Apr
04

NSMU Wind Tunnel

Photo’s of this online are hard to find and not as good, This wind tunnel has a very large test chamber to study laminar flow boundary layers on different surfaces over a span of several meters. This is one of the only wind tunnels in the world working on this type of research.

Diffuser

Mar
16

Record-seeking skydiver makes 13-mile test jump

Skydiving daredevil Felix Baumgartner is more than halfway toward his goal of setting a world record for the highest jump.

Baumgartner lifted off Thursday for a test jump from Roswell, N.M., aboard a 100-foot helium balloon. He rode inside a pressurized capsule to 71,581 feet — 13.6 miles — and then jumped. He parachuted to a safe landing, according to project spokeswomanTrish Medalen.

He’s aiming for nearly 23 miles this summer. The record is 19.5 miles.

“The view is amazing, way better than I thought,” Baumgartner said after the practice jump, in remarks provided by his representatives.

Thursday’s rehearsal was a test of his capsule, full-pressure suit, parachutes and other systems. A mini Mission Control — fashioned after NASA’s — monitored his flight.

Baumgartner reached speeds of up to 364.4 mph Thursday and was in free fall for three minutes and 43 seconds, before pulling his parachute cords, Medalen said. The entire jump lasted eight minutes and eight seconds. She stressed that the numbers are still unofficial.

With Thursday’s successful test, Baumgartner is believed to be only the third person ever to jump from such a high altitude and free fall to a safe landing, and the first in a half-century.

“I’m now a member of a pretty small club,” he said.

When the 42-year-old Austrian known as “Fearless Felix” leaps from 120,000 feet in a few months, he expects to break the sound barrier as he falls through the stratosphere at supersonic speed. There’s virtually no atmosphere that far up, making it extremely hostile to humans, thus the need for a pressure suit and oxygen supply.

The record for the highest free fall is held by Joe Kittinger, a retired Air Force officer from Florida. He jumped from 102,800 feet — 19.5 miles — in 1960.

Baumgartner is out to beat that record. He plans one more dry run — jumping from 90,000 feet — before attempting the full 120,000 feet. The launch window opens in July and extends until the beginning of October.

For comparison, commercial jets generally cruise at over 30,000 feet.

Baumgartner has jumped 2,500 times from planes and helicopters, as well as some of the highest landmarks and skyscrapers on the planet — the Christ the Redeemer statue overlooking Rio de Janeiro, the Millau Viaduct in southern France, the 101-story Taipei 101 in Taiwan.

He’s also plunged deep into the Earth, leaping face-first into a pitch-dark cave in Croatia.

Baumgartner considers that 620-foot-deep cave jump his most dangerous feat so far, soon to be outdone by his stratospheric plunge. His mission takes its name, Red Bull Stratos, from the stratosphere as well as the energy drink-maker sponsor.

“I like to challenge myself,” Baumgartner told The Associated Press in a recent interview, “and this is the ultimate skydive. I think there’s nothing bigger than that.”

He’s caught NASA’s attention, even though space officially begins much higher at an even 100 kilometers, 328,084 feet or 62 miles.

Kittinger is now 83 and one of Baumgartner’s chief advisers. A former NASA flight director directs the medical team: Dr. Jonathan Clark, whose astronaut wife, Laurel, was killed aboard space shuttle Columbia in 2003. The accident led Clark to become an expert in spacecraft emergency escape.

Kittinger and Clark were among those taking part in Thursday’s dress rehearsal.

Mar
09

Be Entertained, and Educated

Top 10 Facts: (Reference: listverse.com)

Fact: If you put Saturn in water it would float

The density of Saturn is so low that if you were to put it in a giant glass of water it would float. The actual density of Saturn is 0.687 g/cm3 while the density of water is 0.998 g/cm3. At the equator Saturn has a radius of 60,268 ± 4 km – which means you would need an extremely large glass of water to test this out.

