THE TECH-LICIOUS: NASA

Curiosity marks two years on Mars

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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: large;"><img alt="Artist's impression of Curiosity (Image: NASA)" height="358" src="http://images.gizmag.com/hero/curiosity-2nd-year.jpg" title="Artist's impression of Curiosity (Image: NASA)" width="640" /> </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">Break out the party hats – NASA’s Curiosity rover
 is celebrating its second anniversary on Mars. On August 5, 2012 at 
10:31 pm PDT (August 6, 05:31 GMT), the unmanned spacecraft touched down
 at Bradbury Landing in Gale Crater on the start of a multi-year mission
 to seek out areas where life could or may once have existed, and is now
 preparing to carry on for a third year.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">The nuclear-powered explorer had a very busy first year.
 As the largest, most advanced rover ever built, nothing like this had 
ever flown before and since the nearest garage was a hundred million 
miles away, the first months that Curiosity spent on Mars involved an 
array of system tests before it took it first tentative rolls across the
 Martian sands on its roundabout path to Mount Sharp.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">Curiosity’s main mission was to find out if there are any places on 
Mars where life could have once existed – specifically, areas displaying
 minerals and geology that could have been produced by water. In this, 
Curiosity was very lucky. Bradbury Landing turned out to be very close 
to an ancient dried lake bed in an area named Yellowknife Bay. According
 to NASA, this lake bed may have been able to sustain microbial life 
billions of years ago because it contained all the general 
prerequisites; water, the right chemical elements, and a chemical source
 of energy.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: large;"><a href="http://www.gizmag.com/curiosity-2nd-year/33248/pictures#1" target="_blank"><img alt="Image of tracks left by Curiosity taken the day before the second anniversary (Image: NASA..." src="http://images.gizmag.com/inline/curiosity-2nd-year-0.jpg" width="530" /></a></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">Image of tracks left by Curiosity taken the day before the second anniversary (Image: NASA)</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">"Before landing, we expected that we would need to drive much farther
 before answering that habitability question," says Curiosity Project 
Scientist John Grotzinger of the Caltech. "We were able to take 
advantage of landing very close to an ancient streambed and lake. Now we
 want to learn more about how environmental conditions on Mars evolved, 
and we know where to go to do that."</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">Compared to its first year, which was marked by many firsts, such as 
the first drilling operation on Mars, the first laser firing, and first 
UV night scans, Curiosity's second year on the Red Planet has been more 
routine. However, it hasn’t been without incident. In February, the 
rover cleared a dune
 that blocked its progress and in July it negotiated a detour around 
rocky terrain at Zabriskie Plateau. The latter was of particular concern
 because NASA has noticed that the six aluminum wheels that carry 
Curiosity are wearing faster than anticipated.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">NASA says that time is taking its toll on the computer systems as 
well with mission control nursing Curiosity’s two computers to make sure
 they both remain in proper working order. It had to switch to its B 
computer after the A computer started acting up, and in July the rover 
got a two-day holiday as technicians confirmed that the A computer could
 still act as a backup should the need arise.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: large;"><a href="http://www.gizmag.com/curiosity-2nd-year/33248/pictures#3" target="_blank"><img alt="Diagram of Curiosity (Image: NASA)" src="http://images.gizmag.com/inline/curiosity-2nd-year-2.jpg" width="530" /></a></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">On the science side, year two has had its share of surprises. The biggest one is the total lack of methane gas
 detected in the Martian atmosphere. Because methane is a key indicator 
of biological activity, this was a blow to chances of finding life on 
Mars today. Worse, it meant that other sources of methane are absent on 
Mars as well, which poses some head-scratching questions.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">On the plus side, Curiosity has been monitoring the radiation on the 
Martian surface as a prelude to manned expeditions. NASA says that 
though the levels are high, they are consistent with predictions.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">Currently, Curiosity is making its way toward new areas of study 
about 2 miles (3.2 km) from its present position. It’s next stop is a 
rock outcrop called "Pahrump Hills,” which lies about 1 mile away on 
Zabriskie Plateau.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">source-<a href="http://www.gizmag.com/curiosity-2nd-year/33248/" target="_blank">gizmag </a></span></span></div>
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Curiosity marks two years on Mars

Break out the party hats – NASA’s Curiosity rover is celebrating its second anniversary on Mars. On August 5, 2012 at 10:31 pm PDT...

