Apologies to my readers for a lack of updates this last week. I'm driving my mother to Burleson, Texas and she is old, deaf, and mobility impaired. So it's been work. I simply haven't had the time to update here, and when I have had the time, haven't had the energy.
I was planning to get all caught up today...stopped early on purpose just to do so..but the hotel room was the hotel room from hell, which I didn't realize until we'd already got unpacked. Despite the problems - no TV, no internet, running toilet, loud refrigerator (neither of which my mom could hear, of course) my mom didn't want to move.
Finally, at 7.17 pm Central time I'm able to access the internet, but I'm too mentally exhausted to do anything except complain about how exhausted I am.
So this blog will return to form - and have new features - on this comng Sunday, when we will have arrived in Burleson and I can work all day long.
Thanks for understanding!
Wednesday, September 29, 2010
Monday, September 27, 2010
Space Exploration Glossary - As
Acceptance Test - A test or series of tests to demonstrate that performance is within specified limits.
Acquisition and Tracking Radar - A radar set which searches for, acquires and tracks an object by means of reflected radio frequency energy from the object, or tracks by means of a radio-frequency signal emitted by the object.
Acquisition and Tracking Radar - A radar set which searches for, acquires and tracks an object by means of reflected radio frequency energy from the object, or tracks by means of a radio-frequency signal emitted by the object.
Saturday, September 25, 2010
Soyuz capsule lands in Kazakhstan
Los Angeles Times: Soyuz capsule lands in Kazakhstan
ALMATY, Kazakhstan — A Russian Soyuz capsule carrying three astronauts who lived six months on the International Space Station touched down safely, but one day late, Saturday morning in the cloudy, central steppes of Kazakhstan.
The homecoming of American astronaut Tracy Caldwell-Dyson and Russia's Alexander Skvortsov and Mikhail Kornienko had been delayed after technical glitches hindered the undocking of the spacecraft.
NASA spokesman Rob Navias said in a Web streamed report on the landing that the Soyuz craft landed vertically at its precise planned landing spot at 11:23 a.m. local time (0523 GMT).
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"That was almost a bull's-eye landing," Navias said.
A hover of 12 Russian recovery helicopters took flight ahead of the landing above an area southeast of the remote central Kazakh town Arkalyk to intercept the capsule.
Recovery workers arrived quickly at the landing spot and erected a plaftorm around the slightly titled capsule.
Skvortsov beamed with joy and held his fist aloft as the recovery team carefully lifted him out of the Soyuz.
After being hoisted out of the craft, the astronauts were immediately placed into reclining chairs to help them recover from the change in gravitational pull after spending 176 days in space.
Russian space officials and health workers then crowded around a smiling Skvortsov and handed him an apple, as is tradition.
Caldwell-Dyson, who looked weary but joyous, spoke with colleagues by satellite phone after being lowered into her chair and wrapped in a blanket.
By contrast with the previous day's attempt to depart the space station, undocking from the International Space Station was executed flawlessly and exactly on schedule.
The three astronauts remaining aboard the space station -- Americans Doug Wheelock and Shannon Walker, and Russian cosmonaut Fyodor Yurchikhin -- pumped their fists with joy as they watched a report on the landing via a direct feed.
Russian cosmonauts Alexander Kaleri and Oleg Skripochka, along with NASA astronaut Scott J. Kelly, will join them after blasting off from the Russia-leased Baikonur launch facility in Kazakhstan on Oct. 8.
Undocking on Friday had been thwarted by signaling errors in the onboard computer system and a malfunction with the opening hooks and latches on the space station side of the capsule.
After the failed undocking attempt, one of the Russian cosmonauts on board, flight engineer Fyodor Yurchikhin, inspected the space station docking mechanism holding the Soyuz in place and discovered a loose piece of gear mechanism with two teeth broken off.
The crew installed a series of electrical jumper cables to bypass what's believed to be a failed part. Once that was completed, the cosmonauts performed a test, and the hooks and latches opened properly, NASA said.
Minor but recurring glitches with the Soyuz will create unease as reliance on the Russian craft increases over the next few years with two launches left for U.S. space shuttles before the fleet is retired.
Space shuttle Discovery is set to lift off Nov. 1 for the International Space Station. Endeavour will follow in February to wrap up 30 years of shuttle flight.
That will leave NASA without its own means to send astronauts into space for the first time in half a century.
Space Exploration Glossary - As
Abort - the cutting short of an aerospace mission before it has accomplished its objective.
Acceleration - The rate of change of velocity. Decrease in velocity is sometimes called "negative acceleration."
Acceleration - The rate of change of velocity. Decrease in velocity is sometimes called "negative acceleration."
Friday, September 24, 2010
House plan edges toward extra shuttle flight
House plan edges toward extra shuttle flight
WASHINGTON — The latest House proposal for NASA's future edges closer to President Obama's plan to develop a commercial rocket program and would provide the extra space shuttle flight sought by shuttle advocates in Florida.
But it's not clear the three-year bill released Thursday will satisfy NASA advocates in the Senate. House and Senate lawmakers may continue haggling over their differences after the election.
"This is a good, bipartisan and fiscally responsible bill," House science committee Chairman Bart Gordon, D-Tenn., said after releasing the compromise.
Sen. Bill Nelson, D-Orlando, who has led negotiations with Gordon, said he still hopes the two chambers will come together and approve a compromise on NASA policy by the end of next week.
"We're trying to match up," he said. "We're talking."
Gordon said certain senators want to reduce NASA funding -- currently about $19 billion a year -- by $1 billion a year. But after huddling in a hallway with Nelson, Gordon said senators are negotiating in good faith and legislation still could be approved.
The House compromise bill released Thursday would spend $600 million on a third and final shuttle flight. That's vitally important to Kennedy Space Center, where the shuttle fleet's retirement next year could cost about 8,000 jobs. The House science committee's earlier proposal -- and a rival bill approved by the Senate -- also called for an extra shuttle flight.
The main debate over space policy is whether to spend money on NASA rockets or those developed by commercial companies.
Obama has proposed giving NASA an additional $6 billion over five years to work with private companies to develop commercial rockets that would ferry people to the International Space Station. He also wants to eliminate the Constellation return-to-the-moon program and its Ares rocket.
In the House, where opposition to commercial rockets is strongest, the latest compromise would boost the amount spent on commercial rocket development to $1.2 billion over three years, up from $464 million in a committee-passed bill.
WASHINGTON — The latest House proposal for NASA's future edges closer to President Obama's plan to develop a commercial rocket program and would provide the extra space shuttle flight sought by shuttle advocates in Florida.
But it's not clear the three-year bill released Thursday will satisfy NASA advocates in the Senate. House and Senate lawmakers may continue haggling over their differences after the election.
"This is a good, bipartisan and fiscally responsible bill," House science committee Chairman Bart Gordon, D-Tenn., said after releasing the compromise.
Sen. Bill Nelson, D-Orlando, who has led negotiations with Gordon, said he still hopes the two chambers will come together and approve a compromise on NASA policy by the end of next week.
"We're trying to match up," he said. "We're talking."
Gordon said certain senators want to reduce NASA funding -- currently about $19 billion a year -- by $1 billion a year. But after huddling in a hallway with Nelson, Gordon said senators are negotiating in good faith and legislation still could be approved.
The House compromise bill released Thursday would spend $600 million on a third and final shuttle flight. That's vitally important to Kennedy Space Center, where the shuttle fleet's retirement next year could cost about 8,000 jobs. The House science committee's earlier proposal -- and a rival bill approved by the Senate -- also called for an extra shuttle flight.
The main debate over space policy is whether to spend money on NASA rockets or those developed by commercial companies.
Obama has proposed giving NASA an additional $6 billion over five years to work with private companies to develop commercial rockets that would ferry people to the International Space Station. He also wants to eliminate the Constellation return-to-the-moon program and its Ares rocket.
In the House, where opposition to commercial rockets is strongest, the latest compromise would boost the amount spent on commercial rocket development to $1.2 billion over three years, up from $464 million in a committee-passed bill.
Our leadership in space exploration [Canada]
Our leadership in space exploration
By Ed Fast, Special to the Times September 24, 2010
On Sept. 2, Canada's Conservative government announced that veteran astronaut Colonel Chris Hadfield will be the first-ever Canadian to command the International Space Station.
The announcement reaffirmed Canada's role as one of the world's leaders in space exploration.
Most Canadians are unaware that our country was the third nation in space. Canada's astronauts have participated in 15 space missions - more than any country other than the US and Russia. The world famous Canadarm and "space robot" Dextre were both designed, developed and built in Canada. Canadians are rightly proud of our accomplishments in space.
Space exploration and aerospace research are strategic national assets that are essential for Canada to assert sovereignty over its borders and natural resources.
Our leadership in space research and technology also enhances our government's ability to keep Canadians safe and secure.
To ensure that Canada maintains its strong position in this important field, our government is investing $497 million in the Canadian space industry to develop the RADARSAT Constellation Mission, the next generation of advanced radar remote sensing satellites.
Our desire to protect our advantage in radar satellite technology is also the reason why in 2008 Prime Minister Stephen Harper refused to allow the sale of Canadian aerospace firm, Macdonald Dettwiler & Associates Ltd., to a large American military contractor. The proposed sale simply did not meet the test of "net benefit" to Canadians.
Our government's investments in space exploration complement our efforts to safeguard Arctic waters and assert Canadian sovereignty in an era of melting sea ice and increasing northern ship traffic.
At the same time, these investments are driving cutting-edge research within Canada while promoting technological excellence and a resilient economy.
As Colonel Hadfield takes over command of the International Space Station, we wish him and his colleagues a successful mission and safe return.
By Ed Fast, Special to the Times September 24, 2010
On Sept. 2, Canada's Conservative government announced that veteran astronaut Colonel Chris Hadfield will be the first-ever Canadian to command the International Space Station.
The announcement reaffirmed Canada's role as one of the world's leaders in space exploration.
Most Canadians are unaware that our country was the third nation in space. Canada's astronauts have participated in 15 space missions - more than any country other than the US and Russia. The world famous Canadarm and "space robot" Dextre were both designed, developed and built in Canada. Canadians are rightly proud of our accomplishments in space.
Space exploration and aerospace research are strategic national assets that are essential for Canada to assert sovereignty over its borders and natural resources.
Our leadership in space research and technology also enhances our government's ability to keep Canadians safe and secure.
To ensure that Canada maintains its strong position in this important field, our government is investing $497 million in the Canadian space industry to develop the RADARSAT Constellation Mission, the next generation of advanced radar remote sensing satellites.
