Ion thrusters are being designed for a wide variety of missions – from keeping communications satellites in the proper position to propelling spacecraft throughout our solar system. But, what exactly is ion propulsion and how does an ion thruster work? Great question! Let’s take a look:
Regular rocket engines: You take a gas and you heat it up, or put it under pressure, and you push it out of the rocket nozzle, and the action of the gas going out of the nozzle causes a reaction that pushes the spacecraft in the other direction.
Ion engines: Instead of heating the gas up or putting it under pressure, we give the gas xenon a little electric charge, then they’re called ions, and we use a big voltage to accelerate the xenon ions through this metal grid and we shoot them out of the engine at up to 90,000 miles per hour.
Something interesting about ion engines is that it pushes on the spacecraft as hard as a single piece of paper pushes on your hand while holding it. In the zero gravity, frictionless, environment of space, gradually the effect of this thrust builds up. Our Dawn spacecraft uses ion engines, and is the first spacecraft to orbit two objects in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter.
To give you a better idea, at full throttle, it would take our Dawn spacecraft four days to accelerate from zero to sixty miles per hour. That may sounds VERY slow, but instead of thrusting for four days, if we thrust for a week or a year as Dawn already has for almost five years, you can build up fantastically high velocity.
Why use ion engines? This type of propulsion give us the maneuverability to go into orbit and after we’ve been there for awhile, we can leave orbit and go on to another destination and do the same thing.
As the commercial applications for electric propulsion grow because of its ability to extend the operational life of satellites and to reduce launch and operation costs, we are involved in work on two different ion thrusters of the future: the NASA Evolutionary Xenon Thruster (NEXT) and the Annular Engine. These new engines will help reduce mission cost and trip time, while also traveling at higher power levels.
The Star Trek trailer is here and it just reignited my emotions about space.
WE’re on a tiny speck of dust in comparison to the entirety of even our local galaxy cluster, much less the KNOWN universe.
We are so small and last seconds in comparison with the ‘age’ of the universe and it’s continuing entropy.
There are more everything than grains of sand, entire other worlds,
THERE IS LIFE OUT THERE, whether it’s microbial or developed and sentient.
There is so much we don’t know. Mankind has never been beyond the moon, and robots have taken years to reach beyond the asteroid belt, but all the area we are in probably has all the same/possibly similar elements and laws for its gravity and life and physics
Our solar system is so tiny
There’s just SO MUCH out there to learn about, to humble us
Antimatter is probably our best choice because the meeting of antimatter and matter is catosofically explosive and would be an infinite source of energy, we just A) have to find some and B) figure out how to contain it so we can utilize it. But how to contain it when the container would likely be matter and could corrode away? Idk, probably in suspension or in some kind of fluid/gel, there’s always a middle ground.
Or maybe we could use dark matter/energy since it makes up so much of the known universe
It’s just
THERE’S worlds out there that we may never known exist
We can keep building bigger and better telescopes
But we will never know everything unless we go out there, discover the ground of some planet orbiting some distant star is entirely unlike anything thought possible in all of human history
The sky and the atmosphere are so suffocating when you realize just how much is out there
I think I’m going to go look at Nasa’s hubble deep space and cry
THERES GONNA BE A TOTAL LUNAR ECLIPSE THIS SUNDAY (SEPTEMBER 27, 2015) OF A SUPER MOON. THIS HAS ONLY HAPPENED 5 TIMES SINCE 1910 AND WONT HAPPEN AGAIN UNTIL 2029.
Why is this important? Not only because its a fucking TOTAL LUNAR ECLIPSE but it’s one of a SUPER MOON. Basically the moon has a slightly elliptical orbit around the earth, and when it’s at it’s closest it’s called a super moon because it appears 14% bigger and 30% brighter. Lunar eclipses do happen relatively often at least in terms of astronomy, but total ones where the moon is completely covered by the earth’s shadow are a little more rare.
I mean, it’s not really important, more just Cool As Fucking Hell.
So basically this is going to be ONE HELL OF A LUNAR ECLIPSE. I suggest not missing it. Grab your friends or other loved ones and go watch this cool ass shit. It’s supposed to start at 9:07 EDT.
A new cosmic map is giving scientists an unprecedented look at the boundaries for the giant supercluster that is home to Earth’s own Milky Way galaxy and many others. Scientists even have a name for the colossal galactic group: Laniakea, Hawaiian for “immeasurable heaven.”
Image 1:Scientists have created the first map of a colossal supercluster of galaxies known as Laniakea, the home of Earth’s Milky Way galaxy and many other. This computer simulation, a still from a Nature journal video, depicts the giant supercluster, with the Milky Way’s location shown as a red dot.Credit:[Nature Video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rENyyRwxpHo)
Image 2:This computer-generated depiction of the Laniakea Supercluster of galaxies, which includes the Milky Way galaxy containing Earth’s solar system, shows a view of the supercluster as seen from the supergalactic equatorial plane.Credit:SDvision interactive visualization software by DP at CEA/Saclay, France
The scientists responsible for the new 3D map suggest that the newfound Laniakea supercluster of galaxies may even be part of a still-larger structure they have not fully defined yet.
“We live in something called ‘the cosmic web,’ where galaxies are connected in tendrils separated by giant voids,” said lead study author Brent Tully, an astronomer at the University of Hawaii at Honolulu.
Galactic structures in space
Galaxies are not spread randomly throughout the universe. Instead, they clump in groups, such as the one Earth is in, the Local Group, which contains dozens of galaxies. In turn, these groups are part of massive clusters made up of hundreds of galaxies, all interconnected in a web of filaments in which galaxies are strung like pearls. The colossal structures known as superclusters form at the intersections of filaments.
The giant structures making up the universe often have unclear boundaries. To better define these structures, astronomers examined Cosmicflows-2, the largest-ever catalog of the motions of galaxies, reasoning that each galaxy belongs to the structure whose gravity is making it flow toward.
“We have a new way of defining large-scale structures from the velocities of galaxies rather than just looking at their distribution in the sky,” Tully said.
