Blogs / 80beats

Forty years ago today, a brave crew of NASA astronauts were approaching the moon’s orbit for the first time, in a risky mission that lifted the hearts of Americans in a troubled era. Apollo 8 blasted off on the morning of December 21, and eased into the moon’s orbit on Christmas Eve, when hundreds of millions of people tuned in to hear the astronauts describe their view and read from the Bible. To the public, the Apollo 8 mission was an antidote to all the toxic events that had subverted most of 1968, including the assassinations of Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert Kennedy, the eruption of inner-city rioting and the peak of American involvement in the Vietnam War [Chicago Tribune].

Apollo 8 wasn’t originally intended to go to the moon; it was scheduled to orbit Earth and test the new lunar landing vehicle. But the vehicle wasn’t ready, and the CIA was reporting that the Soviets were on the verge of sending their own manned expedition around the moon, so NASA decided to push ahead. It was a gutsy, dangerous decision, and not just because flying without a lunar lander meant that Apollo 8’s crew - Commander Frank Borman, James Lovell, and Bill Anders - would be stranded without a lifeboat if anything went wrong. Houston still didn’t have the software Apollo would need to navigate to the moon. And the huge Saturn V rocket required to launch a spacecraft beyond the Earth’s gravity was still being perfected, and had never been used on a manned flight. By today’s standards, the risks were unthinkable. Apollo’s program director, Chris Kraft, figured the odds of getting the crew home safely were no better than 50-50 [The Boston Globe].

(more…)

NASA officials have long pronounced themselves ready to move on from the aging space shuttles, which could be retired as soon as 2010, but the incoming Barack Obama administration has raised new doubts about what the next step should be. Last week, news reports surfaced that Obama’s transition team was questioning NASA about alternatives to the Ares I rocket that is currently under development as the shuttle’s replacement, and now transition team members are reportedly considering using modified military rockets instead. No decision has been made and the concept raises major technical, funding and policy issues. But in recent weeks, the transition team assigned to [NASA] has been asking aerospace industry officials about the feasibility of such a dramatic shift in priorities [The Wall Street Journal].

The Ares I rocket is designed to bring the new Orion crew capsule to the International Space Station, and eventually back to the moon and on to Mars. Technical difficulties and budget problems have raised doubts about the program, but NASA officials have dismissed these issues as a normal part of the process, and have argued against a change in plans. NASA officials stressed that moving away from the current Ares rocket designs almost certainly would entail extra costs and lengthy delays in getting the shuttle replacement off the ground. With the first Ares 1 test flight tentatively scheduled for next summer, “going to completely different hardware would put a big gap” in the workforce focusing on rocket development, said Steve Cook, Ares program manager. “We would really be stepping backward” by deciding that the shuttle replacement could ride safely on an alternate rocket [The Wall Street Journal].

(more…)

NASA engineers have finally tested an “interplanetary Internet” that could be crucial for future communications with rovers and astronauts exploring the moon, Mars, or other planets. NASA says the system would rely on probes and orbiters to serve as relay stations, or routers, to send communications around the solar system. The space agency has been working for 10 years on the project with Vint Cerf, one of the Internet’s key inventors and now chief Internet evangelist for Google [AP].

The protocols (the language computers use to speak to each other) used for our terrestrial Internet won’t work for deep space, because they assume that the network’s nodes will be connected continuously, and that messages will travel swiftly. But communication between objects in space are frequently disrupted by solar storms and obstructing planets, and sending a message from Earth to Mars can take up to 20 minutes. So engineers at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory worked with Cerf to come up with a new protocol, called Disruption-Tolerant Networking (DTN).

With the new communications design, each network node is designed to hold onto data packets, instead of discard them, until a destination path can be found. “The incentive to use Internet-like protocols over space links was to take advantage of automated routing,” [said NASA’s Leigh Torgerson]. “With standard space-link communications, the ground sends commands to spacecraft to tell it what time and what data to send. It’s very hands-on-intensive” [Computerworld].

(more…)

Today the entire nation of India rejoiced as the nation’s first lunar orbiter send an impact probe smashing into the moon’s surface. As the probe was painted with the jaunty tricolor flag of India, millions of ecstatic citizens saw it as a near equivalent to Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin’s planting of the American flag on lunar soil almost 40 years ago. “Just as we had promised, we have given India the moon,” said G. Madhavan Nair, Chairman of the Indian Space Research Organisation [The Hindu].

Lunar orbiter Chandrayaan-1 — Chandrayaan means “moon craft” in Sanskrit — was successfully launched from southern India on October 22 and is now orbiting the moon. Its two-year mission is to take high-resolution, three-dimensional images of the moon’s surface, especially the permanently shadowed polar regions. It also will search for evidence of water or ice and attempt to identify the chemical composition of certain lunar rocks [CNN]. The Indian government has said that the $79 million mission to map the lunar surface is just a prelude to the landing of a robotic lunar rover in 2012, and a manned mission to the moon by 2020.

