Experiment Station was established there. Morrill Hall was built the following year, on November 29,1912, a fire destroyed the barracks where the students were housed, all the schools records, and most of the academic buildings, leaving only Morrill Hall untouched. There were no injuries or fatalities, and all but two returned to the university and insisted on classes continuing. Students were housed by families in neighboring towns until housing could be rebuilt, a large brick and concrete compass inlaid in the ground designates the former center of campus as it existed in 1912. The state took control of the school in 1916, and the institution was renamed Maryland State College and that year, the first female students enrolled at the school. On April 9,1920, the became part of the existing University of Maryland, replacing St. Johns College. In the same year, the school on the College Park campus awarded its first PhD degrees. In 1925 the university was accredited by the Association of American Universities, by the time the first black students enrolled at the university in 1951, enrollment had grown to nearly 10,000 students—4,000 of whom were women
6.
Photovoltaic system
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A photovoltaic system, also PV system or solar power system, is a power system designed to supply usable solar power by means of photovoltaics. It may also use a tracking system to improve the systems overall performance and include an integrated battery solution. Strictly speaking, a solar array only encompasses the ensemble of solar panels, the part of the PV system. Moreover, PV systems convert light directly into electricity and shouldnt be confused with other technologies, such as concentrated solar power or solar thermal, used for heating and cooling. PV systems range from small, rooftop-mounted or building-integrated systems with capacities from a few to tens of kilowatts. Nowadays, most PV systems are grid-connected, while off-grid or stand-alone systems only account for a portion of the market. A rooftop system recoups the energy for its manufacturing and installation within 0.7 to 2 years. Due to the growth of photovoltaics, prices for PV systems have rapidly declined in recent years. However, they vary by market and the size of the system, a photovoltaic system converts the suns radiation into usable electricity. It comprises the solar array and the balance of system components, other distinctions may include, systems with microinverters vs. central inverter, systems using crystalline silicon vs. thin-film technology, and systems with modules from Chinese vs. About 99 percent of all European and 90 percent of all U. S. solar power systems are connected to the grid, while off-grid systems are somewhat more common in Australia. PV systems rarely use battery storage and this may change soon, as government incentives for distributed energy storage are being implemented and investments in storage solutions are gradually becoming economically viable for small systems. A solar array of a typical residential PV system is rack-mounted on the roof, rather than integrated into the roof or facade of the building, utility-scale solar power stations are ground-mounted, with fixed tilted solar panels rather than using expensive tracking devices. Crystalline silicon is the predominant material used in 90 percent of worldwide produced solar modules, about 70 percent of all solar cells and modules are produced in China and Taiwan, leaving only 5 percent to European and US-manufacturers. S. Which are less opposed to ground-mounted solar farms and cost-effectiveness is more emphasized by investors, driven by advances in technology and increases in manufacturing scale and sophistication, the cost of photovoltaics is declining continuously. There are several million PV systems distributed all over the world, mostly in Europe, in exceptionally irradiated locations, or when thin-film technology is used, the so-called energy payback time decreases to one year or less. Net metering and financial incentives, such as preferential feed-in tariffs for solar-generated electricity, have greatly supported installations of PV systems in many countries. As of 2015, the fast-growing global PV market is approaching the 200 GW mark – about 40 times the installed capacity of 2006
7.
Delta II
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Delta II is an American expendable launch system, originally designed and built by McDonnell Douglas. Delta II is part of the Delta rocket family and entered service in 1989, Delta II vehicles included the Delta 6000, and two Delta 7000 variants. In the early 1980s, all United States expendable launch vehicles were planned to be phased out in favor of the Space Shuttle, production of Delta, Atlas-Centaur, and Titan 34D had ended. McDonnell Douglas, at time the manufacturer of the Delta family. These were intended to launch a series of GPS Block II satellites, the Air Force exercised additional contract options in 1988, expanding this order to 20 vehicles, and NASA purchased its first Delta IIs in 1990 for the launch of three Earth-observing satellites. The first Delta II launch occurred in 1989, with a Delta 6925 boosting the first GPS Block II satellite into a 20,000 km high orbit, the first Delta II 7000-series flew in 1990, replacing the RS-27 engine of the 6000-series with the more powerful RS-27A. Additionally, the steel-cased Castor 4A solid boosters of the 6000 series were replaced with the composite-cased GEM40, all further Delta II launches except three were of this upgraded configuration, and the 6000-series was retired in 1992. McDonnell Douglas began Delta III development in the mid-90s as increasing satellite mass required more powerful launch vehicles, the upgraded boosters would still find use on the Delta II, leading to the Delta II Heavy. In total, the Delta II family has launched 153 times, no one was injured, and the launch pad itself was not seriously impacted, though several cars were destroyed and a few buildings were damaged. In 2007, Delta II completed its 75th consecutive successful launch, with the launch of SMAP in 2015, the Delta II has enjoyed 98 consecutive successful launches, with two more scheduled in 2017 and 2018. Should these launches be successful, the Delta II would achieve an unprecedented 100 consecutive launch successes, the first stage of the Delta II is propelled by a Rocketdyne RS-27 main engine burning RP-1 and liquid oxygen. This stage is referred to as the Extra-Extended Long Tank Thor. The RS-27 used on the 6000-series Delta II produced 915 kN, the stage is 26 meters long and 2.4 meters wide, weighs over 100 t when fueled, and burns for 260 seconds. In addition, two LR101-NA-11 vernier engines provide guidance for the first stage, for additional thrust during launch, the Delta II uses solid boosters. For the 6000-series, Delta II used Castor 4A boosters, while the 7000-series uses Graphite-Epoxy Motors manufactured by ATK, the vehicle can be flown with three, four, or, most commonly, nine boosters. The second stage of Delta II is the Delta-K, powered by a restartable Aerojet AJ10-118K engine burning hypergolic Aerozine-50 and these propellants are highly toxic and corrosive, and once loaded the launch must occur within approximately 37 days or the stage will have to be refurbished or replaced. This stage also contains a combined platform and guidance system that controls all flight events. The Delta-K stage is 6 meters long and 2.4 meters wide, contains up to 6 t of propellant, for low Earth orbit, Delta II is not equipped with a third stage
8.
Cape Canaveral Air Force Station
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Cape Canaveral Air Force Station is an installation of the United States Air Force Space Commands 45th Space Wing, headquartered at nearby Patrick Air Force Base. Located on Cape Canaveral in Brevard County, Florida, CCAFS is the primary head of Americas Eastern Range with three launch pads currently active. The Cape Canaveral Air Force Station Skid Strip provides a 10, 000-foot runway close to the launch complexes for military airlift aircraft delivering heavy, a number of American space exploration firsts were launched from CCAFS, including the first U. S. Earth satellite, first U. S. astronaut, first U. S. astronaut in orbit, first two-man U. S. spacecraft, first U. S. unmanned lunar landing, and first three-man U. S. spacecraft. The CCAFS area had used by the United States government to test missiles since 1949. On June 1,1948, the U. S. Navy transferred the former Banana River Naval Air Station to the U. S. Air Force, with USAF renaming the facility the Joint Long Range Proving Ground Base on June 10,1949. On October 1,1949, the Joint Long Range Proving Ground Base was transferred from the Air Materiel Command to the Air Force Division of the Joint Long Range Proving Ground. On May 17,1950, the base was renamed the Long Range Proving Ground Base, in 1951, the Air Force established the Air Force Missile Test Center. Early American sub-orbital rocket flights were achieved at Cape Canaveral in 1956 and these flights occurred shortly after sub-orbital flights launched from White Sands Missile Range, such as the Viking 12 sounding rocket on February 4,1955. Following the Soviet Unions successful Sputnik 1, the US attempted its first launch of a satellite from Cape Canaveral on December 6,1957. However, the rocket carrying Vanguard TV3 blew up on the launch pad, NASA was founded in 1958, and Air Force crews launched missiles for NASA from the Cape, known then as Cape Canaveral Missile Annex. The row of Titan and Atlas launch pads along the coast came to be known as Missile Row in the 1960s, nASAs first manned spaceflight program was prepared for launch from Canaveral by U. S. Air Force crews. Mercurys objectives were to place a spacecraft in Earth orbit, investigate human performance and ability to function in space. Suborbital flights were launched by derivatives of the Armys Redstone missile from LC-5, Orbital flights were launched by derivatives of the Air Forces larger Atlas D missile from LC-14. The first American in orbit was John Glenn on February 20,1962, three more orbital flights followed through May 1963. Flight control for all Mercury missions was provided at the Mercury Control Center located at Canaveral near LC-14 and he had also convinced Gov. C. Farris Bryant to change the name of Cape Canaveral to Cape Kennedy and this resulted in some confusion in public perception, which conflated the two. This name was used through the Gemini and early Apollo programs, however, the geographical name change proved to be unpopular, owing to the historical longevity of Cape Canaveral
9.
Boeing
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The Boeing Company is an American multinational corporation that designs, manufactures, and sells airplanes, rotorcraft, rockets, and satellites worldwide. The company also provides leasing and product support services, Boeing stock is a component of the Dow Jones Industrial Average. The Boeing Companys corporate headquarters are located in Chicago and the company is led by President, Boeing is organized into five primary divisions, Boeing Commercial Airplanes, Boeing Defense, Space & Security, Engineering, Operations & Technology, Boeing Capital, and Boeing Shared Services Group. Boeing bought Heaths shipyard in Seattle on the Duwamish River, which became his first airplane factory. Boeing was incorporated in Seattle by William Boeing, on July 15,1916, Boeing was later incorporated in Delaware, the original Certificate of Incorporation was filed with the Secretary of State of Delaware on July 19,1934. Boeing, who studied at Yale University, worked initially in the timber industry and this knowledge proved invaluable in his subsequent design and assembly of airplanes. The company stayed in Seattle to take advantage of the supply of spruce wood. William Boeing founded his company a few months after the June 15 maiden flight of one of the two B&W seaplanes built with the assistance of George Conrad Westervelt, a U. S. Navy engineer. Boeing and Westervelt decided to build the B&W seaplane after having flown in a Curtiss aircraft, Boeing bought a Glenn Martin Flying Birdcage seaplane and was taught to fly by Glenn Martin himself. Boeing soon crashed the Birdcage and when Martin informed Boeing that replacement parts would not become available for months, Westervelt agreed to build a better airplane and soon produced the B&W Seaplane. This first Boeing airplane was assembled in a hangar located on the northeast shore of Seattles Lake Union. Many of Boeings early planes were seaplanes, on April 6,1917, the U. S. declared War on Germany and later in the year entered World War I. On May 9,1917, the became the Boeing Airplane Company. With the U. S. entering the war, Boeing knew that the U. S. Navy needed seaplanes for training, so Boeing shipped two new Model Cs to Pensacola, Florida, where the planes were flown for the Navy. The Navy liked the Model C and ordered 50 more, the company moved its operations to a larger former shipbuilding facility known as Boeing Plant 1, located on the lower Duwamish River, Washington state. Others, including Boeing, started selling other products, Boeing built dressers, counters, and furniture, along with flat-bottom boats called Sea Sleds. In 1919 the Boeing B-1, flying boat made its first flight and it accommodated one pilot and two passengers and some mail. Over the course of eight years, it made international airmail flights from Seattle to Victoria, on May 24,1920, the Boeing Model 8 made its first flight
10.
