CU-Boulder #39;s Ants In Space
Ever wonder how ants would do on the International Space Station, which is whipping around in weightlessness 200 miles over our heads at a mind-blowing 17,00...

By: University of Colorado Boulder

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CU-Boulder's Ants In Space - Video

The Russian cargo spacecraft Progress M-20M, which undocked from the International Space Station on February 3, has ended its free flight and is to be sunk in the unnavigated part of the Pacific Ocean on February 11 around 8 pm MSK.

On board the spacecraft there is about a ton of garbage and decommissioned equipment taken from the ISS. Scientists have not come up with ways of utilizing other types of space debris. However, space debris poses a great threat to satellites and astronauts.

The era of active space exploration began 56 years ago. On October 4, 1957 Soviet scientists launched the first artificial satellite from the Earth. One cannot count how many satellites and piloted missions have been launched since then, each one leaving behind a trace in space - a booster, an apparatus that got out of control or a piece of the spacecraft coating.

Such garbage poses a serious threat, Andrei Ionin, a member of the Russian Tsiolkovsky Academy of Cosmonautics and specialist in space policy, points out.

"One must not be fooled by the fact that the size of most parts of that space debris is not big. Because in space particles move at a great speed and one must take into account relative speeds as well," he says.

There have been several instances when debris approaching the ISS presented a threat to the station. Astronauts then put on their space suits and moved to the Soyuz capsules so that they had an opportunity to start moving towards the Earth if needed. So far the ISS has been lucky.

The coating of the American shuttle spacecraft has been damaged twice. In 2006, a tiny space fragment collided with a satellite in its orbit, as a result of which residents of the Far East were left without a TV signal for a while. Taking into account that the planet's technologies are increasingly linked to space, orbital debris can at any moment interrupt the usual course of life for any of us, Igor Marynyn, editor-in-chief of the News of Cosmonautics magazine, notes.

"Currently neither Russia nor any other country has any reasonable solution as to how to clean the space debris. Some propose to use a net. It is an absolutely unrealistic project. Because all the debris fly in different directions at speed of 10-12 km per second. That is faster that a bullet. It is impossible to catch such debris with a net. Some propose to use a magnet. That is also unrealistic as most metals satellites are made of are not influenced by a magnetic field as they are made of duralumin," Marynyn adds.

There have been fantasy ideas to burn the debris with a laser beam from the Earth or launch a cleaning robot into space. But so far the only effective solution is to clean after yourself. For example, a booster block that launches satellites from a low orbit into a high one as a rule is left drifting in space.

If their design includes more fuel and an opportunity of control, then at a certain moment the booster can be sent back into the atmosphere to be burned down. But that makes the project more expensive, that is why not everyone likes that idea, the expert Igor Marynyn asserts.

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Space junk endangers mankind's usual course of life

It's corrosive, it's hazardous, and it can cause an explosion powerful enough to thrust a satellite forward in space. Multiple NASA centers are currently conducting a remotely controlled test of new technologies that would empower future space robots to transfer this dangerous fluid -- satellite oxidizer -- into the propellant tanks of spacecraft in space today.

Building on the success of the International Space Station's landmark Robotic Refueling Mission (RRM) demonstration, the ground-based Remote Robotic Oxidizer Transfer Test (RROxiTT) is taking another step forward in NASA's ongoing campaign to develop satellite-servicing capabilities for space architectures and human exploration.

On Earth, RROxiTT technologies could one day be applied to robotically replenish satellites before they launch, keeping humans at a safe distance during an extremely hazardous operation.

Building on the Past to Set the Stage for the Future In January 2013, RRM demonstrated that remotely controlled robots -- using current-day technology -- could work through the caps and wires on a satellite fuel valve and transfer fluid into existent, orbiting spacecraft that were not designed to be serviced.

To meet the safety requirements of space station, ethanol was used as a stand-in for satellite fuel. For the team that conceived and built RRM, the Satellite Servicing Capabilities Office (SSCO) at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., the successful conclusion of this refueling demonstration was not the end of their work -- only the beginning.

"We were immensely pleased with RRM results. But doing more was always part of the plan," says Benjamin Reed, deputy project manager of SSCO. "There were certain aspects of satellite refueling that couldn't be demonstrated safely while we were using space station as a test bed - aspects that we chose to defer to a later test date. RROxiTT is the next step in that technology development."

Taking lessons learned from RRM, the SSCO team devised the ground-based RROxiTT to test how robots can transfer oxidizer, at flight-like pressures and flow rates, through the propellant valve and into the mock tank of a satellite that was not designed to be serviced in space.

"No one has ever attempted this type of oxidizer transfer before," says Marion Riley, the SSCO test manager for RROxiTT. "Like any NASA-sized challenge, we had to figure out -- and at times, create -- the right set of technologies and procedures to get the job done. Testing on the ground helps us know we're on the right track."