(more…)

Researchers have tested a small, portable magnetic field that could be just the protection required for a manned expedition to Mars, when astronauts would need to be protected from radiation from solar storms. Researchers say the lab experiment is the proof of concept for a magnetic force-field that mimics the protective qualities of the Earth’s magnetosphere, which shields our planet from that same radiation.

Outside Earth’s protective atmosphere and magnetic field, supersonic particles from stellar processes run amok, screaming through space and tearing through just about anything in their path—including the bodies of astronauts, where they can wreak havoc on genetic material [Scientific American]. Astronauts on the International Space Station are within Earth’s protective magnetic field, so the Apollo astronauts who went to the moon are the only humans who have been exposed to this radiation; happily, there were no major solar storms during their quick trips to the moon and back. However, a manned mission to Mars would take about six months each way, leaving astronauts much more vulnerable.

(more…)

One of the teams competing for the $20 million top prize in the Google Lunar X Prize has announced its plans for an ambitious series of moon missions, beginning with a proposed trip to the historic Apollo 11 landing site. The team, Astrobotic Technology Inc., wants to send a rover to Tranquility Base in May 2010 to see how the relics left behind by Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin have weathered over the 40 years.

The proposal has sparked a debate over whether new rovers can be trusted to not disturb the hallowed ground. Astrobotic Tech says its rover will land far from the Apollo 11 site and will be able to recognize and circumvent footprints and artifacts on the lunar surface, but not everyone shares this optimism. [Space policy expert] John Logsdon … believes the team should first perform trial runs on Earth. “I’d like to see them demonstrate their ability to do a precision landing someplace else before they try it next to the Apollo 11 site,” Logsdon says. “You wouldn’t have to be very far off to come down on top of the flag or something dramatic like that” [Seed].

(more…)

Space startup company Armadillo Aerospace won the $350,000 prize on Friday in the Northrop Grumman Lunar Lander Challenge, proving that a private company has the know-how to build a craft capable of ferrying supplies or astronauts around the lunar surface. At the X Prize event in New Mexico, Armadillo’s craft won the Level One Challenge when it successfully lifted off and climbed vertically 160 feet, scooted sideways in the air for more than 90 seconds and touched down on a landing pad; finally, the craft had to refuel and make the return journey.

The challenge is meant to encourage private space companies to literally aim for the moon with their technology, and X Prize officials called Armadillo’s triumph a validation of that approach. Peter Diamandis, X Prize Foundation CEO, said: “The incredible legacy of Armadillo is their ability to fly over and over again in a low-cost fashion. They actually build the vehicle, fly it, see what happens, and make the repairs. They can iterate multiple times in a couple of days…. It’s really the garage rocket scientist approach to low-cost reliable vehicles. I think it’s something that the larger companies and the government should be learning from” [SPACE.com].

(more…)

Researchers have gotten a close look at a lunar crater that was thought to hold “skating rinks” of ice, and have reached the disappointing conclusion that the crater does not have visible patches of water ice after all. New images from the Japanese lunar orbiter, Kaguya, reveal no traces of ice in the Shackleton crater, a cold and shadowy place near the moon’s south pole. Ice would be vital for future colonies on the Moon, providing drinking water for astronauts and hydrogen fuel for their vehicles [New Scientist].

Researchers had high hopes for the Shackleton crater because it never receives direct sunlight. The theory was that if comets have landed there (and, given the craters’ ages, the odds are that several will have), some of the ice carried by such dirty celestial snowballs might be preserved in the permanent shadow cast by the craters’ walls [The Economist]. Then NASA’s 1998 Lunar Prospector detected an excess of hydrogen at the moon’s poles, which researchers thought indicated the presence of water ice.

(more…)

Early tomorrow morning, India will launch its first lunar satellite, making it the sixth country to do so, following the United States, Russia, the European Space Agency, China, and Japan. The lunar-orbiting spacecraft, Chandrayaan-1, is scheduled to blast off aboard an Indian-built rocket at 6:20 am (0050 GMT) on Wednesday from the Satish Dhawan Space Centre in Sriharikota on India’s southeastern coast [AFP].

If all goes to plan, the satellite, weighing half a [metric] tonne, will enter a lunar orbit some 62 miles above the moon’s surface on November 8 and begin its two-year mission to map the moon in 3D, survey its surface for mineral wealth and start its 11 hi-tech probes, including five from the US, Sweden, Japan, Germany and Bulgaria [Guardian] Specifically, Chandrayaan-1 will be looking for uranium, helium-3 (used for nuclear fusion), and water ice. Although the unmanned spacecraft itself will not land on the moon, it will eject a small craft to land on and investigate the lunar surface.

