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6 votes
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Details pour in from New Horizons’ visit to Arrokoth, an object in the Kuiper Belt
7 votes -
A two-year investigation of the ties between a network of deceptive dating sites and Firefly Aerospace, a company selected by NASA for bidding on lunar payloads
9 votes -
SpaceX is taking over the tiny village of Boca Chica
7 votes -
What we know about dark matter
3 votes -
Highlights from ten years of observations of the Sun by NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory
9 votes -
Iranian rocket fails to reach necessary speed for putting Zafar 1 communications satellite into orbit
6 votes -
There are no known commodity resources in space that could be sold on Earth
13 votes -
NASA brings Voyager 2 fully back online, 11.5 billion miles from Earth
21 votes -
Boeing's Starliner could have failed catastrophically during a December mission if a software error hadn't been found and fixed while the vehicle was in orbit
10 votes -
SpaceX will now let you book a rocket launch online starting at $1 million
9 votes -
Voyager 2 engineers working to restore normal operations
10 votes -
A small rocket maker is running a different kind of space race
6 votes -
Inside SpinLaunch, the space industry’s best kept secret
13 votes -
A Russian "inspector" spacecraft now appears to be shadowing an American spy satellite
4 votes -
First images from the National Science Foundation's Inouye Solar Telescope show the surface of the sun at the highest resolution ever
8 votes -
Two defunct satellites will narrowly avoid colliding on Wednesday evening, passing each other just fifteen to thirty meters apart while travelling at 14.7 kilometers per second
16 votes -
NASA selects Axiom Space to build commercial space station module
5 votes -
James Webb Space Telescope: Technical challenges have caused schedule strain and may increase costs
7 votes -
Dark Energy may be an illusion: Gravitons themselves may have mass
20 votes -
NASA prepares to shut down Spitzer Space Telescope
6 votes -
NASA administrator Jim Bridenstine on the year ahead: ‘A lot of things have to go right’
10 votes -
DirecTV fears explosion risk from satellite with damaged battery
7 votes -
SpaceX conducts successful Crew Dragon In-Flight Abort Test
16 votes -
Power loss halves GEO satellite Eutelsat 5 West B capacity, while ESO hosted payload spared
4 votes -
Sierra Nevada explores other uses of Dream Chaser
4 votes -
NASA wants to grow a Moon base out of mushrooms
13 votes -
SpaceX tests black satellite to reduce ‘megaconstellation’ threat to astronomy
15 votes -
Ask Tildes: Design a spacecraft! You've been offered to submit a space exploration misson, with a cost cap of $1 billion. What is your proposal?
You've been asked to submit a proposal for a space exploration mission of your own desire, to the New Frontiers spaceflight program. These missions have a cost cap of approximately $700 million to...
You've been asked to submit a proposal for a space exploration mission of your own desire, to the New Frontiers spaceflight program. These missions have a cost cap of approximately $700 million to $1 billion, and have famously produced the following spacecraft:
- New Horizons, a flyby probe to Pluto.
- Juno, a polar orbiter of Jupiter.
- OSIRIS-REx, a sample return mission to a rocky asteroid.
- Dragonfly, a drone lander to Saturn's moon Titan.
These are medium-sized missions in both scope, and cost. You can't build the Mars 2020 Rover, or the James Webb Space Telescope. What do you send, and where? Things to consider:
Technology Readiness Level
Administrators are less likely to choose your mission if you choose to integrate risky or untested flight hardware, or novel concepts into the mission design. You're more likely to get selected with more conventional hardware.
Power Source
Your best bet is probably solar panels, maybe something commercial off the shelf like NG's Ultraflex panels? The downside is that these are only effective up to about Jupiter's orbit, and generate power according to the inverse square law. How much do these cost and weigh? How much energy do you generate?
If you go further out into the solar system than that, you'll need a Radioisotope Thermoelectric Generator (RTG). There aren't many of those around, in fact, after Mars 2020 has taken its RTG, there's two left. What makes your mission deserving of an RTG? Is there enough power in the MMRTG to power your mission?
Propulsion
Does your mission need in-flight propulsion? Either for orbit insertion, landing, or maybe a long coast with Ion thrusters like Dawn? If the latter, you can get some pretty good Xenon-powered thrusters, like NEXT, which gives you 236mN of force from 7kW of input power (this rules out an RTG as your power source).