Our desire to protect our advantage in radar satellite technology is also the reason why in 2008 Prime Minister Stephen Harper refused to allow the sale of Canadian aerospace firm, Macdonald Dettwiler & Associates Ltd., to a large American military contractor. The proposed sale simply did not meet the test of "net benefit" to Canadians.
Our government's investments in space exploration complement our efforts to safeguard Arctic waters and assert Canadian sovereignty in an era of melting sea ice and increasing northern ship traffic.
At the same time, these investments are driving cutting-edge research within Canada while promoting technological excellence and a resilient economy.
As Colonel Hadfield takes over command of the International Space Station, we wish him and his colleagues a successful mission and safe return.
Thursday, September 23, 2010
Gemini, by Virgil "Gus" Grissom
Excerpts from Gus Grissom's book, Gemini!, completed just a couple of weeks before his death in 1968, and edited afterwards by Jacob Hay.
The Introduction
Grissom explains why he wrote the book, in part saying:
Newspapers and magazines yellow and crumble away. And my two sons, Scott and Mark, may, like thousands of other young people, never learn to read a technical report or extract records from a computer's memory...Technical reports aren't concerned with the feelings of the people involved, just the results-did Gadget A operate on schedule? Did Gismo [stet] B malfunction?A computer wouldn't say that Gadget A worked because Wally Schirra sweated for weeks to be absolutely sure it would work when we needed it. It wouldn't say John young [my co-pilot on GEmini 3] and I knew it would work, because we'd learned to have perfect confidence in our backup team, Wally and Tom Stafford.
...
Heaven knows, in the years ahead, once we've gone on from GEmini to Apollo and far beyond, we're going to need all the scientists and engineers and technicians we can get. So that's why this book, too. If this brings only one bright, curious, hard-driving youngster into space science and technology, that's justification enough for me.
...
This new dimension their fathers are just now starting to explore is going to need young women, too.
...
So here it is: the story of GEmini as we've lived it.
The Introduction
Grissom explains why he wrote the book, in part saying:
Newspapers and magazines yellow and crumble away. And my two sons, Scott and Mark, may, like thousands of other young people, never learn to read a technical report or extract records from a computer's memory...Technical reports aren't concerned with the feelings of the people involved, just the results-did Gadget A operate on schedule? Did Gismo [stet] B malfunction?A computer wouldn't say that Gadget A worked because Wally Schirra sweated for weeks to be absolutely sure it would work when we needed it. It wouldn't say John young [my co-pilot on GEmini 3] and I knew it would work, because we'd learned to have perfect confidence in our backup team, Wally and Tom Stafford.
...
Heaven knows, in the years ahead, once we've gone on from GEmini to Apollo and far beyond, we're going to need all the scientists and engineers and technicians we can get. So that's why this book, too. If this brings only one bright, curious, hard-driving youngster into space science and technology, that's justification enough for me.
...
This new dimension their fathers are just now starting to explore is going to need young women, too.
...
So here it is: the story of GEmini as we've lived it.
Space Exploration Glossary - the As
Ablating materials - Special heat-dissipating materials on the surface of a spacecraft that can be sacrificed (carried away, vaporized) during re-entry.
Ablation - Melting of ablative heat shield materials during re-entry of spacecraft into earth's atmosphere at hypersonic speeds.
Ablation - Melting of ablative heat shield materials during re-entry of spacecraft into earth's atmosphere at hypersonic speeds.
Wednesday, September 22, 2010
Space agency funding Mars exploration
The Vancouver Sun: Space agency funding Mars exploration
The Canadian Space Agency has awarded a contract to develop a Canadian-designed vehicle to explore the surface of Mars.
The $6-million contract given to B.C.-based MacDonald, Dettwiler and Associates will help fund the development of a semi-autonomous rover that can be commanded from a remote location.
"The project will position Canada as a potential partner in international space exploration missions, and maintain Canadian technical expertise in space robotics," according to a release from the space agency.
The rover, similar to the ones launched by NASA in 2004, will be equipped with cameras and detectors for navigation and a small robotic arm to help conduct experiments on the planet's surface.
The prototype is expected to be ready for field testing in 2012.
The CSA expects the technology will also have applications on Earth-based mining, transportation and security.
MDA has proven expertise in space robotics, including the development of the robotic arm on the International Space Station — Canadarm2 or Dextre — the CSAs contribution to the orbiting space lab.
The Canadian Space Agency has awarded a contract to develop a Canadian-designed vehicle to explore the surface of Mars.
The $6-million contract given to B.C.-based MacDonald, Dettwiler and Associates will help fund the development of a semi-autonomous rover that can be commanded from a remote location.
"The project will position Canada as a potential partner in international space exploration missions, and maintain Canadian technical expertise in space robotics," according to a release from the space agency.
The rover, similar to the ones launched by NASA in 2004, will be equipped with cameras and detectors for navigation and a small robotic arm to help conduct experiments on the planet's surface.
The prototype is expected to be ready for field testing in 2012.
The CSA expects the technology will also have applications on Earth-based mining, transportation and security.
MDA has proven expertise in space robotics, including the development of the robotic arm on the International Space Station — Canadarm2 or Dextre — the CSAs contribution to the orbiting space lab.
Tuesday, September 21, 2010
Space Exploration Technologies and EADS's Astrium offer launch services
FlightGlobal: Space Exploration Technologies and EADS's Astrium offer launch services
With a newly signed marketing agreement with California-based Space Exploration Technologies and the operation from next year of its new medium-lift Vega launcher, EADS's Astrium subsidiary is set to offer what it claims is a unique range of launch services.
The SpaceX deal gives Astrium exclusive rights up to 2015 to market in 28 European countries launches aboard the US company's Falcon 1e rocket, which is set to make its maiden flight next year from the US Army's Reagan test site at Kwajalein Atoll.
Falcon 1e is a heavy version of SpaceX's Falcon 1, which successfully launched a commercial payload in July to mark the company's entry to the launch market. The size of the Falcon 1e rocket is significant, as it will give Astrium the ability to offer to European institutional customers dedicated launches of very small satellites, of up to 500kg (1,100lb).
© Astrium
Ariane 5 is getting a small US cousin
Alain Charmeau, chief executive of Astrium Space Transportation, says there are no other commercial operators that can offer dedicated launches of very small satellites, and he cites three key advantages to customers who would otherwise have to rely on "piggyback" launches on much larger rockets, such as the 1,500kg-payload Vega or Russian Soyuz, which is also available through Astrium, or Astrium's heavylift workhorse, the 10t payload Ariane 5.
The first, he says, is that a dedicated launch should be much more affordable. Second, a dedicated launch gives the customer a fixed launch date of their choosing. And, third, a dedicated launch will put the satellite into the most suitable orbit - not one determined by the requirements of a larger piggyback partner.
SpaceX and Astrium have been discussing this marketing arrangement for more than a year, visiting each other's facilities in France, Germany and California. Good contact between working teams has established the start of a "very long co-operation" between two companies Charmeau sees as innovators.
FOR STARTERS
For now, he says, collaboration is strictly in marketing, with launches available from SpaceX locations at Cape Canaveral, Kwajalein and Vandenberg AFB in California.
No technical collaboration is part of the deal, but Charmeau readily concedes that the partnership could develop further.
Early signs are good. Charmeau says the first launch under the new marketing arrangement will come "very soon", although he is not as yet revealing any details. Astrium last September placed an order with SpaceX to launch a yet-to-be-identified Earth observation satellite.
His opposite number at SpaceX, Elon Musk, describes the agreement as "opening new doors for SpaceX". Musk, who made a fortune as co-founder of the PayPal internet payment system, subsequently founded SpaceX and later launched the Tesla all-electric sports car, boasts that the Falcon concept is to "provide breakthrough advances in reliability, cost, and time to launch".
This month also marks a milestone in the Vega project, with prime contractor ELV, of Colleferro in Italy, signed to deliver five launchers after the type's qualification flight.
Vega features three solid-propulsion stages and a fourth stage with a reignitable liquid rocket engine to offers payload capacity of 1,500kg into polar orbit at 700km (435 miles) altitude, for launch from Europe's French Guiana spaceport.
With a newly signed marketing agreement with California-based Space Exploration Technologies and the operation from next year of its new medium-lift Vega launcher, EADS's Astrium subsidiary is set to offer what it claims is a unique range of launch services.
The SpaceX deal gives Astrium exclusive rights up to 2015 to market in 28 European countries launches aboard the US company's Falcon 1e rocket, which is set to make its maiden flight next year from the US Army's Reagan test site at Kwajalein Atoll.
Falcon 1e is a heavy version of SpaceX's Falcon 1, which successfully launched a commercial payload in July to mark the company's entry to the launch market. The size of the Falcon 1e rocket is significant, as it will give Astrium the ability to offer to European institutional customers dedicated launches of very small satellites, of up to 500kg (1,100lb).
© Astrium
Ariane 5 is getting a small US cousin
Alain Charmeau, chief executive of Astrium Space Transportation, says there are no other commercial operators that can offer dedicated launches of very small satellites, and he cites three key advantages to customers who would otherwise have to rely on "piggyback" launches on much larger rockets, such as the 1,500kg-payload Vega or Russian Soyuz, which is also available through Astrium, or Astrium's heavylift workhorse, the 10t payload Ariane 5.
The first, he says, is that a dedicated launch should be much more affordable. Second, a dedicated launch gives the customer a fixed launch date of their choosing. And, third, a dedicated launch will put the satellite into the most suitable orbit - not one determined by the requirements of a larger piggyback partner.
SpaceX and Astrium have been discussing this marketing arrangement for more than a year, visiting each other's facilities in France, Germany and California. Good contact between working teams has established the start of a "very long co-operation" between two companies Charmeau sees as innovators.
FOR STARTERS
For now, he says, collaboration is strictly in marketing, with launches available from SpaceX locations at Cape Canaveral, Kwajalein and Vandenberg AFB in California.
No technical collaboration is part of the deal, but Charmeau readily concedes that the partnership could develop further.
Early signs are good. Charmeau says the first launch under the new marketing arrangement will come "very soon", although he is not as yet revealing any details. Astrium last September placed an order with SpaceX to launch a yet-to-be-identified Earth observation satellite.
His opposite number at SpaceX, Elon Musk, describes the agreement as "opening new doors for SpaceX". Musk, who made a fortune as co-founder of the PayPal internet payment system, subsequently founded SpaceX and later launched the Tesla all-electric sports car, boasts that the Falcon concept is to "provide breakthrough advances in reliability, cost, and time to launch".
This month also marks a milestone in the Vega project, with prime contractor ELV, of Colleferro in Italy, signed to deliver five launchers after the type's qualification flight.
