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What is Nasa's giant SLS rocket? – BBC News

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.css-1ecljvk-StyledFigureCopyrightposition:absolute;bottom:0;right:0;background:#3F3F42;color:#EEEEEE;padding:0.25rem 0.5rem;text-transform:uppercase;NASA

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.css-14iz86j-BoldTextfont-weight:bold;Nasa has been developing a huge rocket called the Space Launch System (SLS) to launch astronauts to the Moon – and eventually Mars. Set to make its debut in November 2021, the SLS is the most powerful launch vehicle built since the 1960s.

Nasa has plans to send a man and woman to the lunar surface by 2024, in the first landing with humans since Apollo 17 in 1972.

In the last 20 years, astronauts have been making routine trips to and from the International Space Station (ISS).

But the Moon is nearly 1,000 times further than the ISS; getting astronauts there requires a monster rocket.

The SLS is the modern equivalent of the Saturn V, the huge launcher built during the Apollo era. Like the Saturn, it is split into segments, or stages, stacked on top of each other. But the rocket also incorporates technology from the space shuttle.

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  • What is the SpaceX Crew Dragon?
  • Nasa Moon rocket core leaves for testing
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The first version of the SLS will be called Block 1. It will undergo a series of upgrades in coming years so that it can launch heavier payloads to destinations beyond low-Earth orbit.

The Block 1 SLS will tower 23 storeys above the launch pad – making it taller than the Statue of Liberty.

“It is truly an immense rocket. It is just jaw-droppingly big,” said John Shannon, vice president and program manager for the SLS at Boeing, the rocket’s prime contractor. He told BBC News in 2019: “When you see the SLS put together, you just haven’t seen anything like it since the Saturn V.”

The rocket will launch astronauts in Nasa’s next-generation crew vehicle – Orion, boosting it to the speeds necessary to break out of low-Earth orbit and travel onwards to the Moon.

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How the rocket works

The SLS consists of a giant core stage flanked by two solid rocket boosters (SRBs). The core houses two large storage tanks: one for liquid hydrogen, the fuel, and another for liquid oxygen, an “oxidiser”, which makes the fuel burn.

Together, these are known as propellants.

At the base of the core stage are four RS-25 engines, the same ones that powered the spaceplane-like shuttle orbiter, retired in 2011.

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NASA / Michoud / Steve Seipel

When liquid hydrogen and oxygen are fed into the engine chambers and ignited with a spark, the chemical reaction produces vast amounts of energy and steam.

The steam exits engine nozzles at speeds of 16,000 km/h (10,000 mph) to generate thrust – the force that propels a rocket through the air.

The SRBs give the rocket extra power to escape gravity’s clutches. These twin boosters stand more than 17 storeys tall and burn six tonnes of solid propellant each second. They provide 75% of total thrust during the first two minutes of flight.

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The most powerful rocket ever?

If we use thrust as a measure, the SLS will be the most powerful rocket ever when it flies to space in 2021. The Block 1 SLS will generate 8.8 million pounds (39.1 Meganewtons) of thrust at launch, 15% more than the Saturn V.

In the 1960s, the Soviet Union built a rocket called the N1, in a bid to reach the Moon. Its first stage could produce 10.2 million pounds (45.4 Meganewtons) of thrust. But all four test flights ended in failure.

A future version of the SLS – called Block 2 cargo – should approach the N1’s thrust levels. But a vehicle called Starship, being developed by Elon Musk’s company SpaceX, should exceed both – producing as much as 15 million pounds (66.7 Meganewtons) of thrust. Starship is currently under development, although there is no firm date for its first flight.

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The SLS in numbers

NASA
  • The rocket will stand 98m (322ft) tall in its initial, or Block 1, configuration
  • The Block 1 SLS can send more than 27 tonnes (59,500 pounds) to lunar orbits – the equivalent of 11 large sports utility vehicles (SUVs)
  • A future version of the SLS, called Block 2 Cargo, will launch 46 tonnes (101,400 pounds) to the Moon. That’s 18 large SUVs.
  • The SLS will produce 8.8 million pounds (39.1 Meganewtons) of thrust in its Block 1 configuration
  • Four RS-25 engines sit at the base of the core stage; they’re the same ones used in the space shuttle

How shuttle technology was re-used

The SLS core stage is based on the space shuttle’s foam-covered external tank. This tank fed propellant to three RS-25 engines at the rear of the shuttle orbiter. The solid rocket boosters play much the same role in both vehicles.

But the SLS is a very different beast. A number of components and structures derived from the shuttle underwent significant design changes because of the different levels of stress placed on them by the SLS.

As an example of these different stresses, in the space shuttle, the RS-25 engines were canted up and away from the solid rocket boosters. Moving them next to the SRBs exposes them to more shaking. As a result, every system in the complex SLS engine section had to be rigorously tested to ensure it could withstand the vibrations.

Why the SLS was built

In February 2010, the Obama administration cancelled Constellation – George W Bush’s plan to return to the Moon by 2020. The news came as a devastating blow to workers in five southern states – Alabama, Florida, Louisiana, Mississippi and Texas – where Nasa’s human spaceflight programme funded tens of thousands of jobs.

