46
votes
Did Apollo 13 produce any scientific results?
It did, with the third rocket stage. Instead of just becoming another object in solar orbit like the previous Apollo third stages, this time the third stage was sent into the Moon for a crash landing ...
- 8,445
30
votes
Did Apollo 13 produce any scientific results?
In addition to crashing the Saturn V's S-IVB into the moon to collect seismic data from sensors installed by the crews of Apollo 11 and 12, several life sciences experiments were performed on the crew ...
- 2,275
12
votes
Accepted
What exactly are the recent observations of organics on Mars? What's the data?
There are currently (June 2018) two new papers (links may be paywalled):
"Organic matter preserved in 3-billion-year-old mudstones at Gale crater, Mars", Eigenbrode et al., Science 360, 1096–1101 (...
- 12.6k
12
votes
Hijacked space data, notable instances of recovering images or other goodies from someone else's space mission?
Two items of note: Luna 9's initially released pictures came from scientists at Jodrell Bank Observatory in England, which could be received because they were in a standard format. This came ahead of ...
- 121k
11
votes
Accepted
Is there free, accurate and updated data on planetary body positions in the solar system?
For integration into software, I would recommend the SPICE toolkit, available with interfaces for C, Fortran, IDL, and MATLAB, and the many SPK kernels that can be loaded into SPICE containing the ...
- 58.5k
11
votes
Hijacked space data, notable instances of recovering images or other goodies from someone else's space mission?
note: Here are two examples of "hijacked signals" that include "public release of the images or data that included the admission that it is 'stolen' or 'hijacked'." I am sure there are a few more. One ...
- 149k
10
votes
Why is the Duration of Time spent in the Dayside greater than that of the Night side of the Moon for Chandrayaan-2 Orbiter?
The degree of orbital shadowing experienced by an orbiting object with small orbital altitude is determined by its beta angle (normally used in reference to LEO objects but the concept applies to ...
- 178k
10
votes
Accepted
What are the data storage capabilities onboard the James Webb Telescope?
This user guide seems to be reasonably recent (2017) and answers your question.
The solid state recorder (SSR) onboard JWST can hold at least 58.8 Gbytes of recorded science data.
JWST ...
- 19.3k
9
votes
Accepted
What is the slope of the sides of Aristarchus crater on the Moon?
The slope is over 50 degrees at some point.
I made a quick pseudocolor rendering of the slope with QGIS using the global DEM from LRO LOLA. The slope was generated from the DEM using QGIS's slope ...
- 994
8
votes
Can I find detailed flight parameters of some space mission(s)?
The "Flight Evaluation Reports" from the Apollo missions have a number of data plots and tables that may help you.
Bob Braeunig developed a simulation that matched the Apollo 11 flight report rather ...
- 167k
8
votes
How can the CYGNSS spacecrafts (actually) measure ocean roughness?
Addressing multipath has long been a challenge with regard to GPS. Carrying a GPS-enabled smartphone toward the heart of a large city results in GPS-estimated positions and altitudes that bounce ...
- 73.2k
7
votes
Accepted
"UK schoolboy corrects Nasa data error" - what precisely was the "error"?
The source of the data is the Radiation Environment Monitor. Lawrence S. Pinsky is listed as co-investigator.
This Radiation Environment Monitor demonstration will provide information that is ...
- 126k
7
votes
When did Kepler roll over and how does it match the anomalies of KIC 8462852?
Section 4.1 on page 8 of the original report on the phenomenon discards this possibility, albeit indirectly:
The Kepler light curve for KIC 8462852 is unique, and we have
thoroughly explored the raw ...
- 21.3k
7
votes
When did Kepler roll over and how does it match the anomalies of KIC 8462852?
Kepler rolled between the quarter dates found at this site. At first glance, they don't seem to correlate, although I need to do more work to actually line it up. As Kepler rolls the data between data ...
- 121k
7
votes
Why is the Duration of Time spent in the Dayside greater than that of the Night side of the Moon for Chandrayaan-2 Orbiter?
There is no circular orbit that has a share of 50:50 between night and day.
The possible times are a bit less than 50% to 0% night or, respectively, a bit more than 50% day to 100% day.
The two ...
- 14.9k
6
votes
Accepted
Is data from Huygens still being analyzed in 2018?