Vega features three solid-propulsion stages and a fourth stage with a reignitable liquid rocket engine to offers payload capacity of 1,500kg into polar orbit at 700km (435 miles) altitude, for launch from Europe's French Guiana spaceport.
Monday, September 20, 2010
China’s space programme gears up for missions to Moon, Mars
The Hindu: China’s space programme gears up for missions to Moon, Mars
China is planning giant strides into deep space exploration by sending its first lunar manned mission by 2025, a probe to Mars by 2013 and to Venus by 2015, intensifying its space race with India which also plans Moon and Sun missions.
China’s first step toward expected to orbit the Moon, land and return to Earth by 2020, said Ye Peijian, Commander in Chief of the Chang’e (lunar landing) programme and an academic at the Chinese Academy of Sciences.
Ye told a meeting Space scientists that China plans to launch its first manned moon landing in 2025, a probe to Mars by 2013 and to Venus by 2015.
“China has the full capacity to accomplish Mars exploration by 2013,” Ye was quoted as saying by the state-run Global Times newspaper.
The unmanned mission to the Moon was seen as a counter to India’s Chandrayan-1, which left its foot prints on the Moon by crashing on to the lunar surface with the tricolour, stealing a march over China by becoming the fourth country to do so after the U.S., Russia and Japan.
China, earlier, had a head start by flying a man into space in 2003 thus becoming the third nation only after United States and the Soviet Union and Chang’e 1 was launched in 2007 which entered lunar orbit and sent pictures of the moon.
India plans to launch its Chandrayan-II mission in 2012-13 with its Geosynchronous Satellite Launch Vehicle (GSLV), which would include a lunar orbiter to probe the moon surface for geological date and look for helium-3.
ISRO also plans to send manned space flight by 2015 and a human moon mission by 2025 besides plans to send a satellite (Aditya) to study Sun corona with more advanced GSLV launchers.
China has also announced plans to set up its orbital space station by 2020.
Earlier this month, Chief Engineer overseeing China’s lunar exploration programme Wu Weiren said that work on the Chang’e-2 lunar orbiter had entered the pre-launch testing stage and it would make its first trial flight before the end of the year.
Chang’e-2 will carry out a soft-landing test in preparation for the launch of Chang’e-3, which is scheduled for 2013. The Chang’e Project is named after a Chinese legend of a goddess who took a magic elixir and flew to the moon.
Space-programme officials had said previously that the Chang’e-2 mission would be launched in October around the Mid Autumn Festival, dedicated to the Moon Goddess, Chang’e, but no precise date has been given.
Ouyang Ziyuan, chief scientist of China’s lunar orbiter project, said Beijing plans to launch an orbital space station by around 2020 is achievable, based on aerospace technology development and the success of future manned missions.
China’s space programme will pose great challenges to scientists and technicians, Mr. Ouyang said. The space station will be quite small in size compared with the International Space Station, a joint collaboration between 16 countries, including the U.S. and Russia.
Chinese analysts, however, dismissed international concerns that Beijing is engaging in an outer-space arms race, stressing that recent activities and future missions are for scientific purposes and for the benefit of mankind.
Secretary of Defense Robert M. Gates hosts an honor cordon to welcome Ecuador’s Minister of Defense Javier Ponce Cevallos to the Pentagon today at 1:3
PopSci: Boeing Will Launch Space Tourism Business, Lifting Off in 2015
By Clay Dillow
By Clay Dillow
American space ambitions have, for the most part, maintained a well-defined line between space exploration and space tourism, But that line has now blurred considerably as Boeing announced that it is entering the space tourism business, selling leftover seats in its Crew Space Transportation (CST) spacecraft after the initial four are filled by embarking and returning crews bound for the International Space Station.
Boeing and Las Vegas-based Bigelow Aerospace won an $18 million contract from Boeing earlier this year for development and testing of a space capsule capable of carrying astronauts to the space station and back. Boeing’s planned capsule would seat up to seven passengers, and since space station crew rotation missions generally require four NASA astronauts, three seats would be available for commercial sale.
Boeing stopped short of naming a price, but it did indicate that flights could begin as soon as 2015 and that it’s already prepared to speak to interested customers. However, Boeing and Space Adventures (the company that will handle the bookings) did say prices would be competitive with previous Soyuz flights, which most recently charged $40 million for an eight-day round-trip to the ISS.
Russia, of course, has been selling seats aboard its Soyuz spacecraft for years, allowing wealthy tourists the opportunity to launch alongside Russian cosmonauts, accompanying them on their missions. But NASA has thus far refrained from entering the space tourism game, though it has lent support – monetary and otherwise – to private ventures that eventually aim to enter the private space tourism business.
In a larger context, the blurring of the line between NASA and its commercial counterparts could signal an embracing of the Obama administration’s vision for future American spaceflight, a vision that calls for increased reliance on commercial ventures for orbital trips to space and a shifting of NASA’s focus to deep space exploration. Some members of Congress, specifically those on the House Science and Technology Committee, feel that such a shift strips NASA and America of their space dominance.
But considering we’re supposed to find a habitable exoplanet by Memorial Day of next year, perhaps a transition toward deep space technologies is in order after all.
Sunday, September 19, 2010
Scotland in the space age
From HeraldScotland: Scotland in the space age
Report by Russell Leadbetter
Share 0 comments 19 Sep 2010
In the summer of 1969, when Neil Armstrong left that first footprint on the lunar surface, space was an ethereal idea to most of us, as remote as it was vast.
Four decades on, it is coming a lot closer to home.
The space race has already transformed such fields as telecommunications, TV broadcasting, climate and weather forecasting, information sharing, commerce, security, banking and navigation. But now a new space age beckons for Britain. And this week a conference entitled just that – A New Space Age for Britain – will chart the economic advantages space exploration will give the beleaguered UK economy.
Almost unnoticed by the public, which probably still associates space with manned flight [see box], the space technologies economy has expanded to the point where it supports 68,000 jobs in the UK, directly and indirectly, and contributes £6.5 billion to the nation. Without it we wouldn’t have the high-speed broadband, GPS services and high-definition TV that so many of us rely on. The global market for space manufacturing, applications and services has been estimated to be worth at least £400bn by 2030 –and Britain is determined to boost its share of the market from 6% to 10%, creating up to 100,000 jobs by 2030.
A new £40m International Space Innovation Centre at Harwell in Oxfordshire, announced last March, will establish centres of excellence to exploit data generated by Earth Observation satellites, use space data to understand climate change and boost the security of space systems and services.
If you look 20, 30 years into the future, one can imagine the generation of solar power in space, beaming it back down to Earth as a very efficient form of power generation. Dr David Parker, director of space science and exploration, UK Space Agency
“The sky’s the limit,” said Dr David Parker, director of space science and exploration at the UK Space Agency, as he ran through an impressive list of British achievements and looked ahead at potential developments.
“If you look forward, I can imagine we will all have mobile satellite and information systems that we use as part of everyday life, in the way we use the internet now.”
Already, social media sites such as Facebook are incorporating devices which allow users to pinpoint exactly on the map where their friends are.
Parker added: “The data you will be able to get will be so much better, and that will include the position data. Imagine a system that is built into your car; you’re in an accident on the motorway, and you’re unconscious. The car will signal the ambulance system automatically to come and find you. That is perfectly feasible.
“If you look 20, 30 years into the future, one can imagine the generation of solar power in space, beaming it back down to the Earth as a very efficient form of power generation.
“People talk about starting to exploit the mineral resources within the solar system. What we really want to see, to make all of that sort of stuff possible, is a much lower-cost way of getting into space, with a reusable launch vehicle.”
One London firm, Reaction Engines, is working on Skylon, an unpiloted, reusable space-plane intended to provide inexpensive and reliable access to space. According to the company website, the vehicle, currently in proof-of-concept phase, will take a decade to develop and be capable of transporting 12 tonnes of cargo into space. Another of its projects is the Sabre hybrid air-breathing rocket engine.
As for Scotland, scientist and space entrepreneur Craig Clark expects the sector to generate at least £5bn over the next 20 years, creating at least 10,000 jobs.
Over the last five years Glasgow-born Clark and his colleagues have nurtured their company, Clyde Space, to become an important player globally, with a growing list of overseas contracts to its name.
The company, based in the West of Scotland Science Park in Glasgow, specialises in high-performance subsystems for small satellites and micro-spacecraft, and has supplied in excess of 130 CubeSat power systems and batteries to teams all over the world.
“We work with small 5kg satellites, which are used for a number of different things. We’re getting more and more interest from military, commercial and science use, and most of our customers are based in the US,” said Clark. Via third parties, the satellites are supplied to such high-profile bodies as Nasa and the US army.
Clark, who is a member of the government’s Space Leadership Council, is eloquent on the subject of Britain’s space potential.
“Space affects people’s lives on a daily basis, almost without them realising it, whether it’s watching Sky TV at home, or using GPS in their car or while out on the hills, or using a satellite phone around the coastline. Inmarsat, [a space company] which is based in London, provides that service on a global scale.
“In the future, there are a lot of things happening in the UK. One London company, Avanti, is launching two satellites that will provide broadband to every part of the UK. There are still areas, especially in Scotland, with a poor broadband service, and a lot of people think the solution to that is to lay cable, but it is probably easier to upgrade, and move forward, if you have satellites in space.”
Space technology could turn out to be important, too, in such matters as detecting bush fires, such as those that swept through Victoria, Australia, last February, killing at least 200 people and destroying entire communities.
“One of the ideas I am working on is an early-warning system for bush fires. At the moment, communities still use human spotters stationed at the top of posts who look for smoke. But in space, if you have a satellite passing over every 10 or 20 minutes, looking for fires, you are getting real-time warning. How much money would that save insurance companies? It’s not just Australia that suffers bush fires: north America, south America, Africa, Europe and China all have problems with this. What you need is a global solution, and space can provide that.”
On the issue of continuing investment in the space programme, Clark is not alone in thinking it will hinge on the returns, whether it’s government spending or a commercial venture.
“Inmarsat bought three satellites from Boeing a couple of months ago for $1.2bn. They are generating enough revenue from their space-enabled data services that they are able to largely fund this internally. That shows there is an appetite to invest in space.”
But Britain is far from alone. It is a founder member of the European Space Agency, has signed memorandums of understanding with countries such as China, India and Japan, and in July the UK Space Agency signed a “historic” deal with Russia, opening the way to greater collaboration in space between the two nations. As he signed the agreement, the agency’s acting chief executive, Dr David Williams, said: “Space provides governments with the possibility to improve lives across their communities, along with offering novel commercial opportunities. It is a truly global activity and one where it is right that we should work together.”
