Jim Siegel

July 21st, 2017

Astronauts test the accessibility of handrails on the NanoRacks airlock mockup in the Neutral Buoyancy Laboratory. Photo Credit: NanoRacks

Five months ago, NanoRacks, LLC announced it would partner with Boeing to build the first private airlock for the International Space Station. That initiative is progressing and recently achieved a design milestone with the successful test of a NASA-built, full-scale mockup at the Johnson Space Center in the Neutral Buoyancy Laboratory (NBL).

The NBL features a 6.2 million gallon indoor pool, which is 10 times larger than a typical Olympic-size swimming pool. It contains full-size mockups of ISS modules and payloads, as well as space station visiting vehicles such as SpaceXs Dragon capsule.

An artists rendering of the NanoRacks airlock attached to the Tranquility module. Image Credit: NanoRacks

The purpose of the NBL, which simulates the weightlessness of working in space, is to prepare for missions involving spacewalks. NASA team members use the NBL to develop flight procedures, verify hardware compatibility, train astronauts, and refine spacewalk procedures during flight that are necessary to ensure mission success.

Recent tests involving the airlock confirmed that spacewalking astronauts will be able to successfully maneuver around the structure and mounted external payloads. Astronauts will be able to do this with the assistance of handrails, which will be strategically placed by the NanoRacks design team.

The test lasted about two to three hours and went so well that we cancelled the additional test time scheduled for the next day, said airlock Project Manager Brock Howe. In particular, we were able to validate the handrail locations.

Howe said all is progressing smoothly with the development of the NanoRacks airlock.

We are still targeting launch in 2019 in a SpaceX Dragon trunk, and were thankful for the hard work involving all of our airlock partners, including our friends at Boeing, ATA Engineering, and Oceaneering, Howe said.

NanoRacks airlock will be the solution to the constraints associated with the stations only airlock system used for deploying CubeSats and other items into space. That current airlock, located on the Japanese Kibo module, can only be opened 10 times per year, with only five of those allocated to NASA and commercial companies. The other five go to the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency, which owns the airlock. Demand by both NASA and commercial companies now far exceeds that capacity.

The NanoRacks airlock, to be located on the port side of the Tranquility module, will measure roughly 6.6 feet (2 meters) in diameter and 5.9 feet (1.8 meters) long. It will be much larger than the existing Japanese airlock.

The private airlock will be able to discharge five times the volume of payload at a time. Additionally, it will be designed to accept components from outside of the ISS, components that might be in need of repair or adjustment.

ISS astronauts will be able to place payloads inside the airlock, close its hatch, depressurize it, and then detach it from the module using the stations Canadian robotic arm. The arm will extend the airlock aft and 45 degrees down, and the CubeSats and other payloads will be deployed into orbit or tested in the vacuum of space.

Image Credit: NanoRacks

Howe said NASA will provide an air save pump that will recover about 80-90 percent of the air evacuated from the airlock.

There are constraints on the frequency of opening the airlock and deploying payloads, however. Howe said the most significant of these is crew time, followed by the availability of the robotic arm and other activity outside the ISS. At this time, teams are planning for four to six per year, though he added there is talk of as many as 10-12 per year if justified by demand and allowed by crew schedules.

Abby Dickes, NanoRacks director of marketing, communications, and special events, said there is considerable ongoing demand for CubeSat deployment. Over 180 have been launched to date and an additional 30 are scheduled to be included in the manifest for the upcoming SpaceX CRS-12 mission slated for next month.

We are looking pretty full, said Dickes. There are a few slots that are open in the next few launches, but the few that are left are filling fast. We operate on just about every U.S. mission launching to ISS, so there are plenty of new flight opportunities coming up as new customers get signed on.

The fee to deploy a 1U CubeSat going through the NanoRacks CubeSat Deployer is roughly $85,000. Internal payloads start at about $15,000. Dickes estimates that it takes about 12-18 months from the time a customer orders a CubeSat launch until it is deployed.

In addition to internal payloads aboard the ISS and externally-released CubeSats, NanoRacks offers a third alternative to its customers.The NanoRacks External Platform (NREP), manufactured by Airbus, was placed outside the ISS in August 2016.

Our External Platform actually doesnt release CubeSats payloads are however in the CubeSat form factor, Dickes said. The NREP offers a great solution to run a lot of the same systems as a CubeSat but you dont lose the CubeSat to orbit your NREP payload can return to Earth. NREP is robotically maneuvered in and out of station, and then your payload can come home.

The NanoRacks airlock is on track to meet its next project milestones.

We are working through the detailed design and anticipate a critical design review at the end of October, Howe said. The next big milestone will be a Phase II Safety Review with NASA in January or so.

Tagged: International Space Station Johnson Space Center Lead Stories NanoRacks NASA Neutral Buoyancy Laboratory

Jim Siegel comes from a business and engineering background, as well as a journalistic one. He has a degree in Mechanical Engineering from Purdue University, an MBA from the University of Michigan, and executive certificates from Northwestern University and Duke University. Jim got interested in journalism in 2002. As a resident of Celebration, FL, Disneys planned community outside Orlando, he has written and performed photography extensively for the Celebration Independent and the Celebration News. He has also written for the Detroit News, the Indianapolis Star, and the Northwest Indiana Times (where he started his newspaper career at age 11 as a paperboy). Jim is well known around Celebration for his photography, and he recently published a book of his favorite Celebration scenes. Jim has covered the Kennedy Space Center since 2006. His experience has brought a unique perspective to his coverage of first, the space shuttle Program, and now the post-shuttle era, as US space exploration accelerates its dependence on commercial companies. He specializes in converting the often highly technical aspects of the space program into contexts that can be understood and appreciated by average Americans.

Follow this link:

NanoRacks airlock moving toward 2019 installation on the ISS - SpaceFlight Insider

Collin Skocik

July 20th, 2017

A photograph of Armstrong near the Apollo 11 LM, taken by Aldrin on the lunar surface; most of the time, Armstrong had the camera. Photo Credit: NASA

On July 20, 196948 years ago todaythe world was changed forever when two human beings walked on the Moon. 38-year-old Neil Armstrong stepped off the ladder of the flimsy, spidery Lunar Module Eagleonto the soft and pliant dust of the Moons Sea of Tranquillity (Mare Tranquillitatis) and spoke the immortal words: Thats one small step for [a] man, one giant leap for mankind.

Apollo 11 launch. Photo Credit: NASA

It was the culmination of a decade of feverish work and the dedication of 500,000 people across the nation,which paved the way for six more crewed lunar missions.

It began in 1957 when the Soviet Union began the Space Race by launching the first satellite, Sputnik. The National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA) was reorganized into a civilian agency known as the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). After several failures, NASA succeeded in launching Americas first satellite, Explorer I.

Nonetheless, it was the crewed space race that attracted the most attention. After vetting the highest qualified test pilots in all the armed services, NASA selected seven top pilots as its Mercury Astronautsthe Mercury Seven.

However, the Soviet Union led the way again, launching Yuri Gagarin into space on April 12, 1961. On May 5, Alan Shepard was launched on a fifteen-minute suborbital flight in his tiny Freedom 7 Mercury capsule propelled by a Redstone rocket. That fifteen minutes of space experience was enough to bolster the confidence of young President John F. Kennedy to stand before Congress and ask for the funding to put a man on the Moon by the end of the decade.

Nine more astronauts were selected for the two-man Gemini Program and the upcoming three-man Apollo flights. Five more Mercury missions expanded Americas ability to live, work, and navigate in space.

