This is from Voice of America, way back in August 2013
http://www.voanews.com/content/reu-nasa-space-launch-platforms-for-sale/1734278.html
CAPE CANAVERAL, FLORIDA — While NASA
considers competing bids to take over a shuttle launch pad at Kennedy
Space Center, it added three mobile launch platforms to its list of
excess equipment available to private industry, officials said on
Tuesday.
Ideally, NASA wants a commercial launch company to take over one or more
of the massive steel platforms, which were originally built in 1967 to
support the Apollo moon program's Saturn rockets. The 25-foot
(7.6-meter) tall platforms were later modified for the space shuttles,
which flew from 1981 until 2011.
Recycling the platforms, which measure 160 feet by 135 feet (49 by 41
meters) is another option, a solicitation on NASA's procurement website
shows.
The U.S. space agency also is interested in other uses for the mobile
launch platforms, which served as bases to stack and assemble the
shuttle and then transport it to the launch pad. The platforms provided
power and umbilical connections and had open sections for flames and
rocket exhaust to pass through.
“At this point, NASA is looking to gage interest for potential use of
the [platforms] and concepts for potential use,” spokeswoman Tracy Young
said.
Proposals are due Sept. 6.
NASA is already assessing bids for the shuttle launch pad from two competing firms backed by Internet billionaires.
NASA is also turning over the shuttle's runway to Space Florida, a
state-backed economic development agency. Space Florida, in turn, plans
to make the runway and support facilities available to a variety of
commercial companies, including privately owned XCOR Aerospace, which is
developing a two-person, suborbital spaceship called Lynx that takes
off and lands like an airplane.
Another potential customer is Stratolaunch Systems, an orbital space vehicle backed by Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen.
The most contentious - and highest profile - piece of shuttle equipment
available is a Kennedy Space Center launch pad that has attracted
competing bids from Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, and Elon Musk, co-founder
of Paypal and chief executive of electric car company Tesla Motors.
Bezos and Musk, both billionaires, are vying for Launch Complex 39A.
NASA intends to keep the second shuttle launch pad, 39B, for a new
heavy-lift rocket under development called the Space Launch System.
Musk's Space Exploration Technologies of Hawthorne, California, wants
39A to launch its Falcon 9 and planned Falcon Heavy rockets. The
privately-owned firm, also known as SpaceX, already flies from a leased
launch pad at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, located just south of
the Kennedy Space Center.
The first Falcon 9 rocket flight from a new launch site at Vandenberg
Air Force Base in California is scheduled for next month. The company
has a backlog of more than 50 launches, including 10 missions to fly
cargo for NASA to the International Space Station.
SpaceX also is developing a version of its Dragon cargo ship to fly astronauts.
Startup Blue Origin, a Kent, Washington, firm owned by Bezos, submitted
an alternative proposal to NASA to run pad 39A as a multi-user facility.
Both firms say they are ready to take over maintenance and operations of the launch pad on Oct. 1.
United Launch Alliance, a partnership of Boeing and Lockheed Martin, did
not bid on the shuttle's launch pad, but has publicly endorsed Blue
Origin's proposals. The company, which has a lucrative monopoly on
launching U.S. military satellites, is facing its first competition for
the business from rival launch pad bidder SpaceX.
The main NASA facilities that will remain are the shuttle launch pad
39B, plus various hangars for the Orion deep space capsule to be
launched by NASA's heavy lift rocket, due to begin test flights in 2017.
Wednesday, January 22, 2014
Monday, January 6, 2014
Is China's Space Program Shaping a Celestial Empire?
From Space.com: http://www.space.com/22474-china-space-program-empire.html
China is pressing forward on its human space exploration plans, intent on establishing an international space station and, experts say, harnessing the technological muscle to launch its astronauts to the moon.
Highlighting China's intent, the country is working with the United Nations to stage a major workshop on human space technology, to be held Sept. 16-20 in Beijing.
The meeting is organized jointly by the U.N. Office for Outer Space Affairs and the China Manned Space Agency, co-organized by the International Academy of Astronautics and hosted by the China Manned Space Agency.
The five-day international workshop will bring together senior experts, professionals and decision-makers from public sectors, academia and industry worldwide. [See photos from China's Shenzhou 10 space mission]
On the agenda, the workshop aims to contribute to "establishing institutional capacity in microgravity science and enhancing international cooperation in human space exploration as a global endeavor," according to meeting documents.
Share and exchange information
"With such a strong partner as China, I am convinced that this workshop will be extraordinary and interesting, and valuable results will be achieved for the whole space community," Mazlan Othman, director general of the United Nations Office for Outer Space Affairs, said in a statement.
The workshop "will provide great opportunities for space colleagues from the world to share and exchange information and ideas on human space exploration activities. I believe those exchanges will definitely enhance the friendship among us and the international cooperation in the endeavor," Zhaoyao Wang, director general of the China Manned Space Agency (CMSA), said in a statement.
Zhaoyao said that, since its establishment in 1992, the CMSA has organized 11 flight missions and sent 10 Chinese astronauts into outer space to bolster the nation's human space exploration activities.
China's first space traveler, Yang Liwei, was sent into orbit in October 2003, making China the third nation — after Russia and the United States — to launch astronauts to space using its own vehicles. [Chinese Lift-Off! Crew of 3 to Visit Space Lab |(Video)]
"The year 2013 marks the 10th anniversary of China's manned space flight mission," Zhaoyao said. "These achievements are crucial steps towards fulfilling China's plans of building a manned space station around the year 2020, which would benefit the world by promoting international cooperation in the utilization of the station for the peaceful exploration and use of outer space."
