Dit is ons nieuw hondje Kira, een kruising van een waterhond en een Podenko. Ze is sinds 7 februari 2024 bij ons en druk bezig ons hart te veroveren. Het is een lief, aanhankelijk hondje, dat zich op een week snel aan ons heeft aangepast. Ze is heel vinnig en nieuwsgierig, een heel ander hondje dan Noleke.
This is our new dog Kira, a cross between a water dog and a Podenko. She has been with us since February 7, 2024 and is busy winning our hearts. She is a sweet, affectionate dog who quickly adapted to us within a week. She is very quick and curious, a very different dog than Noleke.
DEAR VISITOR,
MY BLOG EXISTS NEARLY 13 YEARS AND 4 MONTH.
ON /30/09/2024 MORE THAN 2.230.520
VISITORS FROM 135 DIFFERENT NATIONS ALREADY FOUND THEIR WAY TO MY BLOG.
THAT IS AN AVERAGE OF 400GUESTS PER DAY.
THANK YOU FOR VISITING MY BLOG AND HOPE YOU ENJOY EACH TIME.
The purpose of this blog is the creation of an open, international, independent and free forum, where every UFO-researcher can publish the results of his/her research. The languagues, used for this blog, are Dutch, English and French.You can find the articles of a collegue by selecting his category. Each author stays resposable for the continue of his articles. As blogmaster I have the right to refuse an addition or an article, when it attacks other collegues or UFO-groupes.
Druk op onderstaande knop om te reageren in mijn forum
Zoeken in blog
Deze blog is opgedragen aan mijn overleden echtgenote Lucienne.
In 2012 verloor ze haar moedige strijd tegen kanker!
In 2011 startte ik deze blog, omdat ik niet mocht stoppen met mijn UFO-onderzoek.
BEDANKT!!!
Een interessant adres?
UFO'S of UAP'S, ASTRONOMIE, RUIMTEVAART, ARCHEOLOGIE, OUDHEIDKUNDE, SF-SNUFJES EN ANDERE ESOTERISCHE WETENSCHAPPEN - DE ALLERLAATSTE NIEUWTJES
UFO's of UAP'S in België en de rest van de wereld In België had je vooral BUFON of het Belgisch UFO-Netwerk, dat zich met UFO's bezighoudt. BEZOEK DUS ZEKER VOOR ALLE OBJECTIEVE INFORMATIE , enkel nog beschikbaar via Facebook en deze blog.
Verder heb je ook het Belgisch-Ufo-meldpunt en Caelestia, die prachtig, doch ZEER kritisch werk leveren, ja soms zelfs héél sceptisch...
Voor Nederland kan je de mooie site www.ufowijzer.nl bezoeken van Paul Harmans. Een mooie site met veel informatie en artikels.
MUFON of het Mutual UFO Network Inc is een Amerikaanse UFO-vereniging met afdelingen in alle USA-staten en diverse landen.
MUFON's mission is the analytical and scientific investigation of the UFO- Phenomenon for the benefit of humanity...
Je kan ook hun site bekijken onder www.mufon.com.
Ze geven een maandelijks tijdschrift uit, namelijk The MUFON UFO-Journal.
Since 02/01/2020 is Pieter ex-president (=voorzitter) of BUFON, but also ex-National Director MUFON / Flanders and the Netherlands. We work together with the French MUFON Reseau MUFON/EUROP.
ER IS EEN NIEUWE GROEPERING DIE ZICH BUFON NOEMT, MAAR DIE HEBBEN NIETS MET ONZE GROEP TE MAKEN. DEZE COLLEGA'S GEBRUIKEN DE NAAM BUFON VOOR HUN SITE... Ik wens hen veel succes met de verdere uitbouw van hun groep. Zij kunnen de naam BUFON wel geregistreerd hebben, maar het rijke verleden van BUFON kunnen ze niet wegnemen...
14-11-2016
Forget Schiaparelli. 2020 Is the Real Mars Party
Forget Schiaparelli. 2020 Is the Real Mars Party
In 2020, three rovers will compete to find life on Mars first.
ExoMars was supposed to be for Mars what Lewis and Clark were to the exploration of the wild American western frontier: a mission to understand the biological mysteries of the Red Planet. The mission — a joint collaboration by the European Space Agency and Russia’s space agency, Roscosmos — was set to make its first major splash on Wednesday when the Schiaparelli lander was supposed to barrel through the Martian atmosphere and land on the planet.
Supposed to is the operative term here — ESAs ExoMars team lost contact with Schiaparelli and has no idea whether it survived its descent to the Red Planet, experienced a fatal crash, or simply lost the ability to communicate with the Trace Gas Orbiter (or TGO, the ‘mothership’ for Schiaparelli and the ExoMars mission as a whole) and any other satellites orbiting Mars. ESA put a positive spin on the setback, emphasizing that Schiaparelli was able to collect critical data during its descent to the surface, and that TGO is working as well as its supposed to be.
It’s an especially devastating blow, considering the fact that Schiaparelli was a test run for a brand new spacecraft entry, descent, and landing system designed for future missions to Mars. That exact same system is set to be used for the launch and delivery of the ExoMars rover in 2020, whose primary goal is to look for signs of past — or present — extraterrestrial life on Mars.
But that ExoMars rover mission is just one of three Martian rover missions taking place next year, arguably making 2020 a banner year for an explosion of Martian knowledge.
Conceptual art for Mars 2020 Rover
NASA is revving up preparations to launch an ExoMars-like mission called Mars 2020, the successor to the Curiosity rover. Its primary scientific objective is, like ExoMars, to search for evidence of extant or current Martian organisms, and to assess the historical and present potential for habitability on the Red Planet. Mars 2020 will be very, very similar to the Curiosity rover and use a very similar entry-descent-landing system — it’s a tried-and-true method that’s worked for NASA in the past, so why mess with a good thing? The biggest difference between those two little buggers, however, is that Mars 2020 will be specifically fitted with instruments relevant to astrobiology.
That’s not to say ExoMars and Mars 2020 are copycats — far from it. Mars 2020 will be tasked with collecting samples that NASA expects to retrieve on a future mission, then return to Earth for more in-depth analysis. ExoMars, on the other hand, will test out mechanisms relevant to extraterrestrial sample retrieval, but the actual sample return task for ExoMars is set aside for an unnamed, unplanned future mission.
We all know three’s company — and that’s why China is joining the Martian robot rave, with plans to launch its own rover to the Red Planet in 2020 as well. Details are sparse, but the scientific goals behind that mission seem more generalized than ExoMars and Mars 2020.
Conceptual art for China's Mars rover
So far, China’s space missions have been focused much more around establishing technological feasibility for space travel rather than actually conducting science. There are some exceptions, most notably that one time China’s lunar rover helped uncover some pretty strange history in the moon’s geology. But if China expects its Mars rover to actually ascertain something new about Mars, it will need to possess the kind of state-of-the-art instruments ESA/Roscosmos and NASA are building for their respective rovers.
Ultimately, the mission that’s most likely to conduct some groundbreaking science on Mars is Mars 2020. NASA’s been launching and operating these robotic bad boys since the Mars Pathfinder mission in 1997. The agency knows what it’s doing.
Russia’s previous Martian rover missions occurred in 1971, but that ended in epic failure. So did ESA’s Beagle 2 mission in 2003. In that vein, it’s not entirely surprising to see that contact with Schiaparelli was lost. If the Schiaparelli saga proves anything, it’s that Mars missions are an intricate, lucky, flaky science, and 2020 has many surprises in store for us.