Fact: We are moving through space at the rate of 530km a second

Our Galaxy – the Milky Way is spinning at a rate of 225 kilometers per second. In addition, the galaxy is travelling through space at the rate of 305 kilometers per second. This means that we are traveling at a total speed of 530 kilometers (330 miles) per second. That means that in one minute you are about 19 thousand kilometers away from where you were. Scientists do not all agree on the speed with which the Milky Way is travelling – estimates range from 130 – 1,000 km/s. It should be said that Einstein’s theory of relativity, the velocity of any object through space is not meaningful.

Fact: The moon is drifting away from Earth

Every year the moon moves about 3.8cm further away from the Earth. This is caused by tidal effects. Consequently, the earth is slowing in rotation by about 0.002 seconds per day per century. Scientists do not know how the moon was created, but the generally accepted theory suggests that a large Mars sized object hit the earth causing the Moon to splinter off.

Fact: The light hitting the earth right now is 30 thousand years old

The energy in the sunlight we see today started out in the core of the Sun 30,000 years ago – it spent most of this time passing through the dense atoms that make the sun and just 8 minutes to reach us once it had left the Sun! The temperature at the core of the sun is 13,600,000 kelvins. All of the energy produced by fusion in the core must travel through many successive layers to the solar photosphere before it escapes into space as sunlight or kinetic energy of particles.

Fact: The Sun loses up to a billion kilograms a second due to solar winds

Solar winds are charged particles that are ejected from the upper surface of the sun due to the high temperature of the corona and the high kinetic energy particles gain through a process that is not well understood at this time. Also, did you know that 1 pinhead of the sun’s energy is enough to kill a person at a distance of 160 kilometers? [Sourced from Planet Science]

Fact: The Big Dipper is not a constellation, it is an asterism

Many people consider the big dipper to be a constellation but, in fact, it is an asterism. An asterism is a pattern of stars in the sky which is not one of the official 88 constellations; they are also composed of stars which are not physically related to each other and can be vast distances apart. An asterism can be composed of stars from one or more constellations – in the case of the Big Dipper, it is composed entirely of the seven brightest stars in the Ursa Major (Great Bear) constellation.

Fact: Uranus was originally called George’s Star

When Sir William Herschel discovered Uranus in 1781, he was given the honor of naming it. He chose to name it Georgium Sidus (George’s Star) after his new patron, King George III (Mad King George). This is what he said:

In the fabulous ages of ancient times the appellations of Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn were given to the Planets, as being the names of their principal heroes and divinities. In the present more philosophical era it would hardly be allowable to have recourse to the same method and call it Juno, Pallas, Apollo or Minerva, for a name to our new heavenly body. The first consideration of any particular event, or remarkable incident, seems to be its chronology: if in any future age it should be asked, when this last-found Planet was discovered? It would be a very satisfactory answer to say, ‘In the reign of King George the Third.’

Uranus was also the first planet to be discovered with the use of a telescope.

Fact: Earth has at least 4 moons

Okay – that is not actually true – but it is very close. In 1986, Duncan Waldron discovered a asteroid (5km across) that is in an elliptic orbit around the sun with a period of revolution virtually identical to that of Earth. For this reason the planetoid and earth appear to be following each other. The periodic planetoid is namedCruithne  (pronounced krin-yə) after an ancient group of Scottish people (also known as the Picts). Because of its unusual relationship with Earth, it is sometimes referred to as Earth’s second moon. Cruithne, is fainter than Pluto and would require at least a 12.5 inch reflecting telescope to attempt to be seen. Since its discovery, at least three other similar asteroids have been discovered. These types of objects are also found in similar relationships to other planets in our Solar System. In the image above (courtesy of Paul Wiegert ), the earth is the blue circle with a cross in it, and Cruithne’s orbit is shown in yellow.

Fact: Sunspot activity may be the primary reason for the beautiful sound of Stradivarius violins

Antonio Stradivari is considered to be the greatest violin maker ever. He lived in Italy in the 17th and 18th centuries. Scientists have been unable to work out what it is about his violins that makes them so incredible, but they do know that the timber used to make them is a very important contributing factor. From the 1500s to 1800s, the earth underwent a little ice age  mostly due to increased volcanic activity and decreased solar activity (this is called the Maunder Minimum ). As a result of this cooling, the types of trees that Stradivari used for his violins were particularly hard (due to slow growth). Hard timber is especially good when making violins. It is very probable that had Stradivari lived in a different age, his violins would not be prized as they are today. This picture above is made of three overlapping photos. It shows the rings in the spruce tree used to make the most famous Stradivarius violin, the “Messiah.” The first row of numbers gives the width of each ring in millimeters (one mm is about the thickness of a fingernail). The bottom row gives the years in which each ring grew.

