Definitely a highlight of my rather long day today was seeing these images taken by the ESA’s Mars Express robotic probe. The images depict the Echus Chasma series of canyons mentioned in the title, and I find them absolutely stunning. Planetary geologists believe that these chasms were formed by flowing ground water, and that they were carved over thousands of years. More images:
I absolutely geek out seeing the surface of Mars in such incredible detail. Our base of knowledge for Mars is growing rapidly, and it seems that with the Phoenix Mars Explorer, Mars Surveyor, and ESA’s Mars Express we have a trifecta of data and images streaming to us from the red planet.
Catching up on the deluge that is my RSS reader lately, I came across this image from APOD of the Caloris basin (also called Caloris Planitia) on Mercury recently snapped by the Mercury Messenger robotic explorer. It’s huge, and one of the largest impact basins from an asteroid-sized object in our solar system. The basin measures over 1,500 km across. The image above is a false color image in order to enhance details not visible in a true color image. The yellowish object dominating the image is obviously the impact crater of the Caloris basin, but the orange spots above denote volcanic activity on Mercury, which is new evidence provided by Messenger that the smooth plains of Mercury are actually lava flows.
I had previously written about Mercury and NASA’s Messenger mission here and here.
The Phoenix Mars mission team released some incredible news on June 20th. The Phoenix Mars explorer, since landing on Mars on May 25th, had definitively established that the white material exposed with its digging tool earlier is in fact frozen water. Phoenix had found water ice just below the Martian regolith. That was a significant part of the mission, and to accomplish it so quickly and efficiently is a big win for NASA, JPL, and the whole mission team. The proof is represented in the image above. If you watch the image you see the white material begin to shrink and disappear. That is called sublimination, which is the transition of an element or compound from solid to gas without the intermediary liquid step. Given the atmospheric conditions on Mars, you are seeing evidence above of the frozen water on mars subliming.
Identifying water ice was the first important step in the mission team’s “follow-the-water” mission framework. Knowing that they are working with water ice now triggers a series of analyses that will help identify the mineral components and chemicals in that water ice, and also look for any organic materials. This investigation will help determine if the conditions just below the Martian surface are conducive to microbial life, and if that life exists or has existed on Mars.
Yesterday marked the 25th anniversary of NASA astronaut and physicist Sally Ride’s first trip into orbit aboard the Space Shuttle, making her the first American woman into space. It was on June 18th, 1983 that Ride and her five crew members rode the Space Shuttle Challenger into Earth orbit. In so doing she became an important role model for all of us, but especially for young girls with a passion for science and adventure. I remember reading about that shuttle mission in the newspaper and thinking that she was just about the coolest person on the planet.
“All adventures, especially into new territory, are scary.”
Sally Ride - Retired U.S. Astronaut
Prior to becoming an astronaut, Ride was a nationally ranked tennis player. When asked about her professional tennis career she quipped:
“I was always very interested in science, and I knew that for me, science was a better long-term career than tennis.”
She was preceded into space as one of the first women by Soviet Kosmonauts Valentina Tereschkova in 1963 and Svetlana Savitskaya in 1982. After inspiring an entire generation of women, she retired from NASA in 1987 and entered academia.
The Cassini robot explorer, written about here before, will hit the four year mark on June 30th in the relentless pursuit of its prime mission to explore Saturn and its many moons. After June 30th Cassini is operating in bonus territory, as it was not expected that the probe would last this long or work this well. They call this additional time the “extended mission”. Obviously, everyone is ecstatic as the Cassini mission has been profoundly successful in sending us back invaluable information and images of Saturn (like the one above of Saturn’s rings), as well as the moons Titan, Enceladus, Dione, Tethys, Phoebe and Iapetus. In many ways the discoveries regarding Saturn’s moons has largely overshadowed the many, many findings with regards to Saturn itself.
Following the work of Cassini has been like following your favorite band on tour. Nearly every month the mission team has reported more incredible findings or provided another series of stunning images. This page from the mission website catalogs dozens of events and accomplishments. This year alone Cassini has scheduled over a dozen different flybys to allow the use of the craft’s Visual and Infrared Mapping Spectrometer (VIMS), Ultraviolet Imaging Spectrograph (UIS), Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR), Ion and Neutral Mass Spectrometer (INMS), and Radio Science Subsystem. Cassini is packed with gear, and it is not only amazing that it all is still working as planned, but that it made it there in the first place. Congratulations to the Cassini-Huygens mission team on the four year anniversary.
NASA engineers have been busy testing robotic mobility prototypes for potential use on future missions to the moon and Mars. The engineers, in full astronaut gear, have been putting the machines through their paces on terrain at Moses Lake, Washington that approximates the mobility challenges of navigating the surface regolith of the moon.
