The man tasked with steering NASA through difficult transitions and pointing the space agency boldly towards the stars will be a former astronaut who has piloted the space shuttle. On Saturday, President Barack Obama announced his long-awaited nomination for NASA administrator: Charles F. Bolden Jr. If confirmed by the Senate, the former astronaut and retired Marine Corps general will be the first African-American to head the space agency.
The pick has been celebrated by NASA insiders, and is viewed as a signal that, after some signs of ambivalence, President Obama is now embracing the expensive manned spaceflight program. “Clearly Charlie Bolden would not have taken the job if he were being asked to shut down human spaceflight,” said John Logsdon, a space policy expert in Washington…. He added that a recent announcement of the administration’s plans to review the Ares 1 rocket and Orion spacecraft, which are to replace the space shuttle by 2015, is not a shot across the bow of NASA’s human spaceflight program. He said it would be a review of the hardware, not the destination or goals [Los Angeles Times].
However, it is not clear whether the new leadership will adopt all of the goals for human exploration of the solar system that were laid out by the Bush administration: namely, returning to the moon by 2020 and then working towards landing humans on Mars.
(more…)
The U.S. government has announced increasing concern over the quality of its Global Positioning System (GPS), which could begin to deteriorate as early as next year, resulting in regular blackouts and failures – or even dishing out inaccurate directions to millions of people worldwide [The Guardian]. The possibility that new satellites would not be launched in time was announced in late April, but the warning was stepped up this week in a government statement that recognized cost over-runs of defence department space programmes [Nature] as part of the problem.
The functioning of GPS relies on a network of satellites that constantly orbit the planet and beam signals back to the ground that help pinpoint your position on the Earth’s surface [The Guardian]. GPS service cannot maintain its level of precision if old satellites wear out before new satellites are launched as replacements, and the ability of the system to provide full coverage could dip below 95% between 2010 and 2014, when the Air Force plans to begin replacing the current block of satellites with a newer generation [Nature], warned the report by the Government Accountability Office.
(more…)
Yesterday, about 350 miles above western Australia, two massively expensive pieces of space hardware rendezvoused in a delicate orbital dance. The space shuttle Atlantis arrived at the Hubble Space Telescope for the telescope’s fifth and final upgrade, and met the telescope in orbit as it circled the Earth at 17,200 miles per hour. With mission commander Scott Altman at the controls, Atlantis eased up within 30 feet of NASA’s flagship observatory, bringing the ship close enough for a capture attempt. Mission specialist Megan McArthur limbered up the shuttle’s robot arm and used snares at its end to latch on to a pin-like grapple fixture on the side of the gleaming telescope. “Houston, Atlantis. Hubble has arrived onboard Atlantis,” said Altman [Florida Today blog].
The astronauts audibly gasped as they drew up to the 12-ton telescope. “Just looking out the window here, and it’s an unbelievably beautiful sight,” said John M. Grunsfeld, a veteran astronaut. “Amazingly, the exterior of Hubble, an old man of 19 years in space, still looks in fantastic shape.” Dr. Grunsfeld, who is on his third Hubble repair trip, was one of the last humans to see the telescope in March 2002 and arguably knows it better than anyone on or above Earth [The New York Times].
(more…)
To explore the dark reaches of the solar system, NASA is going to need a lot more plutonium-238, the space agency has told the Department of Energy. NASA’s deep space probes are powered by pellets of the plutonium isotope: The electricity that powers onboard instruments comes from devices called radioisotope power generators. The RPGs make electricity with the heat from the radioactive decay of small amounts of plutonium-238 carried on board [Los Angeles Times]. Such devices are the only option for probes that voyage far from the sun and can’t absorb enough solar energy to power their operations.
But a new report from the National Research Council notes that the world’s stockpile of Pu-238 is rapidly dwindling, and explains that NASA only has enough left for a couple more missions. The isotope isn’t found in nature, and its production is at a dead halt all around the world. The United States stopped making Pu-238 at the end of the Cold War; although the isotope cannot be used in nuclear weapons, it’s a byproduct of the production of weapons-grade Pu-239. For the past few years NASA has been buying its supply from Russia, but Russia’s plutonium-making reactors were also shut down years ago. NASA will soon receive its last shipment of the isotope from Russia, after which the space agency will be looking for a new supplier.
(more…)
The Mars rover Spirit has driven almost 5 miles across the Martian surface, has climbed a hill as tall as the Statue of Liberty, and has generally kept on trucking for the five years since it landed on the planet, even though its mission was originally scheduled to last only 90 days. But its roving days could be over, unless its controllers at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory can extricate it from a sticky situation: Spirit is stuck in the Martian sand.
The rover was navigating around a low plateau en route to two volcanic features, Von Braun and Goddard, when it started rolling across the soft sand, and began to sink in. NASA controllers have tried a variety of maneuvers over the past few days in an attempt to extricate Spirit, but the rovers’ wheels have only sunk deeper, and are now partially buried in the sand. “This is quite serious,” said JPL’s John Callas, the project manager for Spirit and its twin, Opportunity. “Spirit is in a very difficult situation. We are proceeding methodically and cautiously. It may be weeks before we try moving Spirit again” [Los Angeles Times].
