[quote=NewScientist]
Paul Marks, senior technology correspondent
The first black box flight recorder ever made for a spacecraft successfully survived a searing, incandescent re-entry from low Earth orbit on 30 March, according to its manufacturer, The Aerospace Corporation of El Segundo, California. Called the re-entry break-up recorder, the robust, heatproof device transmitted key data about its condition via satellite as it descended towards the Pacific Ocean between Chile and New Zealand.
The recorder had been inside the deorbiting HTV2 - the uncrewed Japanese Space Agency cargo spacecraft which left the International Space Station last week - and was jettisoned by the fracture of frangible bolts as the HTV2 disintegrated.
[img]http://www.newscientist.com/blogs/onepercent/assets_c/2011/03/htv_reentry-thumb-600x428-121183.jpg[/img]
To the casual observer, it might not sound too momentous an achievement - but a robust machine that does the job of the flight data recorders used in aircraft has to date been missing from the spaceflight arena. That has not only made diagnosis of spaceflight mishaps and disasters difficult, it also means that, in the absence of data on the temperatures, pressures and accelerations encountered during re-entry, engineers don't know a great deal about how much of a spacecraft survives re-entry, since de-orbiting generally happens above oceans and the debris lost.
NASA only found out in detail what happened to the space shuttle Columbia when it broke up after re-entry in February 2003 because, as the first shuttle to be built, it was heavily instrumented with some 700 test sensors - and as such was in some senses a flying flight recorder. The sensor data chronicled, tragically, how superheated plasma had entered a hole in the wing, melting the aluminium airframe. All seven astronauts died in the subsequent breakup over Texas. It was the knowledge that any later incidents would not have that amount of forensic data that led to NASA and the US AIr Force commissioning development of the REBR.
Comprising a 1-kilogram, 30-centimetre diameter heat-shielded cone, the REBR is placed somewhere in a craft where it will break away easily in the heat of deorbiting. It is not designed to be recovered by investigators. Instead, it rights itself in the atmosphere and beams sensor data up to the Iridium communications satellite network, whence it is relayed to an Aerospace Corp mission centre.
[img]http://www.newscientist.com/blogs/onepercent/assets_c/2011/03/Black_box600-thumb-600x358-121188-thumb-600x358-121189.jpg[/img]
The REBR contains a satellite transmitter, GPS sensor, batteries and a solid-state memory bank for storing sensor data. Although not designed to be recovered, the REBR deorbited this week managed to survive water impact, says Bill Ailor, one of its inventors, and continued to transmit data for some hours. The data will be analysed over the next six to eight weeks, he says.
In their US patent on the REBR, Ailor and colleagues say they want to use the data "to fully understand when and where breakup occurs, how a spacecraft disintegrates during breakup and the possible trajectories of breakup debris." So, apart from forensic use, engineers will be able to design craft that break up more efficiently - so huge chunks do not risk falling on populated areas.
[/quote]
Source:
[url]http://www.newscientist.com/blogs/onepercent/2011/03/spacecraft-blackbox-survives-r.html[/url]
AWESOME
Fuck yeah
So it sends out the Data before it's obliterated on impact?
That's kinda clever.
The computers on board are more fragile.
Meh.
Hmmm, sounds like it'll come in handy.
I had no idea we didn't already have black box data for spacecraft and low-orbit satellites. Good to hear we do now.
Must be fun when one hits you into head.
A step closer to space adventure!
The article didn't mention it landed in the ocean and was still transmitting when it was expected to burn up. I don't know if it was recovered or not.
That's pretty impressive.
I find it very interesting how the private industry seems to be out-striving public space programs by leaps and bounds.
Or am I wrong, and NASA and the EUSP don't report their findings as publicly?
NASA don't have any fucking money, which is why they keep blowing things out of proportion, to get more funding.
[QUOTE=Sgt-NiallR;28968091]NASA don't have any fucking money, which is why they keep blowing things out of proportion, to get more funding.[/QUOTE]
They've got money, but you don't realize how much it actually costs for the materials, personal, research, testing and the size and properties of space itself. Thats why we can only cover less than 1% of the sky or something.
I saw a Modern Marvels (?) episode on black boxes.
Also, why did I thin of TF2?
wow the black box is really op
[QUOTE=deadoctober;28968531]wow the black box is really op[/QUOTE]
wow, are you retarded are something
I thought Spacecraft was another game and black box was some kind of deal.
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