Fact: If two pieces of metal touch in space, they become permanently stuck together

This may sound unbelievable, but it is true. Two pieces of metal without any coating on them will form in to one piece in the vacuum of space. This doesn’t happen on earth because the atmosphere puts a layer of oxidized material between the surfaces. This might seem like it would be a big problem on the space station but as most tools used there have come from earth, they are already coated with material. In fact, the only evidence of this seen so far has been in experiments designed to provoke the reaction. This process is called cold welding. For those who still don’t believe it, here is the Wikipedia article on Cold Welding .

 

Mar
03

Podcast 5, Asteroids

The primary goal of the Stardust mission was to collect samples of a comet and return them to Earth for laboratory analysis. Comets are ancient bodies of frozen ice and dust that formed beyond the orbit of the most distant planet. They were expected to contain materials that the solar system formed from, preserved in ice for billions of years. When the international team of 200 scientists began examination of the returned particles, we found that the particles were indeed ancient building blocks of the solar system but the nature and origin of the particles was quite unexpected. Before the mission, there were very good reasons to believe that we knew what comets would be made of and there was a general expectation was that the particles collected from comet Wild 2 would be mainly be dust that formed around other stars, dust that was older than the Sun. Such particles are called stardust or pre-solar grains and this was the main reason why the mission was named Stardust.

What we found was remarkable! Instead of rocky materials that formed around previous generations of stars we found that most of the comet’s rocky matter formed inside our solar system at extremely high temperature. In great contrast to its ice, our comet’s rocky material had formed under white-hot conditions. Even though we confirmed Comets are ancient bodies with an abundance of ice, some of which formed a few tens of degrees above absolute zero at the edge of the solar system, we now know that comets are really a mix of materials made by conditions of both “fire and ice”. Comet ice formed in cold regions beyond the planet Neptune but the rocks, probably the bulk of any comet’s mass, formed much closer to the Sun in regions hot enough to evaporate bricks. The materials that we collected from comet Wild 2 do contain pre-solar “stardust” grains, identified on the basis of their unusual isotopic composition, but these grains are very, very rare.

NASA to Launch New Science Mission to Asteroid in 2016

NASA will launch a spacecraft to an asteroid in 2016 and use a robotic arm to pluck samples that could better explain our solar system’s formation and how life began. The mission, called Origins-Spectral Interpretation-Resource Identification-Security-Regolith Explorer, or OSIRIS-REx, will be the first U.S. mission to carry samples from an asteroid back to Earth.

“This is a critical step in meeting the objectives outlined by President Obama to extend our reach beyond low-Earth orbit and explore into deep space,” said NASA Administrator Charlie Bolden. “It’s robotic missions like these that will pave the way for future human space missions to an asteroid and other deep space destinations.”

NASA selected OSIRIS-REx after reviewing three concept study reports for new scientific missions, which also included a sample return mission from the far side of the Moon and a mission to the surface of Venus.

Asteroids are leftovers formed from the cloud of gas and dust — the solar nebula — that collapsed to form our sun and the planets about 4.5 billion years ago. As such, they contain the original material from the solar nebula, which can tell us about the conditions of our solar system’s birth.

 

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Feb
23

Episode 4: Space Junk

Space debris, also known as orbital debrisspace junk, and space waste, is the collection of objects in orbit around Earth that were created by humans but no longer serve any useful purpose. These objects consist of everything from spent rocket stages and defunct satellites to erosion, explosion and collision fragments. As the orbits of these objects often overlap the trajectories of newer objects, debris is a potential collision risk to operational spacecraft.

