32419425
submission
SchrodingerZ writes:
Just in time to miss the 100 year anniversary of the fatal voyage of the Titanic; Australian mining billionaire Clive Palmer announced he has plans to recreate the Titanic, calling it Titanic II. "It will be every bit as luxurious as the original Titanic but of course it will have state-of-the-art 21st Century technology and the latest navigation and safety systems," says Palmer. He stated it was to be as close to the original as possible, with some modern adjustments. Its maiden voyage is set for 2016.
14104036
submission
japan_dan writes:
It looks like two ESA spacecraft will observe 21 Lutetia during Rosetta's flyby on 10 July: Rosetta from 3160 km and Herschel from 450 mn km. Herschel's PACS and SPIRE spectrometers will view Lutetia in far IR, while Rosetta will gather data in a variety of wavelengths. Since the observations will be coordinated during and at closest approach, scientists will later be able to correlate the data to produce a map of the thermal radiation emitted by Lutetia. There are a pair of animations modelling the expected temperature distribution over Lutetia in the Rosetta Blog: http://www.esa.int/blog. The joint observations are part of a series of 8 sessions planned in the next couple of years by Herschel scientists of objects that will be visited by spacecraft.
6444173
submission
japan_dan writes:
An interesting way to enable Earth-Mars communication even when the Sun occults the direct radio line-of-sight: ESA proposes placing a pair of continuous-thrusting relay sats — one in front and ahead, one behind and below — Mars, with both following so-called 'B-orbits' (non-Keplerian). This means the direction of thrust is perpendicular to the satellites' direction of flight, allowing them to 'hover' with both Earth and Mars in view.
5009745
story
Dusty writes
"After several false alarms, the Ulysses Mission is finally ending. According to the Spacecraft Operations Manager's latest status report, the last track will be on 30th June 2009 from 15:25 until 20:20 UTC. 'We've tried to bolster our dwindling tracking allocation with some success
by grabbing antenna time released on short notice (mostly by the Spitzer Project). However, weekly data return figures are now typically 10% or less. And soon, even 512 bps from 70m antennas will be a thing of the past.'
Further details about Ulysses' 18-year mission are available from NASA and the ESA. We discussed the failing spacecraft last summer when it looked like its fuel was going to freeze, but through clever engineering, experts managed to squeeze out another year.