In the new Denis Villeneuve space-opera Arrival, 12 pods from outer space land at various locations on Earth, each operated by a strange species of alien. The American government enlists a linguist — Louise Banks, played by Amy Adams — to try to figure out what these extraterrestrials want, but it’s not going to be easy.
The first, and most significant, hurdle is language. How is someone who’s learned only Earth-based languages supposed to communicate with a group of beings that gurgle out croaks and write in what look like inky floating coffee stains?
Studying alien languages might seem like a silly, science fiction fantasy. But at the rate we’ve discovered more habitable Earth-like worlds, we are bound to encounter an alien species pretty soon. Sheri Wells-Jensen, an associate professor of linguists at Bowling Green State University, is one of a tiny group of people who has actively thought about how an alien species will communicate with humans.
The only thing she knows for sure is that there’s no way to know how they’ll communicate.
“It’s profoundly humancentric to think they’ll talk like us and look us,” Wells-Jensen told Inverse. The fact that most sci-fi revolves around aliens who speak through voice boxes like us, are bipedal, and even have vaguely anthropomorphic faces limits our imagination as to how extraterrestrial beings will speak when they get here. In reality, more likely than not, their bodies won’t operate or look a single thing like ours. And that means their communication mechanism will be wildly different from ours.
“We’re only beginning to understand that the way we think and communicate and what we build is determined by the way our bodies are shaped and our sensory apparatus,” Wells-Jensen said. For example, if we didn’t perceive sound waves, then our use of sound as a communication device would not exist. Consider the way deaf people communicate so expressively with their hands and faces, and are unable to lasso their voices into the pitch and tone the way hearing humans do when they talk.
Anatomy and physiology do more than dictate how we speak; it’s our way of understanding the world, which is vital to how early humans developed the language, and how we comprehend the world around us. “What if you had a race of aliens that couldn’t see? In what ways would that change the way they built their civilization and how they understand their world?” Wells-Jensen proposed. “We have some data to suggest that the way we are physically built might influence the way our language is structured. It’s because we walk erect, our top appendages are free, and we have to use our hands to do things.”
Language, after all, is a verbal reflection of how we understand our world through our bodies: We crawl, we stagger, we cry, we laugh. We look to see the stars, taste our morning coffee, smell the garbage on the streets, rub our hands in nervousness. Which makes the heptopods that Louise Banks deals with in Arrivalan especially hard one to understand, given that they experience the world with seven fingers, no obvious eyes or ears, and a language based purely on sound reverberations.
There’s also the fact that even if we did come to a point where we could speak the same language as an extraterrestrial species, we wouldn’t have the language to express certain concepts. “You see this with those lists of things in English that we don’t have a word for,” Wells-Jensen points out. And it could happen the other way around too — extraterrestrials might have phrases for concepts that they don’t have words for, which means we’ll have a rough time getting their worldview as well.
Doug Vakoch is the president of Messaging Extraterrestrial Intelligence, METIInternational, which works with its sister organization SETI (the S is for search) and, in 2011, wrote the definitive textbook on xenolinguistics, Communication With Extraterrestrial Intelligence. He says the dominant approach to how we’ll figure out how aliens speak will actually be the Jeremy Renner character in Arrival— through the universal language of mathematics.
“If aliens have an ability to send us messages, they have to be able to create radio and telescopes,” Vakoch reasons. “If they can build spacecraft to come to come to Earth, they have to have an understanding of good engineering, physics, science, math.” The current methods used by SETI is to do a data dump, with researchers shooting off notes into the ether, hoping some will get intercepted.
We’re already trying to make contact with extraterrestrials, and mathematics is the language of choice. Vakoch calls Arrival’s introduction of a linguist “radical” — and challenging. Math is inherently simple and devoid of meaning: a 1 has no feelings, no concept behind just being a single digit representing one unit of an object. “But doing the nitty-gritty work of going back and forth and making guesses at what an alien says, trying to interpret swirls” — as Louise Banks does in the movie — “and determining a sentence or concept? It’s hard.”
But in theory, it would definitely be more effective, Vakoch said. “Conveying matters. You need flexibility of language with its infinite combinations. Our art and culture — that’s all from language, that’s not from just raw numbers.”
Arrival tackles this concept, along with the idea that the very way we think is deeply ingrained within our language. That’s the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, which suggests that our language is integral to how we think. Neuroscientists aren’t completely sure how language re-shapes our brain, but the question Jeremy Renner’s mathematician character asks Amy Adams’s linguist character — “Are you dreaming in their language?” — is not entirely fantastical.
In a study published earlier this week in the journal PNAS, researchers used people who communicate through sign language to understand how the brain processes language. It lines up with how linguist of Arrival approaches the heptopods of Arrival: With that universal symbol of openness and welcoming, an open hand, palm outstretched.
“Sign language has a structure, and even if you examine it at the phonological level, where you would expect it to be completely different from spoken language, you can still find similarities,” Berent said in a press release. “What’s even more remarkable is that our brain can extract some of this structure even when we have no knowledge of sign language. We can apply some of the rules of our spoken language phonology to signs.”
That means our concept of language is flexible, and we aren’t incapable of figuring out how to communicate with aliens — we simply must adjust our brains.
One thing is for sure: Humans don’t have a good track record of communicating with each other — and we’re the same species. The movie touches on this as well, with communication (ironically) breaking down between the other stations as they try to race to understand the role of the heptopods. “It’s a cheat answer, but it’s true,” Wells-Jensen said. “We’re a young race. We’ve only gone a couple hundred thousand miles to our moon and back. These races might be older than us. We’re maybe not even the first race they’ve met.”
There’s no way for us to prepare for communicating with an alien species — and that’s okay. What’s important is that we have to understand how to use what we have as humans to bridge the divide and create a conversation without implying that we as humans are the superior race — because we’re probably not. “We can’t use ourselves as a starting point,” Wells-Jensen said. “We are an endpoint at looking at things. We are the product of evolution. We’re like pond scum.”
Built by the Huns? Ancient Stone Monuments Discovered Along Caspian
Built by the Huns? Ancient Stone Monuments Discovered Along Caspian
By Owen Jarus, Live Science Contributor
A massive stone structure, dating back 1,500 years, has been discovered along the Caspian Sea.
Credit: Photo courtesy Evgeniï Bogdanov
A massive, 1,500-year-old stone complex that may have been built by nomad tribes has been discovered near the eastern shore of the Caspian Sea in Kazakhstan.
The complex contains numerous stone structures sprawled over about 300 acres (120 hectares) of land, or more than 200 American football fields, archaeologists reported recently in the journal Ancient Civilizations from Scythia to Siberia.
"When the area was examined in detail, several types of stone structures were identified," archaeologists Andrey Astafiev, of the Mangistaus State Historical and Cultural Reserve; and Evgeniï Bogdanov, of the Russian Academy of Sciences Siberian Department's Institute of Archaeology and Ethnography, wrote in the journal article. The smallest stone structures are only 13 feet by 13 feet (4 by 4 meters), and the biggest are 112 feet by 79 feet (34 by 24 m). [See Photos of the Massive Stone Structure and Artifacts]
A close-up of one of the stone structures and an intricately carved stone that appears to show some form of creature. The complex was first identified by an archaeologist in 2010 and excavations began in 2014. Much work remains to be done.
The structures are "made of stone slabs inserted vertically into the ground," the archaeologists wrote. Some of the stones, which look a little like those at Stonehenge, have carvings of weapons and creatures etched into them.
One of the most spectacular finds is the remains of a saddle made partly of silver and covered with images of wild boars, deer and "beasts of prey" that may be lions, Astafiev and Bogdanov wrote in their article. The images were etched in relief, sticking out from the silver background.