Progress…faster than expected
"My top line is that the Chinese are moving ahead aggressively on a human exploration program," said Laurence Young, Apollo program professor of astronautics and professor of health sciences and technology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Young told SPACE.com that China is progressing toward robotic lunar exploration and eventually human moon exploration.
In gauging China's human space exploration campaign, Young said "they have laid out what appears to be a more than reasonable, but nevertheless optimistic plan."
From single-piloted missions to multiple crews, space walking, "everything they have been touting they have, in fact, made progress on," Young said. "To many of us, it has been faster than we might have expected."
Distinctive Chinese program
Some experts have criticized China's rockets and spacecraft as simply blowing dust off Russia's Soyuz design. But Young disagreed, saying, "They are wrong." China has taken the best of what they've imported from the Russians, learned from America and the European Space Agency, he said, "and are building a distinctive Chinese program."
Going to the moon is not easy, Young said. "We have to give the Chinese credit for taking on those hard problems. Whether they will be successful or not remains to be seen. But they are serious about it," he said.
A leading expert in space biomedical research and artificial gravity, Young has been invited to take part in an International Forum for Space Life Science and Space Biotechnology, to be held Sept. 24 in Beijing.
At the forum, China's strategic plan for life science, biotechnology and international cooperation, geared to the country's space station, is to be rolled out.
"Around 2020, China is going to build its own space station and to carry out space science research of larger scale," said Yidong Gu, an Academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and leader of the science planning group for China's space station. [Watch China's first video lesson from space]
Unmistakable warning signs
Writing for the journal Foreign Policy this month, John Hickman, a professor of political science at Berry College in Georgia, said there "are unmistakable warning signs that China may surpass the United States and Russia to become the world's pre-eminent spacefaring power."
Hickman said China's recent piloted space mission, Shenzhou 10, "may determine the terms under which the spacefaring powers compete
on the final frontier. By the way, he said that one of many ancient
names for China is Tianchao — the Celestial Empire. Shenzhou 10 may be
pointing the way toward its creation," he said.
Launched in June of this year, Shenzhou 10 was
China’s fifth piloted space flight mission and the tenth flight of the
Shenzhou spacecraft. It was the last of the three Shenzhou flight
missions intended for testing rendezvous and docking techniques with the
country’s Tiangong 1 space lab. The mission lasted 15 days, the longest
space trek so far in the history of China’s human space flight program.
Credit: CMSE
"For Washington to continue to ignore Beijing's resolute space policy
doesn't mean there is no space race; it means that Beijing wins by default," he said.
"Saying that it takes two to tango is a poor excuse for losing because international space politics isn't a tango. Instead, it is a conga line," Hickman told SPACE.com.
"One of the underlying problems in U.S. space policy-making is the conviction based on the dominant Constructivist Theory of International Relations that the behavior of states is necessarily constrained by a consensus on international norms," Hickman said. "Some decision-makers in Washington are convinced that Beijing can be talked into accepting the leadership of Washington because it has been working to establish that consensus together with the second-tier space powers."
Ignore the consensus
Hickman said the hitch is that a state like China can ignore the
consensus if it possesses the material means and the economic and
technological wherewithal to do so. China does, he said.
"The problem with the constructivist theory of international relations is that it tempts decision-makers into engaging in wishful thinking about the future. If China takes the lead, then the other second-tier space powers will begin to follow the Chinese lead," Hickman said.
The last time America was forced to participate in a space race, Hickman said, America managed "a come from behind win" in large part because the U.S. had the advantage of a much larger and more efficient economy than the Soviet Union.
"That is not true this time around. China is not the Soviet Union. The implication is that what we need is a serious 'forward' space policy now or we will lose not only this international competition but also the chance to lead the human endeavor in space," Hickman said.
Hickman then posed this question with a suggested answer: "What should the United States do? Answer: Establish a permanent manned United States base on the moon first."
Last frontier left
"I do think a human moon landing is very much in the cards for China," said Narayani Basu, a research officer with the Southeast Asia Research Program at the Institute of Peace and Conflict Studies in New Delhi, India. "It would seem a natural culmination to the three-phase program that they are working towards completing," she told SPACE.com
All in all, space is the last frontier left, Basu said. "Beijing is aware of its competitors. It has done its research and it is working to become a competitor to be reckoned with as far as space exploration goes. They've improved and built upon the technology already in place so that their space program is leaner and sleeker in terms of budgeting," she said.
Basu said that China is looking for resources on Earth. And the next step is outer space.
A major stepping stone goal for China is orbiting a large space station, a facility targeted for the 2020 time period.
Credit: DragoninSpace.com
Asteroid mining, establishing a permanent manned base on the moon,
these are all avenues just waiting to be taken advantage of, Basu added.
"The U.S. program is struggling at the moment. Taking a quick lead in
matters like these will give Beijing an upper hand in terms of
'geo-strategy' in the future," she said.
International space stage
China's space station is to be in place by 2020, officials have said — perhaps the same year that the International Space Station is going to be scrapped.
"That will undoubtedly give the Chinese an edge on the international space stage," Basu said. "It is also a signal of hope to the Chinese people that China is regaining some of its past glory…that it's still a strong contender in world politics. It is a message that the Party would like to get across, both internationally and domestically, in my opinion, especially given all the bad press about its slowing economy."
Basu said that, practicalities apart, space exploration definitely figures as a theme in Chinese President Xi Jinping's "Chinese dream."
"His vision implies that China will become stronger, has a definite strategic and economic footprint, and a global — and with the culmination of the space program — extraterrestrial — presence. So, in all fields and arenas, it will be a force to reckon with," Basu said.
China is pressing forward on its human space exploration plans, intent on establishing an international space station and, experts say, harnessing the technological muscle to launch its astronauts to the moon.