Some Capitol Hill legislators were furious. Richard Shelby, a republican senator from Alabama, said Congress would not “sit back and watch the reckless abandonment of sound principles, a proven track record, a steady path to success, and the destruction of our human spaceflight programme”.

As a compromise, lawmakers from affected states insisted on a single super heavy-lift rocket to replace the Constellation launchers cancelled by President Obama.

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NASA

The SLS design, which was based on Nasa technical studies, was unveiled in 2011. After work started, delays and cost overruns gave ammunition to critics, who thought Nasa should rely on rockets operated by commercial providers.

But without significant modifications, no existing boosters have sufficient power to send Orion, astronauts and large cargo to the Moon in one flight. Only the SLS currently has this capability.

A recent oversight report says Nasa will have spent more than $17bn on the SLS by the end of the 2020 fiscal year.

But with the rocket’s development phase now over, success in a series of eight “Green Run” tests being carried out on the core stage should clear the way for launch in 2021.

John Shannon, who has been in charge of the SLS at Boeing since 2015, explained: “I suspect that once SLS is in the national capability there won’t be a need for another heavy-lift vehicle like it for many years. So this is really a once-in-a-generation opportunity.”

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Here’s how Helene and other storms dumped a whopping 40 trillion gallons of rain on the South

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More than 40 trillion gallons of rain drenched the Southeast United States in the last week from Hurricane Helene and a run-of-the-mill rainstorm that sloshed in ahead of it — an unheard of amount of water that has stunned experts.

That’s enough to fill the Dallas Cowboys’ stadium 51,000 times, or Lake Tahoe just once. If it was concentrated just on the state of North Carolina that much water would be 3.5 feet deep (more than 1 meter). It’s enough to fill more than 60 million Olympic-size swimming pools.

“That’s an astronomical amount of precipitation,” said Ed Clark, head of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s National Water Center in Tuscaloosa, Alabama. “I have not seen something in my 25 years of working at the weather service that is this geographically large of an extent and the sheer volume of water that fell from the sky.”

The flood damage from the rain is apocalyptic, meteorologists said. More than 100 people are dead, according to officials.

Private meteorologist Ryan Maue, a former NOAA chief scientist, calculated the amount of rain, using precipitation measurements made in 2.5-mile-by-2.5 mile grids as measured by satellites and ground observations. He came up with 40 trillion gallons through Sunday for the eastern United States, with 20 trillion gallons of that hitting just Georgia, Tennessee, the Carolinas and Florida from Hurricane Helene.

Clark did the calculations independently and said the 40 trillion gallon figure (151 trillion liters) is about right and, if anything, conservative. Maue said maybe 1 to 2 trillion more gallons of rain had fallen, much if it in Virginia, since his calculations.

Clark, who spends much of his work on issues of shrinking western water supplies, said to put the amount of rain in perspective, it’s more than twice the combined amount of water stored by two key Colorado River basin reservoirs: Lake Powell and Lake Mead.

Several meteorologists said this was a combination of two, maybe three storm systems. Before Helene struck, rain had fallen heavily for days because a low pressure system had “cut off” from the jet stream — which moves weather systems along west to east — and stalled over the Southeast. That funneled plenty of warm water from the Gulf of Mexico. And a storm that fell just short of named status parked along North Carolina’s Atlantic coast, dumping as much as 20 inches of rain, said North Carolina state climatologist Kathie Dello.

Then add Helene, one of the largest storms in the last couple decades and one that held plenty of rain because it was young and moved fast before it hit the Appalachians, said University of Albany hurricane expert Kristen Corbosiero.

“It was not just a perfect storm, but it was a combination of multiple storms that that led to the enormous amount of rain,” Maue said. “That collected at high elevation, we’re talking 3,000 to 6000 feet. And when you drop trillions of gallons on a mountain, that has to go down.”

The fact that these storms hit the mountains made everything worse, and not just because of runoff. The interaction between the mountains and the storm systems wrings more moisture out of the air, Clark, Maue and Corbosiero said.

North Carolina weather officials said their top measurement total was 31.33 inches in the tiny town of Busick. Mount Mitchell also got more than 2 feet of rainfall.

Before 2017’s Hurricane Harvey, “I said to our colleagues, you know, I never thought in my career that we would measure rainfall in feet,” Clark said. “And after Harvey, Florence, the more isolated events in eastern Kentucky, portions of South Dakota. We’re seeing events year in and year out where we are measuring rainfall in feet.”

Storms are getting wetter as the climate change s, said Corbosiero and Dello. A basic law of physics says the air holds nearly 4% more moisture for every degree Fahrenheit warmer (7% for every degree Celsius) and the world has warmed more than 2 degrees (1.2 degrees Celsius) since pre-industrial times.

Corbosiero said meteorologists are vigorously debating how much of Helene is due to worsening climate change and how much is random.

For Dello, the “fingerprints of climate change” were clear.