NASA tests ‘impossible’ no-fuel quantum space engine – and it actually works

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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;"><img alt="emdrive head" height="353" src="http://www.extremetech.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/emdrive-head-640x353.jpg" width="640" /></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">A study conducted last year by NASA scientists has become the latest, and by far the highest profile, piece of evidence in favor of a seemingly impossible space thruster design that’s been evoking worldwide skepticism for some time now. Apparently annoyed by the persistent boosters of several similar but distinct designs, the space agency finally agreed to test an American-made variant called the Cannae Drive. “Alright!” they said. “We’ll test your stupid drive that won’t work.” Except it did work. Seemingly in contravention of the law of conservation of momentum, the team confirmed that the device produces thrust by using electricity, and nothing else. Supporters call them microwave thrusters or quantum vacuum plasma thrusters (QVPT), while most others use the phrase “anomalous thrust device.”</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">First, the results of NASA’s experiment, since that’s all the team itself wants you to be talking about. Seemingly wanting to avoid unproductive controversy about the nature of existence, they’ve totally ignored the question of <em>how</em> the drive works in favour of simply reporting the data. With controls in place to avoid any confounding forces or variables, the NASA team recorded a reliable thrust between 30 and 50 micro-Newtons, less than a thousandth of the output of some relatively low-powered ion thrusters in use today. Still, the ion thrusters require fuel to operate, and the original QVPT inventor claims the version NASA tested is flawed, leading them to collect far lower thrust readings than his original can provide.</span></div>
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<a href="http://www.extremetech.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/emdrive-21.jpg" style="color: #b1700a; text-decoration: none;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;"><img alt="This is an older version of the concept than the one NASA tested, though it may still produce more thrust." class="size-large wp-image-187360" height="411" src="http://www.extremetech.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/emdrive-21-640x411.jpg" style="border-style: none;" width="640" /></span></a><div class="wp-caption-text" style="color: #666666; line-height: 15px; padding: 10px 0px;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">This is an older version of the QVPT than the one NASA tested, though it may still produce more thrust</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">If confirmed, the practical upshot of this technology would be amazing. Solar panels could provide the electricity needed to keep the thruster working, meaning that propulsion would be low-thrust and long-term with virtually no associated cost. That would not only drastically reduce the cost of keeping satellites running and in orbit, but it could make interstellar travel much easier; Harold White, of warp drive fame, predicted that a beefed up version of the QVPT could reach Proxima Centauri in about <a href="http://ntrs.nasa.gov/archive/nasa/casi.ntrs.nasa.gov/20140000851.pdf" style="color: #b1700a; text-decoration: none;">30 years</a> (assuming the concept actually works at all).</span></div>
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<a href="http://www.extremetech.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/emdrive-3.jpg" style="color: #b1700a; text-decoration: none;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;"><img alt=""Warp" drive isn't such a hare-brained concept any more, so why should quantum drives be?" class="size-medium wp-image-187358" height="200" src="http://www.extremetech.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/emdrive-3-300x200.jpg" style="border-style: none;" width="300" /></span></a><div class="wp-caption-text" style="color: #666666; line-height: 15px; padding: 10px 0px;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">Warp drives aren’t such a harebrained concept any more, so why should quantum drives be?</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">While NASA might not want to talk about it, though, for us it’s worth discussing just how this drive’s creators hypothesize the thruster works. By now, most people are aware that the laws of classical physics tend to break down at the quantum scale, and exploiting that fact can give you interesting little physical impossibilities like infinitely accelerating negative-mass photons. However, the effects of these quantum-scale impossibilities have always stayed at the quantum scale; sure one atom could theoretically phase-shift through another, but we still can’t run through walls.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">The central insight here (assuming this isn’t all a big mistake) is that something called quantum vacuum fluctuations will occasionally spontaneously create particles all throughout the vacuum of space, and that these short-lived particles can be put to useful work. Thus, this thruster actually <em>does</em> use fuel — it just finds and uses that fuel as it goes. The thruster essentially turns these virtual particles into a plasma and expels them out the back of the ship, much like a conventional fuel source. The quantum fuel, though, spontaneously appears inside the thruster’s reaction area without even the need for collection or injection hardware. All things considered, that’s more than a little exciting.</span></div>
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<a href="http://www.extremetech.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/t6.jpg" style="color: #b1700a; text-decoration: none;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;"><img alt="NASA ion thruster" class="size-large wp-image-187383" height="480" src="http://www.extremetech.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/t6-640x480.jpg" style="border-style: none;" width="640" /></span></a><div class="wp-caption-text" style="color: #666666; line-height: 15px; padding: 10px 0px;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">Ion thrusters are another low-powered solution, applying weak but constant acceleration</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">The original design, called <a href="http://emdrive.com/" style="color: #b1700a; text-decoration: none;">the emDrive</a> by creator Roger Shawyer, should get significantly more attention in the coming months, which ought to feel good given the long struggles he’s had with professional apathy and skepticism. As mentioned, the version tested by NASA is distinct from the emDrive, but still (they think) makes use of the quantum vacuum particles as the propellant. There are very preliminary plans to test a version of the drive in space, but such orbital work is expensive; now it might finally have the juice to warrant such a plan.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">SOURCE-<a href="http://www.extremetech.com/extreme/187346-nasa-tests-impossible-no-fuel-quantum-space-engine-and-it-actually-works" target="_blank">EXTREAM TECH</a></span></div>
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NASA tests ‘impossible’ no-fuel quantum space engine – and it actually works