The robotic prototypes tested include the twelve wheeled robotic transport pictured above, as well as a six-legged all-terrain vehicle that can carry large payloads, an autonomous drilling rover and a mapping robot. There is an incredibly large and well-shot image gallery of the testing, and the various robotic vehicles, here that is worth viewing. The public was invited to observe, which is further proof of the efforts that NASA is undertaking to engage the public and enlist their enthusiasm. NASA’s relatively recent adoption of social media as a way to create dialog with the public is an additional indicator of a changed view of the role of the public in space exploration.
Over the past two years astronomers at NASA’s Meteoroid Environment Office have observed over one hundred explosions on the moon’s surface. These explosions are the results of impacts by meteoroids and have measured as powerful as a few hundred pounds of TNT. It is no surprise that the moon suffers impacts, look at the image of the moon’s surface above. What is interesting is the observable frequency of these impacts in the last 24 months, which is quite a bit more intense than astronomers were expecting. This is an important phenomena for NASA to observe and understand as we get closer to the reality of a new effort to send astronauts to the moon and eventually set up a permanent lunar base. Essentially, there is no place on the moon that is impact free, nor is there a time that is less intense for impacts than others. The image below depicts the locations of the recorded impacts since initiation of the program:
The frequency and explosive power of these impacts pose a number of challenges to lunar astronauts, not so much from the risk of a direct hit but more from the risk of a secondary hit by one of the millions of particles that the explosions create and that shoot out from the impact area like bullets. A piece of debris 1 millimeter in diameter could penetrate an astronauts suit and damage equipment.
The first impact was recorded very shortly after the initiation of the moon impact observation program and recorded the strike of a meteoroid about the size of a baseball. Most of these impacts are the result of small meteoroids, some little bigger than a small rock or pebble, but they are traveling in excess of 30,000mph and hit the moon with incredibly violent force. A meteoroid the size of a pebble can create a crater several feet across.
This image is the result of the Mars Phoenix mission team instructing the robotic arm camera to look under the vehicle. What you are looking at is the surface of Mars, and it shows that the Martian soil has been displaced by the landing thrusters on Phoenix to expose what is most probably ice. The simple action of Phoenix landing on Mars has potentially exposed polar ice directly under the vehicle, ice that was covered by a very loose and thin layer of soil.
There is a rumor that when the mission leaders saw this image the first words uttered were “Holy cow!”
Posts lately have been all things solar system, and that is because there is so much going on right now with regards to robotic exploration of Jupiter, Saturn, Mars and the their various moons. It is an exciting time to be a space exploration geek. I just came across the above image taken by the ESA’s Venus Express explorer of a vortex occurring in the southern polar region of the planet. This image was captured by Express back in 2006. I also found an excellent image montage of Express approaching Venus that shows some detail in the cloud covering that surrounds Venus.
Venus Express is essentially a reconfiguration of the ESA’s Mars Express explorer technology and left for Venus back in 2005. The goals for Venus Express are to explore the atmospheric composition and circulation on Earth’s closest neighbor, as well as how the atmosphere interacts with the planet’s surface. Venus is definitely inhospitable, with an atmosphere mostly comprised of noxious gasses and an incredibly hot surface temperature. Surprisingly, given the close proximity of Venus, we still know very, very little about the planet. Venus Express is helping to change this.
The Phoenix robotic explorer has been on Mars now for about 27 hours after an incredibly successful entry, descent and landing. It has been very busy. Incredible images are already streaming to Earth, and those of us geeked out by things of this nature are absolutely riveted. I was excited to discover how many people I know were following @MarsPhoenix on Twitter.
Many images are coming back, and most right now are of the explorer itself and the immediate vicinity as the mission managers check systems and get their bearings. The above image of one of the craft’s landing pads is one of my favorites because that image is of the pad of a man-made robotic explorer sitting on the surface of Mars millions of miles away from Earth, and it was taken in the last 24 hours. Astounding. Even more astounding is this video composite of the Martian surface, terrain and horizon taken by Phoenix today.
We are at just under four hours before Phoenix lands on the surface of Mars. I am checking periodically at the Phoenix mission control website in anticipation of this event. Martian weather is clear and the landing later today is green for go. I suspect there are a lot of very excited and anxious people at JPL right now.
The above animation is of weather on Mars around its north pole from 5/16 through 5/22. The small cigar shaped outline in the upper left quadrant is the planned landing zone.
It’s not just a big day for race fans, its a big day for science and space enthusiasts. In August of last year the Mars Phoenix Explorer left Earth to start its journey to Mars. Its mission is to arrive safely, land on the Martian North Pole, and dig into the soil there begin looking for the building blocks of life. It arrives today at around 4:45PM PDT. Arriving is the hardest part, as now the explorer has to successfully enter the Martian atmosphere (at 12,000mph) using parachutes to slow the rapid descent from 900mph to 250mph, and then fire landing rockets to prevent it from slamming into the Martian surface (see the video above). Its a complex landing, and the mission control team probably hasn’t been sleeping much these last few days, as the last five years of their work culminates today in about seven minutes of anxiety. That’s okay, though, as they have a number of ways they can distract themselves while keeping us updated on the the mission’s progress. For instance, you can follow the Phoenix mission on Twitter and get frequent updates and mission facts. The mission team also has a blog that is full of information and that will be used to post what the mission team is thinking and what Phoenix sees and discovers, as well as an information rich mission website.
