All Questions

I was never great at math but now I wish I would have taken it more seriously. We have an office bet going and I need to come up with a formula to figure out the future velocity the JWST. I was able ...

In space shuttle's operators manual, Page(4.1-4), it is written as: The H2O quantity is determined by a PVT calculation based on H2O tank pressure and temperature transducer readings as well as GN2 ...

Planet Labs recently tweeted ( https://twitter.com/planet/status/1481790983155044352 ) a video showing a Falcon 9 first stage landed on a pad. Strangely, the image looks like it was taken by a camera ...

Although the ISS currently has no laundry facilities, NASA’s Glenn Research Center sponsored a washing machine design contest to do the drudgery during spaceflight. Plans have been made for testing a ...

Since the very first Sycom 1, geostationary satellites from 1960s to 1980s are cylindrical with solar cells covering the body of the satellite. Such examples include: GOES 1 to 7 AsiaSat 1 and its ...

This question may be a crucial follow-up to this one because in this answer it is calculated that the payload to Mercury without a gravity assist would probably be minimal, so if already a moderate ...

Reading the flight crew operating manual of the Space Shuttle I discovered that: The three fuel cells could have been stopped and restarted (unlike previous Apollo missions) The fuel cell start ...

Live Science's China builds 'artificial moon' for gravity experiment says: Chinese scientists have built an "artificial moon" research facility that will enable them to simulate low-gravity ...

This was asked in 2016 : Does ISS crew exercise time count toward their X hour work week? The answer as of 2016 was 40 hours / week for a crew of 6. But as noted there, when the crew size increases to ...

Background @Tristan's answer to How are the silicon PV cells constructed in the ISS's solar panels? Are they as flexible as they appear here? informs us that Kapton is part of the "blanket" ...

Why “super” for supersynchronous orbits? Why not “trans”? and discussions and answers there got me wondering: Question: What was the first spacecraft intentionally moved from GEO or geosynchronous to ...

Why “super” for supersynchronous orbits? Why not “trans”? and discussions and answers there got me wondering: Question: What was the first spacecraft intentionally placed in a supersynchronous Earth ...

I am attempting to try to obtain some proficiency in reviewing and analyzing JWST data. Toward that end, I have installed python language jdaviz environment and files and JWST python environment and ...

One thing which I recently heard Peter Beck say in an interview with Tim Dodd was that the cost of running a launch company isn't primarily driven by the rocket itself, but the operations required to ...

How do you track the position of the James Webb telescope? Does it have its own TLE, or...?

I wonder if a rocket that uses electricity from internal batteries to heat water in its tanks to high pressure would be able to use that pressure to take off. Is it possible? I've researched here and ...

Copied from the Nasa.gov site 'Where is Webb?' NOTE: Segment A3 and A6 will be moved separately at the end of the process because their position sensors are read out in a different way. Why would ...

Why do EVA suits have legs? Planetary exploration suits (PES) obviously need legs. Spacesuits with legs are “a classic icon of human space exploration” and a requirement for mobility. https://www....

can anybody help me to find how to change the date to the exercise of GMAT in order to work anyway? I'm not able to solve this problem. Thanks

How long would it have taken to launch an Apollo contingency flight, if, for example, the lunar lander couldn't have got back up to orbit? Could the lander have held three astronauts?

I downloaded a dozen of NASA documents about post-flight analysis of Apollo 11 mission, but I cannot find a table or a plot of fuel usage and remains; Some of the documents which I found: http://www....

Suppose you start with a rocky sphere about 12,742 kilometers in diameter and continuously add more rocky material such that you don't smash this sphere to bits. What is the upper limit for this? ...

I have currently been testing my implementation of a numerical propagator with the ISS. Without going into much details, the propagator considers Earth gravity (with the GGM03S model including zonal, ...

Conventional EVA suits suffer from mobility and tactile sensory limitations due to their pressurization. Any articulated container which changes volume with motion will resist motion if pressurized. ...

Cubesats can pose some unique challenges; they are small and so potentially a little harder to track, have larger area/mass so more subject to forces that can change their trajectories, are often less ...

Ars Technica's New images of the International Space Station reveal that it is still a jewel includes the photo below and I've added a view of a side module with a collection of various rectangular ...