Highlighting China's intent, the country is working with the United Nations to stage a major workshop on human space technology, to be held Sept. 16-20 in Beijing.
The meeting is organized jointly by the U.N. Office for Outer Space Affairs and the China Manned Space Agency, co-organized by the International Academy of Astronautics and hosted by the China Manned Space Agency.
The five-day international workshop will bring together senior experts, professionals and decision-makers from public sectors, academia and industry worldwide. [See photos from China's Shenzhou 10 space mission]
On the agenda, the workshop aims to contribute to "establishing institutional capacity in microgravity science and enhancing international cooperation in human space exploration as a global endeavor," according to meeting documents.
Share and exchange information
"With such a strong partner as China, I am convinced that this workshop will be extraordinary and interesting, and valuable results will be achieved for the whole space community," Mazlan Othman, director general of the United Nations Office for Outer Space Affairs, said in a statement.
The workshop "will provide great opportunities for space colleagues from the world to share and exchange information and ideas on human space exploration activities. I believe those exchanges will definitely enhance the friendship among us and the international cooperation in the endeavor," Zhaoyao Wang, director general of the China Manned Space Agency (CMSA), said in a statement.
Zhaoyao said that, since its establishment in 1992, the CMSA has organized 11 flight missions and sent 10 Chinese astronauts into outer space to bolster the nation's human space exploration activities.
China's first space traveler, Yang Liwei, was sent into orbit in October 2003, making China the third nation — after Russia and the United States — to launch astronauts to space using its own vehicles. [Chinese Lift-Off! Crew of 3 to Visit Space Lab |(Video)]
"The year 2013 marks the 10th anniversary of China's manned space flight mission," Zhaoyao said. "These achievements are crucial steps towards fulfilling China's plans of building a manned space station around the year 2020, which would benefit the world by promoting international cooperation in the utilization of the station for the peaceful exploration and use of outer space."
Progress…faster than expected
"My top line is that the Chinese are moving ahead aggressively on a human exploration program," said Laurence Young, Apollo program professor of astronautics and professor of health sciences and technology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Young told SPACE.com that China is progressing toward robotic lunar exploration and eventually human moon exploration.
In gauging China's human space exploration campaign, Young said "they have laid out what appears to be a more than reasonable, but nevertheless optimistic plan."
From single-piloted missions to multiple crews, space walking, "everything they have been touting they have, in fact, made progress on," Young said. "To many of us, it has been faster than we might have expected."
Distinctive Chinese program
Some experts have criticized China's rockets and spacecraft as simply blowing dust off Russia's Soyuz design. But Young disagreed, saying, "They are wrong." China has taken the best of what they've imported from the Russians, learned from America and the European Space Agency, he said, "and are building a distinctive Chinese program."
Going to the moon is not easy, Young said. "We have to give the Chinese credit for taking on those hard problems. Whether they will be successful or not remains to be seen. But they are serious about it," he said.
A leading expert in space biomedical research and artificial gravity, Young has been invited to take part in an International Forum for Space Life Science and Space Biotechnology, to be held Sept. 24 in Beijing.
At the forum, China's strategic plan for life science, biotechnology and international cooperation, geared to the country's space station, is to be rolled out.
"Around 2020, China is going to build its own space station and to carry out space science research of larger scale," said Yidong Gu, an Academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and leader of the science planning group for China's space station. [Watch China's first video lesson from space]
Unmistakable warning signs
Writing for the journal Foreign Policy this month, John Hickman, a professor of political science at Berry College in Georgia, said there "are unmistakable warning signs that China may surpass the United States and Russia to become the world's pre-eminent spacefaring power."
Hickman said China's recent piloted space mission, Shenzhou 10, "may determine the terms under which the spacefaring powers compete
on the final frontier. By the way, he said that one of many ancient
names for China is Tianchao — the Celestial Empire. Shenzhou 10 may be
pointing the way toward its creation," he said.
Launched in June of this year, Shenzhou 10 was
China’s fifth piloted space flight mission and the tenth flight of the
Shenzhou spacecraft. It was the last of the three Shenzhou flight
missions intended for testing rendezvous and docking techniques with the
country’s Tiangong 1 space lab. The mission lasted 15 days, the longest
space trek so far in the history of China’s human space flight program.Credit: CMSE
by default," he said."Saying that it takes two to tango is a poor excuse for losing because international space politics isn't a tango. Instead, it is a conga line," Hickman told SPACE.com.
"One of the underlying problems in U.S. space policy-making is the conviction based on the dominant Constructivist Theory of International Relations that the behavior of states is necessarily constrained by a consensus on international norms," Hickman said. "Some decision-makers in Washington are convinced that Beijing can be talked into accepting the leadership of Washington because it has been working to establish that consensus together with the second-tier space powers."
Ignore the consensus
"The problem with the constructivist theory of international relations is that it tempts decision-makers into engaging in wishful thinking about the future. If China takes the lead, then the other second-tier space powers will begin to follow the Chinese lead," Hickman said.
The last time America was forced to participate in a space race, Hickman said, America managed "a come from behind win" in large part because the U.S. had the advantage of a much larger and more efficient economy than the Soviet Union.
"That is not true this time around. China is not the Soviet Union. The implication is that what we need is a serious 'forward' space policy now or we will lose not only this international competition
but also the chance to lead the human endeavor in space," Hickman said.Hickman then posed this question with a suggested answer: "What should the United States do? Answer: Establish a permanent manned United States base on the moon first."