So, the entire Phoenix mission is going to be captured for us via an array of online tools. This is incredibly exciting, and it serves to connect us to the exploration and science that NASA leads in a way that is not only meaningful, but also basically real time.
The image above is via the Galileo explorer and depicts the volcanic moon Io previously discussed, with its neighboring moon Amalthea. Amalthea is small, and has been misshapen by the incredible volatility of existing in close proximity to Io and Jupiter. It’s a tough neighborhood. As Io is swept by Jupiter’s electromagnetic field huge amounts of material are scoured off of Io and spiraled towards Jupiter. At times Amalthea orbit takes it directly into the path of this material, and the total intensity of the power generated, and it is thought that this has created its intense reddish color and elongated shape.
I came across this composite image last evening and it stopped me in my tracks. Click on it to view larger, it’s worth it. Here is an enormous, active chain of volcanic calderas, named Tvashtar Catena, on Jupiter’s moon Io and we get to see it in amazing detail and color. This is a color intensified composite made up of images taken by Galileo back in 2000 and composited by Ricardo Nunes.
Back in 1999 the Galileo Orbiter snapped some pictures of an active fissure eruption in this caldera. The eruption let loose lava flows that were 30km long and 1.5km high. Here’s a composited image from those pictures:
Io is the most volcanic body in our solar system with its surface literally covered in lava lakes, giant calderas, and active lava flows. The color of Io is mostly due to the huge amounts of sulfur that blanket its surface from all of this activity, which has remained continuous as long as we have been able to observe this moon. We have measured volcanic eruptions on this moon that have created sulfurous plumes 500km high. Because Io orbits closely to Jupiter it is subject to intense electromagnetic radiation. As Jupiter’s magnetosphere rotates it sweeps Io and strips away nearly 1 ton per second of volcanic gases and other materials. Io actually acts as an enormous electrical generator as it moves through Jupiter’s magnetic field developing 400,000 volts across its diameter and generating 3 million amperes that flow across the magnetic field and into Jupiter’s ionosphere.
Last Monday Stephen Hawking gave a speech at an event commemorating the 50th anniversary of NASA. Hawking has long been a proponent of the value of humans exploring space, and again called for a determined effort by humans to colonize the moon and Mars. He put special emphasis on putting humans into space, and not relying solely on robotic explorers, which is largely driven by the survival of humans, longer term, and is an insurance policy against war, catastrophe, and disaster here on Earth. A great quote from the speech:
“Robotic missions are much cheaper and may provide more scientific information, but they don’t catch the public imagination in the same way, and they don’t spread the human race into space, which I’m arguing should be our long-term strategy. If the human race is to continue for another million years, we will have to boldly go where no one has gone before.”
With regards to life on other planets, Hawking offered three possibilities: that life in the universe, of any type, is rare; that simple forms of life may be common, but intelligent forms of life rare; or that intelligent life typically destroys itself. He went on to say:
“Personally, I favor the second possibility – that primitive life is relatively common, but that intelligent life is very rare. Some would say it has yet to occur on Earth.”
This is unbelievable given the incredibly short time, only 51 years, that humans have had access to orbit around Earth. Via the European Space Agency (ESA) come high resolution images of all of the human-made objects that litter our previously pristine orbit. The image above only depicts those objects in low Earth orbit (LEO). Here are some staggering space garbage facts:
We have put upwards of 6000 satellites into orbit from 4600 orbital launches
400 of these are beyond geostationary orbit or are on interplanetary trajectories
Only 800 satellites of the 6000 are considered operational
Most of the debris has come from explosion events (200) or collision events (10)
As we contemplate commercial orbital access, and look to things like space tourism to make the experience of space travel viable for many more people, this is a difficult reality to process. First, the amount of space debris is only going to increase, and most probably exponentially as the number of active space programs, both private and government, continues to rapidly increase. Second, there is real concern around protecting space vehicles, space stations, and future satellites from imminent collisions with this debris. That adds tremendous cost, complexity and weight to programs that are already stretched for budget and capacity. This is not impossible to overcome, and engineers have been thinking about this issue for awhile given some of the close calls with the Space Shuttle and the ISS. Still, another complexity added to an already very complex process.
Last month the High Resolution Imaging Science Experiement (HiRISE) took some incredibly detailed images of the Martian moon Phobos, as pictured above. It is incredible to me to see something so far away in such crisp detail. The simple reality that there is so much to learn and see is probably the biggest reason I continue to be fascinated by our solar system and by cosmology.
