Showing posts with label spacecraft. Show all posts

2011-09-20

Declassified US Spy Satellites One Day on Display

HEXAGON (KH-9) Viewing Opportunity, One Day Only - National Air and Space Museum Event

Please note, this event has ended.

HEXAGON (KH-9) Viewing Opportunity, One Day Only
Newly Declassified Satellite Saturday, September 17
10:00 am to 5:30 pm
Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center
Admission: Free, Parking $15

Collected from:HEXAGON (KH-9) Viewing Opportunity, One Day Only - National Air and Space Museum Event

Spy satellite - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

A spy satellite (officially referred to as a reconnaissance satellite) is an Earth observation satellite or communications satellite deployed for military or intelligence applications.
These are essentially space telescopes that are pointed toward the Earth instead of toward the stars. The first generation type (i.e. Corona ^[1] ^[2] and Zenit) took photographs, then ejected canisters of photographic film, which would descend to earth.
Corona capsules were retrieved in mid-air as they floated down on parachutes. Later spacecraft had digital imaging systems and downloaded the images via encrypted radio links.

Collected from:Spy satellite - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

GAMBIT and HEXAGON Programs

The declassification of GAMBIT and HEXAGON was publicly announced on September 17, 2011. Two GAMBIT systems were developed for surveillance of specific targets. GAMBIT 1 initially launched in 1963 and was equipped with the KH-7 camera systems. GAMBIT 3 followed in 1966 and was equipped with the KH-8 camera system. The HEXAGON system was launched in 1971 and was developed for wide-area searches of denied territory. Together these satellitites became America's eyes in space.

Additional Information can be found under NRO's History and Studies page: Gambit/Hexagon Programs.

Collected from:NRO - Freedom of Information Act (FOIA)

Declassified US Spy Satellites Reveal Rare Look at Secret Cold War Space Program | American Spy Satellites, Military Space Program | US National Reconnaissance Office Satellites &Hexagon and Gambit Satellites | Space.com

The massive KH-9 Hexagon spy satellite on display at the Smithsonian National Air Space Museum's Udvar-Hazy Center,

This National Reconnaissance Office released graphic depicts the huge HEXAGON spy satellite, a Cold War era surveillance craft that flew reconnaissance missions from 1971 to 1986. The bus-size satellites weighed 30,000 pounds and were 60 feet long.

Collected from:Declassified US Spy Satellites Reveal Rare Look at Secret Cold War Space Program | American Spy Satellites, Military Space Program | US National Reconnaissance Office Satellites &Hexagon and Gambit Satellites | Space.com

Collected from:KH9 Recon Satellite and Reentry Vehicle on Display at Udvar Hazy Center - YouTube

Collected from:KH9 Reentry Vehicle on Display at Udvar Hazy Center - YouTube

Related

2010-12-18

NASA's Rail-Launched Scramjet Spacecraft Concept

Emerging Technologies May Fuel Revolutionary Launcher

As NASA studies possibilities for the next launcher to the stars, a team of engineers from Kennedy Space Center and several other field centers are looking for a system that turns a host of existing cutting-edge technologies into the next giant leap spaceward.

This artist's concept shows a potential design for a rail-launched aircraft and spacecraft that could revolutionize the launch business. Early designs envision a 2-mile-long track at Kennedy Space Center shooting a Mach 10-capable carrier aircraft to the upper reaches of the atmosphere. then a second stage booster would fire to lift a satellite or spacecraft into orbit.

Different technologies to push a spacecraft down a long rail have been tested in several settings, including this Magnetic Levitation (MagLev) System evaluated at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center. Engineers have a number of options to choose from as their designs progress.

Collected from: NASA - Emerging Technologies May Fuel Revolutionary Launcher

NASA Engineers Propose Combining a Rail Gun and a Scramjet to Fire Spacecraft Into Orbit | Popular Science

The system calls for a two-mile- long rail gun that will launch a scramjet, which will then fly to 200,000 feet. The scramjet will then fire a payload into orbit and return to Earth. The process is more complex than a rocket launch, but engineers say it’s also more flexible. With it, NASA could orbit a 10,000-pound satellite one day and send a manned ship toward the moon the next, on a fraction of the propellant used by today’s rockets.

