Sentences with phrase «when spacecraft»

Cassini released the Huygens probe toward Titan when the spacecraft entered the Saturn system.

You are the second colonization team sent by the U.N.E. (United Nations of Earth) to study potential habitable planets when your spacecraft malfunctions braking from light speed, forcing an emergency landing on the planet's surface.

When a spacecraft carrying research samples from a shady corporate gene - editing experiment explodes in the atmosphere — Marley Shelton appears in this delightfully bonkers riff on «Alien,» with a giant space rat — scattering its tainted shrapnel across the U.S., George, a wolf and a crocodile are infected with the stuff.

Stern, associate vice president of the Space Science and Engineering Division at Southwest Research Institute, serves as principal investigator of NASA's New Horizons mission, which made headlines worldwide when the spacecraft returned remarkable imagery of the Pluto system.

The movements of Jupiter's four largest moons — Io, Europa, Ganymede and Callisto — were captured from June 12 to 29 as Juno traveled closer and closer toward Jupiter, starting when the spacecraft was 10 million miles away until it was 3 million miles away.

Managers of NASA's Dawn spacecraft have developed a preliminary schedule for mission operations when the spacecraft reaches the dwarf planet Ceres in early 2015.

This image is one of those mosaic frames and was acquired on January 14, 2008, 18:10 UTC, when the spacecraft was about 18,000 kilometers (11,000 miles) from the surface of Mercury, about 55 minutes before MESSENGER's closest approach to the planet.

He was in the first US emergency in space with his partner David Scott when their spacecraft spun wildly out of control.

It held to those parameters until last year when spacecraft integration problems surfaced at the prime contractor, Northop Grumman.

When the spacecraft succumbs to the atmosphere, breaking up and unable transmit any more data, it will burn up like a meteor in Saturn's upper atmosphere, NASA officials said.

In this scenario, when the spacecraft ran out of fuel, it would forever remain in a holding orbit around Saturn as a new artificial satellite itself.

Looking for life at Saturn «wasn't on Cassini's pre-launch list,» she adds, but when the spacecraft confirmed Enceladus» salty, water ocean after flying through the moon's enigmatic plumes and taking samples, it became one of the most compelling places beyond Earth to find extraterrestrial biology.

Cassini also received flak from environmental groups who were concerned that when the spacecraft flew by Earth, its radioisotope thermoelectric generator (nuclear power) could pose a threat to our planet, JPL added.

In 2005, Cassini spotted geysers blasting from Enceladus» southern reaches, and when the spacecraft passed through the spray, it detected water and carbon - containing organic compounds.

The image set covers the period 2 - 30 September when the spacecraft was on elliptical orbits that sometimes brought it to within 2 km of the comet's surface.

When the spacecraft plunged into Jupiter's crushing atmosphere on Sept. 21, 2003, it was being deliberately destroyed to protect one of its own discoveries — a possible ocean beneath the icy crust of the moon Europa.

The mighty field overpowers the sun's over a vast distance — in fact, Juno entered its domain on June 25, when the spacecraft was still eight million kilometers away.

Ralph Lorenz at Johns Hopkins University in Maryland says we could use other water jets — those formed when spacecraft release astronaut urine and waste water from fuel cells — to learn about that.

Even then, though, scientists do not expect any decent images or dramatic findings until August 27, when the spacecraft rounds its first orbit and swoops close to the planet again.

(Officially, an orbit starts when the spacecraft reaches its farthest distance, or «apojove,» which it does for the first time on July 27.

Specifically, they analyzed radio occultations — made when Voyager 2 sent radio waves through the rings to be detected back on Earth — and stellar occultations, made when the spacecraft measured the light of background stars shining through the rings, which helps reveal how much material they contain.

Shots of the rings and other features will be available in the coming days, and more stunning views are expected when the spacecraft shoots through the gap between Saturn and its rings again on May 2.

Forward's laser sailing becomes much cheaper when the spacecraft merely need to be large enough to contain a «seed probe,» a robot capable of landing on an asteroid or planet in the target solar system and building up a new civilization from scratch.

