Space Science News of 2014
Jared Rogerson
Mr. Youell
News 2014
1/15/2015 (revised 3/29/15)
The past year has seen many extraordinary breakthroughs and achievements in space science. The test launch of the new capsule called Orion from NASA, the successful landing of the ESA's Philae lander on a comet, and the private company SpaceX's attempt at making a reusable spacecraft are just some of these huge scientific breakthroughs in the realm of the great unknown last year.
The first of these great scientific achievements was the successful landing of the first ever probe on a comet. (see figure 1) This mission has been in progress for over ten years, and finally made its successful landing on the comet named Churyumov-Gerasimenko, but known more commonly as plainly 67p. The Rosetta spacecraft carrying the lander Philae had an extremely difficult and long journey from Earth, which included multiple gravity assists on around Earth and Mars to get it up to enough speed to basically "fling" it out into deep space towards the comet. The mission exceeded 500 million kilometers from start to finish. Unfortunately, during the landing of Philae, grappling hooks that were meant to secure the probe to the comet failed, causing multiple bounces that put it far enough away from its predicted land site that it did not have enough sunlight to continue to run, thus stopping to send data back to earth a few days after landing. Scientists are still hopeful that as the comet gets closer to the sun, the solar panels will have enough sunlight to power the probe once again. But until then, there are a lot of other scientific discoveries and advances that happened in the realm of Space.
The next great discovery in Space science this past year was the successful first test flight of the Orion space capsule (see figure 2). What is so important about a space capsule you ask? Mainly the fact that it is the most high tech and newest space capsule to date, and is planned to launch manned missions to the moon and even to mars in the upcoming years. It also contains the largest heat shield ever made, which will be needed in returning missions from deep space. The test launch took place on December 5th, 2014, and I was one of the people watching live on NASA.gov when it happened. It took off aboard two Delta IV rockets, which although will not be the system it uses during its actual missions was used to test the capabilities. Orion reached its peak altitude some hours later, higher up then any human-capable spacecraft has been since the last moon landing in the 1970's. It continued until it successfully splashed down in the pacific ocean, after all of the major tests had been made and had soared above expectations.
The final great discovery in Science happened in early January of this year, and was the attempt of the private space company SpaceX to successfully launch, and then land a spacecraft on a floating pad in the Pacific ocean. The plan was for their Falcon space capsule to dock with the International Space Station, resupplying it with food and scientific equipment, and then landing it softly on a specially designed landing pad in the Pacific ocean (see figure 3). Regrettably, this first test of their recovery launch system failed by completely missing its landing target. This has caused SpaceX to take more initiative into improving this particular spacecraft landing system, and they hope to have succeeded by the end of this year. So far no new tests have been announced as they are still developing a way to make this more safe and more likely to succeed, but will likely happen in the following months.
As you can see, space science developed and grew exponentially last year. The year 2014 was hailed as the most successful year in space science, and there are no plans of stopping that into 2015 and beyond. The discoveries and success stories that I mentioned are just a few of the major ones from last year, but no where near everything. Space science will continue to grow and succeed in the years to come, and some day we will look back on these as the beginning of something amazing.
Figure 1: Artists depiction of Rosetta Spacecraft (above) and Philae Lander (below) on comet 67P.
Figure 2: Orion Space Capsule test flight launch, rocket clears the launch tower
Figure 3: SpaceX Falcon Landing Pad ready to receive the Falcon spacecraft
The next great discovery in Space science this past year was the successful first test flight of the Orion space capsule (see figure 2). What is so important about a space capsule you ask? Mainly the fact that it is the most high tech and newest space capsule to date, and is planned to launch manned missions to the moon and even to mars in the upcoming years. It also contains the largest heat shield ever made, which will be needed in returning missions from deep space. The test launch took place on December 5th, 2014, and I was one of the people watching live on NASA.gov when it happened. It took off aboard two Delta IV rockets, which although will not be the system it uses during its actual missions was used to test the capabilities. Orion reached its peak altitude some hours later, higher up then any human-capable spacecraft has been since the last moon landing in the 1970's. It continued until it successfully splashed down in the pacific ocean, after all of the major tests had been made and had soared above expectations.
The final great discovery in Science happened in early January of this year, and was the attempt of the private space company SpaceX to successfully launch, and then land a spacecraft on a floating pad in the Pacific ocean. The plan was for their Falcon space capsule to dock with the International Space Station, resupplying it with food and scientific equipment, and then landing it softly on a specially designed landing pad in the Pacific ocean (see figure 3). Regrettably, this first test of their recovery launch system failed by completely missing its landing target. This has caused SpaceX to take more initiative into improving this particular spacecraft landing system, and they hope to have succeeded by the end of this year. So far no new tests have been announced as they are still developing a way to make this more safe and more likely to succeed, but will likely happen in the following months.
As you can see, space science developed and grew exponentially last year. The year 2014 was hailed as the most successful year in space science, and there are no plans of stopping that into 2015 and beyond. The discoveries and success stories that I mentioned are just a few of the major ones from last year, but no where near everything. Space science will continue to grow and succeed in the years to come, and some day we will look back on these as the beginning of something amazing.
Figure 1: Artists depiction of Rosetta Spacecraft (above) and Philae Lander (below) on comet 67P.
Figure 2: Orion Space Capsule test flight launch, rocket clears the launch tower
Figure 3: SpaceX Falcon Landing Pad ready to receive the Falcon spacecraft
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