The ten Gemini flights perfected the skills that would be needed for a successful Moon landingextravehicular activity, rendezvous and docking, measurement of the radioactivity of the Van Allen radiation belts surrounding the Earth, endurance during long missions, integration of spacecraft systems, communications, and many other things.

However, tragedy struck on Jan. 27, 1967, when a fire broke out inside the Apollo One spacecraft during a routine plugs-out test. Astronauts Gus Grissom, Ed White, and Roger Chaffee were killed.

The Apollo Program was shut down for over a year while the spacecraft was disassembled, with each and every piece examined and analyzed. The problem was found and corrected, as were numerous other problems with the Apollo spacecraft.

Finally, on Oct. 11, 1968, the Apollo Program took flight. Wally Schirra, Donn Eisele, and Walt Cunningham were launched aboard Apollo 7 by a Saturn 1B rocket from Cape Canaveral Air Force Stationthe last crewed mission launched from Cape Canaveral. It was a twelve-day orbital flight to test the Apollo Command and Service Module (CSM) in space.

Then, on Dec. 21, NASA launched perhaps the most daring and audacious space mission in history: Apollo 8. Frank Borman, Jim Lovell, and Bill Anders launched on a Saturn Vthe first crewed launch of that massive rocketand, even though the Lunar Module (LM) was not yet ready for flight, set off on a journey all the way to the Moon. Their Christmas Eve broadcast in lunar orbit transmitted the first television images of the lunar surface to the people of Earth.

Apollo 11 LM Eagle in lunar orbit. Photo Credit: NASA

On March 3, 1969, Apollo 9 launched from Kennedy Space Center to test the Lunar Module in Earth orbit. Dave Scott piloted the CSM Gumdrop while Jim McDivitt and Rusty Schweickart put the Lunar Module Spider through its paces.

On May 18, Tom Stafford, John Young, and Gene Cernan flew Apollo 10 to the Moon to test the Lunar Module Snoopy in lunar orbit and to do a full run-through of the first lunar landing.

Finally, on July 16, Apollo 11 launched on the long-awaited first mission to land humans on the Moon and return them safely to the Earth.

Neil Armstrong was a civilian pilot who had flown the Air Forces X-15 to 207,500 feet (63,250 meters), and, on March 16, 1966, had finally beaten the Russians in space by carrying out the first rendezvous and docking in space, docking the Gemini VIII spacecraft with an Agena target vehicleand then saved Gemini VIII when it went into a disastrous spin.

Command Module Pilot (CMP) was Michael Collins, a 38-year-old Air Force pilot and test pilot, and the first astronaut to perform two spacewalks.

Lunar Module Pilot (LMP) was Edwin Buzz Aldrin, a 38-year-old Air Force pilot and Korean War veteran, and the only astronaut at the time to have a Ph.D. Foreseeing the importance of spaceflight in the near future, he had written his doctoral thesis on orbital rendezvous, and had used his skills to dock Gemini XII with an Agena target vehicle when the rendezvous computer failed.

On July 20, 1969, Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin moved from the Command Module Columbia into the Lunar Module Eagle, leaving Collins alone to orbit the Moon in the Apollo CSM. After undocking, Armstrong rotated the Eagle so that Collins could verify that the landing legs were extended and locked into position.

The Apollo 11 plaque on the Moon. (Click to enlarge) Photo Credit: NASA

CAPCOM Charlie Duke, in Mission Control, Houston, talked Armstrong down during powered descent, but Eagle overshot the landing site due to expelled air in the docking mechanism. Seeing that the computer was bringing Eagle into a hazardous, rocky area, Armstrong took manual control and flew Eagle across the lunar surface until he spotted a flat area.

At 4:18 p.m. EDT (20:18 UTC), Armstrong set Eagle down in the Sea of Tranquillity, informing Duke: Houston Tranquillity Base Here. The Eagle has landed.

Armstrong stepped onto the lunar surface at 10:56 EDT (02:56 UTC on July 21). Aldrin followed half an hour later, and the world watched a grainy black-and-white broadcastwith such poor resolution (due to the slow-scan television transmission being incompatible with commercial TV) that Armstrong and Aldrin looked like ghosts as they movedas the two astronauts collected soil and rock samples, set up the experiments of the Early Apollo Scientific Experiments Package (EASEP), and famously planted the American flag.

It was an inspiring mission for the entire world. The plaque on the Eagle, which still sits undisturbed on the lunar surface, reads:

Here men from the planet Earth first set foot upon the Moon, July 1969 A.D. We come in peace for all mankind.

It is an eternal testament to one of humankinds proudest moments, and the one national program ever mounted in the cause of peace and scientific exploration.

Apollo 11, as well as the six Apollo missions that followed, serve as a beacon for the world to follow. Today the future of our space program has never been more uncertain, so full of possibilities and so empty of promise. From here we may go nowhere, or we may conquer the stars. Only timeand the will of the American peoplewill tell.

This photograph of the Lunar Module at Tranquillity Base was taken by Neil Armstrong during the Apollo 11 mission, from the rim of Little West Crater on the lunar surface. Armstrongs shadow and the shadow of the camera are visible in the foreground. When he took this picture, Armstrong was clearly standing above the level of the Lunar Modules footpads. Darkened tracks lead leftward to the deployment area of the Early Apollo Surface Experiments Package (EASEP) and rightward to the TV camera. This is the furthest distance from the Lunar Module traveled by either astronaut while on the Moon. Photo & Caption Credit: NASA

Buzz Aldrin salutes U.S. flag on the Moon. Photo Credit: NASA

Video courtesy of NASA Johnson

Tagged: Apollo 11 Lead Stories Moon NASA

Collin R. Skocik has been captivated by space flight since the maiden flight of space shuttle Columbia in April of 1981. He frequently attends events hosted by the Astronaut Scholarship Foundation, and has met many astronauts in his experiences at Kennedy Space Center. He is a prolific author of science fiction as well as science and space-related articles. In addition to the Voyage Into the Unknown series, he has also written the short story collection The Future Lives!, the science fiction novel Dreams of the Stars, and the disaster novel The Sunburst Fire. His first print sale was Asteroid Eternia in Encounters magazine. When he is not writing, he provides closed-captioning for the hearing impaired. He lives in Atlantic Beach, Florida.

See the article here:

Our Spaceflight Heritage: 48 years since Apollo 11 landed on the Moon - SpaceFlight Insider

Cover for new record from art historian James Merle Thomas and Wilco keyboardist Mikael Jorgensen.

At times, the inexplicable emotions that run though the minds of music creators carries with it the weight of traversing space.

Using technological elements that bring people together over great distances, thus "minimizing" the space and time between them, art historian James Merle Thomas and Wilco keyboardist Mikael Jorgensen have created a musical experience that taps into the history of spaceflight. They dubbed the project "Quindar."

Quindar-Tones are the communication "beeps" between CapCom and spacecraft during NASA's Apollo and other space missions. The purpose of the beeps is to "trigger the ground station transmitters when there is an outgoing transmission from Earth," according to NASA Apollo Lunar Surface Journal contributor Markus Mehring. [Exoplanet Symphony: Listen to TRAPPIST-1 Worlds' Orbital Music]

These tones served as an inspiration for the duo's new record, "Hip Mobility," and they were infused with other NASA audio archives to create the songs, including "Twin-Pole Sunshade for Rusty Schweikart" and "Honeysuckle This Is Houston," which hark back to the Apollo program.

Space.com talked with James Merle Thomas and Mikael Jorgensen of Quindar in an email interview about the record's inspiration and its technical details.