Mars has two small moons, the other being Deimos. Phobos is the bigger of the two, and is about 13 miles across. HiRISE captured a lot of amazing images of this tiny moon, but perhaps the most interesting was a focused shot on the large crater feature named Stickney and shown in the image above. It is the enormous dent on the right side of the moon. If the object that had struck Phobos had been fractionally larger it would very well have blown the moon apart and we would now only know Phobos as a dispersed ring of dust and rock orbiting Mars. Here is an image of the crater in detail:
Those lines emanating from the crater are enormous stress fractures caused by the impact and that run outward across the surface. Surviving this impact was an enormous event, but that pales when compared to the realty that the orbit of Phobos is in slow decay (at 1.8 meters per century) and will eventually bring the moon to crash into the Martian surface. Eventually being about 50 million years from now.
April 4th marked the 40th anniversary of the launch of Apollo 6, the last of the unmanned Apollo missions and the second time that a Saturn V rocket was launched. This was also the day that Martin Luther King, Jr. was shot and killed in Memphis, Tennessee, and as such Apollo 6 was minimally covered in the news. The Saturn V would play a significant role in getting astronauts to the moon and this launch, forty years ago, was to be the final test of the Saturn V before qualifying and readying it for the planned manned missions. For the Moon program, this was an incredibly important mission and would complete an important phase of systems testing. Apollo 6 did have serious problems which prevented the mission from reaching the designated orbit. These problems were quickly identified and addressed in the next mission, Apollo 7, and in the end, it was the only Saturn V launch that experienced operational challenges. It was the Apollo 6 mission that proved the integrity of the Saturn V launch vehicle. Since Apollo 6 was a test flight, NASA positioned cameras in places that would not be possible on a Moon mission. One of these took the famous set of images of the Saturn V first stage separation and the jettisoning of the interstage ring, pictured above.
After Apollo 6, all future Apollo missions were manned. After Apollo 17 the Apollo program was terminated for lack of funding, indicative of a tumultuous time in American history and a changing domestic agenda. At program termination there were three Saturn V rockets that had been completed in preparation of future Moon missions. Of these, one was ultimately used to launch Skylab, America’s first space station, into orbit on May 14, 1973. The remaining two are on display at various places around the country, including the complete Saturn V at the Johnson Space Center in Houston which is composed entirely of never used flight hardware.
As we near the end of the Space Shuttle’s operational life, and work continues on the replacement Orion/Constellation program, it is interesting that NASA has in some ways gone back to the future and put in place a program that is a direct descendant of the successes of the Apollo and Saturn programs, in some cases using identical systems technologies.
Earlier this month the European Space Agency posted some high resolution images taken by the ESA Mars Express Orbiter of the ice covered oddity that is Promethei Planum. The images are striking and gorgeous, and depict the seasonal ice coverage of this cratered area that measures as deep as 3,500 meters in places. In the image below on the right is an impact crater, partially covered in ice, that measures roughly 100 km wide and 800 meters deep.
Catching up on my feeds just now I was saddened to see that Arthur C. Clarke, physicist, author, innovator, futurist, and ardent believer in the potential of humanity, has died. He was 90, so the man had a very decent run. Perhaps his most recognized work was 2001: A Space Odyssey, the movie for which just celebrated its 40th anniversary. He leaves behind an enormous legacy of invention, creativity, art, and inspiration having written over 100 books. Enormous. Few have been so profoundly influential to so many, and managed to do it with such consistent style, usually sporting a satin Nehru jacket and tanned from the beaches of his home in Sri Lanka. For me, Arthur C. Clarke is the Yin to Philip K. Dick’s Yang. A couple great quotes from Clarke in honor of his passing…
Reflecting on his life:
“Sometimes I am asked how I would like to be remembered. I have had a diverse career as a writer, underwater explorer and space promoter. Of all these I would like to be remembered as a writer.”
A terrific quote on the value of the space program, from 1970:
“The inspirational value of the space program is probably of far greater importance to education than any input of dollars… A whole generation is growing up which has been attracted to the hard disciplines of science and engineering by the romance of space.”
Absolutely stunning imagery of the recent fly-by of Saturn’s moon Enceladus by Cassini presented in a photo animation. You will find little mention of this in the news, and that is mostly because the news does not care. Lost opportunity for the news. We’ve investigated the robotic Cassini probe here before, and it continues to be very, very busy. On March 12th Cassini flew within 30 miles of Enceladus, approaching from above Enceladus’ north pole and thus seeing the moon as a crescent. Some facts on this beautiful moon:
Enceladus is very bright, reflecting nearly 100% of the light that strikes it
This is because we believe it is almost entirely covered in water ice
It’s surface is considered to be geologically young at less than 100 million years old
There is evidence indicating that the interior of the moon may still be liquid
It is about 500 km wide, or roughly the width of the state of Arizona
Enceladus is known as the “geyser moon” because of enormous eruptions
These are created by the release of energy caused by frictional geothermal heating
More on Enceladus and Cassini’s observations here, here, and here.