Discovery Program
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NASAs Discovery Program is a series of lower-cost, highly focused American scientific space missions that are exploring the Solar System. It was founded in 1992 to implement then-NASA Administrator Daniel S. Goldins vision of faster, better, cheaper planetary missions, Discovery missions differ from traditional NASA missions where targets and objectives are pre-specified. Instead, these missions are proposed and led by a scientist called the Principal Investigator. Proposing teams may include people from industry, small businesses, government laboratories, proposals are selected through a competitive peer review process. All of the completed Discovery missions are accomplishing ground-breaking science and adding significantly to the body of knowledge about the Solar System, NASA also accepts proposals for competitively selected Discovery Program Missions of Opportunity. These opportunities are offered through NASAs Stand Alone Mission of Opportunity program. In 1989, the Solar System Exploration Division at NASA Headquarters initiated a series of workshops to define a new strategy for exploration through the year 2000, a fast-paced study for a potential mission was requested and funding arrangements were made in 1990. On February 17,1996, NEAR became the first mission to launch in the Discovery Program, also, Phoenix and MAVEN were in the Mars Scout Program not Discovery program. NEAR Shoemaker, a mission to study asteroid 433 Eros, launched on February 17,1996, the spacecraft entered orbit around Eros in 2000 and successfully touched down on its surface one year later. It has succeeded its primary and extended mission and is now complete, the Project Scientist was Andrew Chang of The Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory. Mars Pathfinder, a Mars lander to deploy Sojourner rover on the surface, launched in 1996, it landed on Mars on July 4,1997. It has completed its primary and extended mission, the Principal Investigator was Matthew Golombek of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. Lunar Prospector, a Moon orbiter to characterize the lunar mineralogy, launched in 1998, it spent 1½ years in lunar orbit. It has completed its primary and extended mission and deliberately impacted onto the Moons surface, the Principal Investigator was Alan Binder of the Lunar Research Institute. Stardust, a mission to collect interstellar dust and dust particles from the nucleus of comet 81P/Wild for study on Earth, launched in 1999, it successfully collected samples between 2000–2004, then the sample return capsule returned to Earth on January 15,2006. The capsule is on display at the National Air and Space Museum in Washington D. C, scientists worldwide are studying the comet dust samples while citizen scientists are finding interstellar dust bits through the Stardust@home project. The spacecraft was assigned a new task, called Stardust-NExT to revisit Tempel 1, having completed its primary and extend missions, Stardust did a final burn to deplete its remaining fuel on March 24,2011. The Principal Investigator was Donald Brownlee of the University of Washington, Genesis, a mission to collect solar wind charged particles for analysis on Earth
11.
MESSENGER
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MESSENGER was a NASA robotic spacecraft that orbited the planet Mercury between 2011 and 2015. The spacecraft was launched aboard a Delta II rocket in August 2004 to study Mercurys chemical composition, geology, during its first flyby of Mercury in January 2008, MESSENGER became the second mission after Mariner 10s 1975 flyby to reach Mercury. MESSENGER entered orbit around Mercury on March 18,2011, becoming the first spacecraft to do so and it successfully completed its primary mission in 2012. Following two mission extensions, the MESSENGER spacecraft used the last of its propellant and deorbited as planned. MESSENGERs formal data collection began on April 4,2011. The primary mission was completed on March 17,2012, having collected close to 100,000 images, MESSENGER achieved 100% mapping of Mercury on March 6,2013, and completed its first year-long extended mission on March 17,2013. MESSENGERs second extended mission lasted for two years, but as its low orbit degraded, it required reboosts to avoid impact. It conducted its final reboost burns on October 24,2014, in 1973, Mariner 10 was launched by NASA to make multiple flyby encounters of Venus and Mercury. Mariner 10 provided the first detailed data of Mercury, mapping 40–45% of the surface, Mariner 10s final flyby of Mercury occurred on March 16,1975. No subsequent close-range observations of the planet would take place for more than 30 years, in 1998, a study detailed a proposed mission to send an orbiting spacecraft to Mercury, as the planet was at that point the least-explored of the inner planets. In the years following the Mariner 10 mission, subsequent mission proposals to revisit Mercury had appeared too costly, requiring large quantities of propellant, the MESSENGER mission was designed to study the characteristics and environment of Mercury from orbit. Specifically, the objectives of the mission were, to characterize the chemical composition of Mercurys surface. To study the geologic history. To elucidate the nature of the magnetic field. To determine the size and state of the core, to determine the volatile inventory at the poles. to study the nature of Mercurys exosphere. The MESSENGER spacecraft was designed and built at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory, science operations were managed by Sean Solomon as principal investigator, and mission operations were also conducted at JHU/APL. The MESSENGER bus measured 1.85 meters tall,1.42 m wide, at launch, the spacecraft weighed approximately 1,100 kilograms with its full load of propellant. MESSENGERs total mission cost, including the cost of the construction, was estimated at under US$450 million
12.
Dawn (spacecraft)
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Dawn is a space probe launched by NASA in September 2007 with the mission of studying two of the three known protoplanets of the asteroid belt, Vesta and Ceres. It is currently in orbit about its second target, the dwarf planet Ceres, Dawn entered Vesta orbit on July 16,2011, and completed a 14-month survey mission before leaving for Ceres in late 2012. Dawn entered Ceres orbit on March 6,2015, and is predicted to remain in orbit perpetually after the conclusion of its mission, NASA considered, but decided against, a proposal to visit a third target. The Dawn mission is managed by NASAs Jet Propulsion Laboratory, with components contributed by European partners from the Netherlands, Italy. It is the first NASA exploratory mission to use ion propulsion, previous multi-target missions using conventional drives, such as the Voyager program, were restricted to flybys. The first working ion thruster was built by Harold R. Kaufman in 1959 at NASAs Glenn Research Center in Ohio, the thruster was similar to the general design of a gridded electrostatic ion thruster with mercury as its propellant. Suborbital tests of the engine followed during the 1960s, and in 1964 the engine was tested on a flight aboard the Space Electric Rocket Test 1. It successfully operated for the planned 31 minutes before falling back to Earth and this test was followed by an orbital test, SERT-2, in 1970. In addition to the ion thruster, among the other technologies validated by the DS1 was the Small Deep Space Transponder,26 proposals were submitted to the Discovery Program solicitation, with budget initially targeted at 300 million USD. Three semi-finalists were downselected in January 2001 for a design study, Dawn, Kepler. In December 2001 NASA selected the Kepler and the Dawn mission for the Discovery program, both missions were initially selected for a launch in 2006. The status of the Dawn mission changed several times, the project was cancelled in December 2003, and then reinstated in February 2004. On March 2,2006, Dawn was again cancelled by NASA, the spacecrafts manufacturer, Orbital Sciences Corporation, appealed NASAs decision, offering to build the spacecraft at cost, forgoing any profit in order to gain experience in a new market field. NASA then put the cancellation under review, and on March 27,2006, in the last week of September 2006, the Dawn missions instrument payload integration reached full functionality. Although originally projected to cost US$373 million, cost overruns inflated the final cost of the mission to US$446 million in 2007, christopher T. Russell was chosen to lead the Dawn mission team. Ceres and Vesta were chosen as two contrasting protoplanets, the first one apparently wet and the dry, whose accretion was terminated by the formation of Jupiter. The two bodies provide a bridge in scientific understanding between the formation of planets and the icy bodies of the Solar System, and under what conditions a rocky planet can hold water. Dawn is the first mission to study a dwarf planet, arriving at Ceres a few months before the arrival of the New Horizons probe at Pluto in July 2015, Ceres comprises a third of the total mass of the asteroid belt
13.
Space probe
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A space probe is a robotic spacecraft that does not orbit the Earth, but, instead, explores further into outer space. A space probe may approach the Moon, travel through space, flyby, orbit, or land on other planetary bodies. Approximately fifteen missions are currently operational, once a probe has left the vicinity of Earth, its trajectory will likely take it along an orbit around the Sun similar to the Earths orbit. To reach another planet, the simplest practical method is a Hohmann transfer orbit, more complex techniques, such as gravitational slingshots, can be more fuel-efficient, though they may require the probe to spend more time in transit. Some high Delta-V missions can only be performed, within the limits of modern propulsion, a technique using very little propulsion, but requiring a considerable amount of time, is to follow a trajectory on the Interplanetary Transport Network. First man-made object to land on the Moon, or any other extra terrestrial surface. First mission to photograph the far side of the Moon, launched in 1959, first robotic sample return probe from the Moon. It was sent to the Moon on November 10,1970, first successful in-place analysis of another planet. It may have also been the first space probe to impact the surface of another planet, the Venera 7 probe was the first spacecraft to successfully soft land on another planet and to transmit data from there back to Earth. Upon its arrival at Mars on November 13,1971, Mariner 9 became the first space probe to orbit around another planet. Although, the spacecraft failed shortly after landing, the Mars Exploration Rovers, Spirit and Opportunity surface and geology, and searched for clues to past water activity on Mars. They were each launched in 2003 and landed in 2004, communication with Spirit stopped on sol 2210. JPL continued to attempt to regain contact until May 24,2011, Opportunity arrived at Endeavour crater on 9 August 2011, at a landmark called Spirit Point named after its rover twin, after traversing 13 miles from Victoria crater, over a three-year period. As of January 26,2016, Opportunity has lasted for more than twelve years on Mars — although the rovers were intended to last only three months. The first dedicated missions to a comet, in this case and they dropped landers and balloons at Venus before their rendezvous with Halleys Comet. This Japanese probe was the first non-US, non-Soviet interplanetary probe, a second Japanese probe, it made ultraviolet wavelength observations of the comet. The first space probe to penetrate a comets coma and take images of its nucleus. First solar wind sample return probe from sun-earth L1, first sample return probe from a comet tail
14.