The vast majority of the estimated tens of millions of pieces of space debris are small particles, less than 1 centimetre (0.39 in). These include dust from solid rocket motors, surface degradation products such as paint flakes, and coolant released by RORSAT nuclear powered satellites. Impacts of these particles cause erosive damage, similar to sandblasting. This damage can be partly mitigated through the use of the “meteor bumper”, which is widely used on spacecraft such as the International Space Station. However, not all parts of a spacecraft may be protected in this manner, e.g. solar panels and optical devices (such as telescopes, or star trackers), and these components are subject to constant wear by debris, and to a much lesser extent, micrometeorites.

A much smaller number of the debris objects are larger, over 10 centimetres (3.9 in). Against larger debris, the only protection is to maneuver the spacecraft in order to avoid a collision. If a collision with larger debris does occur, many of the resulting fragments from the damaged spacecraft will be in the 1 kilogram (2.2 lb) mass range, and these objects become an additional collision risk. As the chance of collision is a function of the number of objects in space, there is a critical density where the creation of new debris occurs faster than the various natural forces remove these objects from orbit. Beyond this point a runawaychain reaction can occur that reduces all objects in orbit to debris in a period of years or months. This possibility is known as the “Kessler Syndrome”, and there is debate as to whether or not this critical density has already been reached in certain orbital bands.

A runaway Kessler Syndrome would render the useful polar-orbiting bands difficult to use, and greatly increase the cost of space launches and missions. Measurement, growth mitigation and active removal of space debris are major activities within the space industry today.

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Feb
21

Flashback: First Orbit

Vostok 1 (Russian: Восток-1East 1 or Orient 1) was the first spaceflight in the Vostok program and the first human spaceflight in history. The Vostok 3KA spacecraft was launched on April 12, 1961. The flight took Yuri Gagarin, a cosmonaut from the Soviet Union, into space. The flight marked the first time that a human entered outer space, as well as the first orbital flight of a manned vehicle. Vostok 1 was launched by the Soviet space program, and was designed by Soviet engineers guided by Sergey Korolyov under the supervision of Kerim Kerimov and others.

The spaceflight consisted of a single orbit of the Earth. According to official records, the spaceflight took 108 minutes from launch to landing. As planned, Gagarin landed separately from his spacecraft, having ejected with a parachute 7 km (23,000 ft) above ground. Historian Asif Siddiqi has written that Gagarin was in the spacecraft for 108 minutes after launch, and that he didn’t touch ground for another 10 minutes. (The exact duration is useful to prove that Gagarin completed a full 360-degree orbit in inertial space. The longitude of launch to landing spanned a little more than 340 degrees, but the Earth also was rotating underneath him at about 15 degrees per hour while Gagarin was aloft.)

Due to the secrecy surrounding the Soviet space program at the time, many details of the spaceflight only came to light years later, and several details in the original press releases turned out to be false.

Going back in time: 

This event took place in a time, only 20 years after world war II and many people living at the time were born before the Wright Brothers first took to the air. In current times space travel is just as hard, but experienced personnel lead to safer, more advanced designs. When this flight took place engineers had to make very educated guesses. Will a human brain, organs, sight, and other bodily functions fail? Below is a movie made by firstorbit.org and does much to help regain the excitement for space.

Enjoy :D

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Feb
16

#3: F-35 vs F-22 Fighter Discussion

Is the paradigm of the American Fighter Wing outdated? What does Obama’s NASA budget plans mean for the Aerospace Industry?

In this Episode:

  • Obama budget plans for NASA
  • F-35 vs F-22 vs cheap drones
F-35:
The F-35 is descended from the X-35, the product of the Joint Strike Fighter (JSF) program. JSF development is being principally funded by the United States, with the United Kingdom and other partner governments providing additional funding. The partner nations are either NATO members or close U.S. allies. It is being designed and built by an aerospace industry team led by Lockheed Martin. The F-35 took its first flight on 15 December 2006.
F-22:
The Lockheed Martin/Boeing F-22 Raptor is a single-seat, twin-engine fifth-generation supermaneuverable fighter aircraft that uses stealth technology. It was designed primarily as an air superiority fighter, but has additional capabilities that include ground attack, electronic warfare, and signals intelligence roles.[5] Lockheed Martin Aeronautics is the prime contractor and is responsible for the majority of the airframe, weapon systems and final assembly of the F-22. Program partner Boeing Defense, Space & Security provides the wings, aft fuselage, avionics integration, and training systems.

