Hello everybody and welcome to the #422 edition of Carnival of Space. I am getting ready to the last total lunar eclipse in the current tetrad. Hope that you will be able to see it wherever you are. Another thing I am waiting for is the movie based on the book "The martian" I am sure it will look great in 3D.
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| Carnival of Space |
Saying all that let's go right down to buisness with these week articles
From Universe Today
- NASA and New Horizons team pick post-Pluto target … and serve up an awesome video
- This one really amazed me. Legault is the master of such photos. Thierry Legault Meets His Own Challenge: Image an ISS Transit of a Solar Prominence
- August Full Moon Anticipates September’s Total Lunar Eclipse
From Planetaria
- Back to the ice giants: proposed new mission would re-visit Uranus or Neptune (or both!)
- Testing panspermia: searching for ‘bubbles of life’ in the galaxy
From NextBigFuture
- NASA Glenn Research Center, GRC, currently has several programs to advance near-term photovoltaic array development. One project is to design, build, and test two 20 kW-sized deployable solar arrays, bringing them to technology readiness level (TRL) 5, and through analysis show that they should be extensible to 300 kW-class systems (150 kw per wing). These solar arrays are approximately 1500 square meters in total area which is about an order-of-magnitude larger than the 160 square meters solar array blankets on the International Space Station (ISS). The ISS has the four (pair) sets of solar arrays that can generate 84 to 120 kilowatts of electricity. Each of the eight solar arrays is 112 feet long by 39 feet wide and weights 2400 pounds. There were space missions involving astronauts working in space to install and deploy the ISS solar panels. Alliant Technical Systems, ATK, was selected in 2012 by NASA's Space Technology Program under a Game Changing Technology competition for development of a promising lightweight and compact solar array structure. The MegaFlex™ engineering development unit, EDU, was tested at NASA GRC Plumbrook facility this year. See below for the ATK deployment of the demonstration unit. Use of high-power solar arrays, at power levels ranging from ~500 KW to several megawatts, has been proposed for a solar-electric propulsion (SEP) demonstration mission, using a photovoltaic array to provide energy to a high-power xenon-fueled engine.
- NASA has selected the potential next destination for the New Horizons mission to visit after its historic July 14 flyby of the Pluto system. The destination is a small Kuiper Belt object (KBO) known as 2014 MU69 that orbits nearly a billion miles beyond Pluto.
- Researchers have developed a method for printing optical holographic lenses that could greatly simplify their fabrication. Because the method can be performed quickly and easily, it could potentially be used by astronauts to print lenses while in space for holographic lens telescopes. While current holographic lens fabrication methods are often expensive, time-consuming, and labor-intensive, the new printing method can produce a lens in just a few seconds using only a single step. The method uses a nanosecond laser pulse to create interference patterns on a transparent substrate coated with light-absorbing materials.
- Axanar is the first fully-professional, independent Star Trek film. While some may call it a "fan film" as we are not licensed by CBS, Axanar has professionals working in front and behind the camera, with a fully-professional crew--many of whom have worked on Star Trek itself--who ensure Axanar will be the quality of Star Trek that all fans want to see. Axanar is in pre-production now and will start filming in October 2015 with an anticipated release in the first half of 2016.