Items tagged with Orion
The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) is working to literally “boldly go where no man has gone before”. NASA is currently assessing the feasibility of adding a crew to the first integrated flight of its Space Launch System (SLS) booster and Orion spacecraft on Exploration Mission-1 (EM-1). The project's ultimate goal is to send human beings into deep space as part of a Mars or Asteroid Redirect Mission. William Gerstenmaier, associate administrator for NASA’s Human Exploration and Operations Mission Directorate in Washington, is in charge of the study. He will assess the risks and benefits of such a mission as well as the additional resources and work needed to add a crew...
Read more...
Following a day of delays that temporarily grounded the project, NASA this morning launched its Orion spacecraft from Cape Canaveral, Florida this morning. This is a test run for the crewless spacecraft, which lifted off the ground without issue and is now "flying comfortably through space," according to NASA's blog. Orion is now orbiting above Earth at a low altitude before the United Launch Alliance's Delta IV Heavy rocket sends the spacecraft higher into space. If all goes to plan, Orion will fly 3,600 miles high before returning to Earth -- it's scheduled to splash down into the Pacific Ocean at around 11:29 AM EST. Liftoff didn't come easy. Orion was originally scheduled to conduct its first...
Read more...
NASA is working hard to launch its [currently] unmanned Orion spacecraft this morning, though multiple issues have kept it grounded so far. It was initially supposed to blast off at 7:05 AM ET before being put on hold because a boat came too close, followed by another delay due to a gust of wind, and most recently because a fill and drain valve on the rocket did not function correctly. If NASA isn't able to launch Orion by 9:44 AM ET, it will have to wait until another day. That scenario becomes increasingly likely with each passing moment, especially since mission managers made the decision to cycle the fill and drain valves on Orion's three core boosters to see if that solves the problem. Nevertheless,...
Read more...
With the announcement of a new dual-core processor that is designed to be used in tablet PCs, netbooks, and smartphones, Samsung is giving us a glimpse at what may be coming in 2011. The new processor, codenamed Orion, contains a pair of 1GHz ARM Cortex A9 cores. This processor will be able to handle 1080p video playback and recording at 30 frames per second. In addition, devices that use the processor such as a smartphone will be able to support two displays while also driving a third external display such as a TV or monitor via an HDMI port. Samsung is also touting Orion's graphics capabilities: According to the company, Orion is capable of delivering five times the 3D graphics performance...
Read more...
