Exploring the Planets

A planetary spacecraft has basic instruction programmed into its onboard computers at launch. However, most of the details are sent by controllers on Earth at a later stage, because journeys are often several years long.

After discovering a problem with the radio transmissions between Cassini and Huygens, mission controllers were able to change their plans.

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Other Solar Systems
Is our Solar system unique in the Universe ? Until recently, astronomers could only guess whether other stars are orbited by planetary systems. Extrasolar planets – those that orbit stars other than the Sun – are difficult to detect, because they are about one – billionth the brightness of their parent stars. Extrasolar planets can also be detected by watching for a drop in brightness as ...
An Internal View of the Saturn V
When the American Space program finally achieved a Moon landing on July 20, 1969, the Apollo 11 spacecraft was launched by a powerful rocked called Saturn V. The most powerful rocker ever, Saturn V was used to launch all the Apollo Spacecraft on lunar missions.
How Eclipses of the Sun Happen
In its 27 – day Orbit of the Earth, the Moon sometimes passes directly in front of the Sun and we see a solar eclipse. In one of the natural world’s most eerie, beautiful spectacles, the dark circle of the Moon gradually creeps over the Sun. Between two and five solar eclipses are visible from somewhere on the Earth each year. When the Moon is at its farthest from the Earth, it is not ...
Asteroid Uses
The manufacturing of a spacecraft involves collaboration with lots of different sources. They include the Raw material with material processing that contains Material processing base, Asteroid exploration, Automated Teleoperated lunar. The second part contains the Manufacturing combined with the technology that has Ground demonstration of Starting kit, Substitutability Research, Teleoperation ...
Old Time Map of Celestial Objects
The divine circle might be acknowledged to be interminable in sweep. This denotes any focus within it, incorporating that involved by the spectator, might be recognized the inside. It moreover indicates that everything parallel lines, be they millimeters separated or crosswise over the Earth's planetary group from one another, will appear to cross the circle at a lone indicate, comparable to the v...
The Milky Way in a Diagram
Home galaxy of Earth, the Milky way is a spiral – shaped system of a few hundred billion stars. Bright regions of recently formed stars highlight its arms, while older stars explode or expel their outer layers as beautiful planetary nebulae, then fade away and die. A thick swarm of orange and red stars marks the galactic bulge, encapsulating the star-packed galactic center.
Red Giant Stars Explained
A red monster is an iridescent monster star of level or halfway mass (harshly 0.5–10 sun oriented masses) in a late stage of stellar development. The external environment is swelled and tenuous, making the span monstrous and the surface temperature flat, an as yet undisclosed place from 5,000 K and easier. The manifestation of the red monster is from yellow orange to red, incorporating the unearth...
Space Architecture
Space architecture, in it is least complex definition, is the hypothesis and hone of composing and manufacturing possessed territories in space. The engineering way to space apparatus outline locations the aggregate raised earth, drawing... 
Farside of the Moon
The farside of the moon is always turned away from the Earth. Its appearance remained a mystery until 1959, when the Russian spacecraft Luna 3 was able to travel behind the Moon and send back the first photographs. Although the farside looks similar to the moon’s nearside, there are obvious differences. It has few maria, because the lunar crust is thicker than on the nearside, making it dif...
Messages Sent into Space
Space messages tell about the biosphere, that includes the basic chemical compositions of the continents, oceans and atmosphere. The highest and lowest points of Earth and the surface strength of gravity are also listed in the space messages. Along with the relative sizes and ordering of the planets in our solar system, this message tells about the mass and radius of both our Sun and Jupiter. ...
NASA's Future Capsule
NASA has decided that the MPCV, or Multi-purpose Crew Vehicle, will be America’s next crewed spacecraft following the retirement of the space shuttle. The MPCV program is a refocus of the Orion Crew Vehicle Program, which has been in development since 2005.
International Space Station Modules
A manned orbital research facility currently being assembled in outer space. Joint international project. Participating countries: Belgium, Brazil, Great Britain, Germany, Denmark, Spain, Italy, Canada the Netherlands, Norway, Russia, the United States, France, Switzerland, Sweden, Japan.
Apollo Lunar Module Ascent Stage
The Lunar Module Ascent stage also acts as a core component of this vehicle. It contains the Internal Measurement unit, the water tank, AFT Equipment Bay, Electronic Equipment, the Gaseous Oxygen Tank, Helium Tank, RCS Fuel Tank, APS Fuel Tank, RCS Helium Tank, RCS Oxidizer Tank, Ingress or the Egress Hatch and the RCS Quad.
Deflecting Asteroids
Every object exerts a gravitational pull, including a single spacecraft. Merely by hovering above the asteroid. It could pull the rock off course. The approach could even be tried with the Dawn spacecraft, scheduled to finish its tasks in the asteroid belt by 2015. However, such a strategy would be very slow, requiring years or even decades to alter the path of the asteroid.
Jupiter Explained: Inside and Out
Jupiter is the fifth planet from the Sun and the most vast planet in the Sun oriented System. It's a gas monster with mass one-thousandth that of the Sun but is more than two times the mass of every last trace of the different planets in our Earth's planetary group joined together. Jupiter is arranged as a gas monster plus Saturn, Uranus and Neptune. As one, these four planets are at times poi...
The Sun Explained: Inside and Out
The Sun is the star at the focal point of the Earth's planetary group. It's just about splendidly round and comprises of blazing plasma entwined with attractive fields. It has a breadth of about 1,392,684 km, in the ballpark of 109 times that of Earth, and its mass (about 2×1030 kilograms, 330,000 times that of Earth) explains about 99.86% of the sum mass of the Sun oriented System. Synthet...
The Birth of a Solar System
Most astronomers believe that all the members of the solar system, from the giant Sun to the smallest asteroid, were born out of a vast, spinning cloud of gas and dust – the solar nebula. The process began 5 billion years ago with the formation of the Sun. The planets and other objects formed from unused material. When the solar system was nearly complete, 500 million years later, just 0....
Neptune Explained: Inside and Out
Neptune is the eighth and most distant planet from the Sun in the Earth's planetary group. It's the fourth-most expansive planet by distance across and the third-most vast by mass. Neptune is 17 times the mass of Earth and is to some degree more enormous than its close-twin Uranus, which is 15 times the mass of Earth but not as dense. On normal, Neptune circles the Sun at a separation of 30...