Space.com: In a very novel approach to composing music, you've interwoven space, time and technology into an ethereal experience. How did your interest in spaceflight history and communications technology act as a muse for the record?

James Merle Thomas: Quindar evolved organically out of our shared enthusiasm for histories of art, technology and music, and is directly related to my doctoral research I'm trained as a historian and curator of modern and contemporary art, and am specifically interested in understanding how our notion of what "modern" looks like is related to the technology and politics of the Cold War period. In 2011, while on a Guggenheim fellowship at the National Air and Space Museum, I was researching how NASA designed for space. My research was focused on how the agency's understanding of its own design shifted during the late 1960s/early 1970s, as the Apollo Applications Programs (including Skylab) drew to a close, and as the program reoriented from symbolic exploration to include a narrative about living and working in space, about scientific research in a laboratory setting, etc.

One fascinating aspect of this transitional period is the rich collaboration (and sometimes tensions) between engineers, who were planning for precision and efficiency, and, on the other hand, architects, artists and industrial designers (e.g., Raymond Loewy, who designed the interior of Skylab), who were invested in questions of visual identity, orientation [and] personal space, and who were genuinely interested in matters of aesthetic design and the possibility for personal improvisation.

Mikael Jorgensen: Early on in our collaboration, James suggested that we listen to some of the NASA archival audio materials he'd been gathering as potential source material for the music we were creating. It all made sense in that moment to ingest and remix not only the sounds of the space program but to utilize these recordings to provide narratives to our songs the way lyrics and singing function. Since we were trying to push our own creative sensibilities and sonic possibilities, incorporating this as a fundamental part of our working methodology we didn't see or feel the need to use our own voices. This vast archive of sound would help us figure out what we wanted to say.

The big, heroic, epic stories of spaceflight have been told. There's the endless preparation, calculation, trials, training and tests leading to the blastoff, being in orbit, and then, re-entry. This larger context is the backdrop for what we've been curious about exploring. What is it like to be aggravated in space? Is weightlessness as wonderful as it sounds? (It turns out to be very uncomfortable at times.) In the moments between endless experiments and tasks, is there time to deeply ponder how insane it is to be so unimaginably far away from our planet before a radio crackles and asks for a status report? [Fun in Zero-G: Weightless Photos from Earth and Space]

Quindar tones are 250ms sine waves at 2.525kHz and 2.475kHz which are generated by an analog synthesizer which is housed in a module that would plug into the control panels in mission control. A corresponding Quindar device in the spacecraft would receive a Quindar tone at one frequency and respond with the other. The more we learned about what Quindar tones were and how they functioned, this beautiful metaphor emerged. I like to think of it as a screenplay:

INT. MISSION CONTROL. NIGHT. A vast array of control panels, switches, lights, dials, meters, are busy indicating life-support levels, fuel supplies are attended by men in suits. Large screens in the front of the room display world maps indicating the current position of the spacecraft as it hurtles through space, hundreds of miles above the Earth. The ambient audio of the chatter in the busy room fades out as we zoom in on a single Quindar module in a control panel bank:

Cut to spacecraft:

MISSION CONTROL QUINDAR MODULE: [BEEP] (An indicator lamp lights when the device transmits) Subtitle: Hey, are you there?

SPACECRAFT QUINDAR MODULE: (Lamp lights, confirming receipt of the [BEEP]) Subtitle: I'm here! [BEEP] (Lamp lights when the device transmits) Subtitle: Are you still there?

MISSION CONTROL QUINDAR MODULE: (Lamp lights, confirming receipt of the [BEEP]) Subtitle: I'm here! [BEEP] (An indicator lamp lights when the device transmits) Subtitle: Are you still there?

Cut to Mission Control:

This conversation continues in the background ensuring a consistent communication channel between the astronauts and mission control.

Fade to black.

So this idea that a musical conversation is being transmitted and received by a pair of synthesizers one of which is in space spoke very deeply to us.

Space.com: You're bringing to light a little-known, but really important, component of communications with Quindar. Can you explain how it was applied when composing the record?

Jorgensen: James was pretty quick to take the Quindar tones into the music software Ableton Live, assign them musical values and generate musical textures and chords using the original recordings.

Thomas: I was struck by how a Quindar tone is a focused sonic element, and how, when you slow down the intro/outro tones, their subtle difference becomes more perceptible. For anyone even casually familiar with John Cage, Pierre Schaeffer and a larger artistic tradition of using found sounds in composition, it's a pretty short path to re-imagining an array of Quindar tones as a kind of musical instrument.

Space.com: When you were thinking about what the title of the record should be, how did you decide that "Hip Mobility" was the way to go?

Jorgensen: It's pretty easy to get wrapped up in the seriousness and weight of these unfathomably difficult missions. There were countless problems to solve and challenges to predict with only slide rulers, pencils and brain power. That being said and fully appreciated, we've identified moments that seem unintentionally funny to us. "Hip Mobility" was the title of an excerpt from an industrial film that was depicting the flexibility of a prototype spacesuit and it was just exactly what you'd expect: A man wearing long underwear, in a preposterous aluminum exoskeletal framework, bending and stretching to illustrate the range of motion that this particular spacesuit would provide an astronaut in space. Out of context, "Hip Mobility" sounds like a name for the coolest dance moves or a description of moving into, or out of (not sure which) an up and coming neighborhood. [Evolution of the pacesuit in Pictures (Space Tech Gallery)]

I'd just like to say that we're in no way making fun of these men and women who worked diligently and seriously on these projects, but that we're empathizing with them and hopefully acknowledging some of the ridiculous things that we find ourselves doing in service of some larger goal. It's important to be serious, but not to take yourself too seriously.

Art historian James Merle Thomas and Wilco keyboardist Mikael Jorgensen collaborate to create the 'Quindar' record.

Space.com: Converting phenomena throughout the cosmos, that's usually inaudible by humans, into music has drawn a lot of interested folks to our site. Looking forward, is there another bit of technology, space history or a phenomenon that has been stirring the creative juices?

Jorgensen: There is currently such a wealth of tools and software that exist to make almost any idea a reality. We've been lucky to work with Jeremy Roth, who does stage design and lighting for Wilco, and tap into his expertise when it comes to our live show presentation. We've been using software called Resolume Arena which allows us to cue up video and present it in real time, but also to display multiple channels at once, superimpose video and more. It's been extremely gratifying to build our live show with our synthesizers and laptops and have them communicate with the video software to put this live show together that is at once interactive and responsive to each other.

"Hip Mobility" is available on Amazon. Learn more about Quindar through their website.

Follow Steve Spaleta @stevespaleta. Follow us @Spacedotcom, Facebook and Google+. Original article on Space.com.

The rest is here:

Spaceflight Beeps Inspire Cosmic 'Quindar' Music: A Q&A with the Composers - Space.com

Artists concept of SpaceXs Red Dragon spacecraft. Credit: SpaceX

SpaceXs upgraded Dragon capsules will not return astronauts to Earth for powered landings as originally envisioned, company boss Elon Musk said Wednesday, a design change that raises questions about the space transport firms plans to send commercial landers to the surface of Mars.

Musk cited safety concerns for eliminating plans for propulsive Dragon landings in remarks at the International Space Station Research and Development Conference in Washington. He also said the original Dragon landing concept, in which four landing legs would extend from the base of the capsules heat shield as throttleable SuperDraco thrusters slowed the crafts speed for touchdown, was not as useful as he initially thought for SpaceXs plans to send humans to Mars.