"The relief decoration was impressed on the front surface," Astafiev and Bogdanov wrote. The two researchers think ancient artisans designed the images out of leather and glued them onto wooden boards. "Finally, silver plates would have been laid over the shapes and fixed in place," they said.
Credit: Photo courtesy Evgeniï Bogdanov
The complex is located in an arid area whose vegetation consists of withered bushes. The modern day name for the location is "Altÿnkazgan." Archaeologists believe that the complex was likely built by nomadic groups who lived at a time when the Huns swept across Asia and Europe.
Stone-complex discovery
In 2010, a man named F. Akhmadulin (as named in the journal article), from a town called Aktau, was using a metal detector in Altÿnkazgan, which is located on the Mangÿshlak Peninsula, near the eastern coast of the Caspian Sea, when he found parts of a silver saddle and other artifacts. Akhmadulin brought the artifacts to Astafiev who works in Aktau. [7 Bizarre Ancient Cultures That History Forgot]
"Most of the territory consists of sagebrush desert," Astafiev and Bogdanov wrote. However, Astafiev found that the desert location where Akhmadulin brought him contained the remains of an undiscovered 120-hectare stone complex. Akhmadulin located the artifacts in one of these stone structures.
Credit: Photo courtesy Andrey Astafiev
The remains of a silver saddle were found in one of the stone structures. This fragment of the saddle shows "beasts of prey" (possibly lions) attacking a wild boar. Three birds can be seen flying overhead and two smaller animals can be seen behind the beasts of prey. A photo of a copper band, that was also part of the saddle, can also be seen in this picture.
"Unfortunately, the socioeconomic situation in the region is not one in which it is easy to engage in archaeological research, and it was not until 2014 that the authors of this article were able to excavate certain features within the site," Astafiev and Bogdanov wrote.
When excavations got underway in 2014, the archaeologists excavated the stone structure where Akhmadulin had found the saddle. They found more saddle parts, along with other artifacts, including two bronze objects that turned out to be the remains of a whip.
Who owned the saddle?
A great deal of work needs to be done to excavate and study the remains of the stone complex, the archaeologists said. "Certain features of the construction and formal details of the [stone] enclosures at Altÿnkazgan allow us to assume that they had been left there by nomad tribes," Astafiev and Bogdanov wrote.
The design and decorations on the silver saddle indicate that it dates to a time when the Roman Empire was collapsing, and a group called the "Huns" were on the move across Asia and Europe, they said. "The advance of the Huns led various ethnic groups in the Eurasian steppes to move from their previous homelands," Astafiev and Bogdanov wrote.
Credit: Photo courtesy Andrey Astafiev
In this saddle fragment a beast of prey is seen attacking a deer while a bird attacks the nose of the deer. More birds can be seen flying around.
The owner of the saddle was likely a person of considerable wealth and power as the archaeologists found symbols called "tamgas" engraved on the silver saddle above the heads of predators, something that can be "an indication of the privileged status of the saddle's owner." These signs may also be a link "to the clan to which the owner of the tamga belonged," Astafiev and Bogdanov wrote.
It's not exactly clear why the silver saddle was placed in the stone structure, though it may have been created for a ritual purpose or as a burial good, Astafiev and Bogdanov suggested. They found the remains of one skeleton buried beneath the stone structure; however, the skeleton may date to centuries after the silver saddle was deposited there.
Research is ongoing, and Bogdanov said the team plans to publish another paper on research into the silver saddle in 2017.
Bogdanov said the team hopes to make the public aware of the newly found site. "I hope that one day there [will be] a film about the archaeological excavations on the Mangÿshlak, about ancient civilizations and modern inhabitants," Bogdanov told Live Science.
Nat Geo's 'Mars' Miniseries Ready for Scientifically Accurate Liftoff
Nat Geo's 'Mars' Miniseries Ready for Scientifically Accurate Liftoff
By Hanneke Weitering, Staff Writer-Producer
Watch humanity's first voyage to Mars unfold in National Geographic's new miniseries "Mars." The show premieres Monday (Nov. 14) at 8 p.m. EST in the U.S.
The global event series premieres internationally one day sooner, on Nov. 13. But there's no need to wait for the televised premiere regardless of where you are — National Geographic has already released the first episode online.
"Mars" portrays the story of the first crewed mission to the Red Planet with a unique storytelling format. Scripted scenes that take place in the year 2033 depict the journey to Mars, but these scenes are spliced with present-day interviews with real scientific experts. The show not only tells the story of the first mission to Mars, but it also provides plenty of present-day and historic context. ['Mars': The Epic National Geographic Channel Miniseries in Pictures]
People on Earth have long dreamed of setting foot on Mars. As National Geographic's new series shows, it will be no easy task. Getting there is but one of the many struggles the first Mars colonists will face. Surviving and thriving on the Red Planet will likely be a greater struggle, the show suggests.
To depict the first human journey to Mars as accurately as possible, the show had information from space science experts for everything from rocket science to spacesuit and set designs. The makers of "Mars" were impressively thorough in their attempts to make the show scientifically accurate by summoning a great deal of input from a wide variety of specialists.
"What is really amazing is that people at Radical Media who produced this, and [executive producer] Ron Howard and the people at National Geographic — the one thing they were all on board about was getting this right," Stephen Petranek, author of the book "How We'll Live on Mars," told Space.com.
"Unlike [the movie] "The Martian," which had a lot of areas where you could rip into the accuracy of science behind what you're seeing in the drama, I feel very comfortable that this is as close to perfectly accurate as you're ever going to get in trying to forecast exactly what would happen in sending the first people to Mars and starting the first civilization there," Petranek added.
Experts weigh in
Of the many experts who were interviewed in "Mars," no one had quite as much impact on the series as SpaceX's Elon Musk. The private spaceflight company recently unveiled its concept for the Interplanetary Transport Systemthat could one day carry the first colonists to Mars.
At the world premiere of "Mars" in New York City on Oct. 26, producer Justin Wilkes of RadicalMedia said that his team were granted unprecedented access to Elon Musk and the whole SpaceX team, whom he called "some of the greatest minds that are dreaming up and actually engineering this mission."
Robert Zubrin, founder and President of the Mars Society, is one of the many experts that contributed to National Geographic's new "Mars" series.
Credit: Jemal Countess / Stringer / Getty Images
Other guests who appear on the show include NASA administrator Charles Bolden, astronaut James Lovell of the Apollo 13 mission, astrophysicist and TV star Neil deGrasse Tyson and "The Martian" author Andy Weir.
Several NASA scientists are interviewed in "Mars," but space scientists are far from the only kind of experts present in the show. Psychologist David Dinges of the University of Pennsylvania discusses the effects a journey to Mars would have on the human psyche. Casey Dreier, the director of space policy for the Planetary Society, and Thomas Kalil, deputy director at the White House Office of Science and Technology, discuss the policy implications of sending colonists to unclaimed territories.
Producing 'Mars'
Making "Mars" as realistic as possible required a tremendous amount of scientific information. The on-camera interviews merely scratch the surface of what the scientific community contributed to the making of the series. Even the scripted scenes, which required some creativity to conceptualize, were based almost entirely on advice from many different professionals.
A realistic spacesuit in National Geographic's "Mars" series, designed by Daniela Ciancio.
Credit: Jamal Countess / Stringer / Getty Images
The futuristic spacesuits the astronauts wear in "Mars" were created by the Italian costume designer Daniela Ciancio, and they were designed with real science in mind. Ciancio told Space.com that she based her design on actual spacesuit concepts by NASA and SpaceX. But her main inspiration was the BioSuit concept developed at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Mars spacesuits will need to be strong, flexible, lightweight and comfortable, Ciancio said.
