NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter has been circling the Moon for the past few years, snapping away, taking hi-res pictures of the lunar surface from a height of a mere 50 kilometers (30 miles). A few weeks ago, NASA commanded the probe to dip lower, allowing even closer, more detailed shots. Skimming the surface at a mere 21 km (13 miles), it took this amazing shot of a site where humans once walked on the Moon:

[Click to onesmallstepenate.]

That is Apollo 12, my friends, the location where humans showed that not only can we explore other worlds, but we can do it more than once.

The entire shot shown here is a little over 350 meters across (pictures from Apollo 14 and 17 are also available at on NASA’s website). Various highlights are labeled: the descent stage of the lunar module (left behind when the top half of the module blasted back up to orbit, docked with the command module, and returned home to Earth), the Apollo Lunar Surface Experiments Package (ALSEP), and even Surveyor 3, an unmanned lander that had touched down two years previously; one of the Apollo 12 mission goals was to land near it, examine it, and return pieces of it. Clearly, they nailed that.

The part of the picture showing the lander is really something. LRO took images of the site in 2009, but these new ones are more detailed due to the lowered orbit, and also a bit clearer due to the angle of the Sun being lower. You can see the lander’s shadow to the right far more clearly.

… and those squiggly lines? That’s where the dust was disturbed by the astronauts’ bootprints as they walked around.

Yup. You are actually seeing physical evidence of human beings walking on the surface of another world.

And there’s more.

(more…)

So this is cool: the National Forensic League — the national honor society that promotes debating skills for high school students, and which suggests topics for debate teams — has announced their policy topic for the 2011 – 2012 debating season… and I like it!

Resolved: The United States federal government should substantially increase its exploration and/or development of space beyond the Earth’s mesosphere.

Nice! I think this is an excellent topic, and I know it’ll get a lot of folks thinking about space. There are a lot of pros and cons to space exploration, of course, but to me the positives far, far outstrip the negatives. Not everyone agrees, so I’d be interested in seeing some of these debates.

I get a lot of questions — a lot — about astronomy and space from kids in this age group. I expect this debate topic will prompt many more, since I’m outspoken on the topic. So I’ll take this opportunity to link to a few of my earlier blog posts where I make my opinions pretty clear. I’ve divided them up into subtopics to make them a little easier to read, too. I have no problem trying to influence the opinions of others, but my intent here is to give any potential debaters a place to start, a jumping-off point.

Agree with me? Disagree? Why, that’s why we have debates!

Politics and space

- Space leaders to Congress: light this private candle
- Congress passes NASA authorization bill, but I’d rather watch sausages being made
- Obama lays out bold revised space policy
- Obama champions science… but where’s NASA?
- Obama and McCain on space exploration

Space exploration

- What value space exploration?
- 40 years later, failure is still no longer an option
- Give space a chance
- From distant planets to the deep blue sea
- Why explore space?
- Neil Tyson on exploring space
- Human exploration of Phobos and Deimos

NASA and space

- Apollo 1, Challenger, Columbia, and those who sacrifice for the stars
- Ten years of the International Space Station
- NASA’s next small step: to an asteroid
- Wait, how big is NASA’s budget again?
- My NASA Op-Ed in the New York Post
- Whence NASA?
- NASA’s budget… as far as American’s think
- Followup to Congressional NASA hearings and my thoughts
- An open letter to NASA

I expect I’ll be referring a few students to this blog post in the year to come… and if you know kids who are interested, let them know about the topic! And, as always: per ardua, ad astra.

Tip o’ the spacesuit visor to Linda Mitts for this info.

[Today is the 44th anniversary of the Apollo 1 fire, tomorrow is the 25th anniversary of the loss of the Shuttle Challenger, and next week is the 8th anniversary of the loss of Columbia. I wrote the post below four years ago, but it still reflects my feelings today. I have updated it a bit to keep it current, but overall it stands as it did in 2007, on the 40th anniversary of Apollo 1. Once you've read it, I recommend you read a followup I posted, which has a different but also important view on these events.]

On January 27, 1967 — 44 years ago today — a fire swept through the Apollo 1 capsule during a test, killing all three astronauts.

Ed White, Roger Chaffee, and Gus Grissom didn’t have a chance. 17 seconds after the first yell of "fire!", they were dead.