I'm particularly curious about the coherent transponder mode where the outgoing transmitted signal is phase-locked to the incoming received signal (prompted by @uhoh's recent question). This is a mode ...

Personally, I would rather live near Mercury's north pole than anywhere on Mars mainly because: The permanently shadowed craters harbor abundant water ice and other frozen volatile materials Mercury ...

I read the years-old comments in this question & found a new question waiting an answer. Is JWST going to be in antumbra (aka annular Earth eclipse) in its halo orbit around L2? I was of the ...

The JWST has four mirrors. The large primary mirror made of 18 hexagonal mirrors The secondary mirror The fixed tertiary mirror The flat fine steering mirror I found very little information about ...

I am wondering if the application of General Relativity is ever needed(?) I assume that Newtonian mechanics is sufficient with some trajectory corrections applied as needed on route. I also assume ...

Is there a source for data on velocity and various temperatures of JWST? I would like to see a graph of the data.

Before everyone responds that this has been asked before, I have read through every relevant post I could find here and believe my question has not been clearly covered. I also understand that "...

Webb will issue a final course correction burn to insert it into the orbit around L2. It arrives from earth so the approach velocity should be higher than the desired orbit velocity and the vector ...

I was just getting used to “cis” and “trans” for orbits inside and outside the Lunar orbit. “Trans” is a Latin word root meaning “across, beyond, or through”(Meriam Webster). “Trans” seems like a ...

Ars Technica's All hail the Ariane 5 rocket, which doubled the Webb telescope’s lifetime says: Because ten years seemed like a fairly short operational period for such an expensive and capable space ...

this answer to Is it possible for a spacecraft to communicate with Earth when a planet is in the way? suggesting that atmospheric refraction could be used to get at least some kind of signal around a ...

In my answer to What are the benefits of supersynchronous transfer orbits? I stumbled upon an interesting outcome when considering the total $\Delta V$ cost from an inclined low altitude parking orbit ...

The title essentially explains it all. Some GEO launch vehicles like Proton, which launches from Baikonur at a latitude of 46 degrees, launch into a supersynchronous orbit. So at what point is the ...

I think, if something does not work (had not worked), or some improvisative solution is needed to handle an unexpected problem, then it would significantly improve the configuration freedom if the ...

In David Vallado's book 'Fundamental of Astrodynamics and Applications', chapter 6.7. ("Continuous-Thrust Transfers") there is an algorithm #47: Low Thrust Transfer. In this algorithm a ...

I have recently become interested in testing a numerical orbital propagator with ISS ephemerides, following @RyanC's suggestion in this answer. Ephemerides for the ISS seem to be publicly available in ...

I have a theoretical question, if we use some sort of ionizing radiation like an ionizing laser for example (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atmospheric-pressure_laser_ionization), to create a path in ...

The James Webb Space Telescope has some very specific positioning requirements; the second Lagrange point and the heat shield positioning being at the top of my mind. Do these constraints eliminate ...

In brightness, a nuclear detonation is comparable to the Sun. Source: "The light of the Atomic Bomb," Clay P. Butler, Science Vol. 138 No. 3539 pg. 483-489, 26 October, 1962 How likely are ...

Some satellites are injected into higher apogee than standard GTO apogee of 35 786 km. Next the satellite then has to increase its perigee ( usually 250 km ) to GEO altitude. Then the apogee has to be ...

According to “https://webb.nasa.gov/content/about/orbit.html”, NASA plans to exploit a quarter million mile radius “halo” orbit at L2. And Webb will orbit around L2, not sit stationary precisely at ...

Following the successful EFT-1 mission, why didn't NASA start launching crews to the ISS on the Orion spacecraft? This question deals about why crews weren't sent to the Moon, but I wonder why wasn't ...

If all goes well, JWST will allow us to witness events that occurred roughly 180 million years cosmic time (after big bang). Apparently this light arrives 13.6 billion years after it was emitted. In ...

I have theoretical questions about inter-stellar travel at very high speeds (e.g. 0.9c). The inter-stellar medium is not a perfect vacuum, there are about 1 atom per cm3. This causes some friction. I ...