That was a tough decision, Musk said in response to a question on the matter. He added that the human-rated Dragon, which SpaceX is developing with mostly NASA funding, is technically still capable of propulsive landings.

Although youd have to land it on some pretty soft landing pad because weve deleted the little legs that pop out of the heat shield, Musk said.

SpaceX unveiled the design of the next-generation spacecraft in May 2014, when Musk predicted the capsule should be ready to ferry astronauts to and from the International Space Station by the end of 2016. Musk said Wednesday that the spaceship is now scheduled to launch crews by mid-2018, and he described the crew capsule effort as SpaceXs primary focus.

NASA awarded SpaceX a $2.6 billion contract later in 2014 to finish development of the upgraded Dragon spacecraft called Crew Dragon or Dragon 2 and fly up to six crew rotation missions to the space station. Boeing won a similar contract worth $4.2 billion for its CST-100 Starliner spacecraft.

Both programs have been delayed and will miss NASAs goal of having the vehicles certified for piloted missions by the end of 2017, ending U.S. reliance on Russian Soyuz spacecraft to carry astronauts to the space station and return them to Earth.

Boeing says the CST-100 Starliners first orbital test flight with a two-person crew in August 2018.

SpaceX officials said in 2015 that the Crew Dragons first few missions would end with parachute-assisted splashdowns at sea, similar to the way the current Dragon cargo capsules come back to Earth. The crew-capable version is heavier, requiring four main chutes instead of the three flying on station resupply flights.

But engineers continued to plan for propulsive landings once NASA certified the powered descent approach. The Crew Dragon will already have the SuperDraco thrusters needed for a powered descent. The same rocket packs act as the capsules escape booster to whisk astronauts away from a failing launcher.

That is how a 21st century spaceship should land, Musk said in 2014, describing the crew capsules ability to land anywhere on Earth with the accuracy of a helicopter.

SpaceX now favors another type of recovery.

The reason we decided not to pursue (powered landings) heavily is it would have taken a tremendous amount of effort to qualify that for safety, particularly for crew transport, Musk said. And then there was a time when I thought that the Dragon approach to landing on Mars, where youve got a base heat shield and side-mounted thrusters, would be the right way to land on Mars, but now Im pretty confident that is not the right way, and that theres a far better approach.

Musk did not elaborate on the new concept for landing on Mars.

Thats what the next generation of SpaceX rockets and spacecraft is going to do, so just the difficulty of safely qualifying Dragon for propulsive landings, and the fact, from a technology evolution standpoint, it was no longer in line with what we were confident was the optimal way to land on Mars, Musk said. Thats why were not pursuing it.

It could be something that we bring back later, but it doesnt seem like the right way to apply resources right now.

The redesign of the next-generation Dragons landing system will affect SpaceXs plans to send the first in a series of robotic Dragon spacecraft to Mars in 2020. Musk did not address the status of the first so-called Red Dragon mission Wednesday, but the concept involved dispatching a Dragon capsule similar to the ship built for crews to the red planet on top of a huge Falcon Heavy booster.

The Red Dragon would have descended to a powered touchdown on landing legs in a sequence similar to the one envisioned for Crew Dragons on Earth.

Gwynne Shotwell, SpaceXs president and chief operating officer, said in February that the first Red Dragon flight was delayed to mid-2020 from 2018, pushing its arrival at Mars back to early 2021. Launch opportunities to Mars come approximately every 26 months when the planets are favorably aligned.

The Red Dragons would have delivered cargo and experiments to the Martian surface and tested supersonic retro-propulsion in the planets rarefied atmosphere for the first time. NASA engineers say a rocket-braking mechanism like the Dragons SuperDraco thrusters is needed to safely land heavy supply ships and crew vehicles on Mars.

The space agency signed up to support the privately-developed Red Dragon project to gather data on supersonic retro-propulsion officials said NASA would be unable to obtain until at least the late 2020s with a government-managed mission. NASA said it would spend more than $30 million on the effort by providing advisors, navigation, communications and tracking services, and technical analysis.

Musk wrote in a tweet that SpaceX has not abandoned supersonic retro-propulsion at Mars.

Plan is to do powered landings on Mars for sure, but with a vastly bigger ship, he tweeted Wednesday after his remarks in Washington.

Musk said his team at SpaceX is refining how the company could send people to Mars, eventually to settle there. He revealed a Mars transportation architecture in a speech at the 67th International Astronautical Congress in Guadalajara, Mexico, last year, but the outline has since changed.

A vision for gigantic interplanetary transporters Musk presented last year has been downsized, he said.

Its a little smaller, still big, but I think this ones got a shot at being real on the economic front, Musk said, adding that he might present more details at this years International Astronautical Congress in Adelaide, Australia.

Musk said SpaceX is making progress on the Crew Dragon vehicle, which has a different aerodynamic shape than the companys cargo craft. Designers are also adding a life support system, seats, cockpit displays and other equipment for human passengers.

Its been way more difficult than cargo, for sure, Musk said. As soon as people enter the picture, its really a giant step up in making sure things go right. For sure, the oversight from NASA is much tougher. I thought it was tough for cargo, but its really intense for crew.

It can be a bit tough on the men and women at SpaceX, but I know where its coming from, he said. Its the right motivation, and there will be some debates going into next year about some of the technical details is this right or that right? But I think we really want to make everything humanly possible to make sure it goes well and triple check everything.

Crews riding Dragon spacecraft will blast off on SpaceXs Falcon 9 rocket from pad 39A at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. SpaceX is working on final modifications to the Falcon 9, which it calls the Block 5 configuration, to meet NASA human-rating safety standards.

Musk said there were some small technical bones of contention, but were working through those.

He did not offer details on the disagreements.

Some (of the) the things are really esoteric, really in the weeds of rocket and spacecraft design, he said. But I think its good to have these debates.

Email the author.

Follow Stephen Clark on Twitter: @StephenClark1.

The rest is here:

Propulsive landings nixed from SpaceX's Dragon spaceship - Spaceflight Now

Ocean McIntyre

July 20th, 2017

This illustration shows the average brown dwarf is much smaller than our Sun and low-mass stars and only slightly larger than the planet Jupiter. Image & Caption Credit: NASAs Goddard Space Flight Center

Sometimes in science, when you search for one thing, you end up finding something completely different. Such is the case with the search for the thus far elusive Planet Nine and the citizen scientists who ended up finding a brown dwarf instead.

Backyard Worlds: Planet 9 is a NASA-funded project sponsored by Zooniverse, and is the group under whose auspices the discovery was made just weeks after its official launch on February 15, 2017. The launch date, which also happened to coincide with the 87th anniversary of the discovery of Pluto, was a tip of the hat to the methodology that is being used to look for the hypothesized planet along with other dim rogue worlds in the far distant outer reaches of the Solar System and beyond.

The newly discovered brown dwarf WISEA J110125.95+540052.8 appears as a moving dot (indicated by the circle) in this animated flipbook from the Backyard Worlds: Planet 9 citizen science project. Image & Caption Credit: NASA / WISE

The search for Planet Nine, also called Planet X by some, has led to several new discoveries, including this brown dwarf designated WISEA 1101+5400.

We realized we could do a much better job identifying Planet 9 if we opened the search to the public, said Marc Kuchner, an astrophysicist at NASAs Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, and lead researcher for the Backyard Worlds project. Along the way, were hoping to find thousands of interesting brown dwarfs.

WISEA 1101+5400 (full name WISEA J110125.95+540052.8) was found with the critical assistance of four citizen scientists, one of whom is Rosa Castro, a therapist, who is credited with nearly 100 classifications as a part of this project.