Comet
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A comet is an icy small Solar System body that, when passing close to the Sun, warms and begins to evolve gasses, a process called outgassing. This produces an atmosphere or coma, and sometimes also a tail. These phenomena are due to the effects of radiation and the solar wind acting upon the nucleus of the comet. Comet nuclei range from a few hundred metres to tens of kilometres across and are composed of collections of ice, dust. The coma may be up to 15 times the Earths diameter, if sufficiently bright, a comet may be seen from the Earth without the aid of a telescope and may subtend an arc of 30° across the sky. Comets have been observed and recorded since ancient times by many cultures, Comets usually have highly eccentric elliptical orbits, and they have a wide range of orbital periods, ranging from several years to potentially several millions of years. Short-period comets originate in the Kuiper belt or its associated scattered disc, long-period comets are thought to originate in the Oort cloud, a spherical cloud of icy bodies extending from outside the Kuiper belt to halfway to the nearest star. Long-period comets are set in motion towards the Sun from the Oort cloud by gravitational perturbations caused by passing stars, hyperbolic comets may pass once through the inner Solar System before being flung to interstellar space. The appearance of a comet is called an apparition, Comets are distinguished from asteroids by the presence of an extended, gravitationally unbound atmosphere surrounding their central nucleus. This atmosphere has parts termed the coma and the tail, however, extinct comets that have passed close to the Sun many times have lost nearly all of their volatile ices and dust and may come to resemble small asteroids. Asteroids are thought to have a different origin from comets, having formed inside the orbit of Jupiter rather than in the outer Solar System, the discovery of main-belt comets and active centaur minor planets has blurred the distinction between asteroids and comets. As of November 2014 there are 5,253 known comets, however, this represents only a tiny fraction of the total potential comet population, as the reservoir of comet-like bodies in the outer Solar System is estimated to be one trillion. Roughly one comet per year is visible to the eye, though many of those are faint. Particularly bright examples are called Great Comets, the word comet derives from the Old English cometa from the Latin comēta or comētēs. That, in turn, is a latinisation of the Greek κομήτης, Κομήτης was derived from κομᾶν, which was itself derived from κόμη and was used to mean the tail of a comet. The astronomical symbol for comets is ☄, consisting of a disc with three hairlike extensions. The solid, core structure of a comet is known as the nucleus, cometary nuclei are composed of an amalgamation of rock, dust, water ice, and frozen gases such as carbon dioxide, carbon monoxide, methane, and ammonia. As such, they are described as dirty snowballs after Fred Whipples model
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Comet nucleus
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The nucleus is the solid, central part of a comet, popularly termed a dirty snowball or an icy dirtball. A cometary nucleus is composed of rock, dust, and frozen gases, when heated by the Sun, the gases sublimate and produce an atmosphere surrounding the nucleus known as the coma. The force exerted on the coma by the Suns radiation pressure and solar wind cause an enormous tail to form, a typical comet nucleus has an albedo of 0.04. This is blacker than coal, and may be caused by a covering of dust, comets, or their precursors, formed in the outer Solar System, possibly millions of years before planet formation. How and when formed is debated, with distinct implications for Solar System formation, dynamics. Three-dimensional computer simulations indicate the structural features observed on cometary nuclei can be explained by pairwise low velocity accretion of weak cometesimals. The currently favored creation mechanism is that of the nebular hypothesis, astronomers think that comets originate in both the Oort cloud and the scattered disk. Most cometary nuclei are thought to be no more than about 10 miles across, the largest comets that have come inside the orbit of Saturn are C/2002 VQ94, Hale–Bopp, 29P, 109P/Swift–Tuttle, and 28P/Neujmin. The potato-shaped nucleus of Halleys comet contains equal amounts of ice, during a flyby in September 2001, the Deep Space 1 spacecraft observed the nucleus of Comet Borrelly and found it to be about half the size of the nucleus of Halleys Comet. Borrellys nucleus was also potato-shaped and had a black surface. Like Halleys Comet, Comet Borrelly only released gas from small areas where holes in the crust exposed the ice to sunlight, the nucleus of comet Hale–Bopp was estimated to be 60 ±20 km in diameter. Hale-Bopp appeared bright to the eye because its unusually large nucleus gave off a great deal of dust. The nucleus of P/2007 R5 is probably only 100–200 meters in diameter, the largest centaurs are estimated to be 250 km to 300 km in diameter. Three of the largest would include 10199 Chariklo,2060 Chiron, known comets have been estimated to have an average density of 0.6 g/cm3. Below is a list of comets that have had estimated sizes, densities, about 80% of the Halleys Comet nucleus is water ice, and frozen carbon monoxide makes up another 15%. Much of the remainder is carbon dioxide, methane. Scientists think that comets are chemically similar to Halleys Comet. The nucleus of Halleys Comet is also a dark black
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Giotto (spacecraft)
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Giotto was a European robotic spacecraft mission from the European Space Agency. The spacecraft flew by and studied Halleys Comet and in doing so became the first spacecraft to make close up observations of a comet, on 13 March 1986, the mission succeeded in approaching Halleys nucleus at a distance of 596 kilometers. The spacecraft was named after the Early Italian Renaissance painter Giotto di Bondone and he had observed Halleys Comet in 1301 and was inspired to depict it as the star of Bethlehem in his painting Adoration of the Magi. Originally a United States partner probe was planned that would accompany Giotto, there were plans to have observation equipment on board a Space Shuttle in low-Earth orbit around the time of Giottos fly-by, but they in turn fell through with the Challenger disaster. The plan then became a cooperative armada of five spaceprobes including Giotto, because Giotto would pass so very close to the nucleus ESA was mostly convinced it would not survive the encounter due to bombardment from the many high speed cometary particles. The coordinated group of probes became known as the Halley Armada, the later Stardust spacecraft would use a similar Whipple shield. A mock up of the spacecraft resides at the Bristol Aero Collection hangar, at Filton, the mission was given the go-ahead by ESA in 1980, and launched on an Ariane 1 rocket on 2 July 1985 from Kourou, French Guiana. Attitude determination and control used sun pulse and IR Earth sensor data in the telemetry to determine the spacecraft orientation. The Soviet Vega 1 started returning images of Halley on 4 March 1986, and the first ever of its nucleus, Vega 1 closest approach to Halley was 8 889 km. Giotto passed Halley successfully on 14 March 1986 at 596 km distance, one impact sent it spinning off its stabilized spin axis so that its antenna no longer always pointed at the Earth, and importantly, its dust shield no longer protected its instruments. After 32 minutes Giotto re-stabilized itself and continued gathering science data, another impact destroyed the Halley Multicolor Camera, but not before it took photographs of the nucleus at closest approach. Giottos trajectory was adjusted for an Earth flyby and its instruments were turned off on 15 March 1986 at 02,00 UTC. Giotto was commanded to wake up on 2 July 1990 when it flew by Earth in order to sling shot to its next cometary encounter, the probe then flew by the Comet Grigg-Skjellerup on 10 July 1992 which it approached to a distance of about 200 km. Afterwards, Giotto was again switched off on 23 July 1992, in 1999 Giotto made another Earth flyby but was not reactivated. Images showed Halleys nucleus to be a dark peanut-shaped body,15 km long,7 km to 10 km wide, only 10% of the surface was active, with at least three outgassing jets seen on the sunlit side. Analysis showed the comet formed 4.5 billion years ago from volatiles that had condensed onto interstellar dust particles and it had remained practically unaltered since its formation. Measured volume of material ejected by Halley, 80% water, 10% carbon monoxide 2. 5% a mix of methane, other hydrocarbons, iron, and sodium were detected in trace amounts. Giotto found Halleys nucleus was dark, which suggested a thick covering of dust, the nucleuss surface was rough and of a porous quality, with the density of the whole nucleus as low as 0.3 g/cm³
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Deep Space 1
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Deep Space 1 was a NASA technology demonstration spacecraft which flew by an asteroid and a comet. It was part of the New Millennium Program, dedicated to testing advanced technologies, launched on 24 October 1998, the Deep Space 1 spacecraft carried out a flyby of asteroid 9969 Braille, which was its primary science target. The mission was extended twice to include an encounter with comet 19P/Borrelly, problems during its initial stages and with its star tracker led to repeated changes in mission configuration. While the flyby of the asteroid was a success, the encounter with the comet retrieved valuable information. Three of twelve technologies on board had to work within a few minutes of separation from the rocket for the mission to continue. The Deep Space series was continued by the Deep Space 2 probes, Deep Space 1 was the first NASA spacecraft to use ion propulsion rather than the traditional chemical-powered rockets. The asteroids in the inner Solar System move in relation to other bodies at a noticeable, predictable speed, thus a spacecraft can determine its relative position by tracking such asteroids across the star background, which appears fixed over such timescales. Two or more asteroids let the spacecraft triangulate its position, two or more positions in time let the spacecraft determine its trajectory, existing spacecraft are tracked by their interactions with the transmitters of the NASA Deep Space Network, in effect an inverse GPS. However, DSN tracking requires many skilled operators, and the DSN is overburdened by its use as a communications network, the use of Autonav reduces mission cost and DSN demands. The Autonav system can also be used in reverse, tracking the position of relative to the spacecraft. This is used to acquire targets for the scientific instruments, the spacecraft is programmed with the targets coarse location. After initial acquisition, Autonav keeps the subject in frame, even commandeering the spacecrafts attitude control, the next spacecraft to use Autonav was Deep Impact. ABLE Engineering developed the technology and built the solar array for DS1, with Entech Inc, who supplied the Fresnel optics. The activity was sponsored by the Ballistic Missile Defense Organization, the SCARLET arrays generated 2.5 kilowatts at 1 AU, with less size and weight than conventional arrays. This lack of a history in space meant that despite the potential savings in propellant mass. Furthermore, unforeseen side effects of ion propulsion might in some way interfere with scientific experiments, such as fields. Therefore, it was a mission of the Deep Space 1 demonstration to show long-duration use of an ion thruster on a scientific mission. The NASA Solar Technology Application Readiness electrostatic ion thruster, developed at NASA Glenn and this is an order of magnitude higher than traditional space propulsion methods, resulting in a mass savings of approximately half
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Stardust (spacecraft)