Bobby Braun, a professor of space technology at Georgia Tech, provided technical aid to help keep the show accurate and realistic. In an interview with Space.com, Braun said that he conceptualized the Daedalus spacecraft in "Mars" by combining ideas from papers written by NASA, SpaceX, Lockheed Martin and academic researchers at universities.
This is the Daedalus — the spaceship that transports the crew from Earth to Mars in National Geographic's "Mars" series. It is named after the inventor and craftsman of Greek mythology.
Credit: National Geographic Channels/Robert Viglasky
One idea that Braun incorporated into the Daedalus is the use of supersonic retropropulsion to land on Mars. This technology is necessary for a large spacecraft to slow down in Mars' thin atmosphere before landing. SpaceX has already demonstrated this technology by landing its reusable rockets on Earth, but doing the same thing on Mars will be a lot different, Braun said.
Collaboration between the show's creative team and its science experts was crucial for keeping the show accurate, Wilkes said in an interview with Space.com. But the two groups never quarreled over science versus theatrics. Instead, Wilkes said that the scientists' input inspired the writers to come up with even more dramatic storylines without sacrificing science.
"It's more dramatic because it's based on science," Wilkes said.
How to act like an astronaut
Former NASA astronaut Mae Jemison, the first female African-American to go to space, gave the cast a crash course in how to walk, talk and behave like an astronaut. At the "Mars" world premiere, Jemison explained how she also helped the show's scriptwriters create dialogues that accurately portray the astronauts' emotions and interactions with each other.
"Mae really clarified from her own personal experience of going to space how much you have to contain your emotions and how important that is for all the crew around you," said Jihae, the South Korean singer who plays two roles on the series. In addition to being one of the Daedalus crew, she doubles as her own twin, who works in the mission control center on Earth.
One of the fun parts of astronaut training involved hopping in a swimming pool, actor Ben Cotton (Commander Ben Sawyer) said in an interview with Space.com. In the water, the actors learned the motions of walking in a spacesuit on Mars, Cotton said.
"Mars" was filmed in a desert in Kazakhstan, and Cotton said that suffering from the heat in his spacesuit actually helped him get into character. Though Mars is actually extremely cold, the heat gave the actors the exhausted appearance that they would have during a long hike on Mars.
Arrive, then thrive
When the Daedalus crew arrives on Mars, dome-shaped habitats have already been deployed. But there's one big problem: They land off-course and have to figure out a way to get to their new home, and it's a long, bumpy road ahead.
Getting to Mars is only the beginning. After arriving on the Red Planet, a whole new journey begins for the Mars colonists. Food, fuel and other supplies will be limited. While no life is known to exist on Mars, the colonists must find a way to sustain themselves by farming in enclosed habitats. They'll also need to figure out a way to mine water on Mars.
Mars settlers grow their crops inside a greenhouse at their colony, Olympus Town, in National Geographic's "Mars" series.
Credit: National Geographic Channels/Robert Viglasky
But these technologies, much like the rocket-propulsion technologies borrowed from SpaceX, are not far out of reach. In fact, much of the equipment required to survive on Mars already exists today. Astronauts at the International Space Station have grown plants in space, and the orbiting laboratory contains a water-recycling system to conserve and reuse water.
"I think the public will be surprised when they see how much of the prep work [to get to Mars] is actually happening already," Braun said. "I don't think people have connected the dots that when SpaceX goes from the Falcon to the Falcon Heavy that it means something about how we will settle Mars…I think one of the nice things about this series is that it mixes in some of the present day events, and so it's going to show not only what this future mission might look like and the drama of that future mission, but it's going to show all the stuff that's happening in 2016 to get us ready to go do those things."
In National Geographic's new "Mars" series, humans step foot on the Red Planet for the first time. The series premieres Nov. 14 at 8 p.m. EST in the U.S. and internationally Nov. 13 on the National Geographic Channel.
Credit: National Geographic Channels/Robert Viglasky
What NASA programs will President-elect Donald Trump support, which will he potentially work to eliminate, and whom will he nominate for NASA's top leadership position? Two space policy reporters offered their insight on these questions.
Brian Berger is editor in chief at SpaceNews, a trade publication for the spaceflight industry, and Jeff Foust is a senior writer there. In a webinar on Wednesday (Nov. 9), Berger and Foust discussed how the new presidential administration might affect NASA and other U.S. space-related activities.
"There's going to be a period of uncertainty as the new administration figures out what their priorities are in space and what NASA programs they might want to continue, which ones they might actually want to accelerate and which ones they might want to get rid of," Foust said. [50 Years of Presidential Visions for Space Exploration]
Mars or the moon
Foust published an article yesterday (Nov. 9) outlining the information that Trump's campaign has provided about the president-elect's space plan. Most of that information comes via Robert Walker — former chairman of the U.S. House Committee on Science, Space and Technology and former chairman of the Commission on the Future of the U.S. Aerospace Industry — who was brought in to serve as the campaign's space policy advisor.
In Foust's article, Walker described the campaign's space plan with four words: visionary, disruptive, coordinating and resilient. Walker then outlined nine key goals of the plan. Some of those goals are "fairly broad," Foust said yesterday, including the declaration that Trump's administration will make a "commitment to global space leadership" for the United States.
It remains to be seen what specific actions the Trump administration will take to accomplish the goals that Walker laid out. Prior to the election, President-elect Trump and his campaign representatives made multiple statements voicing support for partnerships with private companies, including the intention to hand over operations in low Earth-orbit (which would include the operation of the International Space Station) to private industry. Such partnerships are already up and running; SpaceX and Orbital ATK are flying robotic cargo missions to the space station for NASA now, and SpaceX and Boeing are scheduled to begin ferrying American astronauts to and from the orbiting lab in the next year or two.
NASA is committed to its current level of support for the space station through 2024, and agency officials as well as leaders in the spaceflight industry have also voiced support for a plan that would relieve NASA of its financial responsibility to the station after 2024. Those funds could then be put toward the agency's efforts to send humans to more distant space locations.
It seems likely that the Trump administration will put particular emphasis on human space exploration, Berger and Foust agreed. One of the most ambitious goals set out by Walker calls for "human exploration of the solar system by the end of the century." Foust said Walker called this a "stretch goal" intended to "help drive some of the technology that will be needed for human exploration of Mars."
NASA is already working to get humans to the surface of the Red Planet by the first half of the 2030s, as instructed by President Barack Obama. But things may change under President-elect Trump.
Right now, NASA is developing a capsule called Orion and a massive rocket known as the Space Launch System (SLS) to get astronauts to distant destinations, such as Mars. Orion flew its first mission, an uncrewed test flight to Earth orbit, in December 2014; the SLS is scheduled to fly for the first time in late 2018, on a mission that will send an uncrewed Orion around the moon. But Berger said during the webinar that he thinks it's possible President-elect Trump could be swayed by arguments that the SLS program is unnecessary for NASA. That's partly because there are commercial companies also working on rockets with heavy-lift capacity (meaning they could also send humans and other payloads all the way to Mars), Berger said.
What's more, many spaceflight experts have said that NASA should establish a long-term human presence on or near the moon before heading to Mars. That goes against the plan laid out by President Obama, who nixed a human return to the moon, instead directing NASA to use a visit to a near-Earth asteroid as a "stepping stone" to Mars (more on that below). An independent report also showed that NASA can't currently afford to invest in a lunar and a Mars mission simultaneously.