Backyard Worlds, along with the majority of the other projects under the umbrella of Zooniverse, relies heavily on citizen scientists to sort through huge volumes of data for things that stand out to them. In this case, the project provides participant individuals with flipbooks animated collections of time-lapsed images of the same part of space to review, noting any visible changes in the position or brightness of the pixels within the series of images.

The flipbooks are a collection of the data that was gathered by the Wide-Field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) which was launched into space on December 14, 2009.

Originally designed to observe cold objects, as well as those that emit light in the infrared portion of the spectrum (long wavelengths) such as brown dwarfs, WISE was deactivated in 2011 after depleting its source of frozen hydrogen that was needed to cool the sensors, and then reactivated in 2013 as NEOWISE to search for near-Earth objects, or NEOs, which tend to be cold, dark objects easier to locate in the infrared spectrum.

The data that the WISE and NEOWISE missions gathered of the entire sky provides one of the best chances of locating the enigmatic Planet 9 because it may already have been caught in those images. It takes human eyes to be able to look through the noise filled images and be able to recognize these objects, though.

There are a vast number of images, more images than a small team of researchers alone could process in a lifetime, which is why the Backyard Worlds project was created and opened up to the public. What started out as a small group of individuals has grown significantly in the five months it has been in operation. Currently, there are several hundred (or more) citizen scientists looking through the flipbooks for additional objects.

So, whats the deal with WISEA 1101+5400? WISEA1101+5400 isnt exactly local with a location approximately 34 parsecs (111 light-years) from Earth in the constellation Ursa Major. The object is a brown dwarf classified as a spectral T5.5, meaning that its size and mass are too low to sustain fusion as a star and that its temperature runs between 9001,500 K (6301,230 C / 1,1602,240 F).

Artists rendition of a T-class brown dwarf. Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

Researchers took images of the spectra (light) from the object and found that it was nearly identical to other T dwarfs, containing specific amounts of water, methane, iron hydride, potassium, and molecular hydrogen. If the object were cooler or hotter, the amounts and variety of these molecules in the spectral analysis would be different.

The spectrum of WISEA 1101+5400 in black with another T5.5 brown dwarf in red. Image Credit: Kuchner et al.

In fact, WISEA 1101+5400 is pretty average as far as T dwarfs go. What isnt average is who and how it was discovered. Its unlikely that Rosa Castro, Dan Caselden, or the two other citizen scientists involved with the discovery, had set out to find this cold distant object, but find it they did, and just six days after the start of the project.

Even with WISEA 1101+5400 averageness, the researchers are excited. Kuchner hopes that with enough time and interest, they will be able to locate super small, super-cold brown dwarfs called Y-dwarfs, some of which may be lurking far closer to us than we realize.

Theyre so faint that it takes quite a bit of work to pull them from the images, thats where Kuchners project will help immensely, said Adam Burgasser at the University of California San Diego. Anytime you get a diverse set of people looking at the data, theyll bring unique perspectives that can lead to unexpected discoveries.

Its interesting to note that this isnt the only discovery that Backyard Worlds has made. There are currently 117 additional brown dwarf candidates being vetted all from this citizen science driven project, and Kuchner expects that the Backyard Worlds effort will continue for several years to come allowing more volunteers to get involved.

I am not a professional. Im just an amateur astronomer appreciating the night sky, said Rosa Castro. If I see something odd, Ill admire and enjoy it.

Backyard Worlds: Planet 9 is a collaboration between NASA, UC Berkeley, the American Museum of Natural History in New York, Arizona State University, the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, and Zooniverse a collaboration of scientists, software developers, and educators who collectively develop and manage citizen science projects on the Internet.

NASAs Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, California, manages the NEOWISE mission for NASAs Planetary Defense Coordination Office within the Science Mission Directorate in Washington. The Space Dynamics Laboratory in Logan, Utah, built the science instrument. Ball Aerospace & Technologies Corp. of Boulder, Colorado, built the spacecraft. Science operations and data processing take place at the Infrared Processing and Analysis Center at Caltech in Pasadena. Caltech manages JPL for NASA.

For more information, visitBackyard Worlds: Planet 9 and NASAs WISE mission.

Tagged: brown dwarf NASA Planet 9 The Range WISE WISEA 1101+5400

A native of the Greater Los Angeles area, Ocean McIntyre's writing is focused primarily on science (STEM and STEAM) education and public outreach. McIntyre is a NASA/JPL Solar System Ambassador as well as holding memberships with The Planetary Society, Los Angeles Astronomical Society, and is a founding member of SafePlaceForSpace.org. McIntyre is currently studying astrophysics and planetary science with additional interests in astrobiology, cosmology and directed energy propulsion technology. With SpaceFlight Insider seeking to expand the amount of science articles it produces, McIntyre was a welcomed addition to our growing team.

View original post here:

Brown dwarf discovered with the help of citizen scientists - SpaceFlight Insider

The launch of a Russian Soyuz rocket July 14 with more than 70 satellites was captured in multiple views from a sharp-eyed orbiting nanosatellite and cameras positioned around the launch pad at the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan.

The Russian state space corporation, Roscosmos, released a video clip containing imagery of last weeks blastoff from several cameras placed around Launch Pad No. 31 at Baikonur, where the Soyuz rocket soared into space at 0636 GMT (2:36 a.m. EDT; 12:36 p.m. Baikonur time) July 14.

The rocket deployed 73 spacecraft into a range of orbits several hundred miles above Earth, including 48 Dove satellites to grow Planets commercial fleet of Earth-imaging CubeSats to nearly 200 members.

One of the Dove satellites already in space about the size of a toaster oven happened to be flying over Kazakhstan at the time of launch. Planets ground controllers pointed the telescopic camera on the spacecraft toward the launch pad at Baikonur.

To create this animation, we pointed a Dove approximately 50 degrees off-nadir towards the pad, capturing one still image per second of the fixed target as the Dove traveled overhead at an approximate speed of seven kilometers per second (or 15,658 mph), a Planet employee wrote in a post on the companys website. Then our imaging team cropped and stitched the stills together. All in all, this short clip covers about two and a half minutes in real-time including liftoff and flight.

The U.S. company operates the worlds largest fleet of commercial satellites, most of which are about the size of a shoebox and built in-house at the companys San Francisco headquarters.

The Soyuz booster launched last week also sent a Russian satellite into orbit to locate forest fires, eight commercial weather satellites for Spire Global, another San Francisco-based company, and spacecraft owned by institutions and operators in Germany, Norway and Japan.

More photos of the July 14 launch are posted below.

Email the author.

Follow Stephen Clark on Twitter: @StephenClark1.

See original here:

Soyuz liftoff glimpsed by orbiting observer and launch pad cameras ... - Spaceflight Now

Artists illustration of the LISA Pathfinder spacecraft. Credit: ESA

The European Space Agencys LISA Pathfinder spacecraft, now sailing around the sun on a trajectory away from Earth, was deactivated Tuesday after a nearly 18-month mission testing previously-untried lasers, vacuum enclosures, exotic gold-platinum cubes and micro-thrusters needed for a trio of gravitational wave observatories set for launch in the 2030s.

Stefano Vitale, principal investigator of the LISA Pathfinder missions core instruments, sent the long-planned command to passivate the probe at 1800 GMT (2 p.m. EDT) Tuesday from the European Space Operations Center in Darmstadt, Germany.

