Spacecraft

NASA scientists are developing a new ion propulsion system that could enable spacecraft to reach unheard-of speeds and undertake long-term explorations of planets in the outer solar system. Dubbed Herakles, the new system would use an ion beam produced from xenon gas to eventually propel the craft to speeds of 200,000 mph, 10 times faster than the top speed of the space shuttle. Because the new technology is much more efficient than conventional propulsion systems, the craft will be able to carry heavier, more sophisticated scientific equipment.

The sun has spewed a pair of solar particle blasts toward three NASA unmanned spacecraft in recent days -- including one on a University of Maryland-led mission. But the risk of electronic malfunctioning is expected to be low and no impact on Earth is forecast, NASA said. The coronal mass ejections occurred at 8:36 p.m. Tuesday and 6:54 a.m. Wednesday. The CMEs sent solar particles flying at about 400 miles per second, a rate that would have them reach Earth within a few days.

The European Space Agency's Venus Express spacecraft returned the first images of the planet's south pole yesterday, revealing a tempestuous sky of sulfuric acid clouds whipped by winds moving faster than 200 mph. Scientists have been hampered from peering into Venus' atmosphere because of a thick haze enshrouding the planet. But the spacecraft's infrared and visible cameras were able to capture two slices of the atmosphere at 34 miles and 40 miles above the surface. "We have been able to see the top 1 percent of the atmosphere," said Kevin Baines, a planetary scientist based at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif.

Space Exploration Technologies is vying to be the first private company to send a spacecraft to the International Space Station, and its mission got off to a successful start with a launch this morning. A Dragon spacecraft launched from the company's launch pad at Cape Canaveral at 3:44 a.m. Tuesday. It will soon begin a series of tests in space to determine if it can indeed dock with the space station. Officials with the company, known as SpaceX, said the launch was a successful first step regardless of what happens later in the mission.

The moon will drift into NASA's cross hairs again Wednesday as the space agency prepares to launch two new spacecraft to search for the best places for humans to land when they return as early as 2020. One of the two will crash its rocket booster into a polar crater, then fly through the debris plume to scan for water ice. The second, conceived and built in Maryland, will orbit the moon for at least a year. Its goal is to find safe landing sites with the water and sunshine needed to help sustain a permanent manned base.

Calling it "the best news any Pluto fan could hope for," scientists working on NASA's New Horizons mission to Pluto have been cheered this month by the first images from their spacecraft's high-resolution camera. All seven instruments on the mission - the one intended to produce the first close look at the "dwarf planet" in 2015 - have proven they are working as expected. The fastest spacecraft ever built, New Horizons is 322 million miles from the sun, moving through the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter at 14.45 miles per second.

In a Valentine's Day marriage of science and sentiment, a Maryland-built spacecraft slipped into orbit yesterday around an asteroid named for the Greek god of love. After a 57-second thruster firing at 10: 33 a.m., the Near Earth Asteroid Rendezvous spacecraft slowed its speed to that of a lover's stroll and slipped into a 280-mile-high orbit around the asteroid Eros, where it immediately began taking pictures. It is the first man-made object ever to orbit an asteroid, and its arrival at Eros on Valentine's Day was a calculated melding of science and public relations.

NASA launched the Messenger spacecraft to Mercury today, the first spacecraft in 30 years to head to the sun's closest planet. Messenger rocketed away in the pre-dawn moonlight from Cape Canaveral, Fla., on what will be a 5 billion-mile, 6 1/2 -year journey to Mercury. The trip should have started a day earlier, but clouds from Tropical Storm Alex postponed liftoff. Messenger's team at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory was told to stand down yesterday 7 minutes before their spacecraft had been scheduled to rocket into space.

Available: Deep Impact and Stardust. Older model spacecraft, already in orbit. Only a few billion miles on them. Big science! Huge markdown! Well, NASA liked the pitch. The space agency has decided to reactivate the two semi-retired comet-hunters and reassign them to two more comet flybys. Deep Impact will also turn its instruments on some gigantic planets circling nearby stars, and back toward Earth to see what a living planet looks like from a distance. The two mission extensions announced this week will cost no more than $55 million, according to NASA officials.

After an absence of more than 25 years, a spacecraft from Earth will be going back to the sizzling planet Mercury before the end of the decade. NASA gave the green light yesterday to the Messenger project, a $256 million effort to put a Maryland-built spacecraft in orbit for a year around the planet closest to the sun. Built in Maryland The craft will be designed, built and operated by the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel....

With a 30-minute blast from its main rocket engine, NASA's Messenger spacecraft slipped into orbit around the planet Mercury Thursday evening, becoming the first craft from Earth ever to circle the closest planet to the sun. At 9:10 p.m., when early telemetry indicated that the rocket burn had finished and the probe had been captured by Mercury's gravity, a round of applause went up from the mission control room at the Johns Hopkins University's Applied...

