Thế giới của Sao: explore

Thứ Sáu, 3 tháng 5, 2013

NASA rover to explore… Greenland

A prototype of GROVER, minus its solar panels, was tested in January 2012 at a ski resort in Idaho. The laptop in the picture is for testing purposes only and not part of the final product.Gabriel Trisca, Boise State University

NASA's newest rover won't be exploring another planet, but will take a look at part of our own.

Named Grover (short for Goddard Remotely Operated Vehicle for Exploration and Research), the rover will explore Greenland's ice sheets to better understand how they form, and how quickly they may be melting.

The device is solar-powered and semi-autonomous, and will embark on its first mission beginning Friday, May 3, and continuing until June 8. It was developed from 2010-2011 by teams of students in summer engineering boot camps at Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland, according to a release from NASA.

The 6-foot-tall, 800-pound rover is equipped with ground-penetrating radar that will send "radio wave pulses into the ice sheet, and the waves bounce off buried features, informing researchers about the characteristics of the snow and ice layers," according to the NASA statement. [Video: Grover the Rover to Explore Greenland Ice Sheet]

At first Grover will operate near the National Science Foundation's Summit Camp, located at the apex of Greenland's ice sheet. Once it appears the rover is functioning properly, it will roam more widely and be controlled via satellite. Since the Arctic sun shines 24 hours a day during the summer, the solar-powered rover will be able to operate continuously, NASA said.

"We think it's really powerful," Gabriel Trisca, a Boise State master's degree student who developed Grover's software, said in the NASA statement. "The fact is the robot could be anywhere in the world and we'll be able to control it from anywhere."

Grover should shed light on Greenland's snow accumulation. Researchers can compare annual accumulation to the amount of ice lost to the sea each year to find out how much mass is being lost to melting, and how much Greenland's ice is contributing to sea level rise.

Greenland's ice sheets contain a vast store of freshwater that could affect global sea levels, and more and more ice is melting. In fact, Greenland's ice loss is accelerating by about 22 gigatons of ice each year, according to a 2012 study.

Last summer, satellite images showed that about 40 percent of the ice sheet had thawed near the surface on July 8; only four days later, images showed a dramatic increase in melting with thawing across 97 percent of the ice sheet surface.

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Thứ Tư, 10 tháng 4, 2013

Obama seeks $17.7 billion for NASA to lasso asteroid, explore space

This asteroid mission brings together the best of NASA's science, technology and human exploration efforts to achieve the President's goals faster and at a lower cost to taxpayers than continuing with business as usual.NASA
By leveraging capabilities across all of NASA, the agency is developing a first-ever mission to identify, rendezvous with, capture and redirect a small asteroid into a stable orbit in the lunar vicinity, and then send humans to visit it using tNASA

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NASA unveiled a $17.7 billion spending plan for 2014 today (April 10) that continues major ongoing space exploration projects, while including funds to kick-start an audacious new mission to capture a small asteroid and park it near the moon so astronauts can explore it by 2025.

The proposed NASA budget is part of President Barack Obama's 2014 federal budget request and would restore the U.S. space agency's funding back near its 2013 levels. The request is about $50 million less than NASA's 2013 budget but would restore deep cuts from sequestration, leaving the agency with a roughly $1 billion increase from the $16.6 billion budget actually received for 2013.

NASA's plan to send a robotic spacecraft to lasso an asteroid and tow it to the moon is a stand-out item in the 2014 budget request. The goal is to capture an asteroid and bring it closer to Earth so that a manned mission can explore the space rock by 2025 — a major U.S. spaceflight goal set by Obama in 2010. [NASA's 2014 Budget Explained in Photos]

"We are developing a first-ever mission to identify, capture and relocate and asteroid," NASA chief Charles Bolden said in a statement. "This mission represents an unprecedented technological feat that will lead to new scientific discoveries and technological capabilities and help protect our home planet. This asteroid initiative brings together the best of NASA’s science, technology and human exploration efforts to achieve the president’s goal of sending humans to an asteroid by 2025."

How to catch an asteroid
NASA's 2014 budget sets aside a $78 million down payment for the asteroid-capture mission, as well as additional funds to search for the candidate space rock for the initial rendezvous and capture, bringing the total funding for the project to about $105 million in 2014.

In all, NASA could spend up to $2.6 billion on the asteroid-capture mission through 2025, according to a study conducted by scientists with Caltech's Keck Institute for Space Studies in Pasadena last year. That study reviewed the feasibility of robotically capturing a 500-ton asteroid about 23 feet wide and placing it in orbit near the moon by 2025.

Bolden said NASA's new mega-rocket, the Space Launch System, and its Orion deep-space capsule would be used for the manned portions of the asteroid capture mission. The agency will also "develop new technologies like solar electric propulsion and laser communications -- all critical components of deep space exploration."

The Space Launch System and Orion capsule are part of NASA's Exploration Systems division, which is funded at $2.7 billion in 2014 in the new budget, down from $3 billion last year.

In addition to the asteroid mission, NASA's 2014 budget includes continued funding for the International Space Station, as well as increased support for private space taxis, which the space agency plans to rely on to launch American astronauts to the space station now that its shuttle fleet is retired. Commercial spaceflight funding in 2014 is pegged at $821.4 million, just over twice the amount received in the 2013 request.

Planetary science, astrophysics and Earth
NASA's planetary science projects, which took a significant funding hit last year, would stay at a $1.2 billion level in 2014 (down from $1.5 billion in 2012) under the new budget request. Astrophysics funding would dip slightly to $642.3 million (down from $648.4 million last year).

Bolden said the planetary science budget will allow NASA to continue operating its many spacecraft exploring planets across the solar system, including the flagship Mars rover Curiosity and its smaller, older cousin Opportunity. Future Mars missions, such as the Maven orbiter launching later this year, new Insight Mars lander launching in 2016 and next Mars rover launching in 2020 will also be funded, he added.

Earth science and space weather funding, however, would rise in 2014 in the new budget, with NASA seeking $1.84 billion for Earth science missions (up from $1.75 billion) to revamp the agency's long-lived Landsat Earth-monitoring satellite constellation and develop new climate sensors. The space agency's Heliosphysics division, which overseas space weather and sun-monitoring missions, would rise to $653.7 million in 2014, up from $644.9 million last year.

NASA's next major space observatory, the $8.8 billion James Webb Space Telescope, will continue under the 2014 budget request, receiving about $658.2 million. The observatory is due to launch in 2018 and serve as the successor to the Hubble Space Telescope, which will also receive continued funding in the 2014 request.

Related Interactive

Obama's proposed 2014 budget plan

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