The end of LISA Pathfinders mission Tuesday marked another turning point in gravitational wave research, a field of astrophysics reinvigorated in the last two years by two major advances, according to Paul McNamara, the missions project scientist at ESA.

First came the launch of LISA Pathfinder on Dec. 3, 2015. Three months later, scientists announced the first confirmed detection of gravitational waves, ripples in the fabric of spacetime produced by the movement of massive objects in space, such as immense supermassive black holes at the centers of galaxies.

The gravitational waves, first predicted more than a century ago by Albert Einstein, were discovered by scientists crunching data gathered in September 2015 from a ground-based observatory called LIGO, which has antennas positioned 1,800 miles (3,000 kilometers) apart in Hanford, Washington, and Livingston, Louisiana.

Gravitational wave research requires huge detectors spread of thousands or millions of miles because the ripples are observed at very low frequencies as they travel through the universe at the speed of flight. Astronomers say the waves, which can be triggered by violent phenomena such as black hole mergers, reveal a new way of studying the cosmos impossible with conventional optical telescopes.

The back-to-back breakthroughs catapulted gravitational waves to the forefront of astronomical journals and space mission planning.

Was it a big step forward? Absolutely, because up to this point there were two doubts, McNamara said in an interview this week with Spaceflight Now. One doubt was gravitational waves dont exist, and then LIGO comes along and detects them.

Then we launched LISA Pathfinder, and we demonstrated the hardware in space, he said. So the two big questions do they exist and can we detect them? both were answered within three months of each other.

LISA Pathfinder was named for a follow-on mission dubbed the Laser Interferometer Space Antenna, which was formally selected by ESAs science planning board June 20 to move into the next phase of mission planning after decades of starts and stops.

With the astonishing success of LISA Pathfinder, we now know how to build a mission like LISA, said Vitale, a researcher at the University of Trento and the National Institute for Nuclear Physics in Italy.

Launched from French Guiana aboard a Vega rocket, the hexagonal space probe is about the size of a small car. LISA Pathfinder reached an operating point at the L1 Lagrange point nearly a million miles (1.5 million kilometers) from Earth in January 2016, lurking near a gravitational balance point between in a direction toward the sun.

In March 2016, on the first day LISA Pathfinder was in full science mode, ground controllers confirmed the mission had already met its minimum success requirements.

Two gold-platinum test cubes launched inside the LISA Pathfinder spacecraft were released from their launch restraints, a complicated procedure involving needle-like appendages that carefully pulled away from the cubes each 1.8 inches (46 millimeters) on a side and with a mass of 4.4 pounds (2 kilograms) to avoid disturbing them with electrostatic forces.

The crux of the mission was to prove the test cubes could be kept in a constant state of nearly perfect free fall during LISA Pathfinders mission.

Two sets of low-impulse thrusters essentially steered the spacecraft around the free-floating test masses suspended inside two vacuum enclosures placed 15 inches (38 centimeters) apart on the satellite.

Accelerometers aboard LISA Pathfinder precisely tracked its movements, and a control computer sent signals to the low-thrust rocket packs outside the probe to continuously correct to keep the test cubes from contacting the walls of their chambers.

A high-precision laser interferometer constantly measured the range between the two test cubes, and that device also exceeded requirements, measuring the relative motion of the test masses with a precision of a femtometer, or one quadrillionth of a meter.

LISA Pathfinder is 10,000 times more stable than any satellite flown on a previous science mission, officials said, demonstrating that it was possible for the test masses to remain virtually motionless with respect to each other.

ESA said the test masses had a relative acceleration of only ten billionths of a billionth of Earths gravity, an achievement made possible by a tedious accounting of every component of the spacecraft that could influence the floating metallic cubes.

Many of the lessons learned from LISA Pathfinder were not in how to build a space-rated gravitational wave detector, but how to operate it, McNamara said. Even the switch-on of a transponder or star tracker added noise to the instrument beyond acceptable limits.

This is such a sensitive instrument that it responds to anything changing whatseover, NcNamara said. Weve learned that, for LISA, we have to assume if you make any changes on-board its going to take you time to recover back into equilibirium. If you turn any unit on, you turn any heater on, or do anything on the spacecraft to put it in a slightly different orientation, itll take you a week to get back to operational status.

Such precision is needed because gravitational waves have an amplitude of a few millionths of a millionth of a meter over a distance of a million kilometers (621,000 miles). Any larger movement of the test masses would mask the gravitational wave.

The LISA Pathfinder mission cost around $630 million, a figure that includes contributions from ESA, NASA and other institutions scattered across Europe.

LISA Pathfinder was conceived to prove a gravitational wave mission was technically feasible.

People just didnt think it was possible, McNamara said. Thats why LISA Pathfinder came into being. It was just to see could we build an instrument which was quiet enough.

The concept for the LISA mission selected by ESA last month calls for three spacecraft similar to LISA Pathfinder to launch in 2034 into an orbit around the sun that trails the Earth.

The LISA spacecraft will fly in a triangular formation more than 1.5 million miles (2.5 million kilometers) apart, linked by lasers to track the exact distances between the nodes, which will each contain two free-floating test masses. Sensors will watch for tiny variations in the range between the craft as gravitational waves pass through the solar system.

With gravitational waves, its a completely new endeavor were taking on, McNamara told Spaceflight Now. This idea of flying three spacecraft separated by millions of kilometers, and you have to be able to measure the distance to a hundredth the size of an atom.

We have exceeded not only the requirements set for LISA Pathfinder, but also the accuracy required for LISA at all frequencies: we are definitely ready to take the next step, said Karsten Danzmann, a LISA Pathfinder co-investigator, the lead proposer of the LISA mission, and director at the Max Planck Institute for Gravitational Physics in Germany.

ESA expects the LISA mission to cost up to $1.2 billion (more than a billion euros), not including support from NASA.

Paul Hertz, director of NASAs astrophysics division, said Wednesday that the U.S. space agency wants to contribute technology and hardware to the LISA mission roughly equivalent to around 20 percent of the missions total cost.

NASA and ESA originally planned a larger, more ambitious LISA mission, but NASA dropped out of the partnership in 2011 due to budget constraints. ESA pressed on with a scaled-back gravitational wave observatory, which received prioritization from the agency in 2013 ahead of the LISA concepts selection last month.

European officials want ESA to lead the LISA mission to avoid falling victim to another failed partnership, but NASA will still be a significant contributor. After discussions in the last few years for NASA to be a 10 percent partner, the U.S. stake in the LISA mission is now likely to be closer to 20 percent.

We are talking about a more substantial contribution than a 10 percent share, Hertz said. ESA has welcomed us as a very major partner.

NASA might develop lasers and telescopes for the LISA observatory, or the missions charge management system. Another potential U.S. addition to the mission could be the micro-thrusters needed to deftly control each of the LISA spacecraft, which will be assembled in Europe.

LISA is third in ESAs Cosmic Vision line of large-class billion-euro space science missions.

A robotic spacecraft that will orbit Jupiter, and then circle Jupiters largest moon Ganymede, is on schedule for launch aboard an Ariane 5 rocket in 2022, followed by liftoff of the Athena X-ray astronomy observatory in 2028.

Then it will be LISAs turn.

Before shutting down LISA Pathfinder, controllers fired its thrusters to nudge it out of its post at the L1 Lagrange point in April to head into a heliocentric orbit around the sun. The maneuver minimized the chance the spacecraft will return to Earths vicinity.

LISA Pathfinders science mission officially ended June 30, and engineers spent the final weeks practicing procedures to recapture the test masses inside their housings, which might be necessary if problems develop on the LISA mission. Other final tasks included monitoring the instruments behavior when the spacecrafts thrusters were turned off, and tracking the test masses response to a coronal mass ejection from the sun.