A joint Statement of Intent for potential co-operation with Nasa, signed in July, detailed areas of bilateral co-operation including space science and human and robotic space exploration.
The space community is clearly excited by all this potential.
“Space,” says Clark, “is a global market, with huge export opportunities, and the UK has an incredible opportunity to achieve its potential as a major player in the international space arena.”
The sky is, indeed, the limit.
Report by Russell Leadbetter
Share 0 comments 19 Sep 2010
In the summer of 1969, when Neil Armstrong left that first footprint on the lunar surface, space was an ethereal idea to most of us, as remote as it was vast.
Four decades on, it is coming a lot closer to home.
The space race has already transformed such fields as telecommunications, TV broadcasting, climate and weather forecasting, information sharing, commerce, security, banking and navigation. But now a new space age beckons for Britain. And this week a conference entitled just that – A New Space Age for Britain – will chart the economic advantages space exploration will give the beleaguered UK economy.
Almost unnoticed by the public, which probably still associates space with manned flight [see box], the space technologies economy has expanded to the point where it supports 68,000 jobs in the UK, directly and indirectly, and contributes £6.5 billion to the nation. Without it we wouldn’t have the high-speed broadband, GPS services and high-definition TV that so many of us rely on. The global market for space manufacturing, applications and services has been estimated to be worth at least £400bn by 2030 –and Britain is determined to boost its share of the market from 6% to 10%, creating up to 100,000 jobs by 2030.
A new £40m International Space Innovation Centre at Harwell in Oxfordshire, announced last March, will establish centres of excellence to exploit data generated by Earth Observation satellites, use space data to understand climate change and boost the security of space systems and services.
If you look 20, 30 years into the future, one can imagine the generation of solar power in space, beaming it back down to Earth as a very efficient form of power generation. Dr David Parker, director of space science and exploration, UK Space Agency
“The sky’s the limit,” said Dr David Parker, director of space science and exploration at the UK Space Agency, as he ran through an impressive list of British achievements and looked ahead at potential developments.
“If you look forward, I can imagine we will all have mobile satellite and information systems that we use as part of everyday life, in the way we use the internet now.”
Already, social media sites such as Facebook are incorporating devices which allow users to pinpoint exactly on the map where their friends are.
Parker added: “The data you will be able to get will be so much better, and that will include the position data. Imagine a system that is built into your car; you’re in an accident on the motorway, and you’re unconscious. The car will signal the ambulance system automatically to come and find you. That is perfectly feasible.
“If you look 20, 30 years into the future, one can imagine the generation of solar power in space, beaming it back down to the Earth as a very efficient form of power generation.
“People talk about starting to exploit the mineral resources within the solar system. What we really want to see, to make all of that sort of stuff possible, is a much lower-cost way of getting into space, with a reusable launch vehicle.”
One London firm, Reaction Engines, is working on Skylon, an unpiloted, reusable space-plane intended to provide inexpensive and reliable access to space. According to the company website, the vehicle, currently in proof-of-concept phase, will take a decade to develop and be capable of transporting 12 tonnes of cargo into space. Another of its projects is the Sabre hybrid air-breathing rocket engine.
As for Scotland, scientist and space entrepreneur Craig Clark expects the sector to generate at least £5bn over the next 20 years, creating at least 10,000 jobs.
Over the last five years Glasgow-born Clark and his colleagues have nurtured their company, Clyde Space, to become an important player globally, with a growing list of overseas contracts to its name.
The company, based in the West of Scotland Science Park in Glasgow, specialises in high-performance subsystems for small satellites and micro-spacecraft, and has supplied in excess of 130 CubeSat power systems and batteries to teams all over the world.
“We work with small 5kg satellites, which are used for a number of different things. We’re getting more and more interest from military, commercial and science use, and most of our customers are based in the US,” said Clark. Via third parties, the satellites are supplied to such high-profile bodies as Nasa and the US army.
Clark, who is a member of the government’s Space Leadership Council, is eloquent on the subject of Britain’s space potential.
“Space affects people’s lives on a daily basis, almost without them realising it, whether it’s watching Sky TV at home, or using GPS in their car or while out on the hills, or using a satellite phone around the coastline. Inmarsat, [a space company] which is based in London, provides that service on a global scale.
“In the future, there are a lot of things happening in the UK. One London company, Avanti, is launching two satellites that will provide broadband to every part of the UK. There are still areas, especially in Scotland, with a poor broadband service, and a lot of people think the solution to that is to lay cable, but it is probably easier to upgrade, and move forward, if you have satellites in space.”
Space technology could turn out to be important, too, in such matters as detecting bush fires, such as those that swept through Victoria, Australia, last February, killing at least 200 people and destroying entire communities.
“One of the ideas I am working on is an early-warning system for bush fires. At the moment, communities still use human spotters stationed at the top of posts who look for smoke. But in space, if you have a satellite passing over every 10 or 20 minutes, looking for fires, you are getting real-time warning. How much money would that save insurance companies? It’s not just Australia that suffers bush fires: north America, south America, Africa, Europe and China all have problems with this. What you need is a global solution, and space can provide that.”
On the issue of continuing investment in the space programme, Clark is not alone in thinking it will hinge on the returns, whether it’s government spending or a commercial venture.
“Inmarsat bought three satellites from Boeing a couple of months ago for $1.2bn. They are generating enough revenue from their space-enabled data services that they are able to largely fund this internally. That shows there is an appetite to invest in space.”
But Britain is far from alone. It is a founder member of the European Space Agency, has signed memorandums of understanding with countries such as China, India and Japan, and in July the UK Space Agency signed a “historic” deal with Russia, opening the way to greater collaboration in space between the two nations. As he signed the agreement, the agency’s acting chief executive, Dr David Williams, said: “Space provides governments with the possibility to improve lives across their communities, along with offering novel commercial opportunities. It is a truly global activity and one where it is right that we should work together.”
A joint Statement of Intent for potential co-operation with Nasa, signed in July, detailed areas of bilateral co-operation including space science and human and robotic space exploration.
The space community is clearly excited by all this potential.
“Space,” says Clark, “is a global market, with huge export opportunities, and the UK has an incredible opportunity to achieve its potential as a major player in the international space arena.”
The sky is, indeed, the limit.
Saturday, September 18, 2010
NASA shows off new space exploration machine
From The Mirror (UK): Nasa shows off latest space exploration machine, set to stomp about the moon
Nasa showed off its latest space exploration machine yesterday - and it will need all six limbs if it has any chance of negotiating the pock-marked surface of the Moon.
The nearest equivalent we have to the lunar landscape on Earth is said to be the north Arizona desert - and the All-terrain Hex-limbed Extra-Terrestrial Explorer (or Athlete for short) has successfully completed two weeks of intensive stress trials there.
Nasa scientists and engineers spend two weeks every year in the desert testing out their latest ideas.
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The astronauts move around in special Space Exploration Vehicles, Nasa's newest rover prototype, which is about the size of a pick-up truck.
They have a pressurised bubble cabin in which two astronauts can live for up to 14 days. Mike Gernhardt, a Nasa astronaut and rover project manager, said: "We're out here to simulate a planetary exploration mission using these dual rovers, or space exploration vehicles, and we set this up like it really is a real mission. We have flight rules, flight plans, a whole science team that's assessing all the different types of information we get."
It's certainly a busy old fortnight - but there's still time for some vegging, as special plants are grown under bizarre atmospheric conditions inside a hermeti-cally sealed module.
The latest rover built to tackle Mars was also unveiled yesterday. Called Curiosity, it is due to be launched on its mission to find life on Mars next year, arriving in 2012.
Curiosity is about the size of a Mini Cooper - and will need a new landing system due to its increased weight. An early predecessor, Pathfinder, which landed on Mars in 1997, was only the size of a microwave oven.
Friday, September 17, 2010
Destination Mars
From Macleans magazine: Destination Mars
Viewed through a telescope on a clear night, the planet Mars glows a soft, dullish red. It seems foreign and strange, but familiar, too: like Earth, Mars has polar ice caps, clouds drifting in its thin atmosphere (even snow), and changing seasons. Its day is just 40 minutes longer than our own. And even though it’s now a freeze-dried wasteland, a growing body of evidence suggests Mars was once wet and warm, and might have harboured life around the same time life sprung up here. Human explorers are bound to set foot on Mars one day. And it might be sooner than most of us think.
But our neighbouring planet, fourth from the sun, is also unimaginably remote: at its closest point in orbit to Earth, which happens only once every 26 months or so, Mars is still about 200 times farther away than the moon. At best, it would take a manned spacecraft roughly six months to reach it. By comparison, “the moon is three days away,” says Bret Drake, who leads mission planning and analysis for the Constellation Program at NASA’s Johnson Space Center. “You can go any time, and if things go wrong, you can return any time.” Once a spaceship left Earth’s orbit for Mars, there’d be no turning back.
On the surface, astronauts might have to contend with everything from swirling dust storms to blasts of radiation from powerful cosmic rays. Their research would be a scientific bonanza, teaching us about our solar system, about the genesis of life on Earth and maybe even whether life exists on Mars, or ever did. Observing how the crew’s bodies change in reduced Martian gravity could tell us if it’s really possible to survive for years on end in space. They’d have to wait over a year until the planets lined up to come back, making it a 2½ year trip, all told. If something went seriously wrong, there’d be little to no hope of rescue.
Teams of scientists and specialists from around the world are already working on projects that tackle some of the biggest challenges of a Mars mission, changing the way we think about space travel, about human endurance and about how we might live someday beyond the bonds of Earth. At the Kennedy Space Center in April, U.S. President Barack Obama delivered a historic speech on space exploration. “We’ll start by sending astronauts to an asteroid for the first time in history,” he said. “By the mid-2030s, I believe we can send humans to orbit Mars and return them safely to Earth. And a landing on Mars will follow. And I expect to be around to see it.”
Space-age luminaries like Buzz Aldrin—who, along with Neil Armstrong, was the first human to set foot on the moon, in 1969—call it our next frontier. “Mars is the only other place that approaches conditions here,” Aldrin, 80, told Maclean’s. “It’s much closer to Earth than Venus or Mercury,” the only other rocky planets in our solar system. Unlike other destinations, “you can imagine astronauts on the surface of Mars, moving and working,” says Richard Zurek, chief scientist for the Mars Program Office at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. “I truly believe the Mars astronauts are alive today,” says Canadian astronaut Robert Thirsk. “They’re probably in elementary school right now.”
