The OFFICIAL Unofficial Achewood Message Board
Trivial Pursuits => Science & Nature => Topic started by: jough on October 31, 2006, 04:02:57 am
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Hey kids,
Just wanted to let you all know about this:
NASA's campaign to send the nom de plumes of people from around the world into the heart of the asteroid belt ends Sat., Nov. 4.
Submitted names will be carried on board NASA's Dawn, the first spacecraft to travel between and scrutinize two distinct worlds. Mission scientists are confident Dawn observations of asteroid Vesta and dwarf planet Ceres will answer basic questions about the nature and composition of these celestial wanderers.
"How many chances do you get to fly into the very heart of the asteroid belt?" said Keyur Patel, Dawn project manager at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif. "When the craft is launched in June 2007, yours and the names of your loved ones can hitch along for the ride and be part of space exploration history."
Dawn will carry a silicon chip containing the names of asteroid, space and other enthusiasts from around the world. People may submit their names for this historic one-way mission by visiting JPL's Dawn Web site now through Nov. 4 at http://dawn.jpl.nasa.gov . More than 170,000 people have already signed up for the asteroid belt tour.
Following launch, Dawn will employ an ion engine to propel it during its more than four year, 3-billion-kilometer journey (1.9-billion miles) to its first target – asteroid Vesta. After months of detailed scientific observation of Vesta, Dawn's ion engine will fire up again, and send it on its way for a 2014 rendezvous with Ceres, recently anointed a "dwarf planet" by the International Astronomical Union.
"This campaign will allow people from around the world to become directly involved with Dawn, and through that, become familiar with the mission's science," said University of California Los Angeles professor Dr. Chris Russell, Dawn's principal investigator.
The Dawn mission is managed by JPL, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington. The University of California Los Angeles is responsible for overall Dawn mission science. Orbital Sciences Corporation of Dulles, Virginia, designed and built the Dawn spacecraft.
For information about NASA and other space flight missions on the Internet, visit http://www.nasa.gov .
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Wow! Thanks for posting that, I had no idea. My name is on the boat!
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Jonathan Darkwood is going to the asteroid belt, oh yes he is.
This is great if only 'cause it's a freebie. Paying a few bob to own a bit of the moon is all well and grand, until you realise you have just spent money for nothing, and it won't help you get free chicks either.
The link escapes me, but yesterday on the local news (very local as you'll see) they had a story about a man who is now selling time in people's names. I kid you not; by finding his elusive website, you can spend £20 (about a dollar) and buy a moment in history. Reportedly, moments such as the end of World War 2 and the 1966 World Cup final are being snapped up like so many hot cakes.
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When the aliens return, they will then know whom to rain fire upon.
How DARE you extend your grasp beyond your galactic dirt clod!
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Does information travel from this spacecraft back to earth at the speed of light or is data transmitted from these things slower than that? It would take light something like 2.8 hours to cross 1.9 billion miles at 186,000 miles per second. How much energy does it take to transmit information across that broad a distance?
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Spacecraft use radio to communicate with home base, so it does travel at the speed of light (more or less). I don't know exact figures on the energy required for this, but it is mostly a matter of focus rather than power. As long as our antennae know where to look, the spacecraft signal just has to be a bit stronger than the background noise.
The 2.8 hour difference is part of the reason why our mars rovers need to be semi-autonomous -- NASA can tell it where they want it to try to go, but the actual navigation can't be handled by remote control.