“We’ve seen tropical storm impacts in western North Carolina. But these storms are wetter and these storms are warmer. And there would have been a time when a tropical storm would have been heading toward North Carolina and would have caused some rain and some damage, but not apocalyptic destruction. ”

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Follow AP’s climate coverage at https://apnews.com/hub/climate

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Follow Seth Borenstein on Twitter at @borenbears

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Associated Press climate and environmental coverage receives support from several private foundations. See more about AP’s climate initiative here. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

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‘Big Sam’: Paleontologists unearth giant skull of Pachyrhinosaurus in Alberta

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It’s a dinosaur that roamed Alberta’s badlands more than 70 million years ago, sporting a big, bumpy, bony head the size of a baby elephant.

On Wednesday, paleontologists near Grande Prairie pulled its 272-kilogram skull from the ground.

They call it “Big Sam.”

The adult Pachyrhinosaurus is the second plant-eating dinosaur to be unearthed from a dense bonebed belonging to a herd that died together on the edge of a valley that now sits 450 kilometres northwest of Edmonton.

It didn’t die alone.

“We have hundreds of juvenile bones in the bonebed, so we know that there are many babies and some adults among all of the big adults,” Emily Bamforth, a paleontologist with the nearby Philip J. Currie Dinosaur Museum, said in an interview on the way to the dig site.

She described the horned Pachyrhinosaurus as “the smaller, older cousin of the triceratops.”

“This species of dinosaur is endemic to the Grand Prairie area, so it’s found here and nowhere else in the world. They are … kind of about the size of an Indian elephant and a rhino,” she added.

The head alone, she said, is about the size of a baby elephant.

The discovery was a long time coming.

The bonebed was first discovered by a high school teacher out for a walk about 50 years ago. It took the teacher a decade to get anyone from southern Alberta to come to take a look.

“At the time, sort of in the ’70s and ’80s, paleontology in northern Alberta was virtually unknown,” said Bamforth.

When paleontogists eventually got to the site, Bamforth said, they learned “it’s actually one of the densest dinosaur bonebeds in North America.”

“It contains about 100 to 300 bones per square metre,” she said.

Paleontologists have been at the site sporadically ever since, combing through bones belonging to turtles, dinosaurs and lizards. Sixteen years ago, they discovered a large skull of an approximately 30-year-old Pachyrhinosaurus, which is now at the museum.

About a year ago, they found the second adult: Big Sam.

Bamforth said both dinosaurs are believed to have been the elders in the herd.

“Their distinguishing feature is that, instead of having a horn on their nose like a triceratops, they had this big, bony bump called a boss. And they have big, bony bumps over their eyes as well,” she said.

“It makes them look a little strange. It’s the one dinosaur that if you find it, it’s the only possible thing it can be.”

The genders of the two adults are unknown.

Bamforth said the extraction was difficult because Big Sam was intertwined in a cluster of about 300 other bones.

The skull was found upside down, “as if the animal was lying on its back,” but was well preserved, she said.

She said the excavation process involved putting plaster on the skull and wooden planks around if for stability. From there, it was lifted out — very carefully — with a crane, and was to be shipped on a trolley to the museum for study.

“I have extracted skulls in the past. This is probably the biggest one I’ve ever done though,” said Bamforth.

“It’s pretty exciting.”

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 25, 2024.

The Canadian Press. All rights reserved.

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The ancient jar smashed by a 4-year-old is back on display at an Israeli museum after repair

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TEL AVIV, Israel (AP) — A rare Bronze-Era jar accidentally smashed by a 4-year-old visiting a museum was back on display Wednesday after restoration experts were able to carefully piece the artifact back together.

Last month, a family from northern Israel was visiting the museum when their youngest son tipped over the jar, which smashed into pieces.

Alex Geller, the boy’s father, said his son — the youngest of three — is exceptionally curious, and that the moment he heard the crash, “please let that not be my child” was the first thought that raced through his head.

The jar has been on display at the Hecht Museum in Haifa for 35 years. It was one of the only containers of its size and from that period still complete when it was discovered.

The Bronze Age jar is one of many artifacts exhibited out in the open, part of the Hecht Museum’s vision of letting visitors explore history without glass barriers, said Inbal Rivlin, the director of the museum, which is associated with Haifa University in northern Israel.

It was likely used to hold wine or oil, and dates back to between 2200 and 1500 B.C.

Rivlin and the museum decided to turn the moment, which captured international attention, into a teaching moment, inviting the Geller family back for a special visit and hands-on activity to illustrate the restoration process.

Rivlin added that the incident provided a welcome distraction from the ongoing war in Gaza. “Well, he’s just a kid. So I think that somehow it touches the heart of the people in Israel and around the world,“ said Rivlin.

Roee Shafir, a restoration expert at the museum, said the repairs would be fairly simple, as the pieces were from a single, complete jar. Archaeologists often face the more daunting task of sifting through piles of shards from multiple objects and trying to piece them together.

Experts used 3D technology, hi-resolution videos, and special glue to painstakingly reconstruct the large jar.

Less than two weeks after it broke, the jar went back on display at the museum. The gluing process left small hairline cracks, and a few pieces are missing, but the jar’s impressive size remains.

The only noticeable difference in the exhibit was a new sign reading “please don’t touch.”

The Canadian Press. All rights reserved.

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