Watch a Cygnus spacecraft burn up as it re-enters the atmosphere

spacecraft- burn- up- when it-re-enters -the -planet -earth-atmosphere

Sometimes you just want to watch a spacecraft burn. Last week researchers jumped on board a chartered aeroplane to watch the re-entry of an uncrewed Cygnus capsule as it returned from the International Space Station (ISS).

Studying its destruction should teach us more about the way spacecraft break up as they enter the atmosphere, which could prove useful when the ISS is eventually brought down to Earth.

Cygnus is a cargo delivery craft designed to resupply the ISS and then be filled with rubbish for disposal as it burns up on re-entry. This particular spacecraft, Cygnus OA-6, was launched to the ISS in March and left the station on June 14, eventually re-entering on June 22.

Researchers working on a project called the Cygnus Shallow Re-Entry Observation Campaign flew a plane from Sydney, Australia to track the craft during its descent, recording how it brightened and broke up.

They also took spectroscopy measurements to determine the chemistry of the burn, seeing signs of magnesium, sodium and lithium atoms. An instrument on board the Cygnus was also meant to transmit data from inside the burning spacecraft, but unfortunately failed.

The observations weren’t the only fiery experience for this Cygnus. NASA had also placed an experiment called Saffire-I on board to test what happens when the insides of a spacecraft accidentally catch fire.

The fuse was lit on June 16 during the craft’s descent, and provided valuable data on how fire spreads in microgravity – watch below to see it burn.

Studying spacecraft destruction could prove useful in the next decade, when the ISS is expected to reach the end of its life. The station can’t sustain itself in orbit without regular boosts from docked spacecraft, so once abandoned it will gradually fall back to Earth.

Given that it is larger than a football field, NASA and the other ISS partners will want to bring it down safely, without risking harm to anyone on the ground, so watching disposable spacecraft like Cygnus re-enter is a way to get in some much-needed practice.

via - newscientist

Comments

Team Work - Meaning and Tips for better Team Work

A single brain is not always capable of making key decisions on its own. To come up with an efficient solution, an individual requires the help and advice of others. A team is established when individuals get together on a common platform with the common goal of completing a task. To guarantee optimum compatibility, team members should ideally come from similar backgrounds and have a single aim. To provide their best, the team members must complement each other and function as a single unit in tight cooperation. "There is no I in Team Work," as the saying goes, and each member must put the needs of his team first. Personal interests must take a second seat. Any team's performance is directly proportionate to the relationship between its members and their combined efforts. What is the definition of teamwork? Teamwork is defined as the sum of each team member's efforts toward the fulfilment of the team's goal. In other words, any team's backbone is its ability t

Scientists discover a new theory / The fundamental property of light – 150 years after Maxwell

Light plays a vital role in our everyday lives and technologies based on light are all around us. So we might expect that our understanding of light is pretty settled. But scientists have just uncovered a new fundamental property of light that gives new insight into the 150-year-old classical theory of electromagnetism and which could lead to applications manipulating light at the nanoscale. It is unusual for a pure-theory physics paper to make it into the journal Science. So when one does, it’s worth a closer look. In the new study, researchers bring together one of physics' most venerable set of equations – those of James Clerk’s Maxwell’s famous theory of light – with one of the hot topics in modern solid-state physics: the quantum spin Hall effect and topological insulators . To understand what the fuss is about, let’s first consider the behaviour of electrons in the quantum spin Hall effect. Electrons possess an intrinsic spin as if they were tiny spinning-tops,

19 Types Of Content Writing Services For Your Business

It’s hard to know which type of content writing service is the best for your business. There are so many different types of content writing services out there that it’s easy to get confused. You end up wondering if you’re choosing the right one for you. In this post, we’ll get rid of this confusion, once and for all. I’m going to list out the different kinds of writing services you could use. By the end of this article, you’ll know whether you need a copywriter, a content writer, or a social media marketer and how they can help you achieve your business goals. This post is also useful for writers who want to hone their writing skills in a specific area. Let’s dive in and learn what types of content writing services exist and when you should use them. (Bonus – if you want to hire the top 1% of writers, go to the bottom to learn how). Types of Content Writing Services As we go through the list of content writing services, you will find that many of them overlap. That’s perfectly

The LimitlessX - Get Tech Science News around the Globe

Search This Blog