"I do think a human moon landing is very much in the cards for China," said Narayani Basu, a research officer with the Southeast Asia Research Program at the Institute of Peace and Conflict Studies in New Delhi, India. "It would seem a natural culmination to the three-phase program that they are working towards completing," she told SPACE.com
All in all, space is the last frontier left, Basu said. "Beijing is aware of its competitors. It has done its research and it is working to become a competitor to be reckoned with as far as space exploration goes. They've improved and built upon the technology already in place so that their space program is leaner and sleeker in terms of budgeting
," she said.Basu said that China is looking for resources on Earth. And the next step is outer space.
A major stepping stone goal for China is orbiting a large space station, a facility targeted for the 2020 time period.Credit: DragoninSpace.com
International space stage
China's space station is to be in place by 2020, officials have said — perhaps the same year that the International Space Station is going to be scrapped.
"That will undoubtedly give the Chinese an edge on the international space stage," Basu said. "It is also a signal of hope to the Chinese people that China is regaining some of its past glory…that it's still a strong contender in world politics. It is a message that the Party would like to get across, both internationally and domestically, in my opinion, especially given all the bad press about its slowing economy."
Basu said that, practicalities apart, space exploration definitely figures as a theme in Chinese President Xi Jinping's "Chinese dream."
"His vision implies that China will become stronger, has a definite strategic and economic footprint, and a global — and with the culmination of the space program — extraterrestrial — presence. So, in all fields and arenas, it will be a force to reckon with," Basu said.
Friday, September 13, 2013
Voyager probe 'leaves Solar System'
From the BBC: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-24026153
Scientists say the probe's instruments indicate it has moved beyond the bubble of hot gas from our Sun and is now moving in the space between the stars.
Launched in 1977, Voyager was sent initially to study the outer planets, but then just kept on going.
Today, the veteran Nasa mission is almost 19 billion km (12 billion miles) from home.
This distance is so vast that it takes 17 hours now for a radio signal sent from Voyager to reach receivers here on Earth.
"Scientifically it's a major milestone, but also historically - this is one of those journeys of exploration like circumnavigating the globe for the first time or having a footprint on the Moon for the first time. This is the first time we've begun to explore the space between the stars," he told BBC News.
Sensors on Voyager had been indicating for some time that its local environment had changed.
The data that finally convinced the mission team to call the jump to interstellar space came from the probe's Plasma Wave Science (PWS) instrument. This can measure the density of charged particles in Voyager's vicinity.
Readings taken in April/May this year and October/November last year revealed a near-100-fold jump in the number of protons occupying every cubic metre of space.
Scientists have long theorised such a spike would eventually be observed if Voyager could get beyond the influence of the magnetic fields and particle wind that billow from the surface of the Sun.
When the Voyager team put the new data together with information from the other instruments onboard, they calculated the moment of escape to have occurred on or about 25 August, 2012. This conclusion is contained in a report published by the journal Science.
"This is big; it's really impressive - the first human-made object to make it out into interstellar space," said Prof Don Gurnett from the University of Iowa and the principal investigator on the PWS.
On 25 August, 2012, Voyager-1 was some 121 Astronomical Units away. That is, 121 times the separation between the Earth and the Sun.
Breaching the boundary, known technically as the heliopause, was, said the English Astronomer Royal, Prof Sir Martin Rees, a remarkable achievement: "It's utterly astonishing that this fragile artefact, based on 1970s technology, can signal its presence from this immense distance."
Although now embedded in the gas, dust and magnetic fields from other stars, Voyager still feels a gravitational tug from the Sun, just as some comets do that lie even further out in space. But to all intents and purposes, it has left what most people would define as the Solar System. It is now in a completely new domain.
Nasa's Voyager probes
The pair's primary objective was to survey the planets Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune - a task they completed in 1989.
They were then steered towards deep space. It is expected that their plutonium power sources will stop supplying electricity in about 10 years, at which point their instruments and their 20W transmitters will die.
Voyager-1 will not approach another star for nearly 40,000 years, even though it is moving at 45km/s (100,000mph).
"Voyager-1 will be in orbit around the centre of our galaxy with all its stars for billions of years," said Prof Stone.
The probe's work is not quite done, however. For as long as they have working instruments, scientists will want to sample the new environment.
The new region through which Voyager is now flying was generated and sculpted by big stars that exploded millions of years ago.
There is indirect evidence and models to describe the conditions in this medium, but Voyager can now measure them for real and report back.
The renowned British planetary scientist Prof Fred Taylor commented: "As a young post-doc, I went to [Nasa's Jet Propulsion Laboratory] and worked for a while with the team that was doing the science definition study for the Outer Planets Grand Tour, which later became Voyager.
"It seemed so incredible and exciting to think we would see and explore Jupiter and Saturn close up, let alone Uranus and Neptune.
"The idea that the spacecraft would then exit the Solar System altogether was so way out, figuratively as well as literally, that we didn't even discuss it then, although I suppose we knew it would happen someday. Forty-three years later, that day has arrived, and Voyager is still finding new frontiers."
The Sun sits in an extensive bubble of hot gas called
the heliosphere
The Voyager-1 spacecraft has become
the first manmade object to leave the Solar System.
Scientists say the probe's instruments indicate it has moved beyond the bubble of hot gas from our Sun and is now moving in the space between the stars.
Launched in 1977, Voyager was sent initially to study the outer planets, but then just kept on going.
Today, the veteran Nasa mission is almost 19 billion km (12 billion miles) from home.
This distance is so vast that it takes 17 hours now for a radio signal sent from Voyager to reach receivers here on Earth.
"This is really a key milestone that we'd been hoping we
would reach when we started this project over 40 years ago - that we would get a
spacecraft into interstellar space," said Prof Ed Stone, the chief scientist on
the venture.