"Bob Walker mentioned that he personally thought it was a good idea to have the moon as a stepping stone on the path to Mars," Foust said. "Certainly a lot of other people in the space industry, including other people who may end up on the transition team or have contacts with people on the transition team, are going to bring that up. I would not be surprised if that was revisited somehow."
A human presence on the moon could involve international partnerships, Foust said. "But how that works out and how that gets paid for will be one of the big issues for the next administration," he said.
Possible program changes
One of the only highly partisan aspects of NASA's current program is its Earth science program.
"A number of prominent Republicans on Capitol Hill think that NASA should not be involved to the degree that it is in Earth science," Foust said. Those representatives generally favor handing NASA's Earth science responsibilities over to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), the United States Geological Survey (USGS) or another agency.
Space policy experts who spoke with Space.com prior to the election said the stance held by many Republicans on climate change has driven this party divide.
In an op-ed published in SpaceNews, Walker and Peter Navarro, another space advisor to the Trump campaign, said that NASA should not be focused on "Earth-centric activities."
Foust said that, currently, Earth science accounts for about 10 percent of NASA's budget. If NASA's Earth science program is reduced or eliminated, that money could be shifted elsewhere within NASA, or to another agency that picks up those responsibilities.
"I would certainly expect to see some sort of development in terms of potential reduction to NASA's Earth science program," Foust said.
Another program that may also be on the chopping block is NASA's Asteroid Retrieval Mission (ARM), said Berger and Foust. The program aims to capture an asteroid and put it into orbit around the moon, where it could be studied and potentially mined for resources. The program was intended as a stepping stone to Mars because the technologies that would be developed for that program could then be used in a human Mars mission. Supporters say the program would also serve the goal of preparing humanity to redirect an asteroid away from a collision course with Earth.
Some members of Congress have already been "calling for a hard look" at ARM, said Berger.
"Certainly, there is a lot of skepticism about ARM going forward," Foust said. "I suspect the next administration is going to take a hard look at it. It may go away and be replaced with something else."
But Foust said it's unclear where the funding currently going toward ARM would be redirected.
"Again, it comes down to what sort of resources are going to be available for NASA and how the new administration decides to rework NASA's current human-exploration plans to fit in with what is arguably a much more expansive mission for human exploration … that Walker describes," Foust said.
NASA funding and administrator
Based on what President-elect Trump and his campaign representatives have said, there's no immediate indication that the administration will cut NASA's budget in any significant way.
"Bob Walker mentioned that he does not expect huge increases in NASA's budget," Foust said. "There may be some modest increases and may be some shifting of funding around."
President-elect Trump will also be able to nominate an administrator and deputy administrator for NASA (the top two positions at the agency). The appointee then has to be confirmed by the Senate.
Foust and Berger said the discussion about who President-elect Trump will nominate for the position of administrator has only just begun. NASA's current administrator, Charles Bolden, had stated before the election that he would retire from that position regardless of the outcome.
"It may take a while for [the administration] to settle on someone," Foust said. "And you may hear … a number of names getting mentioned in SpaceNews or elsewhere … that may or may not come to fruition for one reason or another, because they're not interested, or it just doesn't match up. So it may be some time before we actually get a firm idea of who the next confirmed NASA administrator will be."
According to certain Buddhist and Hindu traditions, secret tunnels connect the surface with a subterranean paradise, and they call this legendary underworld Agartha. In India, this underground oasis is best known by its Sanskrit name, Shamballah, thought to mean ‘place of tranquility.’ Mythologies throughout the world, from South America to the Arctic, describe numerous entrances to these fabled inner kingdoms. Many occult organizations, esoteric authors, and secret societies concur with these myths and legends of subterranean inhabitants, who are the remnants of antediluvian civilizations, which sought refuge in hollow caverns inside the earth.
Numerous endeavors have been undertaken to access the interior of the earth. Polar expeditions and battles, such as Operation Highjump, still remain largely classified, and have been shrouded in secrecy for decades, but scientific revelations validating the rumors surrounding these covert events, and their implications, are finally being exposed to daylight.
Robert Sepehr is an author, producer, and anthropologist specializing in linguistics, archeology, and paleobiology (archeogenetics).
Check out more contributions by Jeffery Pritchett ranging from UFO to Bigfoot to Paranormal to Prophecy
I was on my way home from work and when I reached the 4 way stop I saw something large off in the distance to my left. I originally thought that it might be a blimp but as I continued to drive closer I realized that this wasn’t a blimp and it wasn’t an airplane. It was very large and it was flying very slowly from the North to the South.
When I got to a place where I could pull over and take pictures I observed 2 cars already pulled over doing the same thing and then another car pulled over right after I did. This large object was very large and solid and the only light that it gave off was it was glowing white at the top. There were no other type of lights on it to indicate that it was a plane or anything else that would have those type of lights. It continued flying South and I eventually lost sight of it behind some trees. Anyway this was something that I’ve never seen before and I thought I would report it to you guys to see if you could figure out just what it was.
This is a report of an interview I conducted of a person who was at the Roswell crash site. I am a retired engineer. I joined the staff of the then new campus of the University of California at Santa Cruz. There were several sightings of UFO’s in the mountains behind the campus in 1969 and reported to the University. I was asked to interview 3 people and file a report. I could find on credibility or evidence in these events but, because it was a small campus and everybody in the Sciences knew what was going on, I got the unwanted reputation of someone who knew about UFO’s.
One day in 1970, a maintenance worker who I knew well from my church, came into my lab and said he had a friend who wanted to talk to me but did not want to meet in a public place. I suggested we meet at my home that evening. At the time, I did not know he wanted to tell me about a UFO incident. That evening I was told by the two men that they had been captured by the Germans during WW2 and spent a year and a half in a POW camp. They became good friends during that time and remained so after the war. The individual I interviewed was a welder by trade and after the war was employed at the Roswell Air Force base welding jigs and fixtures for servicing aircraft. He began by stating that the week before the 4th of July flying saucers would fly over the base in pairs every once in a while. He said they were circular and had a large dome on the top. They were flat on the bottom and were silent. He assumed they were some technology obtained from the Germans. He said everyone working there called them “flats.” . He said that he had just returned back to work after the 4th of July holiday when a truck pulled up and an officer got out and told him to load a cutting torch and fresh tanks and that they were going out to the desert. He said that it was mid afternoon when they arrived at the crash site. He said at the time he thought a plane had gone down. He said they had a flatbed truck loaded with wreckage and there were soldiers on their hands and knees picking up every piece of wreckage and putting it in cloth bags. He said the bags were the kind used for sandbags. He said they drove a little farther out of sight from the wreckage and came upon a second group of people standing around an intact UFO. He said the brush was knocked down indicating the craft had skidded across the ground and came to rest nosed into a natural berm with the back side slightly off the ground. He described the craft as being about 25/26 feet in diameter with a large dome on top. He said the craft was the ‘color of weak tea’ with a burnished finish. He said there were no signs of weld marks, seams, or rivets and that all of the edges had either an inside or outside radius. There were no visible windows or openings. That was why he was brought there. He was told to cut an opening in the dome big enough for a man to crawl through. By this time it was getting to be late afternoon and there were soldiers setting up a bank of portable lights. He said he began cutting a hole from the base of the dome. He said it was a tough alloy and slow cutting but the material was surprisingly thin. He tried bending the metal out of his way as he was cutting but the metal would spring back to its original shape without creasing.
