This is not a joke: if you attend the Next-Generation Suborbital Researchers Conference 2012, you could win a seat on an XCOR suborbital rocket flight to space!

I’ll note this conference is a technical meeting for suborbital researchers, so it’s not like Comic Con. Still, I know a lot of scientist-types read this blog, so it’s worth promoting. I attended the meeting here in Boulder in 2010, and it was a fascinating look into a new field of research: science done on crewed suborbital rocket flights, where microgravity (free fall) conditions last for as long as four minutes. That’s long enough to do a lot of interesting work, including astronomy, physics, engineering, and biology.

The meeting is being sponsored by the Southwest Research Institute and many other groups, including XCOR Aerospace, which is developing a reusable suborbital spaceplane that can carry people above the 100 km (62 mile) demarcation line of space. And they’re putting their money where their mouth is: one paid registrant to NSRC 2012 will win a seat on XCOR’s Lynx suborbital vehicle, where they can perform their research. This is a $95,000 value!

How cool is that?

If you want to attend the conference and present a paper, the deadline for submitting abstracts is December 2.

And no, I’m not submitting. I get sick on a kid’s swing set. I’ll let astronauts and people with more solid stomachs take to space. I’m happy to wave at them from the ground.

On April 27, 2011, a Russian Progress M-10M rocket launched into space from Kazakhstan, carrying supplies for the astronauts aboard the International Space Station. It stayed docked to the ISS for nearly 181 days. On October 29, 2011 — last Saturday — it undocked, empty, filled with a half a year’s worth of cast-off detritus. It performed a routine de-orbit burn, dropped down into the Earth’s atmosphere, and disintegrated as it burned up at 12:54 UTC.

But not before U.S. astronaut Mike Fossum took this incredible picture of it from space:

[Click to embiggen.]

That shot is amazing. You can see the pieces of the spacecraft falling off as it rams through the Earth’s air at Mach 25 or so. You’re probably seeing the solar panels, antennae, and various other external bits being stripped off and leaving their own meteoric trails.

In the case of resupply ships, the time and place they de-orbit is tightly controlled. In this case, as usual, it was sent into the Pacific. That’s generally safe because the ocean is 160+ million square kilometers in area, and much of that real estate is empty of islands.

As the pieces hit the air, they compress it violently, heating it up (it’s not actually friction that does the majority of heating, but this ram pressure that does it). They slow down after this initial stage to just a few hundred km/hr, then fall freely into the ocean. That’s still fast, but most impacts from space debris aren’t nearly as fast as most people think. This same thing happens to meteors as well, but they’re moving much faster as they come in from interplanetary space, blasting in at a minimum of 11 km/sec (7 miles/sec). But the principle is the same. In fact, the bits of rock or metal in a meteoroid (as the solid part of a meteor is called) slow down to free fall speeds so high up they have plenty of time to cool, and usually don’t hit the ground and cause fires. I’ve heard some reports of them having frost on them instead!

Anyway, this Progress de-orbit comes on the heels of the successful launch of a Progress craft aboard a Soyuz rocket, taking pressure off both NASA and the Russian space agency to get supplies and people to and from ISS. That’s good news for NASA, which could use some right now.

Image credit: NASA. Thanks to Ben H. in the comments for correcting my statement about the Progress being empty!

Yesterday, October 30, 2011, the Russian space agency Roscosmos successfully launched a new Progress spacecraft on a Soyuz rocket, the same kind of rocket that failed in August and caused such worry.

This means it looks like the Russians have indeed figured out what went wrong in the previous launch and fixed the issue. I’ll be happier with two successful launches rather than one — they may have gotten it right by accident — but still, I bet a lot of folks at NASA are breathing easier now, and this will ease discussion of de-crewing the ISS, which NASA was considering a few months ago.

The Progress is in orbit and scheduled to dock with the ISS on November 2. It’s carrying nearly 3 tons of food, fuel, and supplies for the astronauts. Because of this success, another rocket launch is planned on November 13, carrying three more astronauts up to ISS. Usually there is a crew of six on board, but three of the six astronauts came home in September, leaving three to stay on ISS until more could be launched. The September mission bringing three of the crew back to Earth had to occur then because the vehicles used to bring them home can only stay docked on the ISS for about 200 days before the age of the fuel becomes a problem.

So this is good news for NASA, Roscosmos, and the men aboard ISS, who could probably use six more hands helping out. I’m glad to see this problem — which could have been potentially disastrous — on its way to being behind us.

Image credit: NASA

The German space center DLR is reporting that ROSAT — an astronomical satellite launched in 1990 — re-entered the Earth’s atmosphere just after 01:50 UTC last Sunday, October 23, burning up over the waters of the Bay of Bengal, to the southwest of Thailand. This was during the day, which is why there were no reports of it coming in, and no reports of debris hitting the ground. There are no reports of anyone getting hit, either, of course.