A study conducted last year by NASA scientists has become the latest, and by far the highest profile, piece of evidence in favor of a se...

NASA reveals instruments selected for Mars 2020 rover

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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;"><img alt="The seven instruments selected for Mars 2020 (Image: NASA)" height="359" src="http://images.gizmag.com/hero/mars-2020-instruments.jpg" width="640" /></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; line-height: 22px;">NASA’s </span>Curiosity Mars rover<span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; line-height: 22px;"> has been trundling around the Red Planet for almost two years now, so the space agency is looking for a trade in. At a press conference in Washington DC, it announced the seven instruments selected to fly on the Mars 2020 rover mission that is scheduled to launch in July or August 2020 with a landing set for February 2021 at a yet to be determined site. The instruments were selected out of 58 proposals from US and international scientists and engineers, and represent a development cost of US$130 million.</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">The Mars 2020 rover uses the same basic design and engineering as Curiosity, which is currently exploring the Gale Crater region of Mars. While it will come with some improvements – such as newly designed wheels – the launch system, cruise stage, aeroshell, and Skycrane landing system will be almost identical to that used on its predecessor. Like Curiosity, the new rover’s power source will be a Multi-Mission Radioisotope Thermoelectric Generator (MMRTG) using the heat from the natural decay of plugs of plutonium-238 nuclear fuel.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">The purpose of the mission is to study the geology of Mars, to seek out signs of ancient life, and conduct experiments related to the habitability of Mars for future manned expeditions. In addition, Mars 2020 will collect and store rock and soil samples in a container similar to one developed by the ESA, to be returned to Earth by a later mission.</span></div>
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<a href="http://www.gizmag.com/mars-2020-rover-instruments-announcement/33184/pictures#15" style="background-color: transparent; color: #1e8dd7; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;"><img alt="A sample return container (Image: NASA)" src="http://images.gizmag.com/inline/mars-2020-instruments-14.jpg" style="border: 0px; vertical-align: bottom;" width="530" /></span></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">A sample return container (Image: NASA)</span></div>
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The seven new instruments</span></h2>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;"><b>Mastcam-Z:</b> An advanced camera system, the Mastcam-Z is a new mast-mounted camera for the Mars 2020 rover that has zoom, panoramic and stereoscopic imaging capabilities. It’s used for mineralogical surveys and general imaging to aid rover operations. The zoom capability is a considerable advance because the current camera on Curiosity relies on two fixed-focus lenses and has great difficulty creating stereoscopic images.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;"><b>SuperCam:</b> The Super-Cam is an imaging device for studying chemical composition and mineralogy. It’s designed to detect organic materials in rocks and regolith at a distance.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;"><b>Planetary Instrument for X-ray Lithochemistry (PIXL):</b> This is an x-ray fluorescence spectrometer, which includes a high-resolution imager to study the fine-scale composition of surface materials for detailed detection and analysis. Mounted on the rover’s robotic arm, it can focus its x-rays on a surface sample and complete an analysis within minutes or even seconds while its imager records visual details to aid mineral identification.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;"><b>Scanning Habitable Environments with Raman and Luminescence for Organics and Chemicals (SHERLOC):</b> SHERLOC is a fine-scale spectrometer that uses an ultraviolet laser for mineralogical studies and detecting organic compounds. According to NASA, it’s the first UV Raman spectrometer (named after the Raman scattering effect used) sent to the Martian surface.</span></div>