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Feb
11

Astronaut feels space’s toll on his body

It’s not really why he signed up to be an astronaut, but like it or not, Mike Barratt and his eyes have become a science project.

The eye charts he reads, the red drops that turn his eyes yellow and the ultrasounds being performed on him could determine whether he or any other astronaut ever journeys into deep space or sets foot on other worlds.

NASA’s new priority is how to protect astronauts from going blind on the years-long trip to get wherever they are going.

“I absolutely agree that this is our number one priority,” Barratt said.

Why?

Because when Barratt blasted off to the international space station, he needed eyeglasses for distance. When he returned to Earth, his distance vision was fine, but he needed reading glasses. That was more than two years ago. And he’s not getting better.

“We really need to understand this. This is a critical point for understanding how humans adapt to spaceflight,” he said.

In the past few years, about half of the astronauts aboard the international space station have developed an increasing pressure inside their heads, an intracranial pressure that reshapes their optic nerve, causing a significant shift in the eyesight of male astronauts. Doctors call it papilledema.

Female space travelers have not been affected.

Some of the astronauts slowly recover. Others have not.

Space station astronauts typically spend about six months in orbit.

Barratt is one of 10 male astronauts, all older than 45, who have not recovered. Barratt returned from a six-month stint aboard the station in October 2009 and has experienced a profound change in his sight.

He used to be nearsighted. But now, the space veteran says he’s eagle-eyed at long distance but needs glasses for reading. There is no treatment and no answers as to why female space flyers are not affected.

CNN spent part of a day with Barratt, watching as doctors monitored his progress with high-resolution testing as they try to understand how the weightless environment of space is causing half of all space station astronauts to have this vision change. Today, space station astronauts fly with specially designed variable focus glasses to help combat the vision shift.

“The big benefit of these is that they allow us to adjust for significant prescription changes,” said Dr. Robert Gibson, a senior vision consultant, who was brought in to help study the problem.

Doctors have found that Barratt’s retinas have microscopic folds or wrinkles on them, and the back of his eye, the optic nerve, is no longer round but has flattened.

“I think this is showing that there are physiologic aspects of adaption to spaceflight we weren’t seeing before,” said Barratt.

This raises a red flag for all of NASA’s plans for long-duration human space flight. The space station is supposed to be the test bed for how humans would learn to live in space, but it opens profound questions on whether humans will ever venture to  Mars or to an asteroid if they are unable to figure out how the outer-space environment is affecting the eyes.

“This has all of our attention,” said Terry Taddeo, the acting chief of space medicine at Johnson Space Center in Houston.

“It is a serious problem and one we are going to have to understand more about before we would be able to send somebody into a long-duration mission away from Earth, where they would be away for years,” he said.

Right now, the only data that doctors have are from six-month tours of duty on the space station.

NASA has begun doing extensive preflight and postflight eye exams, including high-resolution MRIs of the eyes. There have been anecdotes  from some space shuttle astronauts who also complained about vision change, but it does not appear they had long-lasting effects from the much shorter space flights that typically lasted up to about three weeks.

“What we’re seeing appears to occur within the first couple of months of flight and appears to level off, plateau after about four to five months,” Gibson said.

“If it’s just a matter of giving them a stronger prescription, we can live with that,” he said. “But if there is an elevated intracranial pressure as the cause of this, we have to be concerned about other neurologic effects.”

That means there could be other effects on the body that haven’t become apparent.

This is why a three-year mission to Mars is in question.

It would be humans’ next great leap, and NASA is spending almost $18 billion over the next five years to develop a heavy lift rocket that would take astronauts to the Red Planet or even to an asteroid. They would travel in a new spacecraft, Orion.