In June, six men entered a sealed isolation chamber in the outskirts of Moscow, to remain there for 520 days. The Mars500 study, a joint effort of the European Space Agency and the Russian Institute for Biomedical Problems, is an attempt to recreate the mental and physical stresses of long-duration space travel, and the effects of extreme isolation. (These lessons also come in handy on Earth: NASA is lending its expertise to help 33 Chilean miners now trapped below ground, expected to be there for up to four months until rescuers can reach them.)
On their simulated mission to Mars, the men—three Russians, two Europeans and one Chinese—only have personal contact with each other. A 20-minute delay is built into communications with the control centre, the same length of time it takes for messages to travel one way between Mars and Earth. The habitat’s main living quarters, where each man has his own tiny bunk, is just 3.6 by 20 m.
In one diary entry in July, French engineer Romain Charles wrote about spending his 32nd birthday in isolation. On his last visit home, “I received some presents for my first birthday in the modules, for [Christmas] and also for my next birthday in 2011,” he writes. “Now here I am with a lot of gifts just under my bed and nothing to stop me from opening them.” Entering the living room, he found his crewmate, Italian-Colombian engineer Diego Urbina. As a surprise, Charles recounts, Urbina had taken a photo of an astronaut, “changed his face to mine and the flag for the French one,” and asked all the crew to sign it. “He knew that since I was nine or 10 years old I wanted to go to space and he made this dream come true in a way.”
Like the Mars500 group, the first team to go to Mars might have four to six members, Drake says, and a complementary set of skills: a commander, an engineer, a geologist and a doctor is a likely mix. They’d almost certainly be multinational and include both men and women. And we can only hope they get along as well as the Mars500 team apparently does. “It’s going to be a very isolated spacecraft, away from family and friends,” says Thirsk, who spent six months aboard the International Space Station last year, becoming the first Canadian to fly a long-duration mission there. Thirsk could often speak to his family back home, a luxury they won’t have.
If there’s friction among the crew, reaching a mediator might not be possible either. Even when psychologists are available, astronauts “often try to hide emotional problems, out of fear they’ll be grounded,” Mary Roach writes in her new book, Packing for Mars, and stressed-out astronauts have been known to vent their frustrations at mission control. Conflict resolution software, in which “the computer acts as a therapist,” might be helpful, says Dr. Jeffrey Sutton, director of the National Space Biomedical Research Institute. It would give astronauts the chance to play out conflicts—hypothetical or real—and explore outcomes with a machine, instead of on a crewmate.
When Thirsk was on the ISS, he spent long moments gazing down at Earth. “I was amazed by its beauty,” he says. “The oceans are blue, but they’re 100 shades of blue. You see incredible patterns in the desert: 100 shades of brown, gold and red. It’s so heartwarming to see such a beautiful planet, and all the signs of life down there.” This is common among astronauts, who tend to say that seeing Earth is the greatest benefit of their time in space, says Dr. Nick Kanas, a professor at the University of California, San Francisco and an expert in astronaut psychology. It can be calming and restorative, he says, imparting “a sense of history, of a lack of boundaries, and of the beauty of Earth as a homeland.”
Astronauts going to Mars won’t have that benefit. They’ll be the first humans to see their home planet fade away, until it disappears into the blackness of space. (As they zoom toward Mars through permanent sunlight, they won’t even see any stars, Roach reports, just black.) “Nobody in the history of our existence has ever perceived Earth as an insignificant dot. We’ve either seen it as a beautiful ball, or we’re standing on it,” Kanas says. Nobody knows what the impact of “Earth out-of-view phenomenon” will be. “It might be nothing,” he says, “but it might be profound.”
Watching their home planet disappear out the rear-view window is just one of the mental and physical challenges these astronauts will face. Microgravity, stress and radiation all wreak havoc on the human body; in space, immune systems become weaker and wounds take longer to heal, Sutton says. Radiation can make medication less effective, and in reduced gravity, muscle and bone tissue wither away. Astronauts might lose bone at up to 1.5 per cent per month on average, a loss that “can be as high as 10 times that of post-menopausal women,” he says. After months in space, an astronaut returning from Mars might step back into Earth’s gravity and snap a bone. Researchers are looking at drugs to help combat bone loss (Thirsk was part of a drug trial on the ISS). Others talk about designing a spinning spacecraft, to create artificial gravity. For now, “the main countermeasure,” Thirsk says, “is exercise.” On the ISS, astronauts do resistance training and work out on stationary bikes or treadmills, with a bungee cord to keep them from floating away.
In May, astronaut Chris Hadfield, who’ll be the first Canadian to command the ISS when he takes over in 2012, spent two weeks in a pod under water off the Florida coast. On that NASA mission, NEEMO 14, he and three crewmates simulated activities that might be performed on Mars or the moon, including emergency procedures like rescuing a wounded colleague (played by a dummy) from the hostile environment of the ocean floor. They also charted how their bodies reacted to the confined space. “It’s very evocative of being on another planet,” Hadfield told Maclean’s in a video chat from the pod. “When you walk outside, you’re weighed down like on another planet. You bounce when you walk, and you hear every breath.”
If there were an emergency and surgery were required, a robot might be the one to do it. McMaster University’s Dr. Mehran Anvari is an expert in telerobotic surgery, remotely controlling robotic arms that perform operations hundreds of kilometres away. The system was designed for use in remote communities, but Anvari’s worked with the Canadian Space Agency and NASA—including mock-ups on NEEMO missions—to see if it could be done in space. Because of the long delay in communications to Mars, “you’ll need a system with some degree of artificial intelligence,” says Anvari, who directs the Centre for Minimal Access Surgery.
“I’ll be very surprised if the next long-term manned mission includes a surgeon,” he says. “It’s not necessary.”
A robotic surgeon would certainly be an asset on a mission to Mars, but we still don’t have a ship that can take us there. With current technology, a trip would require a heavy-lift rocket (one that could blast at least 70 metric tonnes off Earth’s surface) and several launches to get all the necessary equipment off the ground. The giant ship would then be assembled in orbit before blasting off to Mars.
Lifting hundreds of thousands of pounds into Earth’s orbit is no small feat. Paul Spudis, senior staff scientist at the Lunar and Planetary Institute, suggests it might be possible to reduce weight—and, critically, launch costs—by making rocket fuel on the moon instead of bringing it all from home. “The moon’s poles have significant amounts of water ice,” he says. This could be broken down into hydrogen and oxygen, “the most powerful rocket propellants we know of.” (Obama has said he hopes to choose a heavy-lift rocket design by 2015.)
Former NASA astronaut Franklin Chang Díaz thinks it’s time to move on from chemical rockets. After retiring from NASA in 2005, he founded Ad Astra Rocket Company, which is developing a plasma rocket called VASIMR. Powered by solar arrays or nuclear electric power to produce a superheated gas (plasma), “we can do the same work with about one-twentieth the fuel,” he says. “It completely changes the equation of space travel.” With energy close to what’s generated in a nuclear sub, he believes, VASIMR could bring humans to Mars in 39 days. After that, “We won’t stop at Mars,” he says. “We’ll keep going.”
After months of travelling through space, the ship will park itself in orbit around Mars. A lander will detach, ferrying the crew down to the planet’s surface, where—if the most commonly expected scenario plays out—they’ll find rovers, supplies and a habitat waiting, delivered robotically on earlier missions.
Astronauts will spend days at a time inside a rover, exploring the surface and collecting samples, says Kriss Kennedy, a space architect at NASA. (The pressurized rover, which might be the size of a Winnebago, would be what astronauts call a “shirt-sleeve environment.”) In reduced Martian gravity, which is three-eighths of our own, they won’t need to be strapped to their beds when they’re sleeping; but they will feel like they have superhuman strength, jumping higher and lifting more than they ever could on Earth.
When not in the field, astronauts will come back to a habitat, which might be buried in the ground for protection against radiation that bombards the planet. Its size will depend on the specifics of the mission, but each crew member would probably have his own private quarters, with shared space for exercise, lab work and socializing. (The Mars500 crew kills time playing Guitar Hero.) The air they breathe could be brought along in canisters, or made from waste water split into oxygen and hydrogen, a process used on the space station.
It’s impossible to really imagine setting foot on another planet, but luckily we can practise at home. The spot on Earth that most closely resembles Mars is here in Canada: Devon Island, in Nunavut, which was struck by a meteorite about 39 million years ago, leaving a massive scar called the Haughton Crater. Today, it’s “an almost perfect place to learn how to explore Mars,” says Pascal Lee, a planetary scientist at NASA Ames Research Center and chairman of the Mars Institute, which runs the Haughton-Mars Project, a scientific study of the crater and how it relates to Mars. “Mars is a cold, windy, dusty, barren and impact-scarred place,” he says. “So is Devon Island.”
This summer, the Haughton-Mars Project team spent six weeks on site, its 14th consecutive season. Part of their research involved trying out a suitport, a system in which a spacesuit is fastened to the outside of the spacecraft (conventional suits are stored inside the ship and donned inside an airlock). When an astronaut wants to do a spacewalk, he swings open a port “like a thick refrigerator door,” Lee says, climbs into the suit and “scoots through legs first.” He then seals the port behind him, detaches from the vehicle and walks off wearing the suit. When the spacewalk is over, he re-docks, climbs out of the suit and right back into the ship. Suitports would have several advantages on Mars: they’re quick to put on, and corrosive Martian dust is kept outside, although they do risk damage from exposure. Up in Nunavut, the team experimented with spacesuits dangling from a Humvee, which stood in for the type of rover that astronauts could drive on Mars. During the exercise, “almost the entire team tried going in and out,” Lee says. “It was fantastic.”
On Mars, astronauts will find mountains taller than Everest, canyons deeper than the Grand Canyon, and the biggest volcanoes in our solar system: the largest, says Zurek, is the size of the state of Arizona at its base. They might encounter massive winds and dust storms that can engulf the entire planet, and temperatures from -125° C at the poles in wintertime, up to 20° C at noon by the equator, according to NASA. And it might not always look so different from home. In 2008, aided by a Canadian-made weather station, NASA’s Phoenix Mars lander found the first evidence of snow falling from Martian clouds.
Space agencies have been sending robotic missions to Mars since the 1960s, but human explorers would achieve more than robots ever could. Spirit and Opportunity, two NASA rovers, landed on Mars in 2004, and while Spirit eventually got stuck in a sand trap, Opportunity’s still driving around. But their work is excruciatingly slow: it’s been said humans could learn as much in one week on the ground. Getting samples into scientists’ hands will be invaluable. Unlike Earth, the Martian surface seems to be one solid crust; with no plate tectonics to melt it down, ancient rock litters the ground, “preserving an early record of the planet,” Zurek says. Beyond just teaching us about how Mars has evolved, this record might teach us about the origin of life.
