Суборбитальные пуски (научные и экспериментальные)

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DUST

https://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/2019/a-dusty-lab-in-the-sky
ЦитироватьOct. 4, 2019

A Dusty Lab in the Sky

Joe Nuth loves dust. Among astronomers, that puts him in a minority.

"The traditional astronomers — the people looking at galaxies and stars — they hate dust," said Nuth, a planetary scientist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. "It's the stuff that's in their way."

Like the Earthly dust that gathers under your bed, cosmic dust is hard to avoid. "It's about two percent of the total stuff, fr om here to anywhere," said Nuth. But it doesn't take up all that space for nothing.

Dust condenses into asteroids and planets. Giant dust clouds can carry gases from a dying star to fertilize a new one. Dust surrounding young planets can keep them warm, providing surfaces for water to collect and organic molecules to form. But whether any of these effects occurs depends on just how these tiny dust grains are constructed, at the smallest of scales.

That's why Nuth is launching the Determining Unknown yet Significant Traits, or DUST sounding rocket. A collaboration between NASA and the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency, the rocket will make a brief flight into space, carrying lab equipment into a zero-gravity environment. There, Nuth and his team will build dust grains of their very own, hoping to shed light on the outsized role these tiny specks play in our universe. DUST's first opportunity to launch from the White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico begins on Oct. 7, 2019.

Kicking up dust


A sample of cosmic dust collected from Earth's stratosphere. The grain is about five micrometers across – approximately the size of a human red blood cell.
Credits: NASA's Johnson Space Center/Cosmic Dust Collection Program

As prevalent as it may be, cosmic dust doesn't form easily. Dust grains are born when individual atoms collide and stick to one another. But in space, direct collisions are rare (the space wh ere dust forms is about 2.7 billion times less dense than air at sea level). Even when atoms collide, they may not stick. In a previous experiment, Nuth found that for every 100,000 collisions between zinc atoms, only three stick to a growing dust crystal.

Once a few atoms cram together, a wobbly Jenga-like tower emerges. "You're going up a ladder of instability," said Nuth. "Small clusters really want to fall apart." But if you can surround enough atoms on all sides, the system starts to stabilize. You have a growing dust grain.

It's when dust grains themselves collide that things get interesting. If they pack together like snow into snowballs, they don't react much with light or heat. But if they instead link together into lacy, snowflake-like structures, they do much more. Such crystalline dust aggregates catch starlight like a sail, whisking gases from one star to the next. They also trap heat, potentially changing the fate of planets they cover. "If you've got a growing planet surrounded by a dusty blanket, that's a different thermal environment than without," said Nuth. "Dust affects the way planets grow."

But how these dust grains form and aggregate together is still not well understood. Figuring that out may pay major returns across space physics.

Collecting dust

So far, Nuth has done most of his work in the lab, but Earth's gravity imposes severe limitations. His experiments require heating materials to well over 1000 degrees Fahrenheit. But such high temperatures create convection — the churning of air that happens in your oven — that doesn't happen in deep space. "To measure dust grain growth, we need a constant environment," said Nuth. To get that, you need to go to microgravity.

Nuth teamed up with his former postdoc Yuki Kimura of Hokkaido University in Japan to launch lab equipment into space. The payload, designed by Kimura, weighs about 330 pounds. "It's about as big as a small motorbike," said Kimura.

Inside, a set of metal wires coated with magnesium silicates — would-be dust particles — are waiting for launch. Once the rocket enters space and experiences microgravity, the wire heats up and the atoms and molecules diffuse away. Some collide, stick, and begin to form dust grains; others won't. Using spectroscopy and other measures, the DUST experiment will measure when grains start to grow and link together into aggregates, noting at what temperature and density they do the best. The payload will then fall back to Earth to be collected for further analysis.

When the dust settles

Even before retrieving the payload, Nuth will be in the lab working on the Earth-based part of the experiment. His question is whether dust grain formation could be simpler than expected.

In principle, dust grains can form from any of the 92 naturally-occurring elements in the periodic table. "But it's very tough to model," said Nuth. Each element has its own quirks; taking them all into account at once is a major challenge.


The Cat's Eye Nebula (NGC 6543) is a dying Sun-like star that ejected its outer layers into space. The concentric rings surrounding it are clouds of cosmic dust.
Credits: NASA/Space Telescope Science Institute/Hubble Space Telescope

In previous experiments, Nuth learned that some elements block one another: If iron gets into a growing dust grain, for instance, it tends to keep magnesium out. He's exploring this behavior in the lab, hoping to reduce a 92-variable equation into something much more manageable. "It's much easier if you only have to worry about one or two particular materials," said Nuth.

The results from the rocket, paired with Nuth's work in the lab, aim to shed light on how the dusty two percent of our visible universe works. Overall, the DUST experiment reminds us that the key to the unimaginably large sometimes lies in the incredibly tiny.

The DUST sounding rocket will launch from the White Sands Missile Range on a Black Brant IX rocket. During its approximately 14 minute flight, the rocket will reach an estimated altitude of 200 miles before falling back to Earth for recovery.

NASA's Sounding Rockets Program is managed at the agency's Wallops Flight Facility, which is managed by NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. NASA's Heliophysics Division funds the Sounding Rockets Program for the agency.

By Miles Hatfield
NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md.