A series of events and circumstances led to the fire. Perhaps the most famous is the pure oxygen atmosphere used in the capsule during the test. Why did NASA do that? The capsule was designed to use a pure O₂ atmosphere while in space. Our air on Earth is a mix of nitrogen and oxygen, but this is difficult to use in space. The capsule needed to be as lightweight as possible (to save on fuel), so using a lower cabin pressure (5 pounds/square inch instead of 15 as on the surface of the Earth) means less equipment and therefore less weight, and less need for structural strength in the capsule. However, at lower pressure nitrogen can form bubbles in the blood, causing the condition known as "the bends", which can be crippling or fatal. So, at lower cabin pressure, there cannot be nitrogen in the air. Another gas could be substituted but that only works at higher pressure. The air has to have a certain amount of oxygen in it for the human body to survive, and at lower pressure that means essentially 100% of the air must be O₂.

The danger of a fire is very real in space, but the lower pressure and lack of gravity (which means no convection; hot air cannot rise) makes a fire danger with pure O₂ in space is no worse than it is on Earth with our air.

But that means the equipment on board that supplies the air can only handle pure oxygen, which in turn means that on the ground they needed to test with pure oxygen. The big difference is, on the ground the pressure is Earth-normal: 15 psi. At this pressure, fire danger is much higher.

A spark is what caused the fire. In the pure O₂, it swept rapidly through the capsule. The hatch in the capsule that led outside was designed to open inward, to prevent it from being blown accidentally (which had happened in a real flight in 1961– ironically, Grissom’s Liberty Bell Mercury flight). It had a complicated set of procedures to open, and the astronauts couldn’t get it unlatched in time.

And so they died.

But I’ll take this opportunity to make a point. (more…)

For criminy’s sake. What is it with people and all the rending of garments over the impending doom of NASA?

First:

1) The reports of Spirit’s death are greatly exaggerated.

OK, yes, Spirit is now stuck. It looks like even if it survives the Martian winter it may no longer be able to traverse the Red Planet’s landscape. But that doesn’t mean it’s dead. Instead of a rover, it’s now a stationary platform capable of doing a lot of science on the cheap (since most of the cost was getting it there).

If you’d rather not have a lander sitting on the surface of Mars doing science that we simply cannot do from millions of kilometers away on Earth, then fine. But astronomers and scientists and science journalists should know better. Stop saying it’s dead.

[And I can picture Opportunity on the other side of Mars, waving its mast frantically, saying, Hey, remember me? Still moving, still doing cool stuff!]

Next, and more importantly:

2) The reports of the manned spaceflight’s death are greatly exaggerated.

OK, yes, it does look like (assuming the rumors are true) the Obama budget for NASA is cutting out the Constellation rocket program in general and Ares in particular. But that doesn’t mean manned spaceflight is dead.

As I said in that above link, private space companies are still a ways off from putting people in orbit. However, I strongly suspect they’ll be doing it before Ares would’ve been ready to do it anyway. Private companies like Space X may be two years from that, while Ares wouldn’t have been ready for five, assuming NASA could even get Ares ready by the scheduled time and in the assigned budget (which I would give a chance of, oh, say, precisely 0). So it’s possible, perhaps even likely, that after the Shuttle retires later this year (or early next) companies like Space X will be able to reach the International Space Station with rockets before NASA could.

As far as going back to the Moon, we still don’t know exactly what the budget for NASA will be like, but it was made clear in the leaked reports (again, assuming they are true) that money will be spent to look for a better heavy lift vehicle than Ares. No specifics were given (though the Commercial Spaceflight Federation says it may be 6 billion bucks, a huge chunk of change), so let’s wait until we actually see the report, hmmm?

Also, a lot of folks thought Ares was a waste of time, money, and with little or no chance of working well. Heck, the Space Frontier Foundation praises the killing of Ares! So not only is it unfair to lament the death of manned spaceflight, some people think — with some evidence, mind you — this will spur it on even more.

That last sentiment rings true to me. NASA’s manned program has been endlessly circling the Earth for almost 40 years now, with no real end in sight. I don’t have a lot of faith, so to speak, that Ares can do the job in breaking this cycle. I suspect a lot of the same folks who are decrying this move by Obama are the same ones who would be first in line to say that NASA has had its wings cut for decades now, making one bad decision after another when it comes to space exploration. Maybe it’s time — maybe it’s long after time — that we let someone else have a stab at this.

When I look at the Moon, I see a place where people will one day work, live, breathe, play, and explore. I also see that future receding two years for every year NASA doesn’t have a rocket to go there, and I’ve been watching that movie play for many years now.

I’m tired of it. When I look out my window now I see a future I’ve been dreaming of my whole life, a future that seems just out of my reach. When my children, my grandchildren, look out their windows in that future, y’know what I want them to see?

The blue-green crescent Earth hanging in a pitch black sky over a cratered horizon.

Let’s give space a chance.