(more…)

NASA celebrated its 50th anniversary yesterday, looking back on a half-century that saw the growth from an 80-person agency sending up the first communication satellites to a massive network of scientific and engineering hubs capable of sending the Voyager probes to the edge of our solar system and sending the robotic Mars Phoenix Lander to dig in the dirt on Mars.

But even as officials raised their glasses of champagne in celebration, many observers questioned NASA’s current direction and wondered whether it will have enough money to carry out its goals. “It’s a rather unfortunate time to be celebrating a 50th anniversary,” says space historian Joan Johnson-Freese of the Naval War College. “Right now, we’re at best at a plateau, if not — I hate to say this — heading downwards” [USA Today].

(more…)

In a sign of China’s growing technological prowess, the Chinese space agency will soon launch its third manned mission into space. The Shenzhou 7 mission, to launch as early as Thursday, will be the first to carry a full complement of three astronauts, one of whom will perform China’s first space walk, or EVA for “extra-vehicular activity” [AP]. In 2003, China became the third nation to successfully launch astronauts into orbit, joining the United States and Russia.

The Shenzhou VII crew capsule will be boosted aloft by the Long March 2F rocket, which has 66 consecutive successful launches. During the spacewalk, a companion satellite will fly nearby to relay real-time images of the astronaut’s daring feat to the eager crowds back home. If all goes as planned, experts say the mission will be not just a technological achievement, but also a triumph of propaganda. “China wants to get the flight in full 3-D glory to maximize the publicity,” says Eric Hagt, China programme director at the World Security Institute in Washington DC. “This is going to be the Hollywood mission” [Nature News].

(more…)

NASA is hard at work planning a long-term lunar outpost, and the agency now has a potential solution to the energy question: miniature nuclear power systems. This week, NASA announced that it’s planning to build prototypes and simulators that will be ready for testing in 2012 or 2013.

As a lunar settlement draws closer to reality–NASA’s Constellation Program includes returning to the moon by 2020–is busy thinking through the practical details–like how to keep the generators running and the lights on. During the day, solar power is one obvious solution. But lunar nights can last up to 334 hours in some places, and even at the moon’s south pole, the sun never rises high. A fission surface power system would be able to produce power steadily even in harsh environments such as the Moon, or even Mars, without relying on sunlight [World Nuclear News].

(more…)

Yesterday, NASA announced its solution for the potentially dangerous vibrations that have plagued the rocket that is expected to boost NASA’s next generation spacecraft, the Orion, to the moon and maybe beyond. The Ares I rocket is part of the Constellation program that calls for a replacement for the space shuttle to be ready by 2015, and a manned mission to the moon by 2020.

The fix involves two devices that will act like giant springs, which NASA engineers say will act like the shock absorbers on a car: The high-tech absorbers should limit the violent shaking, called “thrust oscillation,” down to a level that NASA officials compared to driving over the rumble strips of a highway [Orlando Sentinel]. The first spring will sit between the first-stage solid fuel rocket booster and the second-stage liquid fuel booster. The second device will consist of a ring of 16 cylinders containing 100-pound weights around the inside of the skirt-like base of the rocket’s first stage. Sensors will move these weights so they actively cancel out the vibration [New Scientist].

(more…)

Yesterday, lunar enthusiasts and space buffs gathered to mark the 39th anniversary of the first human steps on the moon. At NASA’s new Lunar Science Institute, the assembled crowd was also preparing for a three-day conference devoted to planning the next phase of lunar exploration. NASA hopes to return humans to the moon by 2020, but they may have some competition in this space race do-over; both entrepreneurs and other space agencies are also stepping up their activities.

At the gathering at Ames, NASA researchers made clear that the goals for the next lunar expedition are ambitious. The United States, they said, needs to focus on creating a permanent presence on the moon, using it as a training platform for missions to Mars and beyond. “We’re going back, and this time we’re going to stay,” S. Pete Worden, director of NASA/Ames, said in remarks opening the lunar science conference. “This is the first step in settling the solar system” [San Jose Mercury News].

(more…)

It’s almost as if lunar researchers got jealous of all the attention their Martian colleagues have been receiving for their discovery of water ice on Mars, and decided to compete: Lunar researchers say they’ve discovered trace amounts of water inside some moon rocks brought back by NASA’s Apollo astronauts.

A new study of volcanic glass pebbles that date from 3 billion years ago has revealed that although the planet is nearly bone dry today, it may have once harbored significant amounts of water in rocks deep below the surface. The findings challenge researchers’ understanding of how the moon formed around 4.5 billion years ago. The Moon is thought to have been created in a violent collision between Earth and another planet-sized object. Scientists thought the heat from this impact had vaporised all the water [BBC News].

(more…)