A few days after the White House released its budget that proposes axing NASA’s Constellation program and providing more support to private space flight, the Obama administration began to follow through on the second part of that equation. NASA has announced that it’s giving $50 million to five companies to support new space vehicles.
That $50 million isn’t from the revised budget, but rather the American Reinvestment and Recovery Act (or in more common parlance, the $787 billion federal stimulus package). Nevertheless, NASA chief Charles Bolden said these five companies–Sierra Nevada Corporation, Blue Origin, Boeing, Paragon Space Development Corp., and United Launch Alliance–would play a large part in future plans. “Ladies and gentlemen, these are the faces of the new frontier. The vanguard,” said Bolden. “We will certainly be adding to this group in the near future” [Space.com].
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Jeff Bezos, founder of Amazon.com, has been working on top secret rocket plans that may one day carry passengers on suborbital flights that reach just beyond the boundary of outer space. In hush-hush surroundings, the Bezos Blue Origin business plan has been resolute in developing its New Shepard, a vertical takeoff and landing rocket. The plan: To develop a craft that can routinely fly multiple astronauts into suborbital space at competitive prices [SPACE.com]. The flights would reach up to 62 miles in the air, which would allow the passengers to see the blue curve of the Earth (which you, the reader, can see for free atop this post) and experience momentary weightlessness. Bezos has been conducting flight tests on his private Texas ranch, but beyond these general plans, no one really knew what the billionaire might have up his sleeve—until now.
The publicity shy Blue Origin recently announced that it has selected three research payloads—basically zero-G flight experiments—to fly aboard the New Shepard rocket.
The three experiments are:
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With NASA’s manned space flight program in tumult, it’s an open question when/if human boots will tramp on Martian soil. But the space agency has provided a virtual way for humans to explore the red planet, with its new “Be a Martian” program.
The online project, a collaboration between NASA and Microsoft, enlists the power of crowdsourcing. Users are invited to sort through the hundreds of thousands of photos of Mars that have been sent back by rovers and orbiters. To convince people to spend hours pouring over pictures of dusty Martian landscapes, two tasks have been set up as games where participants can win points and badges. One game asks people to count craters in photos of Mars; the other asks people to match small, high-res photos of the Martian surface with their corresponding locations on a low-res photo taken from a higher altitude [Seattle Post-Intelligencer]. (You’ll need to have Microsoft’s Silverlight application for the games and videos on the site to work.)
By enlisting citizen scientists, NASA hopes to both interest students in space careers and to make real progress in Martian research. “We really need the next generation of explorers,” says Michelle Viotti, from the agency’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, which oversees Mars missions. “And we’re also accomplishing something important for Nasa. There’s so much data coming back from Mars. Having a wider crowd look at the data, classify it and help understand its meaning is very important” [BBC News].
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Image: JPL / Microsoft
If NASA ever wants to send astronauts on long-term space flights, it needs to know how radiation will affect the crew. Testing humans obviously isn’t going to happen, so NASA is funding a round of experiments to study how radiation effects monkeys, the first time monkeys have been used as test subjects by NASA in decades. The point of the experiments is to understand how the harsh radioactive environment of space affects human bodies and behavior and what countermeasures can be developed to make long-duration spaceflight safe for travelers beyond Earth’s protective magnetic shield [Discovery News]. The monkey studies will advance previous radiation experiments with rats and mice and will focus on how radiation affects the monkeys’ central nervous system.
Researchers will expose 18 to 28 squirrel monkeys with a small dose of radiation, similar to what astronauts would receive on a round trip flight to Mars. The monkeys, previously trained to perform a variety of tasks, will be tested to see how the exposure affects their performance [Telegraph] at different times after exposure to gamma rays. The monkeys will not be killed during the experiments, and after testing staff and veterinarians will look after them for the rest of their lives at Harvard Medical School’s McLean Hospital in Boston.