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<a href="http://www.gizmag.com/mars-2020-rover-instruments-announcement/33184/pictures#8" style="background-color: transparent; color: #1e8dd7; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;"><img alt="SHERLOC infographic (Image: NASA)" src="http://images.gizmag.com/inline/mars-2020-instruments-7.jpg" style="border: 0px; vertical-align: bottom;" width="530" /></span></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">"This instrument uses two distinct detection strategies," says principal investigator, Luther Beegle of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California. "It can detect an important class of carbon molecules with high sensitivity, and it also identifies minerals that provide information about ancient aqueous environments."</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;"><b>Mars Oxygen ISRU Experiment (MOXIE):</b> This is an experiment from MIT that will attempt to produce oxygen from the carbon dioxide in the thin Martian atmosphere. NASA hopes that this could one day lead to a way to provide explorers with oxygen without the expense of carting it from Earth.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;"><b>Mars Environmental Dynamics Analyzer (MEDA):</b> A weather station to measure temperature, wind direction and velocity, barometric pressure and humidity, as well as the size and shape of dust particles in the air.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;"><b>Radar Imager for Mars' Subsurface Exploration (RIMFAX):</b> Mounted under the rover’s belly, this is a centimeter-scale ground-penetrating radar for studying subsurface features.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">NASA says that Mars 2020 will spend at least one Martian year or two Earth years studying the Red Planet. The space agency hopes that data sent back by the robotic explorer will provide insights into the potential hazards from Martian dust as well as the prospect of manufacturing oxygen out of atmospheric carbon dioxide for breathing and rocket propulsion, which would greatly reduce the cost of sending people to Mars.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">"The 2020 rover will help answer questions about the Martian environment that astronauts will face and test technologies they need before landing on, exploring and returning from the Red Planet," says William Gerstenmaier, associate administrator for the Human Exploration and Operations Mission Directorate. "Mars has resources needed to help sustain life, which can reduce the amount of supplies that human missions will need to carry. Better understanding the Martian dust and weather will be valuable data for planning human Mars missions. Testing ways to extract these resources and understand the environment will help make the pioneering of Mars feasible."</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">The press conference introducing the new instrument suite for the Mars 2020 can be viewed below.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">source-<a href="http://www.gizmag.com/mars-2020-rover-instruments-announcement/33184/" target="_blank">gizmag</a></span></div>

NASA reveals instruments selected for Mars 2020 rover

NASA’s Curiosity Mars rover has been trundling around the Red Planet for almost two years now, so the space agency is looking for a tr...