He finished his cut and set the metal piece aside and looked into the cockpit for a few seconds before he was ordered off the craft. He said it was difficult to see very far into the craft because of the glare from the portable lights and the cockpit was full of smoke from the cutting torch. He said he saw two beings who appeared to be dead. He said the cockpit had a strong smell of ammonia. He described the two beings as being about 4′ tall but they were doubled up so it was hard to say. They were wearing what he said were skin tight purplish flight suits that reminded him of sequins. He described their heads as what we now refer to as greys. He said there were no visible instruments that he could see. He was ordered off the craft with his gear and returned to the Air Base. He said it was dark when they arrived and he was escorted by armed guards into a building for a debriefing. He said there were several high ranking officers at the table along with 4 or 5 civilians in suits. He said that after he was debriefed he was told that he was not to talk about what he had seen as it was a state secret and if he was caught divulging anything he would spend the rest of his life in prison or worse. He was scared to death by the threat and my friend and myself are the only people he ever told and that was 23 years after the event. When we started the interview, I was told that I could not take notes or use a recorder. He was very nervous telling the story and had to be reassured by my friend that I would not betray him. He said that what had been described as the Roswell event was not true and he wanted the truth told after his death. He asked that I keep what he told me a secret until after his death which I have done. He and my friend both passed away in the late 1980’s. When I heard this story I did not know what to think. I was not a UFO buff and had never heard the Roswell story. My friend said this guy was the real thing and during the interview I never sensed anything odd about his presentation or with his mannerisms. He provided a lot more information that I have stated but the interview was almost 50 years ago and forgotten. I think he was telling the truth. My friend was a very honorable and trustworthy man who would knowingly support a bogus story. I never saw or spoke the welder again after that evening. I have shared my knowledge of this interview with a couple of investigators but I think they doubted my credibility. – MUFON CMS
The recent John Kerry 11-7-2016 departure trip to Antarctica by discussing the new agreed upon Nation State Treaty, banning private ships from traveling to Antarctica without advanced authorized permission to do so, for a period of 35 years.
Image above released by Wikileaks on October 18, 2016.
Add to this element of information the previous events occurring in Antarctica, when Obama visited Antarctica in March, and he was preceded by Patriarch Kirill of Russia.
Simultaneous to Obama’s visit to the South Pole, his director of CIA, James Clapper, made a secret trip to Australia, another country with heavy interest in Antarctica. Kirill offered a strange blessing of Antarctica, calling the barren land an “ideal for human kind” because there were no weapons down there or any type of science experiments.
Image above released by Wikileaks on October 18, 2016.
We know that is not true at all: there are multiple scientific expeditions that have gone to Antarctica: this was confirmed in an interview with Richard Byrd, who said that the region would become the center of scientific inquiry directly after WW2.
Due to the fact that prior to Kerry’s visit to Antarctica, Wikileaks released on October 18, 2016 23 images of Antarctica, MrCati comes to the conclusion that all these visits are intended to limiting investigation into Antarctica’s secrets from the past.
(VIDEO) WAS THIS FOOTAGE OF A GREY EXTRATERRESTRIAL REALLY SMUGGLED OUT OF TOP SECRET AREA 51?
(VIDEO) WAS THIS FOOTAGE OF A GREY EXTRATERRESTRIAL REALLY SMUGGLED OUT OF TOP SECRET AREA 51?
Area 51 is the government facility popularly believed to be involved in investigations into other forms of intelligent life and the cover-up of UFO crashes and other alien incidents.
FILM OF ALIEN INTERROGATION LEAKED FROM AREA 51
A man going by the alias 'Viktor' was able to obtain footage that he claims shows a 'Grey' extraterrestrial being interrogated by government officials. It is unclear whether he took this footage himself or was able to obtain it directly from Area 51.
The video can be viewed below.
The video although only short contains footage believed to be highly classified if Viktor and other alien life fanatics are to be believed. It first surfaced in 1997 although it is purported that the interrogation itself took place significantly earlier, in 1966. This matches with the period in which conspiracy theorists claim that Area 51 was at its most active.
'Ufologist' Sean David Morton was amongst the first to view Viktors tape, and although he can recount the details, his description leaves some ambiguity. Morton described the creature in detention as a "small, beige-skinned, black-eyed, bulbous headed creature." An image that would send a shiver down the spine of many however he is unable to provide any details that prove the videos legitimacy. Although the room and equipment seen in the video appear to be what one would expect in the context of an alien investigation, this makes the footage perhaps too perfect and lends strength to claims that it is not real.
Most disturbingly, towards the end of the footage the medical equipment monitoring the 'alien' sounds alarms and the creature is in physical distress, supposedly dying soon after. This supports claims that have been made many times by UFO believers that aliens were being subjected to cruel and in this case, fatal, experiments at a government location in the desert.
UFO disappears into clouds seen from Space Station, Nov 14, 2016, Video, UFO Sighting News.
UFO disappears into clouds seen from Space Station, Nov 14, 2016, Video, UFO Sighting News.
Date of sighting: Nov 14, 2016 Location of sighting: Earths orbit, ISS
This is an extraordinary find by Streetcap1 of Youtube. This is a UFO recorded on the live NASA space station cam. The interesting thing about it is that it actually passes below the clouds. That means this object has perfectly matched the speed of the space station and is traveling at an altitude of most passenger jets. Sure alien tech has no difficulty in keeping up with the 27,600 km/h space station, but still its remarkable to see it pass below those clouds. The size of the UFO looks to be about 1/3 that of the space station. That makes the UFO about 33 meters across. Great catch, please go to Youtube and give Streetcap1 a supportive thumbs up for his hard work. Scott C. Waring
UFO Turns Lights On Over Lima, Peru Excites Locals, Nov 2016, Video, 👽 UFO Sighting News 👽
UFO Turns Lights On Over Lima, Peru Excites Locals, Nov 2016, Video, 👽 UFO Sighting News 👽
Date of sighting: Nov 2016 Location of sighting: Lima, Peru This is cool. A UFO was recorded over Lima, Peru this week and in the recording we see a street light suddenly light up. Coincidence? Probably not, since hundreds of UFO reports report electrical problems when the UFO was near. This is important evidence that this object was a UFO. Scott C. Waring News states:
A mysterious ‘burning’ UFO has been filmed traveling across the sky above a capital city. Residents of Lima, Peru, were left stunned as the orange light floated slowly through the air in the slightly darkened sky. The video, which lasts a full minute and was revealed by Peruvian media last night, has left observers mystified. To add to the mystery, people in other parts of the South American country, including the highlands to the southeast of Lima and the area near the Amazon rainforest, also spotted strange lights in the sky. One theory is that the lights could be the high-altitude balloons used by Google’s Project Loon, an initiative that provides Internet access to people in remote and rural areas. The balloons float in the stratosphere about 18km, 11 miles, above the Earth’s surface and do contain lights. Is this where aliens from Mars relax? British conspiracy theorist spots a SOFA on Red Planet However, there are a number of people who believe Peru is a regular stop-off for aliens who are drawn to the country by its many ancient sites, including the world famous Machu Picchu citadel in the Andes Mountains.
UFO Caught Passing In Front Of Moon, Nov 2016, Video, UFO Sighting News.
UFO Caught Passing In Front Of Moon, Nov 2016, Video, UFO Sighting News.
Date of sighting: Nov 12, 2016 Location of sighting: Surprise, Arizona, USA
This is odd. A UFO in orbit that has a haze mist around it. The object is solid, because if it was transparent, we would see the light of the moon through it. I believe that the field around it is due to the alien propulsion, because the haze has been seen in thousands of UFO photos before. Scott C. Waring
Eyewitness states:
While taking video of the Supermoon, with NexStar 6se telescope, UFOs do a fly by. Camera was a Sony CX500V HandyCam HD, 5X optical zoom, manual focus at .9m, maxview 40 lens for a 38X telescope magnification. The UFOs appear to have distortion surrounding them, perhaps bending light.