But right now, a trip to Mars is still more science fiction than fact. No one is calling this vision problem a showstopper, yet the program’s price tag begs for a solution to be found fast so NASA won’t be building the world’s largest, fastest rocket to nowhere.

Dr. Bruce Ehni, a neurosurgeon at the VA Medical Center at the Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, has consulted with NASA and is the only neurosurgeon on their panel.

“If they can’t predict who is at risk … they put his health in jeopardy. They put, possibly, the mission in jeopardy if he can’t see or do his job effectively,” he said.

But Barratt thinks that any deep space venture to Mars is still 20 years away. He’s hoping that spacecraft will be a whole lot faster than anything the space agency can fly now.

“You fly fast, and you don’t worry,” he said, with a grin.

“I’m still hopeful that in 20 years, we’ll have advanced propulsion capabilities that can get us there in a matter of weeks to a few months. Then, a lot of these problems go away,” he said.

 

http://lightyears.blogs.cnn.com/2012/02/10/astronaut-feels-spaces-toll-on-his-body/?hpt=hp_t3

Feb
10

787 on Dream World Tour, Next Stop Bangkok

BANGKOK, Feb. 9, 2012 /PRNewswire/ – Boeing’s (NYSE:BA) new mid-size passenger airplane, the 787 Dreamliner, touched down here after demonstrating its long-range capabilities by flying nonstop from Seattle’s Boeing Field to Bangkok’s Suvarnabhumi International Airport — a distance of 7,679 miles (12,358 km). The visit is part of Boeing’s Dream Tour.

“We are delighted to say ‘yindee tonrup’ (welcome) to Boeing’s 787 Dreamliner on its first visit to Southeast Asia,” said Piyasvasti Amranand, president of Thai Airways International (THAI). “This airplane will provide an unparalleled and innovative physical flying experience to our passengers. Coupling that with our acclaimed ‘Touches of Thai’ onboard service will provide our guests with an unbeatable travel experience.”

“Boeing is honored that Thai Airways International will be flying the Dreamliner,” said Ralph (Skip) Boyce, president of Boeing Southeast Asia, who watched the 787 land in Bangkok. “We’re glad it’s visiting Bangkok so Prime Minister Yingluck, THAI President Piyasvasti, his pilots and other THAI team members can experience this remarkable airplane firsthand.”

Also in Bangkok was Ray Conner, senior vice president of Sales and Customer Support for Boeing Commercial Airplanes. Speaking from Suvarnabhumi International Airport, he noted that more than 800 787s are on order, calling that “a testament to the airplane’s unique capabilities.”

“As a result of its innovative new technologies, the 787 Dreamliner offers unmatched operating economics, fuel efficiency and passenger comfort,” Conner added. “It is truly an airplane of the 21st century, providing better environmental performance in addition to an outstanding flying experience for passengers and airlines alike. We look forward to demonstrating the airplane’s capabilities to the THAI team.”

During its three-day stay in Thailand, the Dreamliner will be on display for invited media and guests to tour the aircraft interior. On Saturday, the 787 will depart for the Singapore Airshow where it will be on static display.

Aviation enthusiasts can follow the progress of the 787 tour at www.newairplane.com/787/dreamtour.

Feb
08

Moon, Past and Future podcast#2

A total of twelve men have landed on the Moon. This was accomplished with two US pilot-astronauts flying a Lunar Module on each of six NASA missions across a 41-month time span starting on 21 July 1969 UTC, with Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin onApollo 11 (with Armstrong being first to set foot on the surface), and ending on 14 December 1972 UTC with Gene Cernan and Jack Schmitt on Apollo 17 (with Cernan being the last to step off the lunar surface). All Apollo lunar missions had a third crew member who remained onboard the Command Module. The last three missions had a rover for increased mobility.

"chills on the spine"

Can't imagine anything more American

In order to go to the moon, a spacecraft must first leave the gravity well of the Earth. This is achieved by the spacecraft exceeding the escape velocity of the earth. The only practical way of accomplishing this currently is with a rocket . Unlike other airborne vehicles such as balloons or jets, a rocket is the only known form of propulsion which can continue to increase its speed at high altitudes in the vacuum outside the Earth’s atmosphere.