Collected from: NASA Engineers Propose Combining a Rail Gun and a Scramjet to Fire Spacecraft Into Orbit | Popular Science

Scramjet - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

A scramjet (supersonic combustion ramjet) is a variant of a ramjet airbreathing combustion jet engine in which the combustion process takes place in supersonic airflow. As in ramjets, a scramjet relies on high vehicle speed to forcefully compress and decelerate the incoming air before combustion (hence ramjet), but whereas a ramjet decelerates the air to subsonic velocities before combustion, airflow in a scramjet is supersonic throughout the entire engine. This allows the scramjet to efficiently operate at extremely high speeds: theoretical projections place the top speed of a scramjet between Mach 12 and Mach 24, which is near orbital velocity. The fastest air-breathing plane is a SCRAM jet design, the NASA X-43a which reached Mach 9.8. For comparison, the second fastest ^[1] manned airbreathing aircraft, the SR-71 Blackbird, has a cruising speed of Mach 3.2.^[2]

Collected from: Scramjet - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Sources: NASA - Emerging Technologies May Fuel Revolutionary Launcher; NASA Engineers Propose Combining a Rail Gun and a Scramjet to Fire Spacecraft Into Orbit | Popular Science; Scramjet - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Related: SPACE.com -- Railway to the Sky? NASA Ponders New Launch System; NASA Considering Rail Gun Launch System to the Stars; Horizontally Launched Aircraft Could Revolutionize Space Travel | Technology | Epoch Times; DailyTech - NASA Plans to Catapault Scramjet Into Space Launch Using Electric Track; Rail-Launched Scramjets To Space: Science Fiction in the News; NASA's Next-Gen Spacelaunch System Could Launch Scramjets from a Massive Railgun; NASA's Next-Gen Spacelaunch System Could Launch Scramjets from a Massive Railgun | Popular Science; The Hypersonic Age is Near | Popular Science

2010-05-11

Lockheed Falcon HTV-2 Test Flight

Update 2011-08-12: See also Hypersonic Falcon Launched and Lost

Lockheed Falcon unmanned aircraft

Computer animation of Lockheed Martin Skunk Works' hypersonic cruise vehicle for DARPA Falcon programme

Collected from: YouTube - Lockheed Falcon unmanned aircraft

DARPA Falcon Project

The DARPA Falcon Project (Force Application and Launch from Continental United States) is a two-part joint project between the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) and the United States Air Force (USAF).

The program was to follow a set of flight tests with a series of hypersonic technology vehicles.^[8]

The FALCON project includes:

X-41 Common Aero Vehicle (CAV) — a common aerial platform for hypersonic ICBMs and cruise missiles, as well as civilian RLVs and ELVs.

Hypersonic Technology Vehicle-1 (HTV-1) — a test concept, originally planned to fly in September 2007, now canceled.^[9]

HTV-2 — first flew on 22 April 2010, but contact was lost soon afterwards^[10]^[11]

HTV-3X — Blackswift, now canceled

Small Launch Vehicle (SLV) — a smaller engine to power CAVs, now complete

Illustration of HTV-2 reentry phase

Collected from: DARPA Falcon Project - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Collected from: PUB_HTV_Progression_DARPA_2008_lg.jpg (JPEG Image, 1125x844 pixels) - Scaled (85%)

DARPA Falcon hypersonic X-plane - part 1

Collected from: YouTube - DARPA Falcon hypersonic X-plane - part 1

DARPA Falcon hypersonic X-plane - part 2

Collected from: YouTube - DARPA Falcon hypersonic X-plane - part 2

Falcon Hypersonic Technology Vehicle-2 (HTV-2)

The Falcon program objectives are to develop and demonstrate hypersonic technologies that will enable prompt global reach missions. The technologies include high lift-to-drag techniques, high temperature materials, precision navigation, guidance, and control, communications through plasma, and an autonomous flight safety system. Leveraging technology developed under the Hypersonic Flight (HyFly) program, Falcon will address the implications of hypersonic flight and reusability using a series of hypersonic technology vehicles (HTVs) to incrementally demonstrate these required technologies in flight. The HTV-2 program will demonstrate enabling hypersonic technologies for future operational systems through rocket-boosted hypersonic flights with sufficient cross-range and down-range performance to evaluate thermal protection systems, aerodynamic shapes, maneuverability, and long-range communication for hypersonic cruise and re-entry vehicle applications.

Collected from: DARPA - Tactical Technology Office (TTO)

Pentagon’s Mach 20 Glider Disappears, Whacking ‘Global Strike’ Plans

The Pentagon’s controversial plan to hit terrorists half a planet away suffered a setback this weekend, after an experimental hypersonic glider disappeared over the Pacific Ocean.

Collected from: Pentagon’s Mach 20 Glider Disappears, Whacking ‘Global Strike’ Plans | Danger Room | Wired.com

Update Aug 12 2001: See also

Military's Hypersonic Falcon Missile Test a Dud?

The test vehicle launched last week reached Mach 5 on launch, and was designed to crash and sink into the sea and sink near Kwajalein Atoll, 2,000 miles south-west of Hawaii, 30 minutes later and 4,000 miles from the launch site.

But in a statement released Friday night, DARPA said that while “the launch vehicle executed first-of-its-kind energy management maneuvers, clamshell payload fairing release and HTV-2 deployment,” all wasn't perfect with the superfast craft. “Approximately 9 minutes into the mission, telemetry assets experienced a loss of signal from the HTV-2. An engineering team is reviewing available data to understand this event.”