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Stardust was a 300-kilogram robotic space probe launched by NASA on February 7,1999. Its primary mission was to collect dust samples from the coma of comet Wild 2, as well as samples of cosmic dust and it was the first sample return mission of its kind. En route to comet Wild 2, the craft also flew by, the primary mission was successfully completed on January 15,2006, when the sample return capsule returned to Earth. A mission extension codenamed NExT culminated in February 2011 with Stardust intercepting comet Tempel 1, Stardust ceased operations in March 2011. On August 14,2014, scientists announced the identification of possible interstellar dust particles from the Stardust capsule returned to Earth in 2006, beginning in the 1980s, scientists began seeking a dedicated mission to study a comet. During the early 1990s, several missions to study comet Halley became the first successful missions to return close-up data, however, the US cometary mission, Comet Rendezvous Asteroid Flyby, was canceled for budgetary reasons. In the mid-1990s, further support was given to a cheaper, Stardust was competitively selected in the fall of 1995 as a NASA Discovery Program mission of low-cost with highly focused science goals. Construction of Stardust began in 1996, and was subject to the maximum contamination restriction, Comet Wild 2 was selected as the primary target of the mission for the rare chance to observe a long-period comet that has ventured close to the Sun. The comet has since become a short period comet after an event in 1974, in planning the mission, it was expected that most of the original material from which the comet formed would still be preserved. Facilitating the intercept of significant numbers of interstellar dust particles using the collection medium. Returning as many high resolution images of the coma and nucleus as possible. The spacecraft was designed, built and operated by Lockheed Martin Astronautics as a Discovery-class mission in Denver, JPL provided mission management for the NASA division for mission operations. The principal investigator of the mission was Dr. Donald Brownlee from the University of Washington, the spacecraft bus measured 1.7 meters in length, and 0.66 meters in width, a design adapted from the SpaceProbe deep space bus developed by Lockheed Martin Astronautics. To maintain low costs, the spacecraft incorporated many designs and technologies used in past missions or previously developed for missions by the Small Spacecraft Technologies Initiative. The spacecraft featured five scientific instruments to collect data, including the Stardust Sample Collection tray, the spacecraft was launched with 80-kilograms of propellant. Information for spacecraft positioning was provided by a camera using FSW to determine attitude, an inertial measurement unit. The probe was powered by two arrays, providing an average of 330 watts of power. The arrays also included Whipple shields to protect the surfaces from the potentially damaging cometary dust while the spacecraft was in the coma of Wild 2
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EPOXI
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EPOXI uses the Deep Impact spacecraft in a campaign consisting two missions, the Deep Impact Extended Investigation and Extrasolar Planet Observation and Characterization. After its flyby of Hartley 2, the spacecraft was also set to make a flyby of the apollo asteroid 2002 GT in 2020. The mission was suspended altogether, however, after contact with the spacecraft was suddenly lost in August 2013, mission scientists theorized that a Y2K-like problem had plagued the spacecrafts software. The Deep Impact mission was finished with the visit to comet Tempel 1, but the spacecraft still had plenty of maneuvering fuel left, so NASA approved a second mission, called EPOXI, which included a visit to a second comet as well as observations of extrasolar planets. On July 21,2005, Deep Impact executed a trajectory correction maneuver that placed the spacecraft on course to fly past Earth on December 31,2007, the maneuver allowed the spacecraft to use Earths gravity to begin a new mission in a path towards another comet. In January 2008 Deep Impact began studying the stars with several known extrasolar planets in an attempt to find other such stars nearby, the larger of the spacecrafts two telescopes attempts to find the planets using the transit method. The initial plan was for a December 5,2008 flyby of Comet Boethin, the spacecraft did not carry a second impactor to collide with the comet and would observe the comet to compare it to various characteristics found on 9P/Tempel. He explained that the mission would provide only about half of the information collected during the collision with Tempel 1, Deep Impact would use its spectrometer to study the comets surface composition and its telescopes for viewing the surface features. However, as the Earth gravity assist approached, astronomers were unable to locate Comet Boethin, consequently, its orbit could not be calculated with sufficient precision to permit a flyby. Instead, the decided to send Deep Impact to comet 103P/Hartley requiring an extra two years. NASA approved the funding required and retargeted the spacecraft. Mission controllers at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory began redirecting EPOXI on November 1,2007 and they commanded the spacecraft to perform a three-minute rocket burn that changed the spacecrafts velocity. EPOXI’s new trajectory set the stage for three Earth flybys, the first on December 31,2007 and this placed the spacecraft into an orbital holding pattern so that it could encounter comet 103P/Hartley in 2010. The goal of photometric observations is to measure the quantity of light, an aberration in the primary mirror of the HRI allowed the HRI to spread the light from observations over more pixels without saturating the CCD, effectively obtaining better data. A total of 198,434 images were exposed, ePOChs goals were to study the physical properties of giant planets and search for rings, moons and planets as small as three Earth masses. The spacecraft used Earths gravity for the gravity assist in December 2008. Observations of 103P/Hartley began on September 5 and ended November 25,2010, for a diagram of the EPOXI solar orbits see here. The missions closest approach to 103P/Hartley occurred at 10 am EDT on 4 November 2010, the flyby speed was 12.3 km/s
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Exoplanet
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An exoplanet or extrasolar planet is a planet that orbits a star other than the Sun. The first scientific detection of an exoplanet was in 1988, HARPS has discovered about a hundred exoplanets while the Kepler space telescope has found more than two thousand. Kepler has also detected a few thousand candidate planets, of which about 11% may be false positives, on average, there is at least one planet per star, with a percentage having multiple planets. About 1 in 5 Sun-like stars have an Earth-sized planet in the habitable zone, the least massive planet known is Draugr, which is about twice the mass of the Moon. There are planets that are so near to their star that they take only a few hours to orbit, some are so far out that it is difficult to tell whether they are gravitationally bound to the star. Almost all of the planets detected so far are within the Milky Way, the nearest exoplanet is Proxima Centauri b, located 4.2 light-years from Earth and orbiting Proxima Centauri, the closest star to the Sun. The discovery of exoplanets has intensified interest in the search for extraterrestrial life, there is special interest in planets that orbit in a stars habitable zone, where it is possible for liquid water, a prerequisite for life on Earth, to exist on the surface. The study of planetary habitability also considers a range of other factors in determining the suitability of a planet for hosting life. The rogue planets in the Milky Way possibly number in the billions, the convention for designating exoplanets is an extension of the system used for designating multiple-star systems as adopted by the International Astronomical Union. For exoplanets orbiting a star, the designation is normally formed by taking the name or, more commonly, designation of its parent star. The first planet discovered in a system is given the designation b, if several planets in the same system are discovered at the same time, the closest one to the star gets the next letter, followed by the other planets in order of orbital size. A provisional IAU-sanctioned standard exists to accommodate the designation of circumbinary planets, a limited number of exoplanets have IAU-sanctioned proper names. Various detection claims made in the century were rejected by astronomers. The first scientific detection of an exoplanet began in 1988, However, the first confirmed detection came in 1992, with the discovery of several terrestrial-mass planets orbiting the pulsar PSR B1257+12. The first confirmation of an exoplanet orbiting a star was made in 1995. Some exoplanets have been imaged directly by telescopes, but the vast majority have been detected through indirect methods, such as the transit method, in the eighteenth century the same possibility was mentioned by Isaac Newton in the General Scholium that concludes his Principia. Claims of exoplanet detections have been made since the nineteenth century, some of the earliest involve the binary star 70 Ophiuchi. In 1855 William Stephen Jacob at the East India Companys Madras Observatory reported that orbital anomalies made it highly probable that there was a body in this system
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103P/Hartley
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Comet Hartley 2, designated as 103P/Hartley by the Minor Planet Center, is a small periodic comet with an orbital period of 6.46 years. It was discovered by Malcolm Hartley in 1986 at the Schmidt Telescope Unit, Siding Spring Observatory and its diameter is estimated to be 1.2 to 1.6 kilometres. As of November 2010 Hartley 2 is the smallest comet which has been visited and it is the fifth comet visited by spacecraft, and the second comet visited by the Deep Impact spacecraft, which first visited comet Tempel 1 on 4 July 2005. Comet Hartley 2 is a small Jupiter-family comet having a period of 6.46 years. It was discovered by Malcolm Hartley in 1986 at the Schmidt Telescope Unit, Siding Spring Observatory and it has the perihelion near the Earths orbit at 1.05 AU from the Sun. The comet passed within 0.12 AU of Earth on 20 October 2010, from northern latitudes, during early November 2010, the comet was visible around midnight without interference from the Moon. Despite its current close passage by Earths orbit, the comet is not yet a source of meteor showers. Dust trails from the recent returns of 103P/Hartley 2 move in and out of Earths orbit, after the 2010 perihelion passage, not accounting for nongravitational forces, Hartley 2 is estimated to come back to perihelion around 20 April 2017. Observation by the Spitzer Space Telescope in August 2008 showed the nucleus to have a radius of 0.57 ±0.08 kilometers. The mass of the comet is estimated to be about 300 megatonnes, barring a catastrophic breakup or major splitting event, the comet should be able to survive up to another 100 apparitions at its current rate of mass loss. Radar observations by the Arecibo Observatory during the comets 2010 apparition revealed that the nucleus is highly elongated, the project manager of the EPOXI mission described its shape as a cross between a bowling pin and a pickle. In 2011 Herschel Space Observatory detected the signature of vaporized water in the comets coma, Hartley 2 contains half as much heavy water as other comets analyzed before, with the same ratio between heavy water and regular water as found in Earths oceans. For many years, it was known that few comets produced more water vapor than it should by the redirection of nucleus of water ice, the flyby of Hartley 2 showed that many of the icy grains in the coma are driven out by the outgassing of carbon dioxide. It is believed that this is the source of much of the coming from the comet. Observations of Hartley 2 showed the importance of carbon-monoxide ice to carbon-dioxide ice in comets, after a reexamination, it was found that the abundances of carbon-monoxide ice and carbon dioxide ice show that short-period comets formed under warmer conditions, than the longer period comets. This shows that the short-period comets formed closer to the Sun and this discovery goes well with the measurements of Heavy Water in Hartley 2. The EPOXI mission flyby showed that the material being ejected from the comet is composed of CO2 gas. A University of Maryland-led study published in the 17 June issue of the journal Science described an analysis of the mission, moreover, these objects appear to be two to three times more reflective than the surface average
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Michael A'Hearn
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Michael Francis AHearn is an American astronomer and astronomy professor at the University of Maryland College of Computer, Mathematical, and Natural Sciences. He is also the principal investigator for NASAs EPOXI mission and he received his B. A. in science at Boston College and his Ph. D. in Astronomy at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. He was the investigator for the NASA Deep Impact mission. He has aided in the development of systems for surveying abundances in comets as well as techniques for determining the sizes of cometary nuclei which uses optical and his studies focus on comets as well as asteroids and he also supervises numerous graduate students. He is a fellow of the AAAS. He has authored over 100 papers published in journals and is also a sailor who has a commercial coast guard license. In 2008, he received the Gerard P. Kuiper Prize
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Cornell University