I was thinking about why it’s so hard to know exactly where and when a satellite comes down. New Scientist has a short, to-the-point article about it. In a nutshell, low-Earth orbit satellites like ROSAT are a few hundred kilometers above the Earth’s surface, circling every 1.5 hours or so. The Earth’s atmosphere doesn’t just stop if you go high enough; it thins out slowly, and even at 300 km there is still some air, though incredibly tenuous. However, over days, months, and years, a satellite moving through it feels a drag, feels air resistance. This drops its orbit, putting it into thicker air, which slows it faster, dropping it more… this process is very slow at first, but at some point increases rapidly, and the satellites drops into air thick enough that, at its high speed, causes it to burn up. I’ll note it’s mostly due to gas compression, not friction, that heats the satellite up.

And that’s why it’s so hard to know in advance where these things will come down. (more…)

[UPDATE 3: ROSAT fell at 01:50 UTC last night (9:50 p.m. Eastern US time), +/- 7 minutes. The track over the Earth during that time is shown here. The center of the track is the most likely re-entry time, and stretches for seven minutes in both directions (the yellow pins mark five minute intervals). It probably fell over the Indian Ocean, though the track stretches into southern China. There are still no reports of debris sightings. Picture courtesy ROSAT_Reentry and Google Earth.]

[UPDATE 2: (03:30 UT) It's official. According to the DLR website, ROSAT de-orbited between 1:45 and 2:15 UTC. It's not known precisely where itfell; no confirmed reports of pieces have been seen yet. During that period of time, ROSAT was traveling across the Indian Ocean and China. Spaceflight 101 has some maps showing the location.]

[UPDATE: Reports are saying ROSAT may re-enter as soon as 01:00 UT (9:00 p.m. Eastern US time), though more likely a bit later. Follow ROSAT_reentry on Twitter for the up-to-the-minute news.]

We’re less than a day away from ROSAT’s final plunge into Earth’s atmosphere. Even this close to its last moments, it’s difficult to know just where it will drop down; it’s orbiting the Earth at 8 km/sec (5 miles/sec), so if predictions are off by just a couple of minutes that translates to a nearly 1000 km (600 miles) in position! And the models are still uncertain by a few hours.

A meteor burning up in our atmosphere; this is NOT actually ROSAT but just meant to give you an idea of what it will look like.

As it stands, right now as I write this the nominal time of re-entry is sometime on October 23 between 06:00 and 13:00 UT (02:00 – 09:00 Eastern US time). The uncertainty means we still are not sure just where on Earth it will come down.

Yesterday, I was on NPR’s Science Friday show talking about ROSAT. Also on was Mark Matney, an Orbital Debris Specialist with NASA, and we talked about what happens when a satellite re-enters. That link goes to the show page, or you can grab the MP3 file directly. You can get a lot of the basic info there. Still, if you prefer old fashioned reading…

ROSAT is an astronomical satellite, designed to observe high-energy X-rays from space. Launched in 1990, it has a mass of about 2.5 tons, much less than the UARS satellite which came down in September. It was shut down in 1999 after some of its hardware failed; during the decade it was operational it provided astronomers with vast amounts of data about supernovae, black holes, neutron stars, and other cool cosmic objects. It’s been in low-Earth orbit ever since. Over time, the very tiny drag it has experienced due to passing through the very thin upper atmosphere of our planet has dropped it into an ever-lower orbit, and now, after several years, it’s about to re-enter for real.

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In July 2011, at the JREF’s TAM 9 meeting in Las Vegas, I moderated a panel discussing the future of space exploration. On that panel were some familiar faces: Bill Nye (the Science Guy), astronomers Neil Tyson and Pamela Gay, and theoretical physicist Lawrence Krauss. All of us have, ah, some experience talking to the public about matters spacey, so I knew it would be a fun panel to moderate.

I had no idea. The video of the panel has been made available by the JREF, so you can see it for yourself! I’ve embedded it below. It’s an hour long, but I think you’ll find it absolutely worth your time to watch all the way through. A lot of people came up to me afterwards and said it was the best panel at the meeting, and one of the best we’ve ever had at TAM! As a participant, modesty forbids me from saying more, but then, who am I to disagree?

It was a rollicking discussion, and very interesting. Neil was in rare form, and I think my favorite moment was when Pamela was making a point, and Neil jumped in to give an opinion… and Pamela held up a finger and "shusshed" him! It was extremely funny, especially when Neil got this, "OK, fine, you got me" expression on his face. After the panel, Neil was signing books, and I got Pamela to sit down next to him and recreate the moment:

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On Monday, billionaire space advocate Richard Branson and New Mexico Governor Susana Martinez dedicated a new building devoted to commercial access to sub-orbital space: Spaceport America. This will be the new home of Virgin Galactic, Branson’s company that will take people into space.

Technically, this was simply a press event. There were no launches, and there’s nothing really new here. However, I do think this was important. Virgin Galactic is using vehicles built by Scaled Composites, the company that built SpaceShip One, the first private rocket that took a human into space (in 2004). Shortly thereafter they won the Ansari $10 million prize by being the first privately built rocket to get back into space after a 14 day turnaround. Tickets for SpaceShip Two are for sale at a mere $200,000 a piece.

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