Posts Tagged ‘Space’
List of the upcoming space missions and events
2014
- November – (Rosetta) – ESA mission reaches Comet Churyumov-Gerasimenko.
- November – (Philae) – ESA Rosetta Lander touches down on Comet Churyumov-Gerasimenko.
- Virgin Galactic will begin scheduled flights of SpaceShipTwo to sub-orbit.
2015
- February 1 – (Dawn) – NASA’s Dawn spacecraft will enter orbit around Ceres), the first spacecraft to visit a dwarf planet.
- May – The Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) will launch an orbiter towards Venus.
- July 14 – NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft will arrive at Pluto, becoming the first spacecraft to flyby the dwarf planet and also returning the first close-up images of this distant world and its moons.
- August 15 – BepiColombo – Launch of ESA and ISAS Orbiter and Lander Missions to Mercury)
- October – The Google Lunar X Prize may be won by Astrobotic Technology, who has a contract with SpaceX to use one of their rockets to take a lunar rover to the Moon.
- The ESA’s Don Quijote) spacecraft will launch, a mission to impact an asteroid and study the change in its trajectory to see if such a method could be used to deflect an asteroid away from Earth.
- China will land its unmanned Chang’e 4 spacecraft on the Moon.
- Russia is expected to land two unmanned probes on the Moon, Luna-Glob 1 and 2.
2016
- March – NASA’s next Mars lander, InSight, will launch to the Red Planet to study beneath the surface using a drill.
- The first part of the ESA’s ExoMars mission, the Trace Gas Orbiter (to study the atmosphere) and the EDM lander (to test landing technologies), will launch to Mars.
- September – NASA will launch its own asteroid sample return mission, called OSIRIS-REx.
- Bearing the same name as its successful probes in the 60s, 70s and 80s, Russia will launch a new orbiter called Venera-D to Venus.
- Sierra Nevada Corporation’s Dream Chaser spacecraft will complete its first flight, launching on an Atlas V rocket.
- NASA’s solar powered Juno) spacecraft will arrive at Jupiter.
- The The Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) will land its Chandrayaan-2 rover on the Moon, in tandem with a lunar orbiter.
2017
- July – The ESA’s new solar orbiter, SOLO, will launch to the Sun.
- December – First flight of NASA’s Space Launch System rocket, taking the (Orion) spacecraft on an unmanned flight around the Moon.
- China will launch another mission to the Moon, Chang’e 5, this time with the goal of returning lunar samples to Earth.
2018
- January – Inspiration Mars will launch two people to Mars on a 501-day mission to flyby the Red Planet and return to Earth.
- NASA’s Solar Probe Plus will launch and will approach the Sun to within 8.5 solar radii (0.034 AU, 5.9 million kilometres), the closest any spacecraft has been to the Sun.
- The ESA’s ExoMars rover will launch to the Red Planet, using the previously launched Trace Gas Orbiter as its means to communicate with Earth.
- NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), the successor to the Hubble Space Telescope, will launch.
2019
- A proposed NASA telescope called EXCEDE (Exoplanetary Circumstellar Environments and Disk Explorer) will launch to observe planet formation around nearby stars.
2020
- The ISS will be decommissioned and de-orbited at some point after 2020.
- Russia will launch an orbiter, lander and rover to the Moon on the Luna-Grunt 1 mission.
2021
- Russia’s next lunar lander, *Luna-Grunt 28, will return samples to Earth.
NASA’s (Orion) spacecraft will fly with a crew for the first time, possibly taking astronauts to visit an asteroid.
2023
- Mars One is expected to land the first human settlers on the Red Planet.
2024
- Solar Probe Plus will fly into the Sun’s atmosphere (or corona) for the first time.
2231
- April 5 – Pluto – is passed by Neptune in distance from the Sun for the next 20 years.
10,000
- Pioneer 10 passes within 3.8 light years of Barnard’s Star.
296,000
4,000,000
- Pioneer 11 – NASA flyby of star Lambda Aquila.
1,000,000,000
- Estimated lifespan of the two Voyager Golden Records, before the information stored on them is rendered unrecoverable.
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Source: reddit.com
Rosetta o Belen?
Rosetta, il selfie con la cometa 67P
Non so se avete presente la sonda Rosetta.
Una delle missioni spaziali più ambiziose della storia.
In pratica l’uomo ha lanciato un oggetto grande quanto una Panda nello spazio, per 10 anni quest’oggetto è rimasto spento, poi è stato acceso da remoto.
In questi 10 anni ha ruotato 4 volte attorno alla Terra e a Marte per sfruttarne la gravità e prendere slancio (non avendo carburante), ha percorso 6,4 miliardi di chilometri e, se tutto va bene, presto dalla sonda uscirà un modulo che atterrerà su una cometa (grande appena 3,5×4 chilometri).
Per atterrare correttamente, è stato necessario prevedere moto e rotazione della cometa con 10 anni di anticipo, simulandoli e tenendo conto degli imprevisti.
Tutto questo con i computer di 15 anni fa.
La fotocamera a bordo ha soltanto 4 megapixel.
E’ come lanciare una moneta da 5 centesimi e centrare 10 anni dopo un piccione in Australia, che però al momento del lancio si trovava in Italia, calcolandone e prevedendone quindi gli spostamenti in quei 10 anni,
Ma la gente si esalta per un gol in rovesciata o per la farfalla di Belen.
Ulteriori informazioni QUI.
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L’itinerario della sonda Rosetta
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