Mysterious 'burning' UFO spotted in the sky above capital city 'favoured by aliens'
Mysterious 'burning' UFO spotted in the sky above capital city 'favoured by aliens.
BYSUZ ELVE
The mysterious orange light was filmed for a full minute.
A mysterious ‘burning’ UFO has been filmed travelling across the sky above a capital city.
Residents of Lima, Peru, were left stunned as the orange light floated slowly through the air in the slightly darkened sky.
The video, which lasts a full minute and was revealed by Peruvian media last night, has left observers mystified.
To add to the mystery, people in other parts of the South American country, including the highlands to the southeast of Lima and the area near the Amazon rainforest, also spotted strange lights in the sky.
Alerta Noticias
The 'burning' UFO was filmed travelling across the sky above Lima, Peru, for a full minuteSome people think the light could a Project Loon balloon while other believe Peru is a favourite destination for aliens
One theory is that the lights could be the high-altitude balloons used by Google’s Project Loon, an initiative that provides Internet access to people in remote and rural areas.
The balloons float in the stratosphere about 18km, 11 miles, above the Earth’s surface and do contain lights.
However, there are a number of people who believe Peru is a regular stop-off for aliens who are drawn to the country by its many ancient sites, including the world famous Machu Picchu citadel in the Andes Mountains.
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Beagle 2 is niet gecrasht op Mars
Beagle 2 is niet gecrasht op Mars
Tim Kraaijvanger
De gedoemde Marslander Beagle 2 is in 2003 niet neergestort, maar toch zachtjes geland op het oppervlak van de rode planeet. Dat is de conclusie van een nieuw onderzoek.
“Waarschijnlijk lukte het de lander ook om de mees000te zonnepanelen uit te klappen”, beweert onderzoeker Nick Higgett van de De Montfort universiteit. Higgett en zijn collega’s gebruikten publiekelijk beschikbare foto’s van Beagle 2 om een 3D-model van de Marslander op de landingsplaats te maken. Vervolgens konden zij verschillende situaties simuleren, zoals de positie van de zon, om te kijken of de satellietfoto’s overeenkomen met de daadwerkelijke situatie volgens het 3D-model. Daaruit blijkt dat Beagle 2 drie – en misschien alle vier – zonnepanelen heeft uitgeklapt.
Wat gebeurde er? “Wat is er gebeurd met Beagle 2? We komen steeds dichter bij een antwoord op deze vraag”, zegt professor Mark Sims. “Natuurlijk komen we er nooit achter waarom Beagle 2 er niet in slaagde om te communiceren, maar we weten wel dat de landing een succes was.” De meest aannemelijke theorie is dat er drie panelen zijn uitgeklapt en dat dit niet genoeg stroom opleverde om contact op te nemen met Mission Control.
Werkt Beagle 2 nu nog? “Misschien werkte Beagle 2 wel enkele honderden dagen, afhankelijk van hoe snel het stof zich opstapelde op de zonnepanelen en of stofstormen (zogenoemde ‘dust devils’, red.) de zonnepanelen regelmatig reinigden”, vertelt Sims aan de BBC. “Eén mogelijkheid is dat Beagle 2 vandaag de dag nog steeds functioneert, maar dat is zeer onwaarschijnlijk en ik heb er twijfels over.”
Deze trechter op Mars: de plek om naar leven te zoeken?
Deze trechter op Mars: de plek om naar leven te zoeken?
Tim Kraaijvanger
Amerikaanse wetenschappers hebben een trechter op Mars gevonden. Het gaat om een depressie die is gevormd door een vulkaan onder een gletsjer. Is er ooit microscopisch leven ontstaan in deze warme omgeving?
De kans dat er nu nog microscopisch leven op Mars is, is klein, maar het is niet onmogelijk. Het oppervlak van de rode planeet is vele malen droger dan de droogste plekken op aarde. Maar miljarden jaren geleden was de planeet veel natter en warmer.
Sommige plekken op Mars zijn interessant om te onderzoeken als ‘hot spots’ van leven. Dit zijn plaatsen waar de ingrediënten voor leven ooit aanwezig waren, namelijk water, hitte en voedingsstoffen. Dit geldt voor een bijzondere depressie die lijkt op een trechter. De depressie is te vinden in een krater op de rand van het Hellas Bassin. Met een diameter van 2300 kilometer is het Hellas Bassin de grootste inslagstructuur op Mars. “We hebben verschillende scenario’s getest en denken dat de depressie is ontstaan door de interactie van lava en ijs”, concluderen de onderzoekers in het paper.
En dat is bijzonder, want als het gebied is ontstaan door een vulkaan onder een gletsjer, dan waren alle ingrediënten voor het ontstaan van leven aanwezig, inclusief vloeibaar water en chemische voedingsstoffen. Het is geen gek idee om een Marslander in dit gebied neer te zetten en om op zoek te gaan naar sporen van leven.
Hypersonic Flight Is Coming: Will the US Lead the Way?
Hypersonic Flight Is Coming: Will the US Lead the Way?
By Douglas Messier, Space.com Contributor
Artist's rendering of Lockheed Martin's SR-72 concept vehicle, which the company says could potentially fly six times faster than the speed of sound.
Credit: Lockheed Martin Corp.
MOJAVE, California — The world is at the start of a renaissance in supersonic and hypersonic flight that will transform aviation, but the effort will need steady commitment and funding if the United States wants to lead the way, congressional leaders and industry officials said at a forum late last month.
"What's exciting about aerospace today is that we are in a point here where suddenly, things are happening all across the board in areas that just haven't been happening for quite a while," said former U.S. Air Force Maj. Gen. Curtis M. Bedke.
"There was a period where engine technology had just sort of stagnated — a point where all materials technology was going along at about the same pace," Bedke added. "There just wasn't much happening. But suddenly, in all sorts of areas that apply to aerospace, things are happening." [NASA's Vision of Future Air Travel (Images)]
Bedke was one of five panelists to speak Oct. 27 at the Forum on American Aeronautics here at the Mojave Air and Space Port. Sponsored by the House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology, the forum was hosted by committee chairman Lamar Smith, R-Texas, and member Steve Knight, R-Calif. Bedke, Smith and Knight were joined by David McBride, director of NASA's Armstrong Flight Research Center in California, and Craig Johnson, director of business strategy and development for Lockheed Martin's Skunk Works. Former Mojave Air and Space Port CEO Stu Witt moderated.
Knight has taken the lead on the House Science Committee in getting NASA's aeronautical program to focus on a new set of experimental aircraft. He said his passion for these programs isn't just about improving American aviation — it's personal.
"In 1967 was the last time we went hypersonic in an airplane," Knight said, referring to an X-15 flight piloted by his late father, William J. "Pete" Knight. That flight reached Mach 6.7 — 6.7 times the speed of sound — a record for piloted aircraft that still stands nearly 50 years later. (Hypersonic flight is generally defined as anything that reaches Mach 5 or greater. "Supersonic" refers to any flight that exceeds Mach 1.)
"We collected an awful lot of data," he said. "But what I would like to see is that we can move that data into something, whether we are going to move into an aircraft that we're going to put people into or we're going to use it for some other program. We've got to have that continuity and move forward."