Scientists were eager to see how the spacecraft responded when it was zapped by ionizing energy from a solar eruption last week. In particular, mission officials wanted to know whether the instrument would still provide useful science data when the test masses were hit by charged particles. Reviews of that data are still ongoing, McNamara said.

The final commands uplinked to LISA Pathfinder turned off the crafts transponder and corrupted the memory files of the probes primary and redundant computers by filling the processors with the names of scientists and engineers who worked on the mission.

This is a celebration, and its certainly not a sad moment, Vitale said moments before sending the order that silenced the spacecraft.

LISA Pathfinder has done everything and more that we could have asked of it, McNamara said. And its allowed LISA to go ahead, so yes, were sad thats going away and its ending, but were very happy LISA is taking off.

Its another 17 years to go before that one launches, so well exercise our patience.

Email the author.

Follow Stephen Clark on Twitter: @StephenClark1.

Read more from the original source:

Pioneering probe for gravitational wave observatory ends mission - Spaceflight Now

Collin Skocik

July 19th, 2017

Artists impression of a 200-megawatt VASIMR spacecraft. Images Credit: Ad Astra Rocket Company

In Arthur C. Clarkes classic science fiction novels and movies 2001: A Space Odyssey and 2010: Odyssey Two, the spaceships Discovery and Alexei Leonov make interplanetary journeys using plasma drives. Nuclear reactors heat hydrogen or ammonia to a plasma state thats energetic enough to provide thrust.

In 1983, seven-time Space Shuttle Astronaut Franklin Chang Diaz turned Clarkes speculations into reality with an engine known as the Variable Specific Impulse Magnetoplasma Rocket (VASIMR).

An electric power source ionizes hydrogen, deuterium, or helium fuel into a plasma by stripping away electrons. Magnetic fields then direct the charged gas in the proper direction to provide thrust.

A rocket engine is a canister holding high-pressure gas, Chang Diaz explained. When you open a hole at one end, the gas squirts out and the rocket goes the other way. The hotter the stuff in the canister, the higher the speed it escapes and the faster the rocket goes. But if its too hot, it melts the canister.

The VASIMR engine is different, Chang Diaz explained, because of the fuels electrical charge: When gas gets above 10,000 [kelvins], it changes to plasma an electrically charged soup of particles. And these particles can be held together by a magnetic field. The magnetic field becomes the canister, and there is no limit to how hot you can make the plasma.

Chang Diaz has pointed out that hydrogen would be an advantageous fuel for the VASIMR engine because the spacecraft would not have to lift off carrying all the fuel it needs for the journey.

VASIMR System. Image Credit: Ad Astra Rocket Company

Were likely to find hydrogen pretty much anywhere we go in the Solar System, he said.

A spacecraft using conventional chemical rockets would take eight months to get to Mars during opposition. However, the VASIMR engine would make the journey in as little as 39 days.

Chang Diaz explained: Remember, you are accelerating the first half of the journey the other half youre slowing, so you will reach Mars but not pass it. The top speed with respect to the Sun would be about 32 miles per second [or 51.5 km/s]. But that requires a nuclear power source to heat the plasma to the proper temperature.

The use of nuclear power in space is not without its controversy. In 1997, there was widespread public concern when NASAs Cassini probe, which carried a plutonium battery, made a flyby of Earth to perform a gravity assist. Although NASA denied that the risk to the public, should an accident occur, was no greater thanthat posed every day by other sources of radiation, some scientists, including the popular theoretical physicist Michio Kaku, disagreed.

In April 1970, the Atomic Energy Commission was deeply concerned about the return of Apollo 13 to Earth. Where an Apollo mission would usually leave the lunar modules descent stage on the Moon, the unsuccessful Apollo 13 dropped its lunar module Aquarius, with its plutonium-powered scientific experiments, into the ocean, raising concerns about radioactive contamination.

Elon Musk, CEO of Space Exploration Technologies Corporation (SpaceX), is skeptical about the viability of the VASIMR engine. One reason is the concern about radioactive debris falling to Earth in the event of an accident.

Musk is also skeptical that the VASIMR engine would be a significant improvement over chemical rockets, stating: So people like Franklin basically its a very interesting ion engine hes got there, but it requires a big nuclear reactor. The ion engine is going to help a little bit, but not a lot in the absence of a big nuclear reactor. Musk also points out that the big nuclear reactor would add a lot of weight to a rocket.

Chang Diaz dismisses the concerns about nuclear reactors in space, stating: People are afraid of nuclear power. Chernobyl, Three Mile Island, Fukushima it is a little misunderstood. But if humans are truly going to explore space, we eventually will have to come to grips with the concept.

Another vocal critic of the VASIMR engine is Robert Zubrin, president of The Mars Society, who designed the Mars Direct plan to colonize Mars and wrote the popular book The Case For Mars. He has gone as far as to call the VASIMR engine a hoax.

Zubrin wrote in SpaceNews: To achieve his much-repeated claim that VASIMR could enable a 39-day one-way transit to Mars, Chang Diaz posits a nuclear reactor system with a power of 200,000 kilowatts and a power-to-mass ratio of 1,000 watts per kilogram. In fact, the largest space nuclear reactor ever built, the Soviet[-era] Topaz, had a power of 10 kilowatts and a power-to-mass ratio of 10 watts per kilogram. There is thus no basis whatsoever for believing in the feasibility of Chang Diazs fantasy power system.

Chang Diaz, however, says in his paper: Assuming advanced technologies [emphasis added] that reduce the total specific mass to less than 2 kg/kW, trip times of less than 60 days will be possible with 200 MW of electrical power. One-way trips to Mars lasting less than 39 days are even conceivable using 200 MW of power if technological advances allow the specific mass to be reduced to near or below 1 kg/kW.

LEFT: Artists rendition of a lunar tug with 200 kW solar powered VASIMR. RIGHT: Artists rendition of a human mission to Mars with 10 MW NEP-VASIMR. Images Credit: Ad Astra Rocket Company

In other words, Chang Diaz is allowing for further developments that would enable such a reactor.

Zubrin, however, stated: [T]he fact that the [Obama] administration is not making an effort to develop a space nuclear reactor of any kind, let alone the gigantic super-advanced one needed for the VASIMR hyper drive, demonstrates that the program is being conducted on false premises.

The 2011 NASA research paper Multi-MW Closed Cycle MHD Nuclear Space Power Via Nonequilibrium He/Xe Working Plasma by Ron J. Litchford and Nobuhiro Harada, indicates that such developments are feasible in the near future.

Whether the VASIMR engine is viable or not, in 2015, NASA awarded Chang Diazs firm Ad Astra Rocket Company a three-year, $9 million contract. Up to now, the VASIMR engine has fired at fifty kilowatts for one minute still a long way from Chang Diazs goal of 200 megawatts.

In its current form, the VASIMR engine uses argon for fuel. The first stage of the rocket heats the argon to plasma and injects it into the booster. There, a radio frequency excites the ions in a process called ion cyclotron resonance heating. As they pick up energy, they are spun into a stream of superheated plasma and accelerated out the back of the rocket.