Fifteen years of planning and 61/2 years of maneuvering in space will all come down to the crunch Thursday evening as mission managers in Maryland try to slip NASA's Messenger spacecraft into orbit around Mercury. The braking maneuver, playing out 96 million miles from Earth, will have to slow the desk-size planetary probe by 1,929 mph and ease it into a polar orbit around the planet closest to the sun. Failure will leave Messenger's managers at the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Lab near Laurel with less than 10 percent of the fuel the craft left Earth with, and limited options for recovery.

In 1977, NASA flung a message in a bottle toward the stars. After a 10 billion-mile journey that traversed the paths of Jupiter and Saturn, the hardy little Voyager I spacecraft approached the edge of the solar system last week, poised to carry humanity's greetings to the universe beyond. During its 33-year flight, Voyager I and its sister ship, Voyager II, captured the imagination of millions of Earthlings with the first detailed pictures of Jupiter and Saturn, along with stunning images of their mysterious moons and intricate rings.

A Maryland-led mission to capture close-up photos of Comet Hartley 2 climaxed Thursday with razor-sharp images of a whirling, bowling-pin-shaped object spewing jets of carbon dioxide into space. University of Maryland astronomer Jessica Sunshine, assistant principal investigator for NASA's $46 million EPOXI mission, said the 1.2-mile-long comet nucleus seems to be throwing off tons of gas and dust from its rough-looking ends, while accumulating smooth drifts of fine-grained material in lower terrain at the center.

Seeking a larger building to test spacecraft and related hardware for the U.S. Department of Defense, NASA and other clients, the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory intends to start construction this summer on a $30 million, 48,000-square-foot testing and assembly facility in Laurel. Featuring a "high bay" work area with a 45-foot-high ceiling, the one-level building will supplement a 1970s-era facility and enable the APL's Space Department to test and assemble larger satellites and other spacecraft than it can now, according to James Loesch, section supervisor for the APL's project management office.

Scientists say they may have to re-think some of their best theories about the origins and evolution of the planet Mercury as new data from the Sept. 29 flyby of the planet by the Maryland-built Messenger spacecraft continue to surprise. In their latest discussion of the mission's scientific findings, scientists said Tuesday they have found evidence that volcanic activity, including explosive eruptions, continued until unexpectedly recent times. The evidence appears in photos of an unnamed volcanic crater, 180 miles wide with a double ring around it. Its interior is surprisingly smooth and free of subsequent meteor impact craters, suggesting there were lava flows into the center as recently as a billion years ago. Scientists had thought Mercury's vulcanism, like that on Earth's moon, was among the first in the solar system to cease, at least 3 billion years ago. But "if the basin is young and the interior is even younger ... that may not be the case," said Brett Denevi, an imaging team member from Arizona State University in Tempe.

If you want to build something reliable, and you must do it quickly on a tight budget, you'd better keep it simple.That's why the Near Earth Asteroid Rendezvous (NEAR) spacecraft -- set for launch today from the Cape Canaveral Air Station in Florida -- has no antennas to unfold. There are no booms to extend, and no instrument platforms to swivel on NEAR, the first spacecraft sent to orbit an asteroid.If it succeeds, the craft will arrive at an asteroid called Eros -- 245 million miles from Earth -- in January 1999 and spend nearly a year sending back data that could shed light on the origins of the solar system.

The Maryland-built NEAR spacecraft is back on track for a rendezvous with the asteroid Eros.But scientists at mission control in Laurel say it will arrive a year behind schedule and short of fuel after the unplanned shutdown of its main engine on Dec. 20.The fuel shortage may shorten the time available for scientists to study Eros.The engine failure has been blamed on a computer programming glitch, which scientists at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Lab in Laurel say has been fixed with new computer instructions radioed to the spacecraft.

A little more than half of scientists' planned observations during the Messenger spacecraft's flyby of the planet Mercury were lost Tuesday when the probe sensed a problem, shut down its scientific instruments and went into "safe mode." The $426 million mission remains on track to enter orbit around Mercury in 2011, scientists said Wednesday. But much of what they had hoped to learn during the last of three scheduled flybys will have to wait for that orbital phase. "It isn't the outcome everyone expected or wanted," said Eric Finnegan, systems manager for the mission.

Planetary scientists are preparing for another quick and close-up look at the planet Mercury on Tuesday evening as the Maryland-built Messenger spacecraft skims to within 142 miles of the sun's closest neighbor. The flyby, around 6 p.m., will be the scientists' last look at Mercury until their spacecraft returns in March 2011 and, if all goes well, become the first ever to orbit the tiny planet. "Every time we encounter this planet we are surprised," said Sean C. Solomon, of the Carnegie Institution of Washington, the $446 million mission's principal investigator.