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A laser-powered robot took a climb up a cable in the Mohave Desert in Wednesday, and pushed ahead the sci-fi inspired notion of a space elevator capable of lifting astronauts, cargo, and even tourists up into orbit. The robot, built by LaserMotive of Seattle, whizzed up 2,953 feet (nearly 1 kilometer) in about four minutes, which qualifies the team for at least $900,000 of the $2 million in prizes offered in the NASA-backed Space Elevator Games.
Theorized in the 1960s and then popularized by Arthur C. Clarke’s 1979 novel “The Fountains of Paradise,” space elevators are envisioned as a way to gain access to space without the risk and expense of rockets. Instead, electrically powered vehicles would run up and down a cable anchored to a ground structure and extending thousands of miles up to a mass in geosynchronous orbit — the kind of orbit communications satellites are placed in to stay over a fixed spot on the Earth [AP].
The LaserMotive vehicle that climbed up the cable (held by a hovering helicopter) was powered by a system that resembles an upside-down solar power mechanism. Laser beams on the ground were fired up at the ascending craft and hit its photovoltaic cells–like those used in solar panels–in a process known as “power beaming.” LaserMotive will have a chance to improve its vehicle’s speed at another trial today, and other teams will also be vying for prizes.
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Image: Space Elevator Games. The LaserMotive vehicle gets weighed in.
NASA’s Ares I-X experimental rocket completed its first test flight—but the successful endeavor ended on a sour note. The rocket’s first booster stage, which splashed down in the ocean as planned six minutes after launch, was found to be significantly dented when divers reached the mammoth cylinder to prep it for retrieval [Scientific American]. A malfunctioning parachute system caused the hard splashdown, according to mission manager Bob Ess. However Ess argued that it’s not a real cause for concern, since test flights are intended to reveal and work out the technology’s glitches.
The Ares I-X was a prototype for the controversial Ares I rocket that may carry astronauts to the International Space Station and beyond once the space shuttle is retired. The rocket’s design calls for the first booster stage to be retrieved after each flight for reuse. While NASA’s main objective on the test flight was to evaluate the rocket booster’s power, the test of the new parachute system was one of several major objectives of the Ares 1-X test flight [Spaceflight Now]. Despite the test flight’s overall success, the parachute system’s failure is a black eye for the $450 million project, since the heavy Ares I booster rocket will be difficult to ease back down to Earth. The booster is being retrieved from the Atlantic Ocean to determine what exactly went wrong with the parachute system.
80beats: Liftoff! NASA’s New Rocket Takes to the Sky in a Successful Test Flight
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Image: NASA
The Russian space agency has proposed a powerful new way to get a spacecraft to Mars or beyond: just put a big ole nuclear reactor on board.
The head of the agency, Anatoly Perminov, just proposed this new class of nuclear-powered spaceships for manned missions to explore our solar system. “The project is aimed at implementing large-scale space exploration programs, including a manned mission to Mars, interplanetary travel, the creation and operation of planetary outposts” [AP], Perminov wrote in an online statement. He suggested that preliminary designs could be completed by 2012, and said it would then take about nine years and $600 million to build the spacecraft. Some experts call these numbers utterly unrealistic, but Russian President Dmitry Medvedev insists that the government is very serious about the project.
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This morning, NASA’s experimental Ares I-X rocket blasted off a Florida launch pad and roared through the atmosphere, successfully executing the first test flight of the rocket that may carry astronauts to the International Space Station and beyond once the space shuttle is retired. However, debate over the direction of NASA’s manned space flight program means that the rocket’s future is far from certain.
The prototype rocket took off through a few clouds from a former shuttle launch pad at 11:30 a.m., 3 1/2 hours late because of bad weather. Launch controllers had to retest the rocket systems after more than 150 lightning strikes were reported around the pad overnight. Then they had to wait out interfering rain clouds, the same kind that thwarted Tuesday’s try [AP].