Last Updated: Oct. 4, 2019
Editor: Miles Hatfield

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DUST

Цитировать NASA Wallops‏ @NASA_Wallops 19 ч. назад

Update:

The DUST mission successfully launched on a NASA Black Brant IX sounding rocket at 11 a.m. EDT from White Sands, New Mexico. DUST reached an altitude of 210 miles before falling back to the ground.
https://go.nasa.gov/2InWSLf


https://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/2019/a-dusty-lab-in-the-sky
ЦитироватьUPDATE 12:30 p.m., Oct. 7, 2019 The Determining Unknown yet Significant Traits, or DUST, experiment successfully launched at 11 a.m. EDT (9 a.m. MDT), October 7, from the White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico. The Black Brant IX sounding rocket carried DUST to an altitude of 210 miles before descending by parachute for recovery. The science team reports that "Everything went perfectly."
15:00 UTC 07.10.2019

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SARGE

Цитировать Jeff Foust‏ @jeff_foust 3 ч. назад

Spaceport America CEO Dan Hicks says he expects Exos Aerospace to make another suborbital launch from the spaceport around Oct. 25. (Their last launch earlier this year suffered a malfunction shortly after liftoff, but the rocket was recovered.)
#ISPCS2019

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23-27 октября 2019 г.
С 00:00 до 03:00 UTCС 03:00 до 06:00 ДМВ

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SubTec-8

https://www.nasa.gov/wallops/2019/feature/nasa-to-test-space-technologies-with-launch-october-22-from-wallops
Цитировать

Oct. 18, 2019

NASA to Test Space Technologies with Launch October 22 from Wallops


One of four distributed payload communications technology sub-payloads is loaded into the SubTec-8 main payload.
Credits: NASA/Berit Bland

Several space technologies will be put to the test with the launch of a suborbital rocket at 8 p.m., EDT Tuesday, October 22, from NASA's Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia.

Called Suborbital Technology Experiment Carrier-8 or SubTec-8, the launch is designed to test new technologies to improve the capability of conducting suborbital science missions. Some of these technologies also may be applied to orbital spacecraft.

The launch window for the mission is 8 p.m. to midnight.  Backup launch days are Oct. 23 – 27. The Wallops NASA Visitor Center will open at 7 p.m. for launch viewing. Coverage of the mission will begin at 7:45 p.m. on the Wallops Facebook site. The launch may be visible in the Chesapeake Bay region.

SubTec-8 will fly on a Terrier-Improved Malemute sounding rocket and is predicted to reach an altitude of 128 miles before descending by parachute and landing in the Atlantic Ocean.

"The first SubTec launch occurred in 2005. The technology developed and tested through the program has allowed scientists to continue conducting complex missions with increasing capabilities," said Cathy Hesh, technology manager for the sounding rocket program office at Wallops.

SubTec-8 technologies include distributed payload communications that will allow multipoint measurements for scientists to study multiple regions in space simultaneously; a low cost star tracker for assisting in pointing the rocket when taking astronomical observations; and a high data rate encoder that will provide the ability to transmit data from the rocket to the ground four times faster than currently available.

A collaborative effort between Wallops and the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, an autonomous flight termination unit will be flown to develop capabilities, procedures, and tools needed to certify and process an autonomous process as the primary safety system for future launches from Wallops. The unit detects when a rocket is flying off course and directs itself to terminate the flight. For SubTec-8 the unit will not be connected to terminate the rocket flight.

NASA's Sounding Rockets Program is managed at the agency's Wallops Flight Facility, which is managed by NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. NASA's Heliophysics Division funds the Sounding Rockets Program for the agency.

Image caption: SubTec-8 in the electromagnetic interference test chamber at Wallops. Photo:  NASA/Berit Bland

Keith Koehler
NASA's Wallops Flight Facility

Last Updated: Oct. 18, 2019
Editor: Patrick Black

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SubTec-8

Цитировать NASA Wallops‏ @NASA_Wallops 21 окт.

Due to unfavorable weather, the launch of SubTec-8 has been rescheduled for Wednesday, Oct. 23 with the same launch window, 8-11 p.m.
24 октября 2019 г.
С 00:00 до 03:00 UTC / С 03:00 до 06:00 ДМВ

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SubTec-8

Цитировать NASA Wallops @NASA_Wallops 59 сек. назад

The SubTec-8 sounding rocket mission has been postponed due to predicted rough  seas.

Launch has been rescheduled for 8 p.m. EDT on Thursday, Oct. 24. with a launch window extending until midnight.
https://go.nasa.gov/2WavwOJ

25 октября 2019 г.
С 00:00 до 04:00 UTC / С 03:00 до 07:00 ДМВ

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SARGE

EXOS SARGE lAUNCH 4 - трансляция пуска
Цитировать
Начало трансляции: 26.10.2019 15:00 UTC / 18:00 ДМВ


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SubTec-8

Цитировать NASA Wallops @NASA_Wallops 13 мин. назад

NASA is launching a suborbital sounding rocket carrying the SubTec-8 mission tonight at 8 p.m. ET. It is only expected to be visible to communities near Wallops Flight Facility. We'll stream the launch live on Facebook starting at 7:40: http://facebook.com/nasawff .


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#711
SubTec-8


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#712
SubTec-8

 

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