Don't need long-term burn capability? Maybe a COTS bipropellant engine like LEROS is your thing. Watch your weight though, bipropellants aren't efficient! Often more than half the mass of large spacecraft can be dedicated to just propulsion alone.
Instruments
Go crazy. What are you looking to research? Do you need a long range camera, a wide angle camera, something outside of the visible spectrum, a spectrometer, ground-penetrating radar? Do you have a mass-budget in mind?
Launch Vehicle
Every dollar you save on your launch vehicle, you get to add to your mission profile. Your best bet in terms of performance and cost is probably Falcon 9, which retails for $62-90 million, depending on the amount of assurance for success you need. Of course, if you can find a cheaper launch vehicle, feel free to pick it if it fits into your mission weight.
Objectives
What scientific questions do you want to answer? What are you interested in exploring the most?
13 votes -
SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket to be "destroyed in Dragon fire" as part of upcoming Inflight Abort Test, scheduled for January 18
8 votes -
NASA's exoplanet-seeking satellite TESS has discovered its first Earth-size planet in its star’s habitable zone
7 votes -
The "Devil's Horns"
6 votes -
Hubble surveys huge spiral galaxy UGC 2885, 2.5 times wider than Milky Way and containing ten times as many stars
12 votes -
After redesigns, the finish line is in sight for SpaceX’s Crew Dragon spaceship
6 votes -
Purchasing an astrophotography mount
I do some astrophotography for fun in my spare time. I'd like to get into doing deep sky photography. In order to do that, I need a moving mount that can keep the camera aligned with the stars for...
I do some astrophotography for fun in my spare time. I'd like to get into doing deep sky photography. In order to do that, I need a moving mount that can keep the camera aligned with the stars for minutes to hours at a time. I'll be using (at least initially) a Canon 7D (original version) with Canon lenses rather than a telescope. I currently have a 200mm lens with 2x extender, which makes it 600mm equivalent on that body.
I'd like to know if others here have ever done this and what type of hardware they've used for the motor and mount? Prices seem to be all over the place and options vary greatly on different devices. For example, I see the following:
Sky-watcher EQM-35 - $623.00US - Seems pretty full-featured for the price, as it includes tripod, motorized mount, alignment scope, and database of astronomical objects.
Celestron Advanced VX Computerized Mount - $899.00US - Seems very similar to the above, but does not include a scope, but is ~$250 more
Orion AstroView EQ Mount & EQ-3M Motor Drive Kit - $269.99US - Like the first one, but without the scope and holds less weight, and no database of objects to look atI get the difference in price between the first and last, but not the middle one.
In any event, curious if anyone has used any of the above or any others and what their thoughts are on the quality of different brands, and anything I should be looking for or avoiding.
7 votes -
SpaceX drawing up plans for mobile gantry at launch pad 39A in Cape Canaveral, Florida, to vertically integrate U.S. spy satellites before launch
5 votes -
Animation of first crewed flight of Falcon 9 & Crew Dragon in 2020
@elonmusk: Simulation of first crewed flight of Falcon 9 / Dragon 2020 @NASA https://t.co/BSDPYTcVIG
7 votes -
Starliner in good shape after shortened test flight
6 votes -
SpaceX set for record-breaking 2020 manifest
5 votes -
Diving and driving on icy moons: One strategy for exploring Enceladus and Europa
3 votes -
Building a rocket is hard. But building a parachute is boggling.
7 votes -
Boeing's Starliner Capsule lands safely in New Mexico after OFT mission anomaly
8 votes -
How to escape a supernova: Stellar engines
7 votes -
Apple has secret team working on satellites to beam data to devices
5 votes -
Boeing's uncrewed Starliner capsule will be unable to reach ISS after post-launch malfunction
9 votes -
SpaceX has quietly—and retroactively—relicensed its photos out of the public domain
14 votes -
ESA's exoplanet mission Cheops (Characterising Exoplanet Satellite) has successfully launched
6 votes -
Starliner test flight passes launch readiness review
4 votes -
NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory has observed a new type of magnetic explosion on the Sun
6 votes -
Norway gives Sámi names to distant star and planet as part of the 100th anniversary of the International Astronomical Union
6 votes