The DARPA press release did not specify whether any of the test maneuvers were completed by the Lockheed Martin built craft before controllers lost communications with the craft, the site adds.

Collected from: FOXNews.com - Military's Hypersonic Falcon Missile Test a Dud?

Uncovered by the incomparable flateric on secretprojects.co.uk, this graphic from a December presentation by DARPA Tactical Technology Office director David Nyland suggests contact with the HTV-2 (on the yellow Mission A line) was lost somewhere between beginning reentry and starting its hypersonic glide.

Investigation of the telemetry failure is under way. But the question now is what this means for the second HTV-2 flight (red Mission B line above). This is intended to demonstrate the cross-range capability provided by the vehicle's hypersonic aerodynamic efficiency - and key to a prompt global strike weapon - involving sustained maneuvers beyond the simple S-turns planned for the first flight. It's more likely the second flight will have to be a repeat of the first.

Collected from: DARPA's HTV-2 Didn't Phone Home

Sources:

Related:

2009-08-18

Faster-Than-Light Space Travel

clipped from www.dailygalaxy.com

Is a Dark-Energy Fueled Spaceship Possible?

clipped from www.astroengine.com

Warp Drives and… Black Holes?

clipped from www.astroengine.com

clipped from www.foxnews.com

Physicists: Faster-Than-Light Travel Might Be Possible

Travel by bubble might seem more appropriate for witches in Oz, but two physicists suggest that a future spaceship could fold a space-time bubble around itself to travel faster than the speed of light.

clipped from www.whatswrongwiththeworld.net

To Bearly Go?: Baylor physicists propose way to travel faster than light

Baylor University physicists Gerald Cleaver and Richard Obousy have submitted a paper to ArXiv.org explaining how an engine could bend the rules of physics to travel faster than the speed of light without violating Einstein’s theory of relativity.
According to Discovery News, the proposal “involves expanding the fabric of space behind a ship into a bubble and shrinking space-time in front of the ship. The ship would rest in between the expanding and shrinking space-time, essentially surfing down the side of the bubble.

clipped from dsc.discovery.com

Warp Drive Engine Would Travel Faster Than Light

The tricky part is that the ship wouldn't actually move; space itself would move underneath the stationary spacecraft. A beam of light next to the ship would still zoom away, same as it always does, but a beam of light far from the ship would be left behind.

That means that the ship would arrive at its destination faster than a beam of light traveling the same distance, but without violating Einstein's relativity, which says that it would take an infinite amount of energy to accelerate an object with mass to the speed of light, since the ship itself isn't actually moving.

clipped from dsc.discovery.com

Dark Energy and Surfing Spacetime

Artists conception of a warp drive spacecraft.

robousy: The idea is as follows:

One essentially contracts space itself in front of a spacecraft, and expands space behind.

Because spacetime is not limited by the speed of light restriction, this provides a tantalizing mechanism to zip through space at faster than light speeds!

clipped from video.google.com

Sources:
Is a Dark-Energy Fueled Spaceship Possible?
Warp Drives and… Black Holes? | Astroengine.com
FOXNews.com - Physicists: Faster-Than-Light Travel Might Be Possible - Science News | Science & Technology | Technology News
To Bearly Go?: Baylor physicists propose way to travel faster than light (What's Wrong with the World)
Warp Speed Engine Designed : Discovery News : Discovery Channel
Dark Energy and Surfing Spacetime : Discovery Space
Dr. Richard Obousy - Supersymmetry Breaking Casimir Warp Drive
Related:
To Bearly Go?: Baylor physicists propose way to travel faster than light (What's Wrong with the World)
Warp Speed Engine Designed : Discovery News : Discovery Channel
Richard Obousy Consulting :: Physics and Technology Consultant
Spaceflight at warp speed? Make it so - Space.com- msnbc.com
Traveling Faster Than the Speed of Light
Star Trek-like 'warp drive' theorized
Richardobousy’s Weblog
Surfing Spacetime : Wide Angle : Discovery Space

2008-09-25

China Will Build The EmDrive A New Concept in Spacecraft Propulsion

China recently reported to have build the highly controversial Emdrive (electromagnetic drive), an engine that uses microwaves to transform electrical energy into thrust. A technology that might be a breakthrough in spacecraft propulsion technology.

The EmDrive

Clipped from: Emdrive - Home

Satellite Propulsion Research Ltd (SPR Ltd) a small UK based company, has demonstrated a remarkable new space propulsion technology. The company has sucessfully tested both an experimental thruster and a demonstrator engine which use patented microwave technology to convert electrical energy directly into thrust. No propellant is used in the conversion process. Thrust is produced by the amplification of the radiation pressure of an electromagnetic wave propagated through a resonant waveguide assembly.