A quick search on Google Scholar turns up 106 articles published in 2018 using Huygens' data. So I'd say the data is still being analyzed and used.
- 126k
6
votes
Accepted
How will OSIRIS-REx scan and characterise the near-earth asteroid Bennu?
OSIRIS-REx is packed all full of good stuff. I'll throw together a quick list of the scanning ones you're interested in.
Also of note is that the entire spacecraft will be making that scanning ...
- 1,266
6
votes
How can the CYGNSS spacecrafts (actually) measure ocean roughness?
Short version: you have to read the Algorithm Theoretical Basis Documents (ATBD), conveniently collected at https://clasp-research.engin.umich.edu/missions/cygnss/data-products.php . All of them. ...
- 7,778
6
votes
Calculation of coordinates from JPL Small-body database parameters?
Use this page to generate SPICE kernels for the bodies of interest, and then use SPICE routines to calculate whatever you like to your heart's content.
Aarrr. I don't be knowin why ye be reinventing ...
- 58.5k
6
votes
Hijacked space data, notable instances of recovering images or other goodies from someone else's space mission?
Tracking Apollo-17 from Florida
http://www.svengrahn.pp.se/trackind/Apollo17/APOLLO17.htm
On December 10, 1972 we picked up our first signals on S-band. The main carrier was 45 dB over noise and the ...
- 7,813
6
votes
Accepted
When scientific and engineering data are sent from space probes, are the signals repeated to minimize transmission error?
Signals are not repeated, but instead coded in a special way that allows to reconstruct the original data on the receiver side in presence of noise/errors. It is called forward error correction.
FEC ...
- 1,362
6
votes
NEAR Shoemaker mission data
All the data from the NEAR Shoemaker mission is archived at the Small Body Node of the NASA Planetary Data System. Asteroid surface properties (the regolith) is normally measured using images or ...
- 2,506
5
votes
How can the CYGNSS spacecrafts (actually) measure ocean roughness?
The CYGNSS spacecraft will use a technique called "Delay Doppler Mapping". Each satellite will be equipped with a Delay Doppler Mapping Instrument (DDMI), which is capable of receiving four DDM's at ...
- 5,626
5
votes
Data from space missions
NASA requires all missions to release the raw data on a regular basis, in particular to the Planetary Data System. ESA releases their data to the Planetary Science Archive. Russia releases it's data ...
- 121k
5
votes
Accepted
When will NASA PubSpace really make publicly available most of NASA funded research papers?
Never. The goal of PubSpace as stated by NASA themselves:
NASA is using PubMed Central (PMC) to permanently preserve and provide easy public access to the peer-reviewed papers resulting from NASA-...
- 126k
5
votes
Why is the Duration of Time spent in the Dayside greater than that of the Night side of the Moon for Chandrayaan-2 Orbiter?
It all depends on how you define "dayside" and "nightside", and how you define "entering" or "exiting" either one of them for a satellite.
I suppose a big part of the confusion comes from this ...
- 153
4
votes
Accepted
What does this paper say is wrong (quantitatively and procedurally) with WISE & NeoWISE asteroid data?
Upon reading "An empirical examination of WISE/NEOWISE asteroid analysis and results":
As I understand it, nothing is wrong with the data obtained from the missions. What is wrong is the ...
- 1,020
4
votes
Accepted
What are InSight's barometric and seismic digitization rates and frequency responses when it "listens to the wind"?
The page at the NASA Planetary Data System Planetary Atmosphere Node on the Temperature and Wind for InSight (TWINS) instrument and Pressure Sensor (PS) has a description of the instrument and data ...
- 2,506
4
votes
Were there any policies or technical reasons for powering down all Apollo ALSEPs in 1977?
A number of online resources (NASA & https://astronomy.com/news/2019/06/what-did-the-apollo-astronauts-leave-behind) state the reason for decommissioning the Apollo ALSEPs on September 30, 1977 ...
- 13k
4
votes
Accepted
Ceres gravity from spherical harmonics from Dawn, how to get the coefficients, definitions and potential?
What you're missing is the descriptions of the contents of that file. That's in another file, right next to the one you found. The data for the Ceres gravity model are in JGDWN_CER18C_SHA.TAB and the ...
- 73.2k
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