Today, the pressure on Mars is so low that liquid water boils off almost immediately. But scientists have found evidence the planet was once wet and warm, with lakes, oceans, maybe even an atmosphere dense enough to support rain. Where there’s water, there can be life, and new clues suggest that maybe it’s still there. We now know there’s methane in the Martian atmosphere, which, in Earth’s atmosphere, “is largely produced by biological matter, like plants and algae,” says Victoria Hipkin, senior planetary scientist at the CSA. “Methane in the Martian atmosphere could mean there’s a surface source,” maybe even methane-producing microbes, “some of the most primitive microbes that exist on Earth.”
On Axel Heiberg Island, in Canada’s Far North, a team of scientists has been exploring the remote Lost Hammer spring. Its water pushes up through 600 m of permafrost, says McGill University microbiologist Lyle Whyte, but it’s so salty it doesn’t freeze. The water lacks any consumable oxygen, but Whyte has found microbes living there, surviving off methane that bubbles to the surface.
Images from NASA’s Mars Orbiter have shown new gullies forming on Mars. No one knows why, but the presence of springs like Lost Hammer could explain it. If microbes can live in the Lost Hammer spring, maybe they can live on Mars. And if there’s life on Mars—no matter how small, or primitive—chances seem much better that, one day, we’ll find life on other planets, too.
Mars has been called a spacecraft graveyard; it’s littered with the orbiters, landers and unmanned rovers we’ve sent over the years—we’ve never been able to bring any of them home. How we’d bring our astronauts home is another question. The technology to launch a rocket off a foreign planet, with its own gravity and atmosphere, doesn’t yet exist. So maybe, some say, we should just leave them there.
A one-way mission to Mars would cut costs significantly, since we wouldn’t need to send fuel for a return trip, says Paul Davies, a cosmologist at Arizona State University. And the dangers of space travel, including exposure to radiation and the risks associated with takeoff and landing, would be reduced. “People conclude this is a suicide mission,” but it’s not, he says. On a foreign planet, life expectancy would be lower, he admits, but sending older colonizers (say, those in their fifties) might mean shaving only a few years off their lives. Once on Mars, any scientist would be “the proverbial kid in the candy store,” Davies says. “The science would be stupendous. I’m sure plenty of volunteers would be willing.” In her book, Roach cites several who say they’d happily do it. She quotes Valentina Tereshkova, the first woman in space: “I am ready to fly without coming back.”
The first trip, as envisioned by Davies, would consist of roughly four astronauts. With refuelling missions sent every few years—and perhaps another group of explorers to join them, a decade or so later—they could “set the foundations for a permanent colony,” he says. Eventually, they’d have to wean themselves off supplies from Earth, since restocking missions are expensive, so they’d learn to derive what they need from the planet itself; oxygen, Lee says, could be made by breaking down carbon dioxide in the Martian atmosphere. One day, they might even grow their own food in inflatable, radiation-proof greenhouses.
Mike Dixon at the University of Guelph has spent nearly two decades working out how to farm crops in space. In hypobaric chambers at Guelph’s Controlled Environment Systems Research Facility, which he directs, his team is tinkering with pressure, lighting and other factors to determine what plants, and the microbes and pollinators that support them, can withstand. (One day in late July, the chambers were full of soybeans.) So far, “we can grow plants at one-tenth of the Earth’s atmospheric pressure, with one-third of Earth’s oxygen,” says Dixon, who works with the CSA and NASA. “They’re still perfectly edible.” Up on Devon Island, at the Arthur Clarke Mars Greenhouse, his team experiments with germinating and growing crops by remote control before the crew arrives on site, as might be done on a Mars base in the future, he says.
Farming crops in space would have all sorts of benefits, Dixon says, from filtering air to providing the calming effects that come from tending to plants. He hopes to eventually sprout a plant on the moon as proof it can be done.
Before humans ever set foot on Mars, robots will continue to pave the way. Several exploratory missions are planned, with Canadian components. Set to launch next year, NASA’s Curiosity—the size of a minivan, it’s the largest Mars rover yet—features a Canadian-made tool to measure rock composition. A Canadian team is developing an instrument called MATMOS, to be used on the 2016 ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter mission (a joint NASA-ESA project) to measure methane in the Martian atmosphere. In 2018, space agencies hope to land a rover on Mars to collect samples. These will be picked up on a future mission and shot back to Earth, which has never yet been done. If successful, says the ESA’s Jorge Vago, many of the technologies needed for a manned mission—precision landing, takeoff from Mars and the return to Earth—will be demonstrated on a small scale, for the first time.
When we finally do take off for Mars, it will be our greatest adventure yet. “Ask anyone what happened in the 15th century and they’ll say, Columbus discovered the new world,” says American planetary scientist Alan Stern. “In the same way, the first mission to Mars will go down in history, I think, in a way people in the 26th century will remember.”
He and others permit themselves to dream of a future—maybe not so far away—where Mars is within reach. One day, Zurek muses, maybe we could have “little museums at the Viking and Mir landing sites.”
Viewed through a telescope on a clear night, the planet Mars glows a soft, dullish red. It seems foreign and strange, but familiar, too: like Earth, Mars has polar ice caps, clouds drifting in its thin atmosphere (even snow), and changing seasons. Its day is just 40 minutes longer than our own. And even though it’s now a freeze-dried wasteland, a growing body of evidence suggests Mars was once wet and warm, and might have harboured life around the same time life sprung up here. Human explorers are bound to set foot on Mars one day. And it might be sooner than most of us think.
But our neighbouring planet, fourth from the sun, is also unimaginably remote: at its closest point in orbit to Earth, which happens only once every 26 months or so, Mars is still about 200 times farther away than the moon. At best, it would take a manned spacecraft roughly six months to reach it. By comparison, “the moon is three days away,” says Bret Drake, who leads mission planning and analysis for the Constellation Program at NASA’s Johnson Space Center. “You can go any time, and if things go wrong, you can return any time.” Once a spaceship left Earth’s orbit for Mars, there’d be no turning back.
On the surface, astronauts might have to contend with everything from swirling dust storms to blasts of radiation from powerful cosmic rays. Their research would be a scientific bonanza, teaching us about our solar system, about the genesis of life on Earth and maybe even whether life exists on Mars, or ever did. Observing how the crew’s bodies change in reduced Martian gravity could tell us if it’s really possible to survive for years on end in space. They’d have to wait over a year until the planets lined up to come back, making it a 2½ year trip, all told. If something went seriously wrong, there’d be little to no hope of rescue.
Teams of scientists and specialists from around the world are already working on projects that tackle some of the biggest challenges of a Mars mission, changing the way we think about space travel, about human endurance and about how we might live someday beyond the bonds of Earth. At the Kennedy Space Center in April, U.S. President Barack Obama delivered a historic speech on space exploration. “We’ll start by sending astronauts to an asteroid for the first time in history,” he said. “By the mid-2030s, I believe we can send humans to orbit Mars and return them safely to Earth. And a landing on Mars will follow. And I expect to be around to see it.”
Space-age luminaries like Buzz Aldrin—who, along with Neil Armstrong, was the first human to set foot on the moon, in 1969—call it our next frontier. “Mars is the only other place that approaches conditions here,” Aldrin, 80, told Maclean’s. “It’s much closer to Earth than Venus or Mercury,” the only other rocky planets in our solar system. Unlike other destinations, “you can imagine astronauts on the surface of Mars, moving and working,” says Richard Zurek, chief scientist for the Mars Program Office at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. “I truly believe the Mars astronauts are alive today,” says Canadian astronaut Robert Thirsk. “They’re probably in elementary school right now.”
In June, six men entered a sealed isolation chamber in the outskirts of Moscow, to remain there for 520 days. The Mars500 study, a joint effort of the European Space Agency and the Russian Institute for Biomedical Problems, is an attempt to recreate the mental and physical stresses of long-duration space travel, and the effects of extreme isolation. (These lessons also come in handy on Earth: NASA is lending its expertise to help 33 Chilean miners now trapped below ground, expected to be there for up to four months until rescuers can reach them.)
On their simulated mission to Mars, the men—three Russians, two Europeans and one Chinese—only have personal contact with each other. A 20-minute delay is built into communications with the control centre, the same length of time it takes for messages to travel one way between Mars and Earth. The habitat’s main living quarters, where each man has his own tiny bunk, is just 3.6 by 20 m.
In one diary entry in July, French engineer Romain Charles wrote about spending his 32nd birthday in isolation. On his last visit home, “I received some presents for my first birthday in the modules, for [Christmas] and also for my next birthday in 2011,” he writes. “Now here I am with a lot of gifts just under my bed and nothing to stop me from opening them.” Entering the living room, he found his crewmate, Italian-Colombian engineer Diego Urbina. As a surprise, Charles recounts, Urbina had taken a photo of an astronaut, “changed his face to mine and the flag for the French one,” and asked all the crew to sign it. “He knew that since I was nine or 10 years old I wanted to go to space and he made this dream come true in a way.”
Like the Mars500 group, the first team to go to Mars might have four to six members, Drake says, and a complementary set of skills: a commander, an engineer, a geologist and a doctor is a likely mix. They’d almost certainly be multinational and include both men and women. And we can only hope they get along as well as the Mars500 team apparently does. “It’s going to be a very isolated spacecraft, away from family and friends,” says Thirsk, who spent six months aboard the International Space Station last year, becoming the first Canadian to fly a long-duration mission there. Thirsk could often speak to his family back home, a luxury they won’t have.
If there’s friction among the crew, reaching a mediator might not be possible either. Even when psychologists are available, astronauts “often try to hide emotional problems, out of fear they’ll be grounded,” Mary Roach writes in her new book, Packing for Mars, and stressed-out astronauts have been known to vent their frustrations at mission control. Conflict resolution software, in which “the computer acts as a therapist,” might be helpful, says Dr. Jeffrey Sutton, director of the National Space Biomedical Research Institute. It would give astronauts the chance to play out conflicts—hypothetical or real—and explore outcomes with a machine, instead of on a crewmate.
When Thirsk was on the ISS, he spent long moments gazing down at Earth. “I was amazed by its beauty,” he says. “The oceans are blue, but they’re 100 shades of blue. You see incredible patterns in the desert: 100 shades of brown, gold and red. It’s so heartwarming to see such a beautiful planet, and all the signs of life down there.” This is common among astronauts, who tend to say that seeing Earth is the greatest benefit of their time in space, says Dr. Nick Kanas, a professor at the University of California, San Francisco and an expert in astronaut psychology. It can be calming and restorative, he says, imparting “a sense of history, of a lack of boundaries, and of the beauty of Earth as a homeland.”
