SPACE: The Final Frontier

[samhexum]

Beyond Pluto, New Horizons Gets a Reprieve from NASA

It’s lonely out there in the desolation that reigns where NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft now cruises on its one-way trip out of our solar system, with little to pass the time besides sniffing whiffs of plasma and stargazing. After nearly two decades of deep-space operations, the probe is currently more than eight billion kilometers from Earth…

Read in Scientific American: https://apple.news/AmkWL40nGQBe_-bWI0bfZdA

[ICTJOCK]

Have been a space buff since 4th grade,   love it!    The more research and investigation,  the more questions and solid facts we find on the our solar system and those outside our own.   Absolutely fascinating.    I've been reading about the belief that Saturn's rings are only a few million years old and are slowly disappearing.    I was reading about some 2,000 mile object that NASA seems to have spotted that doesn't look natural adjacent to the rings.     Also some of the amazing speculation of several of Saturn's moons.   We'll see!

[mike carey]

7 minutes ago, ICTJOCK said:

I've been reading about the belief that Saturn's rings are only a few million years old and are slowly disappearing.

And I also read that the rings (maybe 100m years old, not just a few) are being added to by ice from the water ice geysers from the moon Enceladus.

[ICTJOCK]

9 minutes ago, mike carey said:

And I also read that the rings (maybe 100m years old, not just a few) are being added to by ice from the water ice geysers from the moon Enceladus.

Very true,  Mike.   Imagine that the spewing of material from underground oceans could do something like that.     Sounds like some kind of fiction.    When I first heard all about that,  I couldn't believe it.     What about the oceans of methane and ethane on TItan.    Wow.

[mike carey]

10 minutes ago, ICTJOCK said:

Very true,  Mike.   Imagine that the spewing of material from underground oceans could do something like that.     Sounds like some kind of fiction.    When I first heard all about that,  I couldn't believe it.     What about the oceans of methane and ethane on TItan.    Wow.

Yes, Titan is possibly the most interesting world in the solar system! Although Europa (one of the four Galilean moons of Jupiter) with its ice covered water ocean is not far behind!

[MikeBiDude]

1 hour ago, mike carey said:

Yes, Titan is possibly the most interesting world in the solar system! Although Europa (one of the four Galilean moons of Jupiter) with its ice covered water ocean is not far behind!

 

[samhexum]

On 10/7/2023 at 9:52 AM, ICTJOCK said:

Have been a space buff since 4th grade,   love it!    The more research and investigation,  the more questions and solid facts we find on the our solar system and those outside our own.   Absolutely fascinating. 

 

On 10/7/2023 at 10:03 AM, mike carey said:

And I also read that the rings (maybe 100m years old, not just a few) are being added to by ice from the water ice geysers from the moon Enceladus.

 

On 10/7/2023 at 10:14 AM, ICTJOCK said:

Very true,  Mike.   Imagine that the spewing of material from underground oceans could do something like that.     Sounds like some kind of fiction.    When I first heard all about that,  I couldn't believe it.     What about the oceans of methane and ethane on TItan.    Wow.

 

On 10/7/2023 at 10:35 AM, mike carey said:

Yes, Titan is possibly the most interesting world in the solar system! Although Europa (one of the four Galilean moons of Jupiter) with its ice covered water ocean is not far behind!

 

On 10/7/2023 at 12:31 PM, MikeBiDude said:

 

NASA wants to fly this nuclear Dragonfly drone on Saturn's moon Titan.

https://www.space.com/nasa-dragonfly-drone-titan-wind-tunnel-test-video

Testing is now underway on NASA's Dragonfly rotorcraft, a nuclear-powered, car-sized aerial drone that will look for potential precursors to life on Saturn's moon, Titan. But before Dragonfly can take to the sky, NASA has to make sure it can withstand the moon's unique environment.

Dragonfly's main goal is to study the complex chemistry on Titan that may give insights into the origins of life in our solar system. Equipped with cameras, sensors, and samplers, this vehicle will investigate areas of Titan known to contain organic materials, especially those regions where such materials might have encountered liquid water beneath the moon's icy surface in the past.

The lander will traverse Titan's nitrogen-rich atmosphere using four dual-coaxial rotors, but to ensure that these rotors can perform under such conditions, the Dragonfly team has conducted numerous tests at NASA's Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia, including operating the drone's rotors in an wind tunnel that can simulate the atmospheric conditions on Saturn's largest moon. 

"All of these tests feed into our Dragonfly Titan simulations and performance predictions," Ken Hibbard, Dragonfly mission systems engineer at Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory (APL), said in a NASA statement.

Four Dragonfly test campaigns have conducted: Two in a 14-by-22 foot subsonic tunnel, and another two at a 16-foot Transonic Dynamics Tunnel (TDT). The subsonic tunnel is used to validate fluid dynamic models developed by mission scientists, while the variable-density heavy gas capability of the TDT is used to validate computer models in simulated atmospheric conditions Dragonfly will likely encounter on Titan.

The most recent testing, held in June, involved a half-scale Dragonfly model with hundreds of test runs, said Bernadine Juliano, APL's test lead for the project. 

"We tested conditions across the expected flight envelope at a variety of wind speeds, rotor speeds, and flight angles to assess the aerodynamic performance of the vehicle," Juliano said. "We completed more than 700 total runs, encompassing over 4,000 individual data points. All test objectives were successfully accomplished and the data will help increase confidence in our simulation models on Earth before extrapolating to Titan conditions."

Analyzing this wealth of data involves a collaborative effort, with specialists from institutions ranging from the University of Central Florida to NASA Ames Research Center in Silicon Valley. Rick Heisler from APL, who oversaw the TDT test campaigns, emphasized the value of these tests in understanding Dragonfly's rotor performance in Titan's unique atmosphere.

"The heavy gas environment in the TDT has a density three-and-a-half times higher than air while operating at sea level ambient pressure and temperature," Heisler said. "This allows the rotors to operate at near-Titan conditions and better replicate the lift and dynamic loading the actual lander will experience."

As the pieces of the mission come together, the enormity of the task and the historic nature of the mission is coming into focus for the team.

"With Dragonfly, we're turning science fiction into exploration fact," Hibbard said. "The mission is coming together piece by piece, and we're excited for every next step toward sending this revolutionary rotorcraft across the skies and surface of Titan."