"Scientifically it's a major milestone, but also historically - this is one of those journeys of exploration like circumnavigating the globe for the first time or having a footprint on the Moon for the first time. This is the first time we've begun to explore the space between the stars," he told BBC News.
Sensors on Voyager had been indicating for some time that its local environment had changed.
The data that finally convinced the mission team to call the jump to interstellar space came from the probe's Plasma Wave Science (PWS) instrument. This can measure the density of charged particles in Voyager's vicinity.
Readings taken in April/May this year and October/November last year revealed a near-100-fold jump in the number of protons occupying every cubic metre of space.
Scientists have long theorised such a spike would eventually be observed if Voyager could get beyond the influence of the magnetic fields and particle wind that billow from the surface of the Sun.
When the Voyager team put the new data together with information from the other instruments onboard, they calculated the moment of escape to have occurred on or about 25 August, 2012. This conclusion is contained in a report published by the journal Science.
"This is big; it's really impressive - the first human-made object to make it out into interstellar space," said Prof Don Gurnett from the University of Iowa and the principal investigator on the PWS.
On 25 August, 2012, Voyager-1 was some 121 Astronomical Units away. That is, 121 times the separation between the Earth and the Sun.
Breaching the boundary, known technically as the heliopause, was, said the English Astronomer Royal, Prof Sir Martin Rees, a remarkable achievement: "It's utterly astonishing that this fragile artefact, based on 1970s technology, can signal its presence from this immense distance."
Although now embedded in the gas, dust and magnetic fields from other stars, Voyager still feels a gravitational tug from the Sun, just as some comets do that lie even further out in space. But to all intents and purposes, it has left what most people would define as the Solar System. It is now in a completely new domain.
Nasa's Voyager probes
- Voyager 2 launched on 20 August 1977; Voyager 1 lifted off on 5 September the same year
- Their official missions were to study Jupiter and Saturn, but the probes were able to continue on
- The Voyager 1 probe is now the furthest human-built object from Earth
- Both probes carry discs with recordings designed to portray the diversity of culture on Earth
Voyager-1 departed Earth on 5 September 1977, a few days
after its sister spacecraft, Voyager-2.
The pair's primary objective was to survey the planets Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune - a task they completed in 1989.
They were then steered towards deep space. It is expected that their plutonium power sources will stop supplying electricity in about 10 years, at which point their instruments and their 20W transmitters will die.
Voyager-1 will not approach another star for nearly 40,000 years, even though it is moving at 45km/s (100,000mph).
"Voyager-1 will be in orbit around the centre of our galaxy with all its stars for billions of years," said Prof Stone.
The probe's work is not quite done, however. For as long as they have working instruments, scientists will want to sample the new environment.
The new region through which Voyager is now flying was generated and sculpted by big stars that exploded millions of years ago.
There is indirect evidence and models to describe the conditions in this medium, but Voyager can now measure them for real and report back.
The renowned British planetary scientist Prof Fred Taylor commented: "As a young post-doc, I went to [Nasa's Jet Propulsion Laboratory] and worked for a while with the team that was doing the science definition study for the Outer Planets Grand Tour, which later became Voyager.
"It seemed so incredible and exciting to think we would see and explore Jupiter and Saturn close up, let alone Uranus and Neptune.
"The idea that the spacecraft would then exit the Solar System altogether was so way out, figuratively as well as literally, that we didn't even discuss it then, although I suppose we knew it would happen someday. Forty-three years later, that day has arrived, and Voyager is still finding new frontiers."
The Sun sits in an extensive bubble of hot gas called
the heliosphere - Solar wind: The stream of charged particles blown off the Sun and travelling at "supersonic" speeds (white arrows)
- Termination shock: Area where particles from the Sun begin to slow and clash with matter from deep space
- Heliosheath: A vast, turbulent expanse where the solar wind piles up as it presses outward against interstellar matter
- Heliopause: The boundary between the solar wind and the interstellar wind, where the pressure of both are in balance
Sunday, August 18, 2013
Time Runs Out for Telescope, Examining Kepler's Contribution to Space Research
From PBS: Time Runs Out for Telescope, Examining Kepler's Contribution to Space Research
JUDY WOODRUFF: The U.S. space agency confirmed yesterday that its renowned Kepler telescope is beyond repair, a big blow in its search for planets.
The Kepler was launched into an orbit around the sun in 2009, its purpose, observe stars thousands of light years from Earth that may harbor Earth-like planets. By looking at what happens to the light emanated by the stars, it's discovered more than 3,500 possible planets, more than 100 of which have been independently confirmed.
But it has not yet found one planet that has the right conditions for sustaining life as here on Earth. NASA says the spacecraft's wheels, which are critical for keeping it pointed correctly, do not work anymore. Astronomers are now assessing its legacy.
Michael Lemonick is the author of a book about Kepler called “Mirror Earth." He has long written about space and science for TIME magazine.
Michael Lemonick, welcome to the NewsHour.
Tell us a little bit more about what the original mission for the Kepler was.
MICHAEL LEMONICK, author: The original mission was to take a census, really, of a group of stars, an average group of stars, to find out what percentage of them have planets of any kind, and what sizes those planets come in and how far they are from their stars, how the temperature on the surface of those planets would be, if you were there.
JUDY WOODRUFF: And why is that important? And how much of that mission did it get done?
MICHAEL LEMONICK: It got -- well, first of all, it got a huge amount done.
It's important because when -- the reason we look for planets around other stars at all is because we're interested in whether there is life elsewhere in the universe. And the best bet for life, we would think, would be on a planet just like Earth, that is, about the same size as Earth, orbiting a star like sun, with the right temperature for water to exist in liquid form, which is a requirement for life, we think.
