17
votes
Accepted
What is your name? What is your quest? What is the story behind Satellite 1963-38C?
It was a secondary payload launched along with the first operational Transit navigation satellite (Transit 5BN-1) and was named, mundanely enough, Transit 5E-1.
Mission goals were
Measure ...
- 171k
8
votes
Accepted
Did the Apollo missions use the Earth's magnetotail to lessen cosmic radiation?
Your first diagram does, implicitly, include the sun's position in the form of the shadowing on the moon.
The Apollo missions were planned with launch windows such that the missions would land on ...
- 164k
8
votes
How could an induced magnetosphere be created at Mars for terraforming?
The way to solve this problem has recently been proposed by NASA. Put a magnet on the L1 Legrange point (between Mars and the Sun) of about 2 Tesla. This is what it looks like:
At present, ...
- 383
6
votes
Accepted
How could an induced magnetosphere be created at Mars for terraforming?
The premise of the question is incorrect. If you were able to terraform Mars on a human civilization time scale in the first place, then you can replenish the atmosphere, if you like, at a rate ...
- 58.1k
6
votes
For how long could astronauts stay on the surface of Europa, Jupiter's moon, with our current latest and most advanced spacesuit before dying?
About Four Minutes
The OSHA safety limit for radiation is 5 REM per year. With a surface radiation is 540 REM, you'd hit the OSHA limit at about 3 minutes 45 seconds.
Space suits provide negligible ...
- 1,053
5
votes
How long would a magnetic shield placed at the Mars L1 point take to replenish Mars's atmosphere?
From the abstract, it appears the proposed mechanism is not to extremely slowly build an entire atmosphere at 0.1kg/second. That would make little sense, at it merely reduces a loss mechanism, not ...
5
votes
Accepted
Is NASA doing research on "mini-magnetospheres" to protect crew from radiation in space?
I've been trying to find a link between the mini-magnetosphere actually created at Rutherford Appleton Labs (U.K.) in 2013 to NASA. So far there's only anecdotal reports and interviews none of which ...
- 66
3
votes
Accepted
Diamagnetic Polar Orbit
As per wiki, light sails are made of Mylar, a reflective polyester film. The material with the highest diamagnetic constant is bismuth, χv = −1.66×10−4, although pyrolytic carbon may have a ...
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3
votes
Artificial Magnetosphere to Terra-form Mars?
Hmmm this is an interesting theory, though I am confused how they would maintain that position between Mars and the Sun. Moreover I want to point out this is theoretical and is not actually building ...
- 1,010
2
votes
Accepted
Is the recently discovered VLF-induced radiation barrier in any way important or useful?
That paper "Anthropogenic Space Weather" runs to 55 pages, but only 5 pages discuss VLF impact on the ionosphere (chapter 8), while 35 pages (chapters 2-7) discuss EMP from high altitude nukes. This ...
- 138
2
votes
Could man-made, magnetic shields protect us from from sun's energetic particles from coronal mass ejections?
Ionizing radiation can be both charged particles and electromagnetic radiation. As pointed out in comments, a magnetic field can in some cases be used to deflect charged particles like protons and ...
- 149k
1
vote
Accepted
Spinning 16 Psyche at Mars L1 to envelop Mars with a magnetosheath?
No. Spinning an asteroid won't generate a magnetic field.
- 9,244
1
vote
How much solar wind (mass) hits Mercury's north pole?
Maybe not a proper answer, but:
The measurements by MESSENGER spacecraft has shown that Mercury's magnetic field is tilted:
(source)
Here is a 2017 paper that summarizes recent discoveries.
quote:
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