One of the researchers investigating the possibilities of building a space elevator said that. It was an incredibly futuristic idea a decade ago. Not so much today. Getting to space with rockets is incredibly dangerous and increasingly expensive. Each Space Shuttle mission costs NASA (and by extension the American taxpayers) about $500 million, and in these constrained budgetary times that is verging on cost prohibitive. This lends credence to the space elevator concept, which is not by any means a new idea (Arthur C. Clark put forth the idea in his 1978 novel “The Fountains of Paradise” - though he was not the first). Developments in materials technologies, like carbon nanotubes, are giving the space elevator new momentum and urging NASA to perhaps consider it seriously as a future alternative to orbital access.
The concept is exceedingly simple:
- Send up a satellite that maintains a geosynchronous orbit
- Satellite deploys a ribbon or cable back to Earth
- Cable is attached to an offshore station
- Elevator rides the cable from the offshore station up to the orbiting satellite
The elevator could be powered by Earth based lasers or by powerful solar reflectors. Panels on the elevator would receive the light energy from the emitters on the ground and produce the electricity that would power the motors on the elevator. It’s sustainable.
Previously, we had been held back by the material realities of trying to build a several thousand mile (as long as 22,000 miles) elevator cable. The advent of carbon nanotube technology, still in its infancy, could be the lightweight but incredibly strong materials breakthrough that makes this possible. If completed, the space elevator would be the largest structure ever built.
More on space elevators in an excellent entry at Wikipedia, at NASA, and a short video from PBS’s NOVA.
NASA is trying to move quickly to finish the International Space Station before they decommission the Space Shuttle in 2010. This is primarily because the program currently in development to replace the shuttle, the Orion orbital vehicle and Constellation launch system, will most likely not be operational until 2015. This leaves a four to five year period where NASA will not be able to access space without the help of others, whether they be companies or nations. The good news is that at that time there will be several options as Russia, Japan (JAXA), the European Space Agency (ESA), and possibly even China will have operational orbital programs, not to mention the private ventures like SpaceX and Rocketplane Kistler (two very cool companies, definitely check them out) that are currently contracted by NASA to develop supplementary ISS transport and support programs. The program from SpaceX, the Falcon9 rocket and Dragon space vehicle, is planned to be operational by 2010. I imagine that Sir Richard Branson would be willing to help, if needed.
As recently as last week NASA alluded to talking with the Russian space program regarding negotiating the purchase of use of their Soyuz and Progress orbital programs, in the event that contracting with private space companies does not provide the necessary capacity. Given that it is now 2008, and that the shuttle goes defunct in 2010, it is in NASA’s best interest to have these plans solidified as soon as possible. Otherwise, our astronauts and researchers face a space access bottleneck at exactly the time that the International Space Station becomes fully operational.
That graphic above looks like it could have been from 1969. I posted about the Constellation and Orion programs earlier, but just spent way to much time on HowStuffWorks and found an excellent and concise summary of the details around the Orion CEV. It is interesting how much from the Apollo program we are leveraging for Orion and Constellation. NASA has gone back to the future, so to speak. It makes perfect sense, in the vein of continuous improvement, as the Apollo program worked very well nearly forty years ago. With today’s advancements in electronics, computers, materials, and propulsion (not to mention everything we have learned from the shuttle and the ISS), Orion should benefit from a very long list of innovations and improvements. Earlier I had read that this program would not be coming online until 2015, five years after the decommissioning of the Space Shuttle leaving quite a gap in our ability to reach space without the help of others. Now I am seeing estimates of 2011 for Orion to be operational, keeping us in what is building up to be an incredibly competitive space race with China, India, Japan, Russia, and the ESA.
The International Space Station has been underway for so long that I think it is often just forgotten about. Work commenced in 1998, so its been under construction for nearly a full decade. But it’s up there and manned 24/7/365. We should collectively pay more attention to the development of the ISS as that is where the future of humanity is slowly (very, very slowly) being shaped. That, and we’re freaking building this thing in space. Most are at least familiar with the station if only because of the problems that have plagued its construction, including the problems with the NASA space shuttle that have caused major construction delays. There have been some close calls for the astronauts and scientists manning the ISS, and some difficult learning experiences for the international team tasked with building Earth’s first large scale “permanent” space platform. But that is the whole point, really, to learn along the way. Building this station is an incredible undertaking.