And since we know there's a planet like that already in the universe, and life is here, we want to look for a planet like that elsewhere as the best bet for finding life.
JUDY WOODRUFF: And so what happened to the telescope? We mentioned the wheels not working. What -- was this something they expected would go wrong?
MICHAEL LEMONICK: Well, so, these wheels help the telescope point very precisely at the stars it's looking at.
You have to hold the telescope very steady in order to detect the very faint fluctuations in light that happen when a planet goes in front of a star, so it dims just a tiny bit. And the wheels help keep it pointed incredibly precisely. And they have had four of these reaction wheels that the satellite went up with.
One of them failed last year. Another one failed last spring. And with only two wheels still working, you can't point with the accuracy that you need. And so the telescope is still in perfect working order. It just can't aim in the direction that it's supposed to.
JUDY WOODRUFF: Michael Lemonick, it must be incredibly frustrating for the NASA scientists who put so much effort into this. How are they taking it?
MICHAEL LEMONICK: Well, they're actually taking it pretty well. When Kepler was first approved in 2000, it was approved for a four-year mission. That's what the scientists asked for. And NASA said, yes, you can have four years.
And they have completed the four years. In 2012, the scientists said, wow, we could do better science if we had another several years, and they got another three-and-a-half. But the first primary phase of the mission has been completed. And only the first two years worth of data from those four years have been analyzed yet. And those numbers you quoted in the introduction, all those planets it's found already, that's just from the first two years of data.
So they have got two more years' worth to probe through, many more discoveries to make. All they're -- all that is lacking is the ability to then go even deeper and look even further. So they're disappointed, of course. They would have liked to do more with this amazing satellite, but they're incredibly satisfied with what they found already.
JUDY WOODRUFF: But in terms of adding to our understanding of space, you're saying this is significant?
MICHAEL LEMONICK: This is very significant.
What they have done in the survey is discovered what they are convinced are more than 3,000 planets. They haven't all been confirmed yet, but most of them will be. And what they see is that if you look out around average stars, you will see some planets, like Jupiter, big, gassy, giant planets that would be very inhospitable to life, more, smaller planets like Neptune, still not very hospitable.
But as you get smaller and smaller and closer to Earth in size, there are more and more planets. And if they extrapolate from what they have seen, one estimate, one lowball estimate is that in the Milky Way, there would be 17 billion planets with just the right conditions for life, and that's a low estimate. There are probably more than that.
So, we didn't know any of this before Kepler. Now we know that Earth-like planets are almost certainly very common in the Milky Way. Fifteen years ago, we didn't even know there were planets at all around other stars. Now we know that Earths are very common in the Milky Way.
JUDY WOODRUFF: And what do they believe it's going to take to find out where those other Earths are?
MICHAEL LEMONICK: Well, so Kepler's primary mission is often misunderstood.
It wasn't specifically to find those planets in particular. It was to get an idea of how common they are. That's the basic mission. So, if it found that Earth-like planets are very rare, that tells astronomers, OK, maybe it's not worth going out now and trying to find specific ones. What it's found instead is that Earth-like planets are probably very common.
There are probably plenty of them reasonably close to us, and now we can start targeting, with new telescopes, targeting stars closer to Earth than the Kepler stars, which are quite far away, looking for those planets, and, ultimately, with more powerful telescopes, looking at their atmospheres and their surfaces to try and determine whether there's really life there, because it's one thing to say, yes, this is a good place where life could exist.
We want to be able to say, yes, life does exist on these planets. And that is now not a crazy thing to try and do, thanks to Kepler. We now know it's not a quixotic endeavor.
JUDY WOODRUFF: Well, that is pretty exciting.
Michael Lemonick, thank you very much.
MICHAEL LEMONICK: I think so.
Thank you.
JUDY WOODRUFF: The U.S. space agency confirmed yesterday that its renowned Kepler telescope is beyond repair, a big blow in its search for planets.
The Kepler was launched into an orbit around the sun in 2009, its purpose, observe stars thousands of light years from Earth that may harbor Earth-like planets. By looking at what happens to the light emanated by the stars, it's discovered more than 3,500 possible planets, more than 100 of which have been independently confirmed.
But it has not yet found one planet that has the right conditions for sustaining life as here on Earth. NASA says the spacecraft's wheels, which are critical for keeping it pointed correctly, do not work anymore. Astronomers are now assessing its legacy.
Michael Lemonick is the author of a book about Kepler called “Mirror Earth." He has long written about space and science for TIME magazine.
Michael Lemonick, welcome to the NewsHour.
Tell us a little bit more about what the original mission for the Kepler was.
MICHAEL LEMONICK, author: The original mission was to take a census, really, of a group of stars, an average group of stars, to find out what percentage of them have planets of any kind, and what sizes those planets come in and how far they are from their stars, how the temperature on the surface of those planets would be, if you were there.
JUDY WOODRUFF: And why is that important? And how much of that mission did it get done?
MICHAEL LEMONICK: It got -- well, first of all, it got a huge amount done.
It's important because when -- the reason we look for planets around other stars at all is because we're interested in whether there is life elsewhere in the universe. And the best bet for life, we would think, would be on a planet just like Earth, that is, about the same size as Earth, orbiting a star like sun, with the right temperature for water to exist in liquid form, which is a requirement for life, we think.
And since we know there's a planet like that already in the universe, and life is here, we want to look for a planet like that elsewhere as the best bet for finding life.
JUDY WOODRUFF: And so what happened to the telescope? We mentioned the wheels not working. What -- was this something they expected would go wrong?
MICHAEL LEMONICK: Well, so, these wheels help the telescope point very precisely at the stars it's looking at.