Astrium gets its last payment only when the spacecraft achieves orbit around Mars.

When the spacecraft touched down on asteroid Itokawa in November 2005, there were questions about whether it could get back home because of attitude control device failures and fuel leaks.

Pluto nearly fills the frame in this image from the Long Range Reconnaissance Imager (LORRI) aboard NASA's New Horizons spacecraft, taken on July 13, 2015 when the spacecraft was 476,000 miles (768,000 kilometers) from the surface.

«And the reason for this doubt is that when the spacecraft supposedly broke through the heliopause we should have seen some sort of distinctive shift in the magnetic field from one medium to the other,» Schwadron says.

When the spacecraft reached orbit, it opened the experiment's door and exposed one group of water bears to the vacuum of space, while shielding them from all radiation.

When the spacecraft hit the atmosphere, the injury melted into a hole, which allowed superheated air to flow toward the wheel well, melting the aluminum trusses that supported the wing.

When the spacecraft is at the lowest point closest to Earth at 67,000 miles (17.0 earth radii), it remains well above geosynchronous orbit 22,236 miles above the equator where most communications satellites operate.

When spacecraft and satellites travel through space they encounter tiny, fast moving particles of space dust and debris.

When the spacecraft passes through the rings, it will also use its instruments to sniff out their composition.

This atmosphere made Titan a uniquely tempting target when spacecraft began exploring the solar system.

The JunoCam instrument took the images to create this color view on August 27, when the spacecraft was about 48,000 miles (78,000 kilometers) above the polar cloud tops.

Juno successfully executed the first of 36 orbital flybys on Aug. 27 when the spacecraft came about 2,500 miles (4,200 kilometers) above Jupiter's swirling clouds.

Stewart says the study should help NASA's Juno mission come up with better models of Jupiter's interior layers when the spacecraft goes into orbit around the planet in July 2016.

The new view was obtained on July 10, 2016, at 10:30 a.m. PDT (1:30 p.m. EDT, 5:30 UTC), when the spacecraft was 2.7 million miles (4.3 million kilometers) from Jupiter on the outbound leg of its initial 53.5 - day capture orbit.

Cassini's next and final close Enceladus flyby will take place on Dec. 19, when the spacecraft will measure the amount of heat coming from the moon's interior.

When a spacecraft is launched into orbit, the rockets jettison and are not retrieved.

When a spacecraft completes its mission or runs out of fuel, it's sent to what NASA calls a Spacecraft Cemetery.

It's remarkable to see how much better the images got when spacecraft got up close, on flybys or landings.

Because the same side of the moon always faces our planet, such «Earthrise» views only happen when a spacecraft is moving.

Not exact matches

Although Saturn was visited by three spacecraft in the 1970s and 1980s, my fellow scientists and I couldn't have imagined what the Cassini space probe would discover during its sojourn at the ringed planet when it launched 20 years ago.

And when his Friendship 7 spacecraft splashed down a few hours later, the first American to orbit the Earth reminded us that with courage and a spirit of discovery there's no limit to the heights we can reach together.

When Elon Musk, co-founder and CEO of electric - car company Tesla, founded SpaceX back in 2002, he probably didn't envision that his company, which designs, manufactures and launches advanced rockets and spacecraft, would be responsible for delivering better coffee to astronauts on the International Space Station (ISS).

But when he climbs up inside the spacecraft, he's real.»

And when you're tasked with building and launching spacecraft millions or even billions of miles from Earth, on missions that take several years, long - term planning is pretty critical.

If the landing is successful, it will be the first time scientists have landed a probe on a comet, and it will be the completion of a mission that began 10 years ago when the Rosetta spacecraft launched.

When space stations come down, «a funny thing» happens that helps doom the spacecraft, Gossner said.

It seems as if the brightest minds on Earth should be able to pinpoint when and where giant spacecraft will reenter Earth's atmosphere, but it's not so simple.