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Cornell University is an American private Ivy League and land-grant doctoral university located in Ithaca, New York. These ideals, unconventional for the time, are captured in Cornells motto, the university also administers two satellite medical campuses, one in New York City and one in Education City, Qatar. Cornell is one of three private land grant universities in the nation and the one in New York. Of its seven colleges, three are state-supported statutory or contract colleges through the State University of New York system, including its agricultural. Of Cornells graduate schools, only the college is state-supported. As a land grant college, Cornell operates a cooperative extension program in every county of New York. The Cornell University Ithaca Campus comprises 745 acres, but is larger when the Cornell Botanic Gardens are considered. Since its founding, Cornell has been a co-educational, non-sectarian institution where admission has not been restricted by religion or race, the student body consists of more than 14,000 undergraduate and 7,000 graduate students from all 50 American states and more than 120 countries. Cornell University was founded on April 27,1865, the New York State Senate authorized the university as the land grant institution. Senator Ezra Cornell offered his farm in Ithaca, New York, as a site, fellow senator and experienced educator Andrew Dickson White agreed to be the first president. During the next three years, White oversaw the construction of the first two buildings and traveled to attract students and faculty, the university was inaugurated on October 7,1868, and 412 men were enrolled the next day. Cornell developed as an innovative institution, applying its research to its own campus as well as to outreach efforts. For example, in 1883 it was one of the first university campuses to use electricity from a dynamo to light the grounds. Cornell has had active alumni since its earliest classes and it was one of the first universities to include alumni-elected representatives on its Board of Trustees. Today the university has more than 4,000 courses, since 2000, Cornell has been expanding its international programs. In 2004, the university opened the Weill Cornell Medical College in Qatar and it has partnerships with institutions in India, Singapore, and the Peoples Republic of China. Former president Jeffrey S. Lehman described the university, with its international profile. On March 9,2004, Cornell and Stanford University laid the cornerstone for a new Bridging the Rift Center to be built, Cornells main campus is on East Hill in Ithaca, New York, overlooking the town and Cayuga Lake
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University of Arizona
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The University of Arizona is a public research university in Tucson, Arizona, United States. Founded in 1885, the UA was the first university in the Arizona Territory, the university operates two medical schools and is affiliated with the regions only academic medical centers. The university is home to the James E. Rogers College of Law and numerous other nationally ranked graduate. During the 2015-2016 academic year, there was an enrollment of 43,088 students. The University of Arizona is governed by the Arizona Board of Regents, the University of Arizona is one of the elected members of the Association of American Universities and is the only representative from the state of Arizona to this group. Known as the Arizona Wildcats, the teams are members of the Pac-12 Conference of the NCAA. UA athletes have won titles in several sports, most notably mens basketball, baseball. The official colors of the university and its teams are UA Red. After the passage of the Morrill Land-Grant Act of 1862, the push for a university in Arizona grew, the University of Arizona was approved by the Arizona Territorys Thieving Thirteenth Legislature in 1885, which also selected the city of Tucson to receive the appropriation to build the university. Tucson had hoped to receive the appropriation for the mental hospital. Tucson was largely disappointed with receiving what was viewed as an inferior prize. Construction of Old Main, the first building on campus, began on October 27,1887, and classes met for the first time in 1891 with 32 students in Old Main, which is still in use today. Because there were no schools in Arizona Territory, the university maintained separate preparatory classes for the first 23 years of operation. The University of Arizona offers 334 fields of study leading to bachelors, masters, doctoral, academic departments and programs are organized into colleges and schools. Currently, grades are given on a strict 4-point scale with A worth 4, B worth 3, C worth 2, D worth 1 and E worth zero points. In 2004, there were discussions with students and faculty that may lead the UA towards eventual usage of the grading system in future years. As of December 2015, the university uses the 4-points scale. The Center for World University Rankings in 2015 ranked Arizona 68th in the world, the 2015–16 Times Higher Education World University Rankings rated University of Arizona 163rd in the world and the 2016/17 QS World University Rankings ranked it 233rd
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Brown University
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Brown is the seventh-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and one of the nine Colonial Colleges established before the American Revolution. At its foundation, Brown was the first college in the United States to accept students regardless of their religious affiliation and its engineering program was established in 1847 and was the first in the Ivy League. It was one of the early doctoral-granting U. S. institutions in the late 19th century, adding master, Browns New Curriculum is sometimes referred to in education theory as the Brown Curriculum and was adopted by faculty vote in 1969 after a period of student lobbying. In 1971, Browns coordinate womens institution Pembroke College was fully merged into the university, Pembroke Campus now operates as a place for dorms and classrooms. Undergraduate admissions is very selective, with a rate of 8.3 percent for the class of 2021. The University comprises The College, the Graduate School, Alpert Medical School, the School of Engineering, the School of Public Health, and the School of Professional Studies. The Brown/RISD Dual Degree Program, offered in conjunction with the Rhode Island School of Design, is a course that awards degrees from both institutions. Browns main campus is located in the College Hill Historic District in the city of Providence, the Universitys neighborhood is a federally listed architectural district with a dense concentration of Colonial-era buildings. On the western edge of the campus, Benefit Street contains one of the finest cohesive collections of restored seventeenth-, Browns faculty and alumni include eight Nobel Prize laureates, five National Humanities Medalists, and ten National Medal of Science laureates. Other notable alumni include eight billionaire graduates, a U. S. Supreme Court Chief Justice, to erect a public Building or Buildings for the boarding of the youth & the Residence of the Professors. Stiles and Ellery were co-authors of the Charter of the College two years later, there is further documentary evidence that Stiles was making plans for a college in 1762. On January 20, Chauncey Whittelsey, pastor of the First Church of New Haven, answered a letter from Stiles, should you make any Progress in the Affair of a Colledge, I should be glad to hear of it, I heartily wish you Success therein. Isaac Backus was the historian of the New England Baptists and an inaugural Trustee of Brown, Mr. James Manning, who took his first degree in New-Jersey college in September,1762, was esteemed a suitable leader in this important work. Manning arrived at Newport in July 1763 and was introduced to Stiles, stiless first draft was read to the General Assembly in August 1763 and rejected by Baptist members who worried that the College Board of Fellows would under-represent the Baptists. A revised Charter written by Stiles and Ellery was adopted by the Assembly on March 3,1764, in September 1764, the inaugural meeting of the College Corporation was held at Newport. Governor Stephen Hopkins was chosen chancellor, former and future governor Samuel Ward was vice chancellor, John Tillinghast treasurer, the Charter stipulated that the Board of Trustees be composed of 22 Baptists, five Quakers, five Episcopalians, and four Congregationalists. Of the 12 Fellows, eight should be Baptists—including the College president—and the rest indifferently of any or all Denominations, the Charter was not the grant of King George III, as is sometimes supposed, but rather an Act of the colonial General Assembly. In two particulars, the Charter may be said to be a uniquely progressive document, the oft-repeated statement is inaccurate that Browns Charter alone prohibited a religious test for College membership, other college charters were also liberal in that particular
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University of Hawaii
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All schools of the University of Hawaii system are accredited by the Western Association of Schools and Colleges. The U. H. systems main administrative offices are located on the property of the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa in Honolulu CDP, the second-largest institution is the University of Hawaiʻi at Hilo on the Big Island of Hawaiʻi, with over 3,000 students. The smaller University of Hawaiʻi-West Oʻahu in Kapolei primarily serves students who reside on Honolulus western, the University of Hawaiʻi Community College system comprises four community colleges island campuses on Oahu and one each on Maui, Kauaʻi, and Hawaiʻi. University of Hawaiʻi education centers are located in remote areas of the State and its several islands. Inouye College of Pharmacy School of Ocean and Earth Science and Technology John A. Burns School of Medicine William S. M, the Board oversees all aspects of governance for the university system, including its internal structure and management. The board also appoints, evaluates, and if necessary removes the President of the University of Hawaiʻi, the Universitys governing board includes a current student appointed by the Governor of Hawaiʻi to serve a two-year term as a full voting regent. The practice of appointing a student to the Board was approved by the Hawaiʻi State Legislature in 1997, alumni of the University of Hawaiʻi system include many notable persons in various walks of life. Senator Daniel Inouye and Tammy Duckworth both are veterans of the US military who were injured during in the line of duty then later entered government service, bette Midler and Georgia Engel are successful entertainers on the national stage. President Barack Obamas parents, Barack Obama, Sr. and S, ann Dunham, and half-sister, Maya Soetoro-Ng, also earned degrees from the Mānoa campus, where his parents met in a Russian language class. His mother earned three degrees from the University of Hawaiʻi including a Ph. D. in anthropology, the University of Hawaiʻi system has had many faculty members of note. Many were visiting faculty or came after they won awards like Nobel Laureate Dr. Georg von Békésy. Dr. Ryuzo Yanagimachi, principal investigator of the group that developed a method of cloning from adult animal cells, is still on the faculty. University of Hawaii Marching Band Robert, Kamins, mālamalama, A History of the University of Hawaiʻi. The Politics of Higher Education In Hawaiʻi, 1985-1992, official website University of Hawaiʻi Athletics
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Science Applications International Corporation
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Government civil agencies and selected commercial markets. In 2014, Leidos reported US$5.06 billion in revenue, in 2015, Leidos reported US$5.09 billion in revenue. As of August 2016, the company has 33,000 employees, the company was founded by J. Robert Bob Beyster in 1969 in the La Jolla neighborhood of San Diego, California, as Science Applications Incorporated. SAIC conducted a public offering of common stock on October 17,2006. The offering of 86,250,000 shares of stock was priced at $15.00 per share. The underwriters, Bear Stearns and Morgan Stanley, exercised overallotment options, in September 2009 SAIC relocated its corporate headquarters to their existing facilities in Tysons Corner in unincorporated Fairfax County, Virginia, near McLean. In 2012 SAIC was ordered to pay $550 million to the City of New York for overbilling the city over a period of seven years on the CityTime contract. In 2014 Gerard Denault, SAICs CityTime program manager, and his government contact were sentenced to 20 years in prison for fraud, in August 2012, SAIC announced its plans to split into two publicly traded companies. The remaining part became a $7 billion-per-year IT company specializing in technology for the security, health. The smaller company was led by Tony Moraco, who beforehand was leading SAIC’s Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance group, the split has allowed both companies to pursue more business, which it could not pursue as a single company due to conflicts of interest. CEO, Roger Krone After more than 30 years of Beysters leadership, dahlberg was named the CEO of SAIC in November 2003. In May 2005, the changed its external tagline from An Employee-Owned Company to From Science to Solutions. The third CEO was Walt Havenstein, who pushed for integration of the companys historically autonomous divisions. The strategy was reversed by the CEO, retired Air Force general John P. Jumper, on July 1,2014 Leidos announced that Roger Krone will become its CEO on July 14,2014. As of 2017, Krone is the Chairman and CEO of Leidos, the Defense Intelligence Agency transitioned a Remote Viewing Program to SAIC in 1991 which was renamed Stargate Project. In March 2001 SAIC defined the concept for the NSA Trailblazer Project, other project participants included Boeing, Computer Sciences Corporation, and Booz Allen Hamilton. According to science news site PhysOrg. com, Trailblazer was a continuation of the earlier ThinThread program, in 2005, NSA director Michael Hayden told a Senate hearing that the Trailblazer program was several hundred million dollars over budget and years behind schedule. In fiscal year 2003, SAIC did more than $2.6 billion in business with the United States Department of Defense, making it the ninth-largest defense contractor in the United States
28.
Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics
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The Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics is a Max Planck Institute, located in Garching, near Munich, Germany. The Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics was founded as sub-institute in 1963, the scientific activities of the institute are mostly devoted to astrophysics with telescopes orbiting in space. A large amount of the resources are spent for studying black holes in the galaxy, the Max-Planck-Institute for extraterrestrial physics was preceded by the department for extraterrestrial physics in the Max-Planck-Institute for physics and astrophysics. This department was established by Professor Reimar Lüst on October 23,1961, a Max-Planck Senate resolution transformed this department into a sub-institute of the Max-Planck-Institute for Physics and Astrophysics on May 15,1963. Professor Lüst was appointed director of the Institute, another Senate resolution on March 8,1991 finally established MPE as an autonomous institute within the Max-Planck-Gesellschaft. It is dedicated to the experimental and theoretical exploration of the space outside of earth as well as astrophysical phenomena, the former independent X-ray and Gamma-ray departments are merged into the new high-energy astrophysics department. This department was established by Professor Reimar Lüst on October 23,1961, a Max-Planck Senate resolution transformed this department into a sub-institute of the Max-Planck-Institut für Physik und Astrophysik on May 15,1963. Professor Lüst was appointed Director of the Institute, another Senate resolution on March 8,1991 finally established MPE as an autonomous institute within the Max-Planck-Gesellschaft. It is dedicated to the experimental and theoretical exploration of the space outside of earth as well as astrophysical phenomena, a continuous reorientation to new, promising fields of research and the appointment of new members ensures steady advancement. Among the 29 employees of the Institute when it was founded in 1963 were 9 scientists and 1 Ph. D. student. Twelve years later in 1975 the number of employees had grown to 180 with 55 scientists and 13 Ph. D. students and it is noteworthy that permanent positions at the institute have not increased since 1973 - despite its celebrated scientific achievements. The increasingly complex tasks and international obligations have been maintained by staff members with positions having limited duration. Because the Institute has assumed a position in astronomy internationally. The number of guests increased from 12 in 1974 to a maximum of 72 in 2000. In recent years MPE has hosted an average of about 50 guest scientists each year, during the early years the scientific work at the Institute concentrated on the investigation of extraterrestrial plasmas and the magnetosphere of the earth. This work was performed with measurements of particles and electromagnetic fields as well as a specially developed ion-cloud technique using sounding rockets and these observations and inferences therefrom are the subject matter of infra-red astronomy as well as X-ray- and gamma-ray-astronomy. In addition to more than 100 rockets, a number of high-altitude balloons have been used to carry experiments to high altitudes. Since the 1990s, satellites have become the preferred observation platforms because of their favorable observation-time/cost ratio, nevertheless, high-flying observation airplanes and ground-based telescopes are also used to obtain data especially for optical and near-infrared observations
29.
Spacecraft
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A spacecraft is a vehicle, or machine designed to fly in outer space. Spacecraft are used for a variety of purposes, including communications, earth observation, meteorology, navigation, space colonization, planetary exploration, on a sub-orbital spaceflight, a spacecraft enters space and then returns to the surface, without having gone into an orbit. For orbital spaceflights, spacecraft enter closed orbits around the Earth or around other celestial bodies, robotic spacecraft used to support scientific research are space probes. Robotic spacecraft that remain in orbit around a body are artificial satellites. Only a handful of interstellar probes, such as Pioneer 10 and 11, Voyager 1 and 2, orbital spacecraft may be recoverable or not. By method of reentry to Earth they may be divided in non-winged space capsules, Sputnik 1 was the first artificial satellite. It was launched into an elliptical low Earth orbit by the Soviet Union on 4 October 1957, the launch ushered in new political, military, technological, and scientific developments, while the Sputnik launch was a single event, it marked the start of the Space Age. Apart from its value as a technological first, Sputnik 1 also helped to identify the upper atmospheric layers density and it also provided data on radio-signal distribution in the ionosphere. Pressurized nitrogen in the satellites false body provided the first opportunity for meteoroid detection, Sputnik 1 was launched during the International Geophysical Year from Site No. 1/5, at the 5th Tyuratam range, in Kazakh SSR. The satellite travelled at 29,000 kilometers per hour, taking 96.2 minutes to complete an orbit and this altitude is called the Kármán line. In particular, in the 1940s there were several test launches of the V-2 rocket, as of 2016, only three nations have flown manned spacecraft, USSR/Russia, USA, and China. The first manned spacecraft was Vostok 1, which carried Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin into space in 1961, there were five other manned missions which used a Vostok spacecraft. The second manned spacecraft was named Freedom 7, and it performed a sub-orbital spaceflight in 1961 carrying American astronaut Alan Shepard to an altitude of just over 187 kilometers, there were five other manned missions using Mercury spacecraft. Other Soviet manned spacecraft include the Voskhod, Soyuz, flown unmanned as Zond/L1, L3, TKS, China developed, but did not fly Shuguang, and is currently using Shenzhou. Except for the shuttle, all of the recoverable manned orbital spacecraft were space capsules. Manned space capsules The International Space Station, manned since November 2000, is a joint venture between Russia, the United States, Canada and several other countries, some reusable vehicles have been designed only for manned spaceflight, and these are often called spaceplanes. The first example of such was the North American X-15 spaceplane, the first reusable spacecraft, the X-15, was air-launched on a suborbital trajectory on July 19,1963. The first partially reusable spacecraft, a winged non-capsule, the Space Shuttle, was launched by the USA on the 20th anniversary of Yuri Gagarins flight
30.
Speckle imaging
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Speckle imaging describes a range of high-resolution astronomical imaging techniques based on the analysis of large numbers of short exposures that freeze the variation of atmospheric turbulence. They can be divided into the method and the speckle interferometry methods. These techniques can dramatically increase the resolution of ground-based telescopes, but are limited to bright targets, the principle of all the techniques is to take very short exposure images of astronomical targets, and then process those so as to remove the effects of astronomical seeing. Many of the remain in wide use today, notably when imaging relatively bright targets. The resolution of a telescope is limited by the size of the main mirror and this results in images of distant objects being spread out to a small spot known as the Airy disk. A group of objects whose images are closer together than this limit appear as a single object, thus larger telescopes can image not only dimmer objects, but smaller objects as well. For many years telescope performance was limited by this effect, until the introduction of speckle interferometry, speckle imaging recreates the original image through image processing techniques. The key to the technique, found by the American astronomer David L. Fried in 1966, was to take very fast images in case the atmosphere is effectively frozen in place. For infrared images, exposure times are on the order of 100 ms, of course there is a downside, taking images at this short an exposure is difficult, and if the object is too dim, not enough light will be captured to make analysis possible. Many of the simpler speckle imaging methods have multiple names, largely from amateur astronomers re-inventing existing speckle imaging techniques, more recently, another use of the technique has developed for industrial applications. By shining a laser on a surface, the speckle pattern can be processed to give detailed images of flaws in the material. In one technique called shift-and-add, the short exposure images are aligned by using the brightest speckle, in the lucky imaging approach, only the best short exposures are selected for averaging. Early shift-and-add techniques aligned images according to the centroid, giving a lower overall Strehl ratio. Methods developed in the 1980s allowed simple images to be reconstructed from this power spectrum information, one more recent type of speckle interferometry called speckle masking involves calculation of the bispectrum or closure phases from each of the short exposures. The average bispectrum can then be calculated and then inverted to obtain an image and this works particularly well using aperture masks. This aperture masking technique was pioneered by the Cavendish Astrophysics Group, one limitation of the technique is that it requires extensive computer processing of the image, which was hard to come by when the technique was first developed. This limitation has faded away over the years as computing power has increased, speckle imaging in biology refers to the underlabeling of periodic cellular components so that instead of appearing as a continuous and uniform structure, it appears as a discrete set of speckles. This is due to distribution of the labeled component within unlabeled components
31.
Infrared spectroscopy
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Infrared spectroscopy involves the interaction of infrared radiation with matter. It covers a range of techniques, mostly based on absorption spectroscopy, as with all spectroscopic techniques, it can be used to identify and study chemicals. Sample may be solid, liquid, or gas, the method or technique of infrared spectroscopy is conducted with an instrument called an infrared spectrometer to produce an infrared spectrum. An IR spectrum is essentially a graph of infrared light absorbance on the vertical axis vs. frequency or wavelength on the horizontal axis, typical units of frequency used in IR spectra are reciprocal centimeters, with the symbol cm−1. Units of IR wavelength are commonly given in micrometers, symbol μm, a common laboratory instrument that uses this technique is a Fourier transform infrared spectrometer. Two-dimensional IR is also possible as discussed below, the infrared portion of the electromagnetic spectrum is usually divided into three regions, the near-, mid- and far- infrared, named for their relation to the visible spectrum. The higher-energy near-IR, approximately 14000–4000 cm−1 can excite overtone or harmonic vibrations, the mid-infrared, approximately 4000–400 cm−1 may be used to study the fundamental vibrations and associated rotational-vibrational structure. The far-infrared, approximately 400–10 cm−1, lying adjacent to the region, has low energy. The names and classifications of these subregions are conventions, and are loosely based on the relative molecular or electromagnetic properties. Infrared spectroscopy exploits the fact that molecules absorb frequencies that are characteristic of their structure and these absorptions occur at resonant frequencies, i. e. the frequency of the absorbed radiation matches the vibrational frequency. The energies are affected by the shape of the potential energy surfaces, the masses of the atoms. In particular, in the Born–Oppenheimer and harmonic approximations, i. e, the resonant frequencies are also related to the strength of the bond and the mass of the atoms at either end of it. Thus, the frequency of the vibrations are associated with a normal mode of motion. In order for a mode in a sample to be IR active. A permanent dipole is not necessary, as the rule requires only a change in dipole moment, a molecule can vibrate in many ways, and each way is called a vibrational mode. For molecules with N number of atoms, linear molecules have 3N –5 degrees of vibrational modes, as an example H2O, a non-linear molecule, will have 3 ×3 –6 =3 degrees of vibrational freedom, or modes. Simple diatomic molecules have only one bond and only one vibrational band, if the molecule is symmetrical, e. g. N2, the band is not observed in the IR spectrum, but only in the Raman spectrum. Asymmetrical diatomic molecules, e. g. CO, absorb in the IR spectrum, more complex molecules have many bonds, and their vibrational spectra are correspondingly more complex, i. e. big molecules have many peaks in their IR spectra
32.
High Resolution Coronal Imager
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The High Resolution Coronal Imager is a sub-orbital telescope designed to take high-resolution images of the Suns corona. It was launched on July 11,2012 aboard a Black Brant sounding rocket from White Sands Missile Range, the images taken were the highest resolution photos ever of the Suns corona. The telescope weighs 464 pounds, and is 10 feet long, the mirrors are approximately 9.5 inches across. Dr. Jonathan Cirtain, from MSFL said, These mirrors were to be the finest pieces of glass ever fabricated for solar astrophysics, the imaging system was designed by Apogee Imaging Systems with a resolution of 0.1 arcsec/pixel. It was based on a version of the E2V CCD203 from Lockheed Martin. The flight lasted for 10 minutes, reached an altitude of 283 kilometres and it imaged the Sun in ultraviolet light at 19.3 nm wavelength. The total cost of the mission was $5 million, the experiment revealed never-before-seen magnetic braids of plasma roiling in the Suns outer layers. It was the first time scientists were able to observe magnetic reconnection in braids. The Sun Revealed, Photos of the Million-degree Solar Corona, Space. com HI-C Sounding Rocket Mission Has Finest Mirrors Ever Made, NASA
33.