You have to hold the telescope very steady in order to detect the very faint fluctuations in light that happen when a planet goes in front of a star, so it dims just a tiny bit. And the wheels help keep it pointed incredibly precisely. And they have had four of these reaction wheels that the satellite went up with.
One of them failed last year. Another one failed last spring. And with only two wheels still working, you can't point with the accuracy that you need. And so the telescope is still in perfect working order. It just can't aim in the direction that it's supposed to.
JUDY WOODRUFF: Michael Lemonick, it must be incredibly frustrating for the NASA scientists who put so much effort into this. How are they taking it?
MICHAEL LEMONICK: Well, they're actually taking it pretty well. When Kepler was first approved in 2000, it was approved for a four-year mission. That's what the scientists asked for. And NASA said, yes, you can have four years.
And they have completed the four years. In 2012, the scientists said, wow, we could do better science if we had another several years, and they got another three-and-a-half. But the first primary phase of the mission has been completed. And only the first two years worth of data from those four years have been analyzed yet. And those numbers you quoted in the introduction, all those planets it's found already, that's just from the first two years of data.
So they have got two more years' worth to probe through, many more discoveries to make. All they're -- all that is lacking is the ability to then go even deeper and look even further. So they're disappointed, of course. They would have liked to do more with this amazing satellite, but they're incredibly satisfied with what they found already.
JUDY WOODRUFF: But in terms of adding to our understanding of space, you're saying this is significant?
MICHAEL LEMONICK: This is very significant.
What they have done in the survey is discovered what they are convinced are more than 3,000 planets. They haven't all been confirmed yet, but most of them will be. And what they see is that if you look out around average stars, you will see some planets, like Jupiter, big, gassy, giant planets that would be very inhospitable to life, more, smaller planets like Neptune, still not very hospitable.
But as you get smaller and smaller and closer to Earth in size, there are more and more planets. And if they extrapolate from what they have seen, one estimate, one lowball estimate is that in the Milky Way, there would be 17 billion planets with just the right conditions for life, and that's a low estimate. There are probably more than that.
So, we didn't know any of this before Kepler. Now we know that Earth-like planets are almost certainly very common in the Milky Way. Fifteen years ago, we didn't even know there were planets at all around other stars. Now we know that Earths are very common in the Milky Way.
JUDY WOODRUFF: And what do they believe it's going to take to find out where those other Earths are?
MICHAEL LEMONICK: Well, so Kepler's primary mission is often misunderstood.
It wasn't specifically to find those planets in particular. It was to get an idea of how common they are. That's the basic mission. So, if it found that Earth-like planets are very rare, that tells astronomers, OK, maybe it's not worth going out now and trying to find specific ones. What it's found instead is that Earth-like planets are probably very common.
There are probably plenty of them reasonably close to us, and now we can start targeting, with new telescopes, targeting stars closer to Earth than the Kepler stars, which are quite far away, looking for those planets, and, ultimately, with more powerful telescopes, looking at their atmospheres and their surfaces to try and determine whether there's really life there, because it's one thing to say, yes, this is a good place where life could exist.
We want to be able to say, yes, life does exist on these planets. And that is now not a crazy thing to try and do, thanks to Kepler. We now know it's not a quixotic endeavor.
JUDY WOODRUFF: Well, that is pretty exciting.
Michael Lemonick, thank you very much.
MICHAEL LEMONICK: I think so.
Thank you.
Wednesday, July 31, 2013
Showdown over NASA funding likely
From USA Today: Showdown over NASA funding likely
WASHINGTON — A Senate panel Tuesday narrowly approved a bill reauthorizing NASA, setting up a showdown with the House over how much money the nation's space program should get.
The three-year bill, which now heads to the full Senate, would give the space agency $18.1 billion in fiscal year 2014, $18.4 billion in 2015 and $18.8 billion in 2016 -- $2 billion more per year than the U.S. House is considering. NASA received $17.7 billion in fiscal 2013, which ends Sept. 30.
The Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee passed the bill 13-12 along party lines, with Democrats in favor and Republicans opposed.
"While it's not as much as we'd like NASA to have, it's certainly a step in the right direction," Sen. Bill Nelson, D-Fla., said after the vote. Nelson chairs the Science and Space Subcommittee that helped shape and steer the legislation.
If the Democratic-led Senate passes the bill as expected, lawmakers likely will have to reconcile it with a House bill that promises NASA much less. Earlier this month, lawmakers on the GOP-led House Science, Space and Technology Committee settled on a funding figure closer to $16.8 billion for fiscal 2014 and fiscal 2015. A vote on the House floor is expected later this year.
The partisan conflict over NASA funding largely involves each party's view of how much money is available to spend on most federal programs, such as space and science.
Republicans are unwilling to go beyond the overall allocations spelled out in the budget they approved earlier this year. Those levels assume the government-wide budget cuts Congress agreed to in 2011 -- known as sequestration -- will remain in effect.
Democrats on the Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee argued Tuesday that NASA reauthorization should be based on how much money the agency realistically needs, not on what might be available in the next budget cycle.
Sen. Maria Cantwell, D-Wash., called a Republican amendment to reduce the bill's funding levels "a misguided attempt to really turn the committee into nothing but the Appropriations (Committee)."
"And I think we have very important technology-mission oversight that we have to focus on," she said.
South Dakota Sen. John Thune, the top Republican on the panel, sounded optimistic that lawmakers can compromise.
The NASA bill "will likely need even more work before (it) reflects the kind of consensus that has characterized our committee's enacted legislation," he told panel members. "With additional effort, however, I am hopeful that we can get there in the weeks and months ahead."