NASA’s newest telescope is housed in a special jumbo jet that flies at 45,000 feet

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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;"><img alt="SOFIA" src="http://www.extremetech.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/SOFIA-640x353.jpg" /></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">The thick, soupy atmosphere of Earth is great for breathing, but not so much for seeing what’s going on in the cosmos. That’s why the most spectacular and scientifically important images of the universe have been taken by the Hubble Space Telescope. It has served the world well for more than 20 years, but Hubble is nearing the end of its useful life, and the James Webb telescope is still years away from completion. In the meantime, NASA and the German Aerospace Center (DLR) have just completed the Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy (SOFIA) — a giant telescope that rides on the back of a high-altitude jumbo jet. It’s really the next best thing to being in space.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">NASA has been working on the SOFIA project for a number of years, but only recently has the flying observatory been declared fully operational. Sadly, it’s not as simple as strapping a telescope to a standard jet and heading for the skies. The plane itself, a Boeing 747SP, is highly specialized. This craft was designed by Boeing to be able to fly higher, faster, and longer than a standard 747, which is perfect for SOFIA. The frame of the aircraft has been modified to be considerably lighter, but the most obvious change is the addition of a large door toward the aft where the 2.5-meter telescope peeks out.</span></div>
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<a href="http://www.extremetech.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/sofia-orion-spitzer.jpg" style="color: #b1700a; text-decoration: none;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;"><img alt="Imagery taken by NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope (similar to Hubble), overlaid with SOFIA imagery" class="size-large wp-image-186179" height="529" src="http://www.extremetech.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/sofia-orion-spitzer-640x529.jpg" style="border-style: none;" width="640" /></span></a><div class="wp-caption-text" style="color: #666666; line-height: 15px; padding: 10px 0px;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">Imagery taken by NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope (similar to Hubble), overlaid with SOFIA imagery</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">The unique design of this aircraft allows it to remain in the stratosphere (at about 45,000 feet, 13,000 meters) for several hours making observations. At that altitude, most of the atmospheric distortion ground telescopes contend with <a href="http://www.geek.com/science/nasas-sofia-telescope-lives-in-a-jumbo-jet-at-45000-ft-1598833/" style="color: #b1700a; text-decoration: none;">is a non-issue</a>, and it can fly to any part of the globe to observe different parts of the sky. One advantage SOFIA has over space-based telescopes is that it lands at the end of each mission, which makes it considerably easier to repair and outfit for particular tasks. A telescope like Hubble needs to be almost entirely automated and servicing it is a <em>bit </em>more involved.</span></div>
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<a href="http://www.extremetech.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/1024px-SOFIA_2.5M_Primary_Mirror.jpg" style="color: #b1700a; text-decoration: none;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;"><img alt="Telescope" class="size-large wp-image-186071" height="415" src="http://www.extremetech.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/1024px-SOFIA_2.5M_Primary_Mirror-640x415.jpg" style="border-style: none;" width="640" /></span></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">SOFIA’s telescope works with nine interchangeable instruments that allow it to do astronomy in the infrared and visible spectrum. However, only one instrument can be attached at a time. That’s not a huge problem as NASA plans more than 100 flights per year. The telescope also has a system of gyroscopes and pressurized oil bearings to cope with vibration from turbulence and the engines. Using these packages, SOFIA is capable of investigating many of the same things as space telescopes including exoplanet study, comet composition, and stellar evolution. The newly completed GREAT spectrometer will be perfect for peering deep into distant planetary nebulae.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">While operating SOFIA is cheap compared to launching a space telescope, the yearly costs are still more than $80 million. NASA has worried publicly that unless the DLR contributes more funding to the program, it might have to be grounded in a few years. The space agency is working to convince Congress to authorize additional funding in 2015 for the SOFIA program. Until it knows for sure, NASA will continue flying SOFIA missions and studying the universe at 600 miles per hour.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">SOURCE-<a href="http://www.extremetech.com/extreme/186069-nasas-newest-telescope-is-housed-in-a-special-jumbo-jet-that-flies-at-45000-feet" target="_blank">EXTREAM TECH</a></span></div>
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NASA’s newest telescope is housed in a special jumbo jet that flies at 45,000 feet

The thick, soupy atmosphere of Earth is great for breathing, but not so much for seeing what’s going on in the cosmos. That’s why the mo...