Details (Slideshow)

Clipped from: EMDrive presentation at Space 08 conference, Barbican, London

EMDrive presentation at Space 08 conference, Barbican, London
View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own. (tags: spr shawyer)

Criticism

Clipped from: EmDrive - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

EmDrive (also Relativity Drive) is the name of a spacecraft propulsion system proposed, and reportedly developed, by Roger Shawyer.^[1] New Scientist ran a cover story on EmDrive in its September 8, 2006 issue.^[1] The device is a Magnetron with a specially shaped fully enclosed tapering resonator cavity whose area is greater at one end. The inventor claims that the device generates thrust even though no detectable energy leaves the device. The inventor proposes to use it as a spacecraft propulsion system that uses no fuel (other than electricity).

On his homepage[1] the inventor claims that independent peer-review is under way, but so far no publication is available.

The device's operation as described seemingly violates several basic laws of physics, notably conservation of momentum, though the inventor insists to the contrary. John Costella, an expert in relativistic electrodynamics describes the EmDrive as a 'fraud'.^[2]

Project in China

Clipped from: Chinese Say They're Building 'Impossible' Space Drive | Danger Room from Wired.com

Chinese Say They're Building 'Impossible' Space Drive
Chinese researchers claim they've confirmed the theory behind an "impossible" space drive, and are proceeding to build a demonstration version. If they're right, this might transform the economics of satellites, open up new possibilities for space exploration –- and give the Chinese a decisive military advantage in space.

[...]
What will China do with the technology? It may be relevant that professor Yang is not unknown in military circles, having published a paper called "Plasma Attack Against Low-Orbit Spy Satellites."

Meanwhile, what about the American interest? Shawyer told me that "the flight thruster program is on hold for the present. [O]nce the U.K. government had provided an export license for a U.S. military application, the major U.S. aerospace company we had been dealing with stopped talking to us. "

The company may have decided that the Emdrive could not work. If they're wrong, China has at least a year's head start in a technology that will dominate space and make previous satellites as obsolete as sailing ships in the age of steam.

2008-08-20

New Thin Skin Protects Micro Spacecraft

Fleets of miniature spacecraft may now be closer to liftoff. Scientists have invented a new, razor thin temperature-regulating film that can protect craft against the extreme heat and intense cold found in outer space.

Micro Spacecraft

Clipped from: Micro-spacecraft

Temperature Control Problem

Clipped from: SPACE.com -- New Thin Skin to Protect Tiny Spacecraft

Developing new kinds of spacecraft is challenging.

Outer space is an extraordinarily hazardous environment, and spacecraft can be frying in harsh sunlight one moment and freezing in pitch black cold in another.

"It may sound very trivial, but controlling the temperature of a spacecraft is absolutely crucial. Currently, there is no way to do it for very small spacecraft," Chandrasekhar said.

The Solution

Clipped from: 236th ACS National Meeting

Tuesday, Aug. 19 (continued)
3:00 p.m. EDT — Embargoed for Tuesday, Aug. 19 at 10:30 a.m. EDT
Key advance toward “micro-spacecraft”
Fleets of inexpensive, pint-sized spacecraft are one giant leap closer to lift off. Researchers describe a new, razor thin temperature-regulating film that brings this sci-fi vision of “micro-spacecraft” weighing barely 50 pounds and 10-pound “nano-spacecraft” closer to reality. See corresponding news release, abstract, and nontechnical summary for PMSE 146.

Prasanna Chandrasekhar, Ph.D., is a researcher with the Ashwin-Ushas Corporation in New Jersey and worked with NASA colleagues.

Thin Film

Clipped from: Thin Film

The thin film is able to change color from light to dark based on its exposure to harsh sunlight or extreme darkness.

News

Clipped from: BBC NEWS | Technology | A thermostat for mini-spacecraft

A thermostat for mini-spacecraft
Researchers in the US are showcasing a new approach to temperature control for spacecraft.
The technique is a welcome advance for miniature spacecraft, for which temperature regulation technologies employed in larger craft cannot be adapted.
The scheme uses razor-thin films that can adjust the amount of heat radiated by spacecraft.
The films are robust, inexpensive, and consume very little power.

2008-01-25

SpaceShipTwo

clipped from ap.google.com

Virgin Galactic Unveils Spaceship

British billionaire Richard Branson, left, and the aerospace designer Burt Rutan unveil a model of SpaceShipTwo, right, the vehicle they hope will be able to take passengers on suborbital joy-rides, just for the fun of it, with test flights beginning as soon as this year, during a news conference in New York, Wednesday, Jan. 23, 2008. At top is a model of White Knight Two, the mothership for Space Ship Two, which is now under construction at a hangar in the Mojave Desert. (AP Photo/Bebeto Matthews)

clipped from www.popularmechanics.com

clipped from www.virgingalactic.com

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