Engineers had been concerned that if the rocket took off through rain clouds, the moisture might cause a phenomenon called triboelectrification. This occurs when the rocket encounters water or ice droplets in the clouds. As these collide with the rocket they cause a static charge to build up on its skin, creating interference with radio signals. This is a problem for the 1-X team, which needs clear signals to gather data from 700 sensors wired throughout the vehicle, which are designed to collect flight data [BBC News]. Luckily, the late morning provided a relatively cloud-free window for takeoff.
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Even as engineers prepare for the first test flight of NASA’s new Ares I-X rocket, a prototype of the launch vehicle that could replace the space shuttle, the experts who conducted a review of NASA’s space flight program are suggesting that this rocket project should be scrapped entirely.
The test flight of the $450 million Ares I-X is scheduled for 8 a.m. tomorrow, weather permitting. It’s a prototype of the planned Ares I rocket, designed to carry astronauts to the International Space Station once the shuttle fleet is retired. But the White House panel convened to evaluate NASA’s plan for space exploration issued its final report (pdf) on Thursday, and in a press conference committee chair Norman Augustine harshly critiqued the Ares I project. Though Augustine said the rocket’s technical problems were solvable, he said its first crewed flights would come too late to be much help in servicing the International Space Station (ISS). “The issue that comes up under Ares I is whether the programme is useful,” he said [New Scientist].
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The European Space Agency is looking for six brave volunteers to sit in locked chamber for 520 days to simulate the isolation of a space flight to Mars, a trip that in real life would take around 900 days. The ‘mission’ is part of the Mars500 programme being conducted by ESA and Russia’s Institute of Biomedical Problems (IBMP) to study human psychological, medical and physical capabilities and limitations in space [Physorg.com]. But what will scientists actually learn from locking these folks up for a year and a half on Earth, especially when the real mission is close to twice as long?
Although the volunteers will simulate a Mars mission as best they can, the most dangerous aspects of space travel won’t be replicated–like, for example, the radiation from cosmic rays. Volunteers will also be able to walk out at any time if they feel unsafe, which isn’t an option on a real space mission. At least one researcher argues that scientists could learn more by studying the historical diaries of long distance explorers to learn how people cope with stress while traveling through the unknown. Other scientists say studying people in Antarctic research stations, nuclear submarines, or astronauts aboard space stations orbiting Earth would be better strategies. Still, there are many things the Mars500 experiment will reveal that historical records cannot. Volunteers will undergo an array of tests that will monitor stress and hormone levels, immune response and sleep patterns, as well as group dynamics [New Scientist].
Space mission simulations have been conducted in the past—a similar 105-day study just ended in July—and they often have interesting results. In one event that made the news on a space mission simulation in 2000, a man twice tried to kiss a woman against her will. As a result, locks were installed between different crew compartments [New Scientist]. These simulations sound like a scientific version of the T.V. show Big Brother.
Better hurry if you want to sign up, the deadline is November 5th!
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Image: NASA/JPL/Malin Space Science Systems
A prototype of the rocket that may blast astronauts into space once the space shuttle is finally retired will get a high-profile test flight next week, and this morning the tall, skinny rocket was rolled onto the launch pad in Florida. While the experimental Ares I-X rocket certainly looked grand as it was rolled slowly from the assembly building to the launch pad (a four-mile trip that took seven hours), its future is far from certain. A White House panel has been considering cancelling Ares I in favour of a commercial launcher. Its final report is expected this week [New Scientist].
NASA’s new sky-scraping rocket measures 327 feet high; it dwarfs the space shuttles, which measure 184 feet high. “It’s a tall rocket; it’s been over three decades since anyone has built a rocket this tall. That was the Saturn V,” explained Trent Smith, the vehicle processing engineer for the Ares 1-X. “We have over 700 sensors on this rocket; and the whole point of Ares 1-X is to understand how does a rocket this shape, this weight, this tall actually fly” [BBC News].
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The presidential panel that recently evaluated the U.S. plan for manned spaceflight declared that “Mars is the ultimate destination for human exploration,” but stressed the financial and technical difficulties that must be overcome before a boot can be planted on that red soil. Now, the New Scientist calls attention to the greatest technical hurdle: protecting astronauts from radiation during their trips to Mars.