Video courtesy of Ad Astra Rocket Company

Tagged: Ad Astra Rocket Company Chang Diaz Journey to Mars The Range VASIMR

Collin R. Skocik has been captivated by space flight since the maiden flight of space shuttle Columbia in April of 1981. He frequently attends events hosted by the Astronaut Scholarship Foundation, and has met many astronauts in his experiences at Kennedy Space Center. He is a prolific author of science fiction as well as science and space-related articles. In addition to the Voyage Into the Unknown series, he has also written the short story collection The Future Lives!, the science fiction novel Dreams of the Stars, and the disaster novel The Sunburst Fire. His first print sale was Asteroid Eternia in Encounters magazine. When he is not writing, he provides closed-captioning for the hearing impaired. He lives in Atlantic Beach, Florida.

See the rest here:

VASIMR plasma engine: Earth to Mars in 39 days? - SpaceFlight Insider

July 18, 2017 by Chris Bergin and William Graham

The Laser Interferometer Space Antenna (LISA) pathfinder mission has come to an end via the final commanding of the spacecraft. The 16 month mission, has provided the tools for a future mission that may take place probably not until the 2030s having successfully demonstrated the technology required to operate a space observatory tasked with studying gravitational waves. LISA Mission:

Conceived as a precursor mission to primary Laser Interferometer Space Antenna (LISA) which was to be a joint mission between ESA and NASA, LISA Pathfinder was designed to prove a concept which scientists believed would allow gravitational waves a phenomenon predicted by Albert Einsteins theory of General Relativity but which had previously not been proven to be observed by studying differences between perturbations in the orbit of a constellation of satellites.

NASA pulled out of the LISA mission due to funding challenges, placing the future mission in doubt. However, just last month, the primary mission received its clearance goal for the 2030s, and was approved as one of the main research missions of ESA. NASA continues to show some interest in being a minor partner.

LISA Pathfinders main experiment, the LISA Technology Package (LTP), contained two test masses, 4.6 centimeters (1.8 inch) cubes of a gold-platinum alloy, which were allowed to float freely in an environment with minimal gravitational interference.

As the masses moved within the spacecraft, LTP used a laser interferometer to identify changes of position on the order of picometers.

Early in 2016, a brief test of drag-free conditions was achieved, applying no electrostatic potential along the cubes sensitive axes to control their position. The spacecraft was maneuvered around the cubes, keeping it centered around one.

NASAs Disturbance Reduction System (DRS), a system of miniature thrusters generating an impulse on the order of micronewtons were used by the spacecraft to maintain its position relative to the free-floating masses.

These thrusters controlled the spacecrafts position to the degree of nanometers.

DRS was originally developed by NASA as part of the New Millennium program, under the designation Space Technology 7 (ST-7).

LISA Pathfinders experiment was designed to validate the spacecraft could accurately measure the movements of these test masses and maneuver accordingly. It was a scaled-down form of the experiment that would have been flown by LISA, using two masses within the same spacecraft instead of three masses in separate spacecraft orbiting at great distances.

LISA Pathfinder was originally to have been part of the Small Missions for Advanced Research in Technology (SMART) program, designated SMART-2. It would have been the second such mission, after the SMART-1 mission which orbited the Moon between 2004 and 2006.

The LISA Pathfinder spacecraft is a 1,906-kilogram (4,202 lb) vehicle consisting of separable propulsion and experiment modules. It was launched on Arianespaces Vega rocket in December, 2015.

Upon the spacecraft reaching its operational halo orbit around the Earth-Sun L1 Lagrangian point, the propulsion module separated and maneuvered away from the experiment module.

In a 500,000 by 800,000 kilometer (300,000 by 500,000 mile) orbit around the Lagrangian Point, the spacecraft was set to operate for around half a year spending three months testing the LISA Technology Package, two months testing the Disturbance Reduction System and then finally a month operating the two systems together.

However, with the mission proceeding without issue and exceeding expectations a further extension to the mission timeline was granted.

The final experiment pushed the precision limits of the test mass grabbing and releasing mechanisms. Then, after a series of final operational tests, the last commands were sent to shut down the spacecraft.

While official operations ended on June 30, the spacecraft team uploaded commands to disable A Computer on Monday, with the final command to completely end the mission occurring on Tuesday.

On 18 July, the LPF mission will conclude with the final commands sent to switch off the on-board transmitter. Since April, the mission operations team in Darmstadt have been working to ensure a safe and smooth end-of-life for this fantastic technology demonstration spacecraft, noted ESA.

The final command was sent just prior to 6pm UTC.

For disposal, the spacecraft has already performed a de-orbit maneuver to leave its Lagrangian orbit and start to drift ahead of the Earth in a heliocentric orbit around the Sun.

The spacecraft now has an orbital period a few days shorter than that of the Earth, keeping the spacecraft safely out of the way and drifting serenely around the Sun, ESA added.

Airbus Defence and Space constructed LISA Pathfinder, using a custom bus for the mission. The propulsion module was loosely derived from the Eurostar 2000 bus used for geostationary communications satellites, utilizing liquid propellant.

The experiment module accounted for about 480 kilograms (1,058 lb) of the spacecrafts mass with the propulsion module accounting for the rest. Power was provided by a panel of solar cells mounted atop the experiment module.

The follow on LISA mission will consist of three spacecraft in a triangular formation, each 2.5 million kilometers from the other two in an orbit around the sun trailing the Earth. The spacecraft would shine lasers at each other, with interferometers on each spacecraft detecting minute distance changes caused by passing gravitational waves.

The three spacecraft, with a combined mass of about 6,000 kilograms, including payload adapter, would launch on an Ariane 6 and drift to their planned orbit over the course of a year and a half.

LISA is to have a planned mission lifetime of four years, but with sufficient propellant on each spacecraft to operate for up to a decade.

(Images via ESA).

Read the original here:

Farewell LISA Space Observatory Pathfinder put to sleep - NASASpaceflight.com

The Space Flight Laboratory (SFL) has announced the successful launch of two Norwegian microsatellites developed and built by SFL for the Norwegian Space Centre with support from the Norwegian Coastal Authority, Space Norway, and the European Space Agency. The Soyuz-2.1a rocket carrying the satellites into orbit launched from Baikonur at 06:36:49 UTC Friday 14 July 2017.

Shortly after launch both satellites were contacted from ground stations in Svalbard and Vardo, Norway. Both satellites are healthy based on initial telemetry, and commissioning is underway.

The first satellite, dubbed NORsat-1 carries a state-of-the-art Automatic Identification System (AIS) receiver to acquire messages from maritime vessels, a set of Langmuir probes to study space plasma characteristics, and a Compact Lightweight Absolute Radiometer (CLARA) to measure total solar irradiation and variations over time.

The payloads were provided by Kongsberg Seatex, the University of Oslo and the Physikalisch-Meterologisches Observatorium Davos World Radiation Center.

The satellite is approximately 15 kilograms with main body dimensions of 20x30x40cm. NORsat-1 utilizes SFL's Next-generation Earth Monitoring and Observation (NEMO) platform, and will serve the Norwegian Coastal Authority in monitoring maritime traffic while also performing ground breaking science.

The second satellite, NORsat-2 also carries an AIS receiver, but in addition has a VHF Data Exchange (VDE) payload that will enable higher bandwidth two-way communication with ships.

Both payloads were provided by Kongsberg Seatex. NORsat-2 will be the first satellite to provide VDE services to Norway. Adding VDE enables increased messaging capacity, better reliability of message delivery, and increased range of ship-to-shore and ship-to-ship communication beyond direct line of sight.

SFL's NEMO platform was used for NORsat-2, and the satellite was integrated in Toronto along with NORsat-1. The relatively large deployable Yagi antenna for the VDE payload was developed by SFL in collaboration with the University of Toronto's Electromagnetics Group.

With