Some quick ISS facts:
- It is the largest and most complex international science project in history
- 27 nations are actively involved in its construction, most not having a space program
- When completed it will weigh over 1 million pounds
- It will ultimately be 356 feet across and 290 feet long
- The solar panels on the ISS would cover an acre
- It is in orbit approximately 250 statute miles from Earth
- It completes 15.77 orbits of the Earth each day
- The station has been continuously inhabited since November, 2002
- It will eventually have 15,000 cubic feet of living space
- The costs to create the ISS will exceed $130 billion, far beyond the original budget
- Five space tourists have visited, paying $25 million each for the opportunity
- The microgravity environment on the station is 88% of Earth’s gravity
- As of today it has been in orbit 3,362 days, and has been inhabited for 2,651 days
- For this pinnacle of human technological achievement, it looks rickety
There is a tremendous amount of valuable research already underway on the station, including experiments in biology, medicine, physics, biotechnology, materials research, cosmology and meteorology. Obviously, much more is planned and as more research modules come online the opportunities will increase. 2010 is tentatively planned to be the year of completion. But that will certainly be subject to change. Oddly, the year that the station is completed is the year that NASA decommissions the space shuttle with its replacement, the Orion/Constellation program, not coming online until 2015.
Some images I grabbed of the ISS for review:
This image, from 2001/2002, shows the initial operational solar arrays.
This is the station configuration as of November, 2007.
Very cool image of an astronaut capturing a reflection of the ISS and the Earth below in his face mask.
A detail shot of the connection between one of the solar arrays and a module. Note the astronaut working on the station in the upper center of the image.
Another detail. The exterior is incredibly complex. There is an astronaut in the image towards the center middle providing the scale of this module. The arm in the image was manufactured by Canada.
A space shuttle preparing to dock with the station. The shuttle has been the primary large payload delivery vehicle for the ISS. The Russians provide supplies and take away refuse via manned and unmanned Soyuz capsules.
A chart showing the breakdown of components and with nation’s of origin.
More from NASA. Check out the interactive informational tour.
2007 was a terrifically important year in the field of robotics. It was a year of new accomplishments in mobility, application, and the continuation of exponential increases in functional robotic populations. Take note, we are riding a technological wave that will dramatically impact our collective futures for the better, and in some ways for the worse, I surmise. The forces behind the continuous improvement and innovation within robotics are gaining tremendous momentum, and the associated tremendous budgets. This is not just about the military, either. Advances in robotics are happening globally and are sponsored by both public and private enterprise. It will be interesting to see what 2008 brings.
There was an excellent article late last month at Scientific American that summarizes well some of the incredible accomplishments and developments in robotics from the past year.
In November of 1959 US Air Force Captain Joe Kittinger, fitted with a pressurized suit and a parachute, rode a high-altitude helium balloon to a height of 76,400 feet above the Earth’s surface. He then proceeded to jump. This had never been done before, and why would it have been? Kittinger entered a free-fall during which he lost consciousness after entering a 120rpm spin the g-forces of which were calculated to be 22 times the force of gravity at his extremities. Fortunately, his parachute was set to automatically open, which it did, saving his life. Three weeks later he rode another balloon high into the atmosphere and jumped from 76,700 feet. This was Project Excelsior. It was research.
That was nothing, though. On August 16, 1960 Captain Kittinger took a balloon up to 102,800 feet. He could see the curvature of the Earth. He could see entire continents. He was effectively the first human being in space. Again, he jumped. He fell for 4 minutes 36 seconds reaching a speed of 614mph. He thought he had broken the sound barrier. At 18,000 feet he opened his parachute and calmly returned to Earth. He set records for the highest balloon ascent, highest parachute jump, and fastest speed by a man through the atmosphere. He also earned a whole series of medals and would eventually be promoted to Colonel. Recognition and rank aside, why would anybody do this?
Because they wanted to understand, to learn, and the only way to do this effectively was to do it yourself. As we entered an age after the conclusion of World War II defined by new and incredible breakthroughs in technology we needed to understand limits, capacities, and thresholds. In the days before super computers and sophisticated software modeling, this was how it was done. There was a need to understand the affects of high altitude bailout on the pilots and astronauts who would be flying at those altitudes. There was a need to test the effectiveness of the equipment we were designing. That meant someone needed to ride a balloon up that high and jump out. Captain Kittinger volunteered for the opportunity. He showed scientists that astronauts could survive the harshness of space with just a pressure suit and that man could eject from aircraft at extreme altitudes and survive.
More about Joe Kittinger and Project Excelsior here, here and here.
There is also this incredible footage of his jump in 1960 with some narrative from Joe Kittinger:
I have been following this story like the wide-eyed ten year old that I am when it comes to anything related to even the remote possibility that I might someday be able to experience the weightlessness of space. Earlier this week Sir Richard Branson unveiled the design of Virgin Galactic’s new orbitalspace launch system, the carrier vehicle WhiteKnightTwo and the suborbital craft SpaceShipTwo (pictured above). This would be phase two of Virgin Galactic’s plan to “improve” humanity’s access to space. At $200,000 per seat that would be wealthy humanity, at least initially until the operation scales and ticket prices come down dramatically. Back in 2005 Branson’s Virgin Group and Burt Rutan’s Scaled Composites announced an agreement to form a new aerospace production company to build a fleet of commercial sub-orbital spaceships and launch aircraft. The new company, The Spaceship Company owns the designs of the SpaceShipTwo and White Knight Two launch systems. See my previous post on Burt Rutan.