Astronauts going to Mars won’t have that benefit. They’ll be the first humans to see their home planet fade away, until it disappears into the blackness of space. (As they zoom toward Mars through permanent sunlight, they won’t even see any stars, Roach reports, just black.) “Nobody in the history of our existence has ever perceived Earth as an insignificant dot. We’ve either seen it as a beautiful ball, or we’re standing on it,” Kanas says. Nobody knows what the impact of “Earth out-of-view phenomenon” will be. “It might be nothing,” he says, “but it might be profound.”
Watching their home planet disappear out the rear-view window is just one of the mental and physical challenges these astronauts will face. Microgravity, stress and radiation all wreak havoc on the human body; in space, immune systems become weaker and wounds take longer to heal, Sutton says. Radiation can make medication less effective, and in reduced gravity, muscle and bone tissue wither away. Astronauts might lose bone at up to 1.5 per cent per month on average, a loss that “can be as high as 10 times that of post-menopausal women,” he says. After months in space, an astronaut returning from Mars might step back into Earth’s gravity and snap a bone. Researchers are looking at drugs to help combat bone loss (Thirsk was part of a drug trial on the ISS). Others talk about designing a spinning spacecraft, to create artificial gravity. For now, “the main countermeasure,” Thirsk says, “is exercise.” On the ISS, astronauts do resistance training and work out on stationary bikes or treadmills, with a bungee cord to keep them from floating away.
In May, astronaut Chris Hadfield, who’ll be the first Canadian to command the ISS when he takes over in 2012, spent two weeks in a pod under water off the Florida coast. On that NASA mission, NEEMO 14, he and three crewmates simulated activities that might be performed on Mars or the moon, including emergency procedures like rescuing a wounded colleague (played by a dummy) from the hostile environment of the ocean floor. They also charted how their bodies reacted to the confined space. “It’s very evocative of being on another planet,” Hadfield told Maclean’s in a video chat from the pod. “When you walk outside, you’re weighed down like on another planet. You bounce when you walk, and you hear every breath.”
If there were an emergency and surgery were required, a robot might be the one to do it. McMaster University’s Dr. Mehran Anvari is an expert in telerobotic surgery, remotely controlling robotic arms that perform operations hundreds of kilometres away. The system was designed for use in remote communities, but Anvari’s worked with the Canadian Space Agency and NASA—including mock-ups on NEEMO missions—to see if it could be done in space. Because of the long delay in communications to Mars, “you’ll need a system with some degree of artificial intelligence,” says Anvari, who directs the Centre for Minimal Access Surgery.
“I’ll be very surprised if the next long-term manned mission includes a surgeon,” he says. “It’s not necessary.”
A robotic surgeon would certainly be an asset on a mission to Mars, but we still don’t have a ship that can take us there. With current technology, a trip would require a heavy-lift rocket (one that could blast at least 70 metric tonnes off Earth’s surface) and several launches to get all the necessary equipment off the ground. The giant ship would then be assembled in orbit before blasting off to Mars.
Lifting hundreds of thousands of pounds into Earth’s orbit is no small feat. Paul Spudis, senior staff scientist at the Lunar and Planetary Institute, suggests it might be possible to reduce weight—and, critically, launch costs—by making rocket fuel on the moon instead of bringing it all from home. “The moon’s poles have significant amounts of water ice,” he says. This could be broken down into hydrogen and oxygen, “the most powerful rocket propellants we know of.” (Obama has said he hopes to choose a heavy-lift rocket design by 2015.)
Former NASA astronaut Franklin Chang Díaz thinks it’s time to move on from chemical rockets. After retiring from NASA in 2005, he founded Ad Astra Rocket Company, which is developing a plasma rocket called VASIMR. Powered by solar arrays or nuclear electric power to produce a superheated gas (plasma), “we can do the same work with about one-twentieth the fuel,” he says. “It completely changes the equation of space travel.” With energy close to what’s generated in a nuclear sub, he believes, VASIMR could bring humans to Mars in 39 days. After that, “We won’t stop at Mars,” he says. “We’ll keep going.”
After months of travelling through space, the ship will park itself in orbit around Mars. A lander will detach, ferrying the crew down to the planet’s surface, where—if the most commonly expected scenario plays out—they’ll find rovers, supplies and a habitat waiting, delivered robotically on earlier missions.
Astronauts will spend days at a time inside a rover, exploring the surface and collecting samples, says Kriss Kennedy, a space architect at NASA. (The pressurized rover, which might be the size of a Winnebago, would be what astronauts call a “shirt-sleeve environment.”) In reduced Martian gravity, which is three-eighths of our own, they won’t need to be strapped to their beds when they’re sleeping; but they will feel like they have superhuman strength, jumping higher and lifting more than they ever could on Earth.
When not in the field, astronauts will come back to a habitat, which might be buried in the ground for protection against radiation that bombards the planet. Its size will depend on the specifics of the mission, but each crew member would probably have his own private quarters, with shared space for exercise, lab work and socializing. (The Mars500 crew kills time playing Guitar Hero.) The air they breathe could be brought along in canisters, or made from waste water split into oxygen and hydrogen, a process used on the space station.
It’s impossible to really imagine setting foot on another planet, but luckily we can practise at home. The spot on Earth that most closely resembles Mars is here in Canada: Devon Island, in Nunavut, which was struck by a meteorite about 39 million years ago, leaving a massive scar called the Haughton Crater. Today, it’s “an almost perfect place to learn how to explore Mars,” says Pascal Lee, a planetary scientist at NASA Ames Research Center and chairman of the Mars Institute, which runs the Haughton-Mars Project, a scientific study of the crater and how it relates to Mars. “Mars is a cold, windy, dusty, barren and impact-scarred place,” he says. “So is Devon Island.”
This summer, the Haughton-Mars Project team spent six weeks on site, its 14th consecutive season. Part of their research involved trying out a suitport, a system in which a spacesuit is fastened to the outside of the spacecraft (conventional suits are stored inside the ship and donned inside an airlock). When an astronaut wants to do a spacewalk, he swings open a port “like a thick refrigerator door,” Lee says, climbs into the suit and “scoots through legs first.” He then seals the port behind him, detaches from the vehicle and walks off wearing the suit. When the spacewalk is over, he re-docks, climbs out of the suit and right back into the ship. Suitports would have several advantages on Mars: they’re quick to put on, and corrosive Martian dust is kept outside, although they do risk damage from exposure. Up in Nunavut, the team experimented with spacesuits dangling from a Humvee, which stood in for the type of rover that astronauts could drive on Mars. During the exercise, “almost the entire team tried going in and out,” Lee says. “It was fantastic.”
On Mars, astronauts will find mountains taller than Everest, canyons deeper than the Grand Canyon, and the biggest volcanoes in our solar system: the largest, says Zurek, is the size of the state of Arizona at its base. They might encounter massive winds and dust storms that can engulf the entire planet, and temperatures from -125° C at the poles in wintertime, up to 20° C at noon by the equator, according to NASA. And it might not always look so different from home. In 2008, aided by a Canadian-made weather station, NASA’s Phoenix Mars lander found the first evidence of snow falling from Martian clouds.
Space agencies have been sending robotic missions to Mars since the 1960s, but human explorers would achieve more than robots ever could. Spirit and Opportunity, two NASA rovers, landed on Mars in 2004, and while Spirit eventually got stuck in a sand trap, Opportunity’s still driving around. But their work is excruciatingly slow: it’s been said humans could learn as much in one week on the ground. Getting samples into scientists’ hands will be invaluable. Unlike Earth, the Martian surface seems to be one solid crust; with no plate tectonics to melt it down, ancient rock litters the ground, “preserving an early record of the planet,” Zurek says. Beyond just teaching us about how Mars has evolved, this record might teach us about the origin of life.
Today, the pressure on Mars is so low that liquid water boils off almost immediately. But scientists have found evidence the planet was once wet and warm, with lakes, oceans, maybe even an atmosphere dense enough to support rain. Where there’s water, there can be life, and new clues suggest that maybe it’s still there. We now know there’s methane in the Martian atmosphere, which, in Earth’s atmosphere, “is largely produced by biological matter, like plants and algae,” says Victoria Hipkin, senior planetary scientist at the CSA. “Methane in the Martian atmosphere could mean there’s a surface source,” maybe even methane-producing microbes, “some of the most primitive microbes that exist on Earth.”
On Axel Heiberg Island, in Canada’s Far North, a team of scientists has been exploring the remote Lost Hammer spring. Its water pushes up through 600 m of permafrost, says McGill University microbiologist Lyle Whyte, but it’s so salty it doesn’t freeze. The water lacks any consumable oxygen, but Whyte has found microbes living there, surviving off methane that bubbles to the surface.
Images from NASA’s Mars Orbiter have shown new gullies forming on Mars. No one knows why, but the presence of springs like Lost Hammer could explain it. If microbes can live in the Lost Hammer spring, maybe they can live on Mars. And if there’s life on Mars—no matter how small, or primitive—chances seem much better that, one day, we’ll find life on other planets, too.
Mars has been called a spacecraft graveyard; it’s littered with the orbiters, landers and unmanned rovers we’ve sent over the years—we’ve never been able to bring any of them home. How we’d bring our astronauts home is another question. The technology to launch a rocket off a foreign planet, with its own gravity and atmosphere, doesn’t yet exist. So maybe, some say, we should just leave them there.
A one-way mission to Mars would cut costs significantly, since we wouldn’t need to send fuel for a return trip, says Paul Davies, a cosmologist at Arizona State University. And the dangers of space travel, including exposure to radiation and the risks associated with takeoff and landing, would be reduced. “People conclude this is a suicide mission,” but it’s not, he says. On a foreign planet, life expectancy would be lower, he admits, but sending older colonizers (say, those in their fifties) might mean shaving only a few years off their lives. Once on Mars, any scientist would be “the proverbial kid in the candy store,” Davies says. “The science would be stupendous. I’m sure plenty of volunteers would be willing.” In her book, Roach cites several who say they’d happily do it. She quotes Valentina Tereshkova, the first woman in space: “I am ready to fly without coming back.”
The first trip, as envisioned by Davies, would consist of roughly four astronauts. With refuelling missions sent every few years—and perhaps another group of explorers to join them, a decade or so later—they could “set the foundations for a permanent colony,” he says. Eventually, they’d have to wean themselves off supplies from Earth, since restocking missions are expensive, so they’d learn to derive what they need from the planet itself; oxygen, Lee says, could be made by breaking down carbon dioxide in the Martian atmosphere. One day, they might even grow their own food in inflatable, radiation-proof greenhouses.