Infrared
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It extends from the nominal red edge of the visible spectrum at 700 nanometers, to 1000000 nm. Most of the radiation emitted by objects near room temperature is infrared. Like all EMR, IR carries radiant energy, and behaves both like a wave and like its quantum particle, the photon, slightly more than half of the total energy from the Sun was eventually found to arrive on Earth in the form of infrared. The balance between absorbed and emitted infrared radiation has an effect on Earths climate. Infrared radiation is emitted or absorbed by molecules when they change their rotational-vibrational movements and it excites vibrational modes in a molecule through a change in the dipole moment, making it a useful frequency range for study of these energy states for molecules of the proper symmetry. Infrared spectroscopy examines absorption and transmission of photons in the infrared range, Infrared radiation is used in industrial, scientific, and medical applications. Night-vision devices using active near-infrared illumination allow people or animals to be observed without the observer being detected, Infrared thermal-imaging cameras are used to detect heat loss in insulated systems, to observe changing blood flow in the skin, and to detect overheating of electrical apparatuses. Thermal-infrared imaging is used extensively for military and civilian purposes, military applications include target acquisition, surveillance, night vision, homing, and tracking. Humans at normal body temperature radiate chiefly at wavelengths around 10 μm, Infrared radiation extends from the nominal red edge of the visible spectrum at 700 nanometers to 1 mm. This range of wavelengths corresponds to a range of approximately 430 THz down to 300 GHz. Below infrared is the portion of the electromagnetic spectrum. Sunlight, at a temperature of 5,780 kelvins, is composed of near thermal-spectrum radiation that is slightly more than half infrared. At zenith, sunlight provides an irradiance of just over 1 kilowatt per square meter at sea level, of this energy,527 watts is infrared radiation,445 watts is visible light, and 32 watts is ultraviolet radiation. Nearly all the radiation in sunlight is near infrared, shorter than 4 micrometers. On the surface of Earth, at far lower temperatures than the surface of the Sun, almost all thermal radiation consists of infrared in mid-infrared region, much longer than in sunlight. Of these natural thermal radiation processes only lightning and natural fires are hot enough to produce much visible energy, thermal infrared radiation also has a maximum emission wavelength, which is inversely proportional to the absolute temperature of object, in accordance with Wiens displacement law. Therefore, the band is often subdivided into smaller sections. Due to the nature of the blackbody radiation curves, typical hot objects, such as exhaust pipes, the three regions are used for observation of different temperature ranges, and hence different environments in space
34.
Spectrometer
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A spectrometer is a scientific instrument originally used to split light into an array of separate colors, called a spectrum. Spectrometers were developed in early studies of physics, astronomy, the capability of spectroscopy to determine chemical composition drove its advancement and continues to be one of their primary uses. Spectrometers are used in astronomy to analyze the composition of stars and planets. The concept of a spectrometer now encompasses instruments that do not examine light, spectrometers separate particles, atoms, and molecules by their mass, momentum, or energy. These types of spectrometers are used in analysis and particle physics. Optical spectrometers, in particular, show the intensity of light as a function of wavelength or of frequency, the deflection is produced either by refraction in a prism or by diffraction in a diffraction grating. These spectrometers utilize the phenomenon of optical dispersion, the light from a source can consist of a continuous spectrum, an emission spectrum, or an absorption spectrum. Because each element leaves its spectral signature in the pattern of lines observed, a mass spectrometer is an analytical instrument that is used to identify the amount and type of chemicals present in a sample by measuring the mass-to-charge ratio and abundance of gas-phase ions. The energy spectrum of particles of mass can also be measured by determining the time of flight between two detectors in a time-of-flight spectrometer. Alternatively, if the velocity is known, masses can be determined in a mass spectrometer. When a fast charged particle enters a constant magnetic field B at right angles, it is deflected into a path of radius r. The momentum p of the particle is given by p = m v = q B r. The focussing principle of the oldest and simplest magnetic spectrometer, the semicircular spectrometer, a constant magnetic field is perpendicular to the page. Charged particles of momentum p that pass the slit are deflected into circular paths of radius r = p/qB and it turns out that they all hit the horizontal line at nearly the same place, the focus, here a particle counter should be placed. Since Danysz time, many types of magnetic spectrometers more complicated than the type have been devised. Generally, the resolution of an instrument tells us how well two close-lying energies can be resolved, generally, for an instrument with mechanical slits, higher resolution will mean lower intensity
35.
Pixel
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The address of a pixel corresponds to its physical coordinates. LCD pixels are manufactured in a grid, and are often represented using dots or squares. Each pixel is a sample of an image, more samples typically provide more accurate representations of the original. The intensity of each pixel is variable, in color imaging systems, a color is typically represented by three or four component intensities such as red, green, and blue, or cyan, magenta, yellow, and black. The word pixel is based on a contraction of pix and el, the word pixel was first published in 1965 by Frederic C. Billingsley of JPL, to describe the elements of video images from space probes to the Moon. Billingsley had learned the word from Keith E. McFarland, at the Link Division of General Precision in Palo Alto, McFarland said simply it was in use at the time. The word is a combination of pix, for picture, the word pix appeared in Variety magazine headlines in 1932, as an abbreviation for the word pictures, in reference to movies. By 1938, pix was being used in reference to pictures by photojournalists. The concept of a picture element dates to the earliest days of television, some authors explain pixel as picture cell, as early as 1972. In graphics and in image and video processing, pel is often used instead of pixel, for example, IBM used it in their Technical Reference for the original PC. A pixel is generally thought of as the smallest single component of a digital image, however, the definition is highly context-sensitive. For example, there can be printed pixels in a page, or pixels carried by electronic signals, or represented by digital values, or pixels on a display device, or pixels in a digital camera. This list is not exhaustive and, depending on context, synonyms include pel, sample, byte, bit, dot, Pixels can be used as a unit of measure such as,2400 pixels per inch,640 pixels per line, or spaced 10 pixels apart. For example, a high-quality photographic image may be printed with 600 ppi on a 1200 dpi inkjet printer, even higher dpi numbers, such as the 4800 dpi quoted by printer manufacturers since 2002, do not mean much in terms of achievable resolution. The more pixels used to represent an image, the closer the result can resemble the original, the number of pixels in an image is sometimes called the resolution, though resolution has a more specific definition.3 megapixels. The pixels, or color samples, that form an image may or may not be in one-to-one correspondence with screen pixels. In computing, a composed of pixels is known as a bitmapped image or a raster image
36.
Deep Impact (film)
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Steven Spielberg served as an executive producer of this film. It was released by Paramount Pictures and DreamWorks Pictures in the United States on May 8,1998, the film depicts the attempts to prepare for and destroy a 7-mile wide comet set to collide with Earth and cause a mass extinction. Both films were received by critics, with Armageddon scoring 39%. Nonetheless, Deep Impact grossed over $349 million worldwide on an $80 million production budget and this is the final film of cinematographer Dietrich Lohmann. On May 10,1998, teenage amateur astronomer Leo Biederman discovers an unusual object near the stars Mizar and Alcor at a party in Richmond. His teacher alerts astronomer Dr. Marcus Wolf, who realizes that the object is a comet, Wolf dies in a car accident trying to alert the world. One year later, MSNBC journalist Jenny Lerner investigates the sudden resignation of Secretary of the Treasury Alan Rittenhouse and his connection to Ellie, after interviewing Rittenhouse, she is intercepted by the FBI and brought before President Tom Beck. Lerner realizes that Ellie is not a mistress but an acronym, due to Lerners investigation, President Beck makes an announcement earlier than planned, the comet named Wolf-Biederman is headed for Earth. It is 7 miles long, large enough to cause a mass extinction, after his name is mentioned on TV, Leo speaks to the town about the discovery and how the White House thought he died alongside Wolf. After landing on the comet, the crew members plant nuclear bombs beneath the surface, when the bombs detonate, the ship is damaged from the blast and the team loses contact with Earth. President Beck announces the crews failure, the nukes did not divert the comet, after President Beck announces the Messiah crews failure, he declares martial law and reveals that governments worldwide have been building underground shelters. The United States shelter is in the caves of Missouri. Lerner and the Biederman family are pre-selected, but Leos girlfriend Sarah Hotchner and her family are not, Leo marries Sarah to save her family, but they are left off the evacuee list. Sarah refuses to leave without her parents, a last-ditch effort to use Earths ICBMs to deflect the comets fails. President Beck reports on this and reveals the final trajectories of the two comets, the Biederman fragment will impact the Atlantic Ocean off Cape Hatteras, which will generate megatsunamis up to 3,500 feet high. The people who would be in its way are immediately advised to evacuate, Leo returns home looking for Sarah, but her family has left for the Appalachian Mountains and is caught in a traffic jam. Leo catches up to the using a motorcycle from their garage. Sarahs parents instruct Leo to take Sarah and her brother to high ground
37.
Joule
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The joule, symbol J, is a derived unit of energy in the International System of Units. It is equal to the transferred to an object when a force of one newton acts on that object in the direction of its motion through a distance of one metre. It is also the energy dissipated as heat when a current of one ampere passes through a resistance of one ohm for one second. It is named after the English physicist James Prescott Joule, one joule can also be defined as, The work required to move an electric charge of one coulomb through an electrical potential difference of one volt, or one coulomb volt. This relationship can be used to define the volt, the work required to produce one watt of power for one second, or one watt second. This relationship can be used to define the watt and this SI unit is named after James Prescott Joule. As with every International System of Units unit named for a person, note that degree Celsius conforms to this rule because the d is lowercase. — Based on The International System of Units, section 5.2. The CGPM has given the unit of energy the name Joule, the use of newton metres for torque and joules for energy is helpful to avoid misunderstandings and miscommunications. The distinction may be also in the fact that energy is a scalar – the dot product of a vector force. By contrast, torque is a vector – the cross product of a distance vector, torque and energy are related to one another by the equation E = τ θ, where E is energy, τ is torque, and θ is the angle swept. Since radians are dimensionless, it follows that torque and energy have the same dimensions, one joule in everyday life represents approximately, The energy required to lift a medium-size tomato 1 m vertically from the surface of the Earth. The energy released when that same tomato falls back down to the ground, the energy required to accelerate a 1 kg mass at 1 m·s−2 through a 1 m distance in space. The heat required to raise the temperature of 1 g of water by 0.24 °C, the typical energy released as heat by a person at rest every 1/60 s. The kinetic energy of a 50 kg human moving very slowly, the kinetic energy of a 56 g tennis ball moving at 6 m/s. The kinetic energy of an object with mass 1 kg moving at √2 ≈1.4 m/s, the amount of electricity required to light a 1 W LED for 1 s. Since the joule is also a watt-second and the unit for electricity sales to homes is the kW·h. For additional examples, see, Orders of magnitude The zeptojoule is equal to one sextillionth of one joule,160 zeptojoules is equivalent to one electronvolt. The nanojoule is equal to one billionth of one joule, one nanojoule is about 1/160 of the kinetic energy of a flying mosquito
38.