The radiation comes in the form of cosmic rays, which are actually speeding protons and heavier atomic nuclei that rain onto our solar system from all directions. They can slice through DNA molecules when they pass through living cells and the resulting damage can lead to cancer [New Scientist]. The residents of Earth and the temporary lodgers at the International Space Station are protected from the rays by the Earth’s magnetic field, but astronauts heading to Mars would have no natural protection. Aluminum or plastic shielding on a spacecraft would have to be impractically thick to safeguard astronauts, and other solutions, like the creation of a miniature magnetic field around the spaceship, are still being developed.
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The Northrop Grumman Lunar Landing Contest, a competition designed to get private space companies more involved in helping replace NASA’s aging fleet, just began its second phase on Saturday with three teams vying for a $1 million prize.
Scorpius, a 1,900-pound, rocket-powered craft, built by Armadillo Aerospace, ascended 50 meters (164 feet) into the air, flew over to land on a simulated rocky lunar surface 50 meters (164 feet) away, and then rose and flew back to land where it started. The flight included a requirement of at least 180 seconds of flying time [SPACE.com].
The successful landing puts Armadillo in a comfortable position as it waits to see if the other teams can complete the takeoffs and landings. If they can’t, Armadillo will walk home with the cash. The team also won the $350,000 phase 1 competition, a similar mock landing that only required 90 seconds of flight time.
The competition is part of the X Prize Foundation, which funds projects that benefit humanity and has already forked over $10 million to achieve a privately funded manned spaceflight. Peter Diamandis, founder and chairman of the foundation, called Saturday’s flight “a stepping stone toward suborbital tourism, rocket racing and landing on the moon” [Dallas Observer]. The two other teams are scheduled to attempt the phase 2 landing in October.
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Image: Armadillo Aerospace
In an experiment that might be classified more as a cool party trick than a scientific breakthrough, researchers levitated a mouse using a powerful superconducting magnet. Other scientists have previously levitated frogs and bugs using the same technique, but the floating mouse was the first mammal to have the honor. The trick works because the magnet generates a strong magnetic field, and because the water in the mouse’s body is weakly diamagnetic–it generates a magnetic field of its own that pushes back against the external field. Since the researchers had a strong enough magnet, the repulsive force generated by the water in each mouse cell combined to make its whole body float.
The researchers used a tiny three-week-old mouse that was only as heavy as a stack of four pennies. When the scientists levitated the youngster it appeared agitated and disoriented, seemingly trying to hold on to something. “It actually kicked around and started to spin, and without friction, it could spin faster and faster, and we think that made it even more disoriented,” said researcher Yuanming Liu…. They decided to mildly sedate the next mouse they levitated, which seemed content with floating [LiveScience].
The technique will be a boon for space research, the scientists say. “We’re trying to see what kind of physiological impact is due to prolonged microgravity, and also what kind of countermeasures might work against it for astronauts,” Liu said. “If we can contribute to the future human exploration of space, that would be very exciting” [LiveScience].
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Image: Da-Ming Zhu et al.
After months of meetings, the panel of space experts appointed by President Obama to evaluate NASA’s manned spaceflight program has returned with a dire assessment: lack of financing has put the program on an “unsustainable trajectory.” The executive summary (pdf) of the report, released yesterday, puts forth a number of ideas for how the space agency can live within its means, but the final decisions on whether to act on the ideas rests with President Obama and Congress.
Among other recommendations, the panel suggested that NASA shelve its goal of rapidly returning to the moon and instead focus on nurturing a robust commercial space industry that can handle short-term objectives of the nation’s space program, such as ferrying cargo and crew to the international space station [The Wall Street Journal]. By canceling a return to the moon (which had been scheduled for around 2020) and outsourcing routine resupply missions, the panel suggested that NASA would be able to work towards more ambitious, deep space missions like a trip to an asteroid or an expedition to Mars.
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