Mike Dixon at the University of Guelph has spent nearly two decades working out how to farm crops in space. In hypobaric chambers at Guelph’s Controlled Environment Systems Research Facility, which he directs, his team is tinkering with pressure, lighting and other factors to determine what plants, and the microbes and pollinators that support them, can withstand. (One day in late July, the chambers were full of soybeans.) So far, “we can grow plants at one-tenth of the Earth’s atmospheric pressure, with one-third of Earth’s oxygen,” says Dixon, who works with the CSA and NASA. “They’re still perfectly edible.” Up on Devon Island, at the Arthur Clarke Mars Greenhouse, his team experiments with germinating and growing crops by remote control before the crew arrives on site, as might be done on a Mars base in the future, he says.
Farming crops in space would have all sorts of benefits, Dixon says, from filtering air to providing the calming effects that come from tending to plants. He hopes to eventually sprout a plant on the moon as proof it can be done.
Before humans ever set foot on Mars, robots will continue to pave the way. Several exploratory missions are planned, with Canadian components. Set to launch next year, NASA’s Curiosity—the size of a minivan, it’s the largest Mars rover yet—features a Canadian-made tool to measure rock composition. A Canadian team is developing an instrument called MATMOS, to be used on the 2016 ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter mission (a joint NASA-ESA project) to measure methane in the Martian atmosphere. In 2018, space agencies hope to land a rover on Mars to collect samples. These will be picked up on a future mission and shot back to Earth, which has never yet been done. If successful, says the ESA’s Jorge Vago, many of the technologies needed for a manned mission—precision landing, takeoff from Mars and the return to Earth—will be demonstrated on a small scale, for the first time.
When we finally do take off for Mars, it will be our greatest adventure yet. “Ask anyone what happened in the 15th century and they’ll say, Columbus discovered the new world,” says American planetary scientist Alan Stern. “In the same way, the first mission to Mars will go down in history, I think, in a way people in the 26th century will remember.”
He and others permit themselves to dream of a future—maybe not so far away—where Mars is within reach. One day, Zurek muses, maybe we could have “little museums at the Viking and Mir landing sites.”
Thursday, September 16, 2010
Shuttle Program Winds Down
BuffaloNews.com: Shuttle Program Winds Down
NASA’s space shuttle program is coming to an end. At this time, only two more missions are scheduled, in November and February.
The Mini Page talked with an expert from NASA to learn more about this important space program.
The shuttle and space station
Even as men were flying to the moon in the 1960s and ’70s, people were already planning the next stage of space exploration. Scientists believed building a station in space was the smart next step.
But if we were going to build a permanent station out in space, we had to have a way to get people and construction materials out there. We needed a vehicle that could fly into space and return safely to Earth again and again. We needed a shuttle.
Finishing the space station
During the last two shuttle missions, astronauts will complete the construction of the International Space Station, or ISS. The shuttles will bring as many spare parts to the ISS as possible.
There are several storage compartments on the outside of the ISS. Stored parts range from a gyroscope to computer boxes. (A gyroscope – JIE-ruh-skope –is an instrument used to help hold the station’s position in space.)
The storage areas are bolted to the ISS and protected from dangers such as cold. If the crew needs parts, they can do a space walk to the storage areas.
The shuttles share space station transportation duties with other countries, including Russia, Japan, Canada, and countries in the European Space Agency, or ESA.
After the shuttle program ends, ISS crews will depend on Russia’s Soyuz spacecraft to transport astronauts and cosmonauts back and forth. Many countries in the partnership will help bring cargo to the ISS.
Space Shuttle Atlantis launches into space for what was its last scheduled mission on May 14.The last flight for Discovery is scheduled for Nov. 1. The last flight for Endeavour is scheduled for Feb. 26, 2011.
NASA’s space shuttle program is coming to an end. At this time, only two more missions are scheduled, in November and February.
The Mini Page talked with an expert from NASA to learn more about this important space program.
The shuttle and space station
Even as men were flying to the moon in the 1960s and ’70s, people were already planning the next stage of space exploration. Scientists believed building a station in space was the smart next step.
But if we were going to build a permanent station out in space, we had to have a way to get people and construction materials out there. We needed a vehicle that could fly into space and return safely to Earth again and again. We needed a shuttle.
Finishing the space station
During the last two shuttle missions, astronauts will complete the construction of the International Space Station, or ISS. The shuttles will bring as many spare parts to the ISS as possible.
There are several storage compartments on the outside of the ISS. Stored parts range from a gyroscope to computer boxes. (A gyroscope – JIE-ruh-skope –is an instrument used to help hold the station’s position in space.)
The storage areas are bolted to the ISS and protected from dangers such as cold. If the crew needs parts, they can do a space walk to the storage areas.
The shuttles share space station transportation duties with other countries, including Russia, Japan, Canada, and countries in the European Space Agency, or ESA.
After the shuttle program ends, ISS crews will depend on Russia’s Soyuz spacecraft to transport astronauts and cosmonauts back and forth. Many countries in the partnership will help bring cargo to the ISS.
Space Shuttle Atlantis launches into space for what was its last scheduled mission on May 14.The last flight for Discovery is scheduled for Nov. 1. The last flight for Endeavour is scheduled for Feb. 26, 2011.
Tuesday, September 14, 2010
Supply-laden Russian cargo carrier docks at space station
From Science Fair: Supply-laden Russian cargo carrier docks at space station
A fresh load of supplies and equipment has arrived at the International Space Station after a robotic Russian space freighter eased up to the outpost and docked at the back end of the Russian side of the complex.
Two months after an aborted docking, station commander Alexander Skvortsov was ready to take manual control of the approaching spacecraft but its automated docking system worked as intended and the Progress 39 vehicle hooked up with the outpost without incident.
The docking took place at 7:58 a.m. ET Sunday as the spacecraft flew 216 miles above Mongolia.
A loss of telemetry during a July 2 docking attempt caused the Progress 38 spacecraft to fly by the station at a safe distance. Flight controllers figured out the problem and the craft docked safely two days later.
The Progress 39 vehicle is carrying 1,918 pounds of propellant, 110 pounds of oxygen, 375 pounds of water and 2,645 pounds of spare parts, experiment hardware and other supplies. It launched Friday from Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan.
By Todd Halvorson, FLORIDA TODAY
A fresh load of supplies and equipment has arrived at the International Space Station after a robotic Russian space freighter eased up to the outpost and docked at the back end of the Russian side of the complex.
Two months after an aborted docking, station commander Alexander Skvortsov was ready to take manual control of the approaching spacecraft but its automated docking system worked as intended and the Progress 39 vehicle hooked up with the outpost without incident.
The docking took place at 7:58 a.m. ET Sunday as the spacecraft flew 216 miles above Mongolia.
A loss of telemetry during a July 2 docking attempt caused the Progress 38 spacecraft to fly by the station at a safe distance. Flight controllers figured out the problem and the craft docked safely two days later.
The Progress 39 vehicle is carrying 1,918 pounds of propellant, 110 pounds of oxygen, 375 pounds of water and 2,645 pounds of spare parts, experiment hardware and other supplies. It launched Friday from Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan.
By Todd Halvorson, FLORIDA TODAY
Monday, September 13, 2010
Stephen Hawking on Time Travel, Space Exploration
Stephen Hawking on Time Travel, Space Exploration
In an interview he gave for PARADE Magazine, theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking argued that humans should continue exploring space, and also revealed that time travel is theoretically possible.
According to the expert, it's the job of physicists and engineers to work together in developing a method of warping space and time. This is absolutely necessary for time travels, he said.
The new interview was taken by Leonard Mlodinow, who is himself a physicist at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech), in Pasadena. Hawking was promoting his new book, The Grand Design, Space reports.
"Science is not only a disciple of reason, but, also, one of romance and passion,” Hawking said, adding that people still need inspiration in their everyday lives.
This is precisely what astronauts floating in the pitch-black darkness of space inspire in people, and this is one of the main reasons why humans, and not robots, should continue space exploration.
While our automated creations do a great job in getting to all sorts of place before we do, and conduct extremely-sensitive measurements, they are no substitute for human presence there.
Hawking believes that space agencies should not focus all of their efforts on building robots. Some funds and research time also needs to be put into developing manned missions.
Theoretically speaking, the expert added in the PARADE Magazine interview, Albert Einstein's theory of general relativity allows for time travel, which means that this can be done.
One way of achieving time travel, Hawking revealed, is for scientists to discover a way of allowing for a rocket launch that would return a pilot home before he or she ever left.
This, however, involves warping space and time, which is not something that can be readily achieved. “I showed it would require matter with negative energy density, which may not be available,” Hawking said.
Throughout the interview, the famed physicist avoided speaking about some of the views he expressed recently, about God, the development of the Universe, and alien civilizations.
It is his view that Earth should not be so eager to find alien life, given that extraterrestrial civilizations may only be on the prowl for resources. As such, they might not be interested in making new friends.
He also said recently that God is not needed for the creation of the Universe. Hawking believes that the existence of laws such as gravity is sufficient all by itself.
In an interview he gave for PARADE Magazine, theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking argued that humans should continue exploring space, and also revealed that time travel is theoretically possible.
According to the expert, it's the job of physicists and engineers to work together in developing a method of warping space and time. This is absolutely necessary for time travels, he said.
The new interview was taken by Leonard Mlodinow, who is himself a physicist at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech), in Pasadena. Hawking was promoting his new book, The Grand Design, Space reports.
"Science is not only a disciple of reason, but, also, one of romance and passion,” Hawking said, adding that people still need inspiration in their everyday lives.
This is precisely what astronauts floating in the pitch-black darkness of space inspire in people, and this is one of the main reasons why humans, and not robots, should continue space exploration.
While our automated creations do a great job in getting to all sorts of place before we do, and conduct extremely-sensitive measurements, they are no substitute for human presence there.
Hawking believes that space agencies should not focus all of their efforts on building robots. Some funds and research time also needs to be put into developing manned missions.
Theoretically speaking, the expert added in the PARADE Magazine interview, Albert Einstein's theory of general relativity allows for time travel, which means that this can be done.
One way of achieving time travel, Hawking revealed, is for scientists to discover a way of allowing for a rocket launch that would return a pilot home before he or she ever left.
This, however, involves warping space and time, which is not something that can be readily achieved. “I showed it would require matter with negative energy density, which may not be available,” Hawking said.
Throughout the interview, the famed physicist avoided speaking about some of the views he expressed recently, about God, the development of the Universe, and alien civilizations.
It is his view that Earth should not be so eager to find alien life, given that extraterrestrial civilizations may only be on the prowl for resources. As such, they might not be interested in making new friends.
He also said recently that God is not needed for the creation of the Universe. Hawking believes that the existence of laws such as gravity is sufficient all by itself.
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