At the heart of RROxiTT's complexity is the nature of the dangerous substance the robot is handling. Oxidizer -- namely nitrogen tetroxide -- is a chemical that, when mixed with satellite fuel, causes instant combustion that provides thrust (motion) for a satellite.

Oxidizer is contained within a satellite tank at intense pressures, up to 300 pounds per square inch (about 20 times atmospheric pressure). Toxic, extremely corrosive and compressed, it requires special handling and a unique set of technologies to transfer it. A Collaborative Effort to Build Space Capabilities

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NASA Tests New Technologies for Robotic Refueling

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Chuck Yeager's historic supersonic flight in 1947 set off a firestorm of research into flight beyond the speed of sound. The most ambitious of these projects was the X-15 program, a top secret USAF program that aimed to test the limits of Mach 7. In X-15: The World's Fastest Rocket Plane and the Pilots Who Ushered in the Space Age, John Anderson and Richard Passman recount the death-defying flights of a steel-nerved team of test pilots at the controls of the world's first rocket plane.

The first hypersonic vehicles in flight were missiles, not airplanes. On February 24, 1949, a WAC Corporal rocket mounted on top of a captured German V-2 boost vehicle was fired from the White Sands Proving Ground in New Mexico, reaching an altitude of 244 miles and a velocity of 5,150 miles per hour. After nosing over, the WAC Corporal careened back into the atmosphere at over 5,000 miles per hour, becoming the first object of human origin to achieve hypersonic flight. In this same period, a hypersonic wind tunnel capable of Mach 7, with an 11- by 11-inch cross-section test section, went into operation on November 26, 1947, the brainchild of NACA Langley researcher John Becker. For three years following its first run, this wind tunnel was the only hypersonic wind tunnel in the United States. It later provided key data for the design of the X-15.

The real genesis of the X-15, however, was human thinking, not test facilities. On January 8, 1952, Robert Woods of Bell Aircraft sent a letter to the NACA Committee on Aerodynamics in which he proposed that the committee undertake the study of basic problems in hypersonic and space flight. At that time, several X-airplanes were already probing the mysteries of supersonic flight: the X-1, X-1A, and X-2. Accompanying Woods's letter was a document from his colleague at Bell, Dr. Walter Dornberger, outlining the development of a hypersonic research airplane capable of Mach 6 and reaching an altitude of 75 miles. By June 1952, the NACA Committee on Aerodynamics recommended that the NACA expand its efforts to study the problems of hypersonic manned and unmanned flight, covering the Mach number range from 4 to 10.

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After two more years of deliberation, the committee passed a resolution during its October 1954 meeting recommending the construction of a hypersonic research airplane. Among the members of this committee were Walter Williams and Scott Crossfield, who would later play strong roles in the X-15 program. Kelly Johnson, who not only was the Lockheed representative to the committee but was considered to be the country's most famous airplane designer, opposed any extension of the manned research program, arguing that to datethe research airplane program was "generally unsatisfactory" and had not contributed to the practical design of tactical aircraft. Johnson was the only dissenter; he later appended a minority opinion to the majority report. The spectacular success of the X-15 program and the volumes of hypersonic data it contributed to the design of the Space Shuttle later proved Johnson wrong. The X-15 program was launched.

The X-15 was designed to be, purely and simply, a research vehicle to provide aerodynamic, flight dynamic, and structural response data for use in the development of future manned hypersonic vehicles, such as the Space Shuttle. No hypersonic wind tunnels, past or present, can provide accurate data for the design of a full-scale hypersonic airplane. The frontiers of flight today are the same as they were in the 1950s: the exploration of hypersonic flight. The X-15 will ultimately be viewed as the Wright Flyer of hypersonic airplanes.

The X-15 was the third of a series of research aircraft that were designed specifically to obtain aerodynamic data, beginning with the Bell X-1, the first piloted airplane to fly faster than the speed of sound. The X-1 investigated aircraft behavior primarily in the transonic flight regime. The transonic regime is generally considered to be flight between Mach 0.8 and about 1.3. It begins when air is accelerated to Mach 1 at any local location on the airplane, usually when the airplane is flying at the subsonic airspeed of about Mach 0.8 The second research airplane, the Bell X-1A, investigated supersonic flight to a Mach number of 2.44. This was followed by the Bell X-2, a swept-wing aircraft of stainless steel construction designed to investigate the effects of sweepback and aerodynamic heating to a Mach number of 3.2.

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Each of these aircraft, like the later X-15, was rocket-powered and carried aloft to be dropped at an altitude of about 30,000 feet. At these high altitudes, where the air is less dense and the drag is therefore low, the rocket provides maximum acceleration to the airplane following launch. This acceleration is sufficient to allow the airplane to reach the desired speeds and altitudes that allow scientists to study the flight regions between where aerodynamic forces are still useful, and outer space, where they are not, and to study speeds of almost Mach 7, which are solidly in the hypersonic regime.

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The Experimental Hypersonic Rocket Plane That Ushered in the Space Age