Upon approach of the target moon, a spacecraft will be drawn ever closer to its surface at increasing speeds due to gravity. There are three possible outcomes: a crash landing where no attempt is made to slow down and the spacecraft is totally destroyed upon impact; a hard landing where the impact speed is reduced to less than 100 miles/hour or so, survivable by ruggedized machines but not humans; and a soft landing where the spacecraft decelerates precisely enough to land safely on the surface with negligible speed at contact. The first three attempts by the Americans to perform a successful hard moon landing with a ruggedized seismometer package in 1962 all failed. The Soviets first achieved the milestone of a hard lunar landing with a ruggedizedcamera in 1966, followed only months later by the first unmanned soft lunar landing by the Americans. The escape velocity of the target moon is roughly equivalent to the speed of a crash landing on its surface, and thus is the total velocity which must be shed from the target moon’s gravitational attraction for a soft landing to occur. For Earth’s Moon, this figure is 2.38 kilometres per second (1.48 mi/s). Such a change in velocity (referred to as a delta-v) is usually provided by a landing rocket, which must be carried into space by the original launch vehicle as part of the overall spacecraft. An exception is the soft moon landing on Titan carried out by the Huygens probe in 2005. As the only moon with an atmosphere, landings on Titan may be accomplished by using atmospheric entry techniques that are generally lighter in weight than a rocket with equivalent capability.

The Soviets succeeded in making the first crash landing on the Moon in 1959. Crash landings  may occur because of malfunctions in a spacecraft, or they can be deliberately arranged for vehicles which do not have an on board landing rocket. There have been many such moon crashes, often with their flight path controlled to impact at precise locations on the lunar surface. For example, during the Apollo program the S-IVB third stage of the Saturn V moon rocket as well as the spent ascent stage of the lunar module were deliberately crashed on the Moon several times to provide impacts registering as a moonquake on seismometers that had been left on the lunar surface. Such crashes were instrumental in mapping the internal structure of the Moon.

If a return to Earth is desired after a moon landing is accomplished, the escape velocities of the Moon and Earth must again be overcome for the spacecraft to come to rest on the surface of the Earth. Rockets must be used to leave the Moon and return to space. Upon reaching Earth, atmospheric entry techniques are used to absorb the kinetic energy of a returning spacecraft and reduce its speed for safe landing. These functions greatly complicate a moon landing mission and lead to many additional operational considerations. Any moon departure rocket must first be carried to the Moon’s surface by a moon landing rocket, increasing the latter’s required size. The moon departure rocket, larger moon landing rocket and any Earth atmosphere entry equipment such as heat shields and parachutes must in turn be lifted by the original launch vehicle, greatly increasing its size by a significant and almost prohibitive degree. This necessitates optimizing the sizing of stages in the launch vehicle as well as consideration of using space rendezvous between multiple spacecraft.

Manned Landings

Mission Name Lunar Lander Lunar landing date Lunar blastoff date Lunar landing site Duration on lunar surface Crew Number of EVAs Total EVA Time
Apollo 11 Eagle 20 July 1969 21 July 1969 Sea of Tranquility 21:31 Neil ArmstrongEdwin “Buzz” Aldrin 1 2:31
Apollo 12 Intrepid 19 November 1969 21 November 1969 Ocean of Storms 1 day, 7:31 Charles “Pete” ConradAlan Bean 2 7:45
Apollo 14 Antares 5 February 1971 6 February 1971 Fra Mauro 1 day, 9:30 Alan B. ShepardEdgar Mitchell 2 9:21
Apollo 15 Falcon 30 July 1971 3 August 1971 Hadley Rille 2 days, 18:55 David ScottJames Irwin 3 18:33
Apollo 16 Orion 21 April 1972 24 April 1972 Descartes Highlands 2 days, 23:02 John YoungCharles Duke 3 20:14
Apollo 17 Challenger 11 December 1972 14 December 1972 Taurus-Littrow 3 days, 2:59 Eugene CernanHarrison H. “Jack” Schmitt 3 22:04

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