Kinetic energy
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In physics, the kinetic energy of an object is the energy that it possesses due to its motion. It is defined as the work needed to accelerate a body of a mass from rest to its stated velocity. Having gained this energy during its acceleration, the body maintains this kinetic energy unless its speed changes, the same amount of work is done by the body in decelerating from its current speed to a state of rest. In classical mechanics, the energy of a non-rotating object of mass m traveling at a speed v is 12 m v 2. In relativistic mechanics, this is an approximation only when v is much less than the speed of light. The standard unit of energy is the joule. The adjective kinetic has its roots in the Greek word κίνησις kinesis, the dichotomy between kinetic energy and potential energy can be traced back to Aristotles concepts of actuality and potentiality. The principle in classical mechanics that E ∝ mv2 was first developed by Gottfried Leibniz and Johann Bernoulli, Willem s Gravesande of the Netherlands provided experimental evidence of this relationship. By dropping weights from different heights into a block of clay, Émilie du Châtelet recognized the implications of the experiment and published an explanation. The terms kinetic energy and work in their present scientific meanings date back to the mid-19th century, early understandings of these ideas can be attributed to Gaspard-Gustave Coriolis, who in 1829 published the paper titled Du Calcul de lEffet des Machines outlining the mathematics of kinetic energy. William Thomson, later Lord Kelvin, is given the credit for coining the term kinetic energy c, energy occurs in many forms, including chemical energy, thermal energy, electromagnetic radiation, gravitational energy, electric energy, elastic energy, nuclear energy, and rest energy. These can be categorized in two classes, potential energy and kinetic energy. Kinetic energy is the movement energy of an object, Kinetic energy can be transferred between objects and transformed into other kinds of energy. Kinetic energy may be best understood by examples that demonstrate how it is transformed to, for example, a cyclist uses chemical energy provided by food to accelerate a bicycle to a chosen speed. On a level surface, this speed can be maintained without further work, except to overcome air resistance, the chemical energy has been converted into kinetic energy, the energy of motion, but the process is not completely efficient and produces heat within the cyclist. The kinetic energy in the moving cyclist and the bicycle can be converted to other forms, for example, the cyclist could encounter a hill just high enough to coast up, so that the bicycle comes to a complete halt at the top. The kinetic energy has now largely converted to gravitational potential energy that can be released by freewheeling down the other side of the hill. Since the bicycle lost some of its energy to friction, it never regains all of its speed without additional pedaling, the energy is not destroyed, it has only been converted to another form by friction
39.
TNT
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Trinitrotoluene, or more specifically 2,4, 6-trinitrotoluene, is a chemical compound with the formula C6H23CH3. This yellow-colored solid is used as a reagent in chemical synthesis. The explosive yield of TNT is considered to be the measure of bombs. In chemistry, TNT is used to charge transfer salts. TNT was first prepared in 1863 by German chemist Julius Wilbrand and its potential as an explosive was not appreciated for several years, mainly because it was so difficult to detonate and because it was less powerful than alternatives. Its explosive properties were first discovered by another German chemist, Carl Häussermann, the German armed forces adopted it as a filling for artillery shells in 1902. The British started replacing lyddite with TNT in 1907, TNT is still widely used by the United States military, as well as construction companies around the world. The majority of TNT currently used by the US military is manufactured by Radford Army Ammunition Plant near Radford, in industry, TNT is produced in a three-step process. First, toluene is nitrated with a mixture of sulfuric and nitric acid to produce mononitrotoluene, the MNT is separated and then renitrated to dinitrotoluene. In the final step, the DNT is nitrated to trinitrotoluene using a mixture of nitric acid. Nitric acid is consumed by the process, but the diluted sulfuric acid can be reconcentrated and reused. The rinse water from sulphitation is known as red water and is a significant pollutant, control of nitrogen oxides in feed nitric acid is very important because free nitrogen dioxide can result in oxidation of the methyl group of toluene. This reaction is exothermic and carries with it the risk of a runaway reaction leading to an explosion. In the laboratory,2,4, 6-trinitrotoluene is produced by a two-step process, a nitrating mixture of concentrated nitric and sulfuric acids is used to nitrate toluene to a mixture of mono- and di-nitrotoluene isomers, with careful cooling to maintain temperature. The nitrated toluenes are then separated, washed with dilute sodium bicarbonate to remove oxides of nitrogen, towards the end of the nitration, the mixture is heated on a steam bath. The trinitrotoluene is separated, washed with a solution of sodium sulfite. TNT is one of the most commonly used explosives for military, industrial, TNT has been used in conjunction with hydraulic fracturing, a process used to recover oil and gas from shale formations. The technique involves displacing and detonating nitroglycerin in hydraulically induced fractures followed by wellbore shots using pelletized TNT, TNT is valued partly because of its insensitivity to shock and friction, with reduced risk of accidental detonation compared to more sensitive explosives such as nitroglycerin
40.
Colosseum
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The Colosseum or Coliseum, also known as the Flavian Amphitheatre, is an oval amphitheatre in the centre of the city of Rome, Italy. Built of concrete and sand, it is the largest amphitheatre ever built, the Colosseum is situated just east of the Roman Forum. Construction began under the emperor Vespasian in AD72, and was completed in AD80 under his successor, further modifications were made during the reign of Domitian. These three emperors are known as the Flavian dynasty, and the amphitheatre was named in Latin for its association with their family name, the building ceased to be used for entertainment in the early medieval era. It was later reused for purposes as housing, workshops, quarters for a religious order, a fortress, a quarry. Although partially ruined because of damage caused by earthquakes and stone-robbers, the Colosseum is also depicted on the Italian version of the five-cent euro coin. The Colosseums original Latin name was Amphitheatrum Flavium, often anglicized as Flavian Amphitheatre, the building was constructed by emperors of the Flavian dynasty, following the reign of Nero. This name is used in modern English, but generally the structure is better known as the Colosseum. The name Colosseum has long believed to be derived from a colossal statue of Nero nearby. This statue was later remodeled by Neros successors into the likeness of Helios or Apollo, Neros head was also replaced several times with the heads of succeeding emperors. Despite its pagan links, the statue remained standing well into the era and was credited with magical powers. It came to be seen as an symbol of the permanence of Rome. This is often mistranslated to refer to the Colosseum rather than the Colossus, however, at the time that the Pseudo-Bede wrote, the masculine noun coliseus was applied to the statue rather than to what was still known as the Flavian amphitheatre. The Colossus did eventually fall, possibly being pulled down to reuse its bronze, by the year 1000 the name Colosseum had been coined to refer to the amphitheatre. The statue itself was forgotten and only its base survives. The name further evolved to Coliseum during the Middle Ages, in Italy, the amphitheatre is still known as il Colosseo, and other Romance languages have come to use similar forms such as Coloseumul, le Colisée, el Coliseo and o Coliseu. The site chosen was an area on the floor of a low valley between the Caelian, Esquiline and Palatine Hills, through which a canalised stream ran. By the 2nd century BC the area was densely inhabited and it was devastated by the Great Fire of Rome in AD64, following which Nero seized much of the area to add to his personal domain
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Space telescope
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A space telescope or space observatory is an instrument located in outer space to observe distant planets, galaxies and other astronomical objects. Space telescopes avoid many of the problems of ground-based observatories, such as pollution and distortion of electromagnetic radiation. In addition, ultraviolet frequencies, X-rays and gamma rays are blocked by the Earths atmosphere, Space telescopes are distinct from other imaging satellites pointed toward Earth for purposes of espionage, weather analysis and other types of information gathering. Spitzers proposal called for a telescope that would not be hindered by Earths atmosphere. Performing astronomy from ground-based observatories on Earth is limited by the filtering, some terrestrial telescopes can reduce atmospheric effects with adaptive optics. A telescope orbiting Earth outside the atmosphere is subject neither to twinkling nor to light pollution from artificial light sources on Earth, as a result, the angular resolution of space telescopes is often much smaller than a ground-based telescope with a similar aperture. Infrared and ultraviolet are also largely blocked, however, all these advantages do come with a price. Space telescopes are much more expensive to build than ground-based telescopes, due to their location, space telescopes are also extremely difficult to maintain. The Hubble Space Telescope was serviced by the Space Shuttle while many other space telescopes cannot be serviced at all, Space observatories can generally be divided into two classes, missions which map the entire sky, and observatories which focus on selected astronomical objects or parts of the sky. Many space observatories have already completed their missions, while others continue operating, satellites have been launched and operated by NASA, ISRO, ESA, Japanese Space Agency and the Soviet space program later succeeded by Roskosmos of Russia. Many space telescopes have been launched, as of February 2017, over 20 telescopes are known to be operational
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Hubble Space Telescope
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The Hubble Space Telescope is a space telescope that was launched into low Earth orbit in 1990 and remains in operation. Although not the first space telescope, Hubble is one of the largest and most versatile, with a 2. 4-meter mirror, Hubbles four main instruments observe in the near ultraviolet, visible, and near infrared spectra. Hubbles orbit outside the distortion of Earths atmosphere allows it to take extremely high-resolution images, Hubble has recorded some of the most detailed visible light images ever, allowing a deep view into space and time. Many Hubble observations have led to breakthroughs in astrophysics, such as determining the rate of expansion of the universe. The HST was built by the United States space agency NASA, the Space Telescope Science Institute selects Hubbles targets and processes the resulting data, while the Goddard Space Flight Center controls the spacecraft. Space telescopes were proposed as early as 1923, Hubble was funded in the 1970s, with a proposed launch in 1983, but the project was beset by technical delays, budget problems, and the Challenger disaster. When finally launched in 1990, Hubbles main mirror was found to have been ground incorrectly, the optics were corrected to their intended quality by a servicing mission in 1993. Hubble is the telescope designed to be serviced in space by astronauts. After launch by Space Shuttle Discovery in 1990, five subsequent Space Shuttle missions repaired, upgraded, the fifth mission was canceled on safety grounds following the Columbia disaster. However, after spirited public discussion, NASA administrator Mike Griffin approved the fifth servicing mission, the telescope is operating as of 2017, and could last until 2030–2040. Its scientific successor, the James Webb Space Telescope, is scheduled for launch in 2018, the history of the Hubble Space Telescope can be traced back as far as 1946, to the astronomer Lyman Spitzers paper Astronomical advantages of an extraterrestrial observatory. In it, he discussed the two advantages that a space-based observatory would have over ground-based telescopes. First, the resolution would be limited only by diffraction, rather than by the turbulence in the atmosphere. Second, a telescope could observe infrared and ultraviolet light. Spitzer devoted much of his career to pushing for the development of a space telescope, space-based astronomy had begun on a very small scale following World War II, as scientists made use of developments that had taken place in rocket technology. An orbiting solar telescope was launched in 1962 by the United Kingdom as part of the Ariel space program, oAO-1s battery failed after three days, terminating the mission. It was followed by OAO-2, which carried out observations of stars and galaxies from its launch in 1968 until 1972. The continuing success of the OAO program encouraged increasingly strong consensus within the community that the LST should be a major goal
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. Bibcode:2014arXiv1404.5968S. Earth and Planetary Astrophysics (astro-ph.EP).