The difference is not just about money. It's also about NASA's overall direction and whether the agency should be allowed — or trusted — to pursue the course it's laid out for the next few years.
Both the House and Senate measures would provide money to continue developing NASA's top priorities: a deep-space mission to Mars, a joint venture with aerospace firms to ferry astronauts to the International Space Station, and completion of the James Webb Space Telescope.
But while the Senate bill would permit an asteroid retrieval mission the agency wants to undertake as part of its stepping-stone approach to Mars, the House measure strictly prohibits it.
"I don't think that is the position of a committee to be telling the scientists and the NASA experts of what we should be doing," Nelson said Tuesday.
WASHINGTON — A Senate panel Tuesday narrowly approved a bill reauthorizing NASA, setting up a showdown with the House over how much money the nation's space program should get.
The three-year bill, which now heads to the full Senate, would give the space agency $18.1 billion in fiscal year 2014, $18.4 billion in 2015 and $18.8 billion in 2016 -- $2 billion more per year than the U.S. House is considering. NASA received $17.7 billion in fiscal 2013, which ends Sept. 30.
The Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee passed the bill 13-12 along party lines, with Democrats in favor and Republicans opposed.
"While it's not as much as we'd like NASA to have, it's certainly a step in the right direction," Sen. Bill Nelson, D-Fla., said after the vote. Nelson chairs the Science and Space Subcommittee that helped shape and steer the legislation.
If the Democratic-led Senate passes the bill as expected, lawmakers likely will have to reconcile it with a House bill that promises NASA much less. Earlier this month, lawmakers on the GOP-led House Science, Space and Technology Committee settled on a funding figure closer to $16.8 billion for fiscal 2014 and fiscal 2015. A vote on the House floor is expected later this year.
The partisan conflict over NASA funding largely involves each party's view of how much money is available to spend on most federal programs, such as space and science.
Republicans are unwilling to go beyond the overall allocations spelled out in the budget they approved earlier this year. Those levels assume the government-wide budget cuts Congress agreed to in 2011 -- known as sequestration -- will remain in effect.
Democrats on the Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee argued Tuesday that NASA reauthorization should be based on how much money the agency realistically needs, not on what might be available in the next budget cycle.
Sen. Maria Cantwell, D-Wash., called a Republican amendment to reduce the bill's funding levels "a misguided attempt to really turn the committee into nothing but the Appropriations (Committee)."
"And I think we have very important technology-mission oversight that we have to focus on," she said.
South Dakota Sen. John Thune, the top Republican on the panel, sounded optimistic that lawmakers can compromise.
The NASA bill "will likely need even more work before (it) reflects the kind of consensus that has characterized our committee's enacted legislation," he told panel members. "With additional effort, however, I am hopeful that we can get there in the weeks and months ahead."
The difference is not just about money. It's also about NASA's overall direction and whether the agency should be allowed — or trusted — to pursue the course it's laid out for the next few years.
Both the House and Senate measures would provide money to continue developing NASA's top priorities: a deep-space mission to Mars, a joint venture with aerospace firms to ferry astronauts to the International Space Station, and completion of the James Webb Space Telescope.
But while the Senate bill would permit an asteroid retrieval mission the agency wants to undertake as part of its stepping-stone approach to Mars, the House measure strictly prohibits it.
"I don't think that is the position of a committee to be telling the scientists and the NASA experts of what we should be doing," Nelson said Tuesday.
Tuesday, May 21, 2013
Friday, March 29, 2013
Take your blood pressure medication!
Spent most of yesterday in the hospital, where my mother was admitted. Her doctor had changed her blood pressure medication a couple of weeks ago, it wasn't doing the job. Unfortunately her doctor was out of town and a home therapist said we should take her to the Emergency Room.
Bad idea, as far as I'm concerned. Put her back on her old medication which was working, just causing her to cough.
Instead we brought her to the emergency room, and since she's old and deaf, this got her more stressed out and scared than ever, because they were all gathered around her shouting questions and wanting to run tests and I'm sure she thought she was dying or something, which sent her blood pressure even higher.
She spent the night there, and is still in today for more tests, which I don't think she needs but I guess since they've got her in there they want to get their money's worth out of our insurance... she's in a private room which must be costing a fortune....
The reason for my headline... she was about 40 when she was first diagnosed with high blood pressure...took pills for a couple of days but didn't like how they made her feel....so she stopped taking them and tried to do the "natural remedy" thing.
Result, 20 years later she had congestive heart failure, and now instead of taking 1 pill a day she has to take 4. And has to go into the hospital periodically on occasions like these.
Moral of the story - go get your blood pressure checked, and if you have high blood pressure make sure you take your meds, otherwise believe me you'll wish you had, when it is too late...
Bad idea, as far as I'm concerned. Put her back on her old medication which was working, just causing her to cough.
Instead we brought her to the emergency room, and since she's old and deaf, this got her more stressed out and scared than ever, because they were all gathered around her shouting questions and wanting to run tests and I'm sure she thought she was dying or something, which sent her blood pressure even higher.
She spent the night there, and is still in today for more tests, which I don't think she needs but I guess since they've got her in there they want to get their money's worth out of our insurance... she's in a private room which must be costing a fortune....
The reason for my headline... she was about 40 when she was first diagnosed with high blood pressure...took pills for a couple of days but didn't like how they made her feel....so she stopped taking them and tried to do the "natural remedy" thing.
Result, 20 years later she had congestive heart failure, and now instead of taking 1 pill a day she has to take 4. And has to go into the hospital periodically on occasions like these.
Moral of the story - go get your blood pressure checked, and if you have high blood pressure make sure you take your meds, otherwise believe me you'll wish you had, when it is too late...
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