SpaceShipTwo will hold six passengers and two pilots and will fly higher than SpaceShipOne, the craft created by Scaled Composites that became the first private venture to enter Earth’s orbit, winning the Ansari X-prize in the process. Virgin Galactic hopes to launch its first public flight before 2009 and is now taking seat reservations. 200 people have already purchased tickets.
The commercial flights will be about 2.5 hours in duration with only a few minutes of that actually being spent in orbit experiencing weightlessness. At $200,000 per flight, that is $1,333 per minute.
I have posted previously about the planet Mercury, so I was excited to learn that the robotic Mercury research spacecraft Messenger had sent back it’s first image of the planet, the first since Mariner 10 visited Mercury 30 years ago. Messenger stands for the MErcury Surface, Space ENvironment, GEochemsitry, and Ranging mission.The image above was was taken on January 11 as Messenger approached Mercury (at just over 1 million miles from the planet). Scheduled for Monday is a pass at about 125 miles over Mercury’s surface. The plan is for Messenger to make two more close passes (in October 2008 and September 2009) before settling into orbit in March of 2011 and initiating its mission of mapping the surface of Mercury in detail. And in color.
Mercury is the fastest planet in our solar system, and the maneuvering that Messenger will have to do (see graphic below from the Messenger website) to comfortably settle into an observational orbit is complex. It involves the three flybys mentioned to help the craft build up enough speed to match Mercury as it settles into orbit, called “Mercury Orbit Insertion,” or MOI. Messenger will also use a series of trajectory corrections and deep space maneuvers achieved by the controlled firing of its thrusters.
Like many things in the latter days of the Soviet Union, the Buran (Russian for blizzard or snowstorm) program was a response. It was a reaction to NASA’s space shuttle and an effort to give the Soviet’s an edge in getting to orbit, though the concept of reusable space vehicles in the Soviet Union predates the American space program. Buran was the most expensive and complicated space program in Soviet history, and one that contributed to the ultimate collapse of the Soviet Union as its economy fell apart and the political stability of the once proud nation fragmented. The Soviets sunk everything they had into both their response to the Strategic Defense Initiative and into the rekindled space race, and this broke their already fragile economy. It was a gamble that they lost as the walls, both literally and figuratively, began to come down.
Buran was an endeavor that mobilized the best and the brightest in Soviet aerospace, and these were very, very bright individuals. The innovations, accomplishments and firsts of Soviet aerospace are many. This made the Buran progam’s end all the more frustrating as this huge effort was finally canceled in 1993 because of the crumbling Soviet state and the resulting loss of all funding. Sad that Buran only made one flight in 1988, unmanned, as a test. The program never had a chance to prove its value.
Pictured below is the Buran shuttle mounted piggy back on its transport aircraft, an Antonov An-225 which was designed specifically to carry the Buran program shuttles between landing and launch sites, much like the NASA shuttles and their custom 747 transport. The An-225 is still the largest powered aircraft in the world.
The Buran program is often criticized as essentially being a copy of the United States space shuttle, the result of espionage by the Soviets. The similarities are undeniable, and at the project’s inception in 1976 Soviet leaders pushed for the program to copy the American shuttle to maintain parity with the United States, though Soviet aerospace engineers argued for the utility of a smaller reusable shuttle. Superficially, there are incredible similarities between the two craft, as seen below:
In reality, there were many significant differences between the two craft:
- Buran utilized manned & robotic flight, the US shuttle was retrofitted for robotic flight.
- Unlike the shuttle, Buran had no main rocket engines freeing tremendous weight & space.
- Buran’s launcher, Energia, was designed to carry up to 80 metric tons into orbit on its own.
- Energa was also being designed to carry payloads to the moon without Buran.
- Buran could lift 30 metric tons of payload into orbit, vs. the shuttle’s 25 metric tons.
- The thermodynamic tiles of Buran were very different than the shuttle, and thought superior.
On May 12, 2002, a hangar housing the only remaining Buran shuttle, and quite possibly the actual shuttle that flew in 1988, collapsed due to inadequate maintenance and upkeep. The collapse killed eight workers and destroyed the shuttle.
“Testing leads to failure, and failure leads to understanding.“
That puts him in alignment with a number of innovation leaders, those that believe that success is born out of learning from failures and capitalizing on that learning. In an intensely competitive world, not fearing failure and successfully mitigating and taking advantage of risk can be the difference between whether or not you are relevant next year. Anyway, a comment on my post What’s Left For Architects offered up a quote from Burt Rutan in reference to his employees at Scaled Composites, the company building SpaceShipOne, shown behind him in the photo above. Here’s the quote:
“You don’t get the privilege of designing something unless you have the capability of building it with your own hands.”
