Alexander Grant Quaoar Case Study

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) is one of the leading organizations in space technology and research. In the past 60 years, NASA has sent numerous satellites, telescopes and crew modules into space. Despite drawbacks in launch failures and lack of funding, NASA continues to focus on its mission in space exploration and technological advancement. One of NASA’s projects is to explore deep space, in which entails a manned missions to Mars, exploration of the asteroid belt, and beyond. With these goals in mind, NASA has engineered new rocketry and even created a program to better allocate costs of such conquests. With these new advancements, NASA has created a new age of how space travel is carried out.

This activity is about the main events in New Horizon’s journey to Pluto and beyond.

odds of disaster were realized. Every shuttle has a 1/24 chance of disaster. NASA 's

The lack of power was from the extensive power use during the period after the explosion and the electrical problem in the wiring. They were able to deal with this by shutting down many systems to get the amperage lower that the rate they are getting from the batteries. The lack of heat came from this issue as well. They were forced to shut down the heaters when they lost lots of electrical and fuel power. This caused great discomfort for the astronauts and it could have impacted some of the equipment on board. The explosion also caused a guidance issue due to the thrust coming from the explosion, the loss of some systems dealing with guidance, and the loss of aerodynamics. Aerodynamics were lost by losing an entire panel and potentially having parts of the spacecraft protruding into space. This caused a very high use of fuel to navigate, especially when done on manual calculations. In any way you look at it, the explosion was definitely the source of all problems on this

On 1st of February, 2003, the space shuttle Columbia exploded when it re-entered the Earth’s atmosphere after finished a 16 days mission in space. All seven astronauts were dead because of this incident. The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) had stopped the space shuttle program for more than two years to investigate this tragedy. In the 16 days period, the astronauts did approximately 80 experiments on different categories, for example, life science and material science [1]. An investigation later has found out that the disaster was caused by a problem on the day that took off on 16th of January.

New Horizons launched from Cape Canaveral Air Force Stations in Florida in January of 2006 and flew past Pluto a little over a decade, eleven years, later sending back zoomed in photographs of the planet’s surface. This paper will explore numerous topics about how the spacecraft could reach its destination and beyond. There are numerous challenges in sending a craft that far such as powering the contraption without utilizing solar energy since it is too weak to generate power at that distance. There is also the choice of what sort of instruments should be incorporated on the exploration spacecraft that would get the most accurate results and be least susceptible to wear and tear. Also, there are concerns about how spacecraft might ensure that

One may remember Stephen Hawking's plan to blast tiny spacecraft through the galaxy for deep space missions. The plan may have inspired NASA, who might use the same laser system to launch human missions to Mars, protecting Earth from dangerous asteroids, space junk and that mysterious alien humanoid hanging around the red planet.

Solar flares are cyclical, usually over a period of eleven years. There are three basic stages to a solar flare. The first stage is the precursor stage, where the release of magnetic energy is triggered. In the second or impulsive stage, radio waves are emitted. During the third or decay stage, the gradual build up and decay of soft x-rays can be detected.

Juno has been constructed to be durable and long lasting, using solar powered and spin-stabilized technologies. Its main challenges are weak sunlight, extreme temperatures and radiation levels. Thermal blankets and an armored vault are used to protect the spacecraft and its delicate instruments.

Possibly the most dramatic event that occurs within our solar system is the solar flare. Scientists have spent much time studying this solar phenomenon attempting to learn how to predict them. This in turn has caused a significant increase in understanding the anatomy of solar flares to include the phases of flares and what they emit. Bringing things closer to Earth, the emissions of solar flares can have a significant impact in today’s technological world. By far, the largest impact of solar flares to our technology is radio blackouts. The emissions of solar flares cause scintillation to occur in the ionosphere effectively blocking long distance transmissions. Solar flares are excessively bright and powerful and so deserve our attention not only from a scientific standpoint, but a societal standpoint as we rely more and more on our technology.

The earliest studies of asteroid mining proposed retrieving a main belt asteroid. Because of the very long travel times to the main asteroid belt, attention has shifted to the asteroids whose orbits bring them fairly close to the Earth. In these schemes, the asteroids would be bagged and then processed during the return trip, with the asteroid itself providing the reaction mass to propel the mission homeward. A mission to one of these near-Earth

In the heliosphere, the large-scale structure of the solar wind is dominated by two types of interplanetary disturbances: transient and corotating disturbances. Corotating disturbances, associated with spatial variability and solar rotation, occur in response to the interaction of fast and slow solar winds. Transient disturbances, due to episodic solar eruptions, expand outward from the Sun into interplanetary space (Gosling, 1996).

     Have you ever heard of a solar flare? A solar flare exists after a sunspot has existed for a long time and the magnetic lines of force usually become jumbled. As a result of this jumbling, magnetic energy is stored in the Corona (region of atmosphere above the chromosphere). The energy may be released in a spectacular discharge, which is a solar flare. A solar flare can be as wide as 367,000 miles and as high 500,000 miles out into space. A solar flare is nothing more than helium erupting from the sun like a volcano.

One of the greatest tragedies in history occurred on January 8, 1986. Shortly after it was launched, the space shuttle Challenger exploded, killing seven astronauts, including Christa McAuliffe, a New Hampshire schoolteacher chosen to be the first teacher in space (“Challenger Disaster, n.d.). The explosion was caused by a failure of the O-rings of the solid rocket boosters. The O-rings were unable to seat properly, causing the leaking of hot combustion gases, which burnt through the external fuel tank. The malfunction was not any one person’s or organization’s fault; it was caused by many factors including the decision to launch despite the cold weather, the poor communication between management levels of the National Aeronautics and

It is inevitable that the Sun will turn into a red giant and eventually a black hole, thus, killing everything that is left in our solar system. When this happens, the fate of the human race will either survive or go extinct. If we as a species intend on surviving, we must develop ways to colonize interstellar space. However, there is currently many limitations that don’t allow humans to travel vast distances in short periods of time. Since the space race, there have been countless proposed propulsion solutions; however, with current technology one stands out. This being the solar sail.