(more…)
While NASA’s central mission is the same as it always was–to send astronauts up, up, and away!–the details of how it will send bold explorers into the space frontier are suddenly, well, up in the air. After months of signaling displeasure with NASA’s operations, the Obama administration has ordered a 90-day review of the human space flight program. In a letter to NASA Acting Administrator Christopher Scolese, the president’s science adviser, John Holdren, wrote that “it would be only prudent” to review NASA’s human space flight program given the magnitude of its ambitions and “the significant investment of both funds and scientific capital” [Washington Post].
The crux of the matter is the Constellation program, which aims to replace the aging space shuttles with the newly designed Ares rockets and Orion crew capsule. But during the past several months, watchdog agencies have questioned whether NASA can deliver the Constellation program on time and within budget. Its estimated costs through 2015 have risen from $28 billion in 2006 to more than $40 billion today, and engineers still are wrestling with design flaws that would cause Ares I to shake violently during ascent and also possibly drift into its launch tower [Orlando Sentinel]. Back in December, Obama’s transition team reportedly asked NASA officials if military rockets used to launch satellites could be reconfigured to boost astronauts to the International Space Station and on to the moon.
(more…)
NASA hopes to send a “nano-satellite” the size of a bread loaf into orbit tomorrow, where it will conduct experiments on yeast to determine how the microorganisms behave in space. Weighing only 10 pounds, the tiny satellite called PharmaSat is scheduled to lift off on board a U.S. Air Force four-stage Minotaur 1 rocket late on May 5. Once aloft and free of the rocket, the satellite will circle the Earth at 17,000 mph while carrying a micro-laboratory packed with sensors and optical systems [ComputerWorld].
The satellite’s lab will autonomously conduct drug testing in orbit, treating the yeast with anti-fungal drugs to see if the yeast responds differently to treatment when it’s free of the Earth’s gravity. “There’s data that’s coming back from shuttle and space station missions that indicates something is changing microorganisms in a microgravity environment making them more varied,” said Bruce Yost, PharmaSat mission manager…. Those genetic changes could make bacteria more resistant to antibiotics and medical treatment — something scientists are hoping to learn more about before attempting longer jaunts into space such as to the moon and beyond [The Register]. One recent study found that salmonella become more virulent after just 83 hours of growing in space.
(more…)
When the Messenger spacecraft swooped low past the planet Mercury on October 6 2008, it gathered up a wealth of data that will have planetary scientists puzzling for years. As researchers sort through findings regarding Mercury’s volcanic past, meteor impacts, and the effect of the solar wind on the innermost planet’s magnetosphere, one broad conclusion stands out: Mercury isn’t just a boring chunk of rock. Marilyn Lindstrom, a NASA program scientist, said the Messenger findings show that Mercury is “just an amazingly dynamic planet, both in the past and in the present” [Baltimore Sun].
Superficially, Mercury looks a lot like the moon: small, grayish-brown and pockmarked with craters. Some scientists assumed that Mercury’s surface formed the same way the moon’s did, with lighter rocks rising to the surface of a magma ocean and congealing into a brittle crust early on. But the new observations reveal that 40 percent of the surface was formed by volcanoes. “Up until before Messenger’s arrival, we weren’t even sure that volcanism existed on Mercury” [Wired], says researcher Brett Denevi. The presence of titanium oxide also suggests that the planet was hot enough in its first 100 million years to be covered in magma oceans.
(more…)
NASA astronauts may not be assigned to a stint at a lunar base anytime soon. A statement by a NASA official suggested that the space agency is likely to scrap the idea of a permanent moon base, but could instead try to speed up other, more ambitious manned missions to explore our solar system.
NASA has been working towards returning astronauts to the moon by 2020 and building a permanent base there. But some space analysts and advocacy groups like the Planetary Society have urged the agency to cancel plans for a permanent moon base, carry out shorter moon missions instead, and focus on getting astronauts to Mars [New Scientist]. When the agency’s acting administrator, Chris Scolese, testified before a congressional subcommittee yesterday, he said that the agency probably won’t aim to build an outpost on the moon, suggesting that the agency may be following those advocates’ advice.
(more…)
In an attempt to smooth the way for future manned missions to the moon, a researcher who studied lunar dust almost 40 years ago has returned to his data to investigate why the dust behaves in such problematic ways. The tiny grains cling to spacesuits and scientific instruments, causing myriad problems—clogging, abrasion, inhalation, obfuscation—for lunar visitors and the experiments they leave behind [Scientific American].
Physicist Brian O’Brien worked on several Apollo lunar landing missions from 1969 to 1971, building dust detection devices that were planted on the moon’s surface. In 2006 he learned that NASA had lost the original data from those devices and decided to go back through his own set of data tapes from the experiments, to see if anything new could be learned. “Dust is the number one environmental hazard on the moon, yet its movements and adhesive properties are little understood,” said O’Brien [SPACE.com]. Lunar dust generally refers to only the tiniest particles of lunar regolith, the loose blanket of rock fragments that covers most of the moon’s surface.
(more…)
At the ripe old age of five the Mars rover Spirit is starting to show signs of its age, and NASA scientists are beginning to wonder how much longer it can continue to roll across the Red Planet. Over the past few weeks the rover once ignored its morning wake-up call and has unexpectedly rebooted its computer several times. Spirit has also occasionally failed to record its activities in its memory drive, the robotic equivalent of “senior moments.”
John Callas, project manager for the Mars rovers, says scientists don’t yet have an explanation for these glitches, but adds that the incidents suggest that Spirit is getting erratic. Or maybe just old…. “I don’t think anyone can tell you how these rovers will eventually end on Mars,” Callas said. “Will they gradually degrade until their mechanical functionality goes or will they have a catastrophic end, where something inside the rover breaks?” [Washington Post]
(more…)
A pair of solar observers known as the STEREO spacecraft have taken the first 3-D pictures of the sun’s powerful storms, during which billions of tons of charged particles erupt from the sun’s surface. The two spacecraft have taken up two positions about 100 million miles apart: Not unlike human eyes, the satellites’ two points of view allow for combination images that render scenes in three dimensions [National Geographic News].
Solar storms can have serious repercussions here on Earth. They can disrupt GPS signals and power grids, damage satellites, and bombard astronauts with solar radiation, experts said [National Geographic News]. But with the STEREO system, researchers say they can predict when a fierce storm will hit Earth 24 hours in advance (an improvement over previous 12-hour predictions). Says researcher Chris Davies: “That’s ample time to power down a satellite until the worst of the storm has passed; and if you’re an astronaut on the space station, you would have had plenty of time to get into an area that has much better shielding” [BBC News]. While STEREO is a temporary scientific research mission, researchers say it provides an example of how a “space weather” early-warning system would work.
(more…)
Bureaucratic rules regarding who can use what equipment aboard the International Space Station are causing some hard feelings among the crew members, according to Russian cosmonaut Gennady Padalka, who gave an interview to Russia’s Novaya Gazeta newspaper before he blasted off towards the space station on Thursday. Padalka complained that regulations will prevent him from using his American colleagues’ exercise bike to stay fit in space. Worse than that, [officials] also ruled that American and Russian crew members should use their own “national toilets”, with Russian crew banned from using the luxurious American astro-loo [The Guardian].
Padalka said strict regulations that prevent the sharing of everything from food to toilets hurts the crew’s morale and makes working in space still more complicated. But he added that the crew will rise above the pettiness. “Cosmonauts are above the ongoing squabble, no matter what officials decide,” said Padalka, a veteran of two space missions, according to the newspaper. “We are grown-up, well-educated and good-mannered people and can use our own brains to create normal relationship. It’s politicians and bureaucrats who can’t reach agreement, not us, cosmonauts and astronauts” [AP].
(more…)
Astronauts flown up aboard the space shuttle Discovery are working hard to get the International Space Station ready for more residents: In May, the station’s live-aboard crew will expand from three to six members. But while some elements of the station upgrade have gone flawlessly, including the installation of the station’s final array of solar panels, astronauts encountered problems with other crucial procedures–like fixing the station’s urine recycling system.
The astronauts were given an extra task when NASA issued an alert about a piece of space junk that was expected to whiz past the space station at dangerously close range. With his ship still docked at the International Space Station, shuttle commander Lee Archambault fired up Discovery’s steering jets Sunday to move the linked craft into a new position that will reduce their chances of colliding with a piece of space junk [Los Angeles Times]. The four-inch chunk of debris, part of a spent Chinese satellite, is the latest reminder that orbital odds and ends pose a threat to the Space Station. Less than two weeks ago, crew members had to scramble into an escape pod as a precaution when another piece of debris came too close for comfort.
(more…)
The Mars Phoenix Lander conked out in November, ending the active mission of the robotic scientist, but the results of its five months of research on Martian geology are still coming in. In a late-breaking update, some Phoenix scientists now declare that they spotted several drops of liquid salt water on the lander’s legs; this would be the first time liquid water has been detected and photographed beyond Earth.
The researcher who proposed the hypothesis, Nilton Renno, was careful to say, “This is not a proof.” But he added: “I think the evidence is overwhelming. It’s not circumstantial evidence” [The New York Times]. Liquid water would boost the possibility that microbial life could survive beneath the Martian surface.
Renno bases his claim on images that show several blobs on the lander’s legs that changed between snapshots, seeming to merge and grow in size. The dramatic assertion has divided the Phoenix’s science team, with some researchers arguing that the low-resolution pictures actually show nothing more than clumps of frost. “It’s highly unlikely that [liquid water is] the explanation,” said Michael Hecht of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory…. “It’s just water vapor moving around. It’s an ordinary, unexciting explanation” [AP].
(more…)