That’s a powerful statement, and incredibly prescient for a number of industries, the most obvious for myself presently being architecture. Architecture in the United States has done an impressive job moving about as far away from the actual making as possible. In many ways this has occurred due to a fear of failure, and a fear of risk. But that’s changing. Slowly. Stay tuned. Moving on, the comment and the quote it contained motivated me to do this post on Burt Rutan. Easily one of the most prolific innovators and leaders in the world of aerospace, Rutan is championing the first privately funded venture to put humans into orbit. Back in 2004 he and his team won the highly publicized Ansari X Prize for successfully sending SpaceShipOne into orbit. Twice. In two weeks. I do not think that NASA has ever accomplished that with the same launch and orbital vehicles. Though they suffered a tragic setback earlier this year, Rutan and his team are still focused and unwavering on their goal set. That is because this is a really big deal, and smart business people like Sir Richard Branson see the enormous potential of broadening our access to Earth orbit. Beyond SpaceShipOne, though, Rutan has a laundry list of innovations and achievements including Voyager, the first aircraft to circle the Earth without refueling. The man is a relentless, tough, smart, designer, engineer and collaborator. He is also an accomplished team builder, and while it may be his name that is linked to all of these achievements, his success has been from putting together exceptional teams, and supporting them. I leave you with one last smart quote from the man:
“If you don’t have a consensus that it’s nonsense, you don’t have a breakthrough.”
This post was initiated by one of my xmas presents. My good brother Mattisimo gave me a subscription to a newish arts and culture magazine called Cabinet. On page 13, as part of a really terrific article on the history of giant spheres, was the above image with a paragraph explanation. According to Cabinet, in 1960 NASA launched Echo 1 (the balloon pictured above) which qualified as America’s first communications satellite. This was not enough information.
The image above depicts a giant aluminumized satellite balloon, the same balloons that most likely account for +90% of all UFO sightings during the 1950’s and 1960’s. This is because from 1956 until 1964, engineers and scientists at the Langley Research Center developed a series of these spherical satellite balloons called “satelloons.” They were part of a much larger project, named Project Echo, that was the United States’ initial foray into orbital communications. Project Echo served as our proof of concept for orbital communications satellites, and anticipated the looming space satellite race between the United States and the Soviet Union (who kicked it off with Sputnik in 1957). These satelloons, like the more than 100-foot diameter aluminumized balloon pictured above, were one of the inaugural projects for NASA, which was only officially established in 1958 in an effort to fast track our nation’s efforts to get America into space. In his 1995 history of NASA Langley, Space Revolution, Dr. James Hansen wrote:
The Echo balloon was perhaps the most beautiful object ever to be put into space. The big and brilliant sphere had a 31,416-square foot surface of Mylar plastic covered smoothly with a mere 4 pounds of vapor-deposited aluminum. All told, counting 30 pounds of inflating chemicals and two 11-ounce, 3/8-inch-thick radio tracking beacons (packed with 70 solar cells and 5 storage batteries), the sphere weighed only 132 pounds. For those enamored with its aesthetics, folding the beautiful balloon into its small container for packing into the nose cone of a Thor-Delta rocket was somewhat like folding a large Rembrandt canvas into a tiny square and taking it home from an art sale in one’s wallet.
These satelloons were initially conceived as research tools to collect data on the density of the upper atmosphere. The original research proposal put forward by a Langley engineer named William J. O’Sullivan called for a 20-inch balloon, which was soon increased to 30 inches. The size of the balloons would jump exponentially as the demands for more research, and the accompanying payloads, would increase in intensity. Eventually, we made the jump and just stuffed the gear into satellites that were in turn stuffed into the payload bays of various re-purposed intercontinental ballistic missiles.
Nine years after NASA was experimenting with balloon based communications satellites they put astronauts on the moon in 1969 as part of the Apollo manned mission program. Is there an equivalent for that kind of progress today?
That question is on the whiteboard of Bill Johns office at Lockheed Martin, and is his mantra as he engages in what is perhaps the most important program for the U.S. space program in the last thirty years. The question has a box around it with a “do not erase” pointing to it. Johns is a senior manager at Lockheed Martin, which in August 2006 won the $8 billion contract to build the next generation of NASA’s reusable space vehicles. Called “Orion,” and depicted in the rendering above in orbit around the moon, this crew capsule is being designed to take six astronauts into orbit in support of the International Space Station, or four astronauts to the moon. The space shuttle, initially the darling of an aggressive NASA in the 1970’s and 1980’s, continues to be plagued with problems and technology challenges. That, and it is incredibly expensive and inefficient to operate. NASA is decommissioning the three remaining space shuttles in 2010. It should be noted that as a wide-eyed 10 year old I wrote a letter to NASA expressing my own excitement wi