Knight noted that it still takes the same 4.5 hours or so to fly from New York to Los Angeles today as it did 30 years ago. Supersonic aircraft flights over land have been banned for decades because of the sonic booms they produce. No supersonic passenger planes have been in operation since the retirement of the Concorde in 2003.
NASA wants to change that. In February, the space agency awarded a contract to Lockheed Martin for the design of an experimental plane to test technologies that can significantly reduce the sonic booms caused by aircraft. If the program is successful, the ban on overland supersonic flights could be lifted.
"We're poised on the brink of a new era in air transportation," McBride said. "We do need to go faster. There is a market for supersonic flight over land in an efficient manner that can fly without being an annoyance to everyone on the ground."
NASA also is exploring ways to improve the efficiency and reduce the environmental impacts of subsonic aircraft. Engineers are experimenting with blended wings and other innovations.
Smith admitted that the difficulty that Congress and the president have experienced in passing budgets has caused problems in sustaining research.
"None of that is conducive to good work getting done in an efficient way," Smith said. "And we can do better. We need to get to the point where continuity actually lasts beyond just one administration, much less beyond tomorrow. And we're with you on that."
Bedke said there is no time to waste in moving these programs forward.
"It is inevitable that hypersonic technologies are going to happen," he said. "It is not inevitable that we are going to be the country to do it first. But we can be the country to do it first, but we're going to have to put our minds to it, and we're going to have to stop the history of fits and starts, of throwing money at a big program, achieving a wild success, and then having no follow-up. Or throwing a lot of money at too big a program, taking too giant a bite, failing miserably and then deciding hypersonics isn't going anywhere. Neither of those must be allowed to happen in the coming years."
NASA to Launch 'Swarms' of Small, Earth-Observing Satellites
NASA to Launch 'Swarms' of Small, Earth-Observing Satellites
By Hanneke Weitering, Staff Writer-Producer
NASA plans to launch a suite of tiny, next-generation satellites into Earth's orbit to study weather patterns and climate change. These missions will conduct important scientific research while also advancing the technology needed to launch smaller, cheaper satellites, NASA said.
The space agency hosted a teleconference today (Nov. 7) from its headquarters in Washington, D.C., to discuss some of the new small satellites, or "smallsats," that will launch in the coming months.
Ellen Stofan, chief scientist at NASA Headquarters, explained that small satellites can reduce the costs of space-based Earth observations. Additionally, the satellites can increase access to space for private companies as well as universities and students interested in pursuing science experiments in Earth's orbit, Stofan said.
Small satellites have several advantages," he said during the teleconference. "They reduce the risk and cost of demonstrating precursor technologies and infusing them into larger flight projects. They're used for flight testing and demonstrating new proof-of-concept components. And they enable affordable distributive science observation systems using constellations or swarms of small satellites to achieve broad coverage."
For example, eight identical spacecraft in NASA's Cyclone Global Navigation Satellite System (CYGNSS) mission slated to launch Dec. 12 will fly in formation over the Earth's most hurricane-prone latitudes to monitor the weather and improve storm-forecasting capabilities.
All eight CYGNSS observatories prepped for launch on the Pegasus rocket.
Credit: University of Michigan
Another mission, the Radiometer Assessment using Vertically Aligned Nanotubes (RAVAN) project, aims to encompass the globe with several orbiting satellites that will monitor the greenhouse gas effect and Earth's changing climate. The first RAVAN is a three-unit CubeSat, or mini satellite, scheduled to launch later this month, said Bill Swartz, the mission's principal investigator. If all goes well, RAVAN satellites may someday swarm around the entire planet.
A planned constellation of multiple RAVAN (Radiometer Assessment using VerticallyAligned Nanotubes) satellites would be evenly distributed around planet Earth to measure energy balances in the global atmosphere and monitor climate change.
Credit: Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory
In a separate mission, a swarm of 12 CubeSats will study tropical cyclones while also measuring and tracking air pollution. This mission is called TROPICS, short for Time-Resolved Observations of Precipitation structure and storm Intensity with a Constellation of Smallsats. Each satellite will use a radiometer instrument to measure temperature and water vapor profiles of storms. William Blackwell, the principal investigator for TROPICS, said during the teleconference that the satellites are about the size of a milk carton and weigh about 8 lbs. (3.6 kilograms) each.
With 12 individual CubeSats, the TROPICS constellation of small satellites will fly over any part of the tropics about every 30 minutes. This will allow the mission to monitor the quickly changing features of tropical cyclones as they progress. Each TROPICS CubeSat is the size of a loaf of bread and weighs eight pounds (3.6 kilograms), flying 350 miles (560 kilometers) above Earth.
Credit: MIT Lincoln Laboratory
These new missions mark the beginning of a new era in satellite technologies. Missions like those mentioned above may also pave the way for swarms of mini satellites to orbit around the moon, Mars and other objects in the solar system, Stofan said in the teleconference. And the initiative is making it easier than ever for space researchers outside of NASA to get involved in small satellite projects.
Stofan said that the agency is "actively promoting the small spacecraft approach as a paradigm shift for NASA and the larger space community," through contracts with industry, NASA directive projects, collaborations with universities and partnerships with other space agencies.
'Impossible' Space Engine Might Actually Work, Study Suggests
'Impossible' Space Engine Might Actually Work, Study Suggests
By Mike Wall, Space.com Senior Writer
Engineers are working on ways to make spaceflight faster and cheaper, in an effort to open the heavens to exploration.
Credit: NASA/Glenn Research Center
An experimental propulsion system that seems to violate the laws of physics may actually work, a new study suggests.
A controversial and puzzling engine design known as the EmDrive generated small amounts of thrust in a lab test, NASA researchers reported in the study, which has yet to be published or peer-reviewed but was recently leaked online.
The EmDrive, which was developed by British researcher Roger Shawyer more than a decade ago, generates thrust by bouncing microwaves around inside a cone-shaped chamber. According to Newton's third law of motion— for every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction — this shouldn't work, because there's no exhaust expelled out of the EmDrive system. (Think about rockets, which get their oomph by blasting superheated gases and other material out of nozzles at high speeds.) [Superfast Spacecraft Propulsion Concepts (Images)]
But the NASA team, led by Harold "Sonny" White of the agency's Johnson Space Center in Houston, did measure some thrust. Specifically, their EmDrive variant produced about 1.2 millinewtons of force per kilowatt of energy. That's about 100 times more thrust than solar-sailing spacecraft, which harness the momentum of photons streaming from the sun, are able to achieve, White and his colleagues wrote.
Like solar sails, the EmDrive requires no propellant; a spacecraft equipped with this propulsion system could generate all the microwaves it needs using solar panels. So the EmDrive could make space travel much cheaper and faster, theoretically opening up the heavens to greater exploration, advocates have said.
Don't get too excited — that's a long way from happening, if it happens at all. The new study is just a proof of concept, and further testing is needed to definitively rule out all possible sources of experimental error, White and his team said. (For example, it's possible that air within the EmDrive system could have heated up and expanded, causing some of the observed effect, the researchers wrote.)
But the new result is the latest in a series of apparent successes for EmDrive technology. Shawyer reported generating thrust with his version, as did Chinese researchers who tested their own variant in 2012. And White and his colleagues reported a positive result back in 2013 as well.
So this seemingly impossible engine may actually work — perhaps by somehow harnessing the energy of subatomic particles that are constantly popping into and out of existence, White and his team have speculated. (Shawyer has his own ideas about what's happening inside the EmDrive, and he doesn't think Newton's Third Law is being violated at all. Check out his explanation here: http://emdrive.com/faq.html.)
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Ik ben Pieter, en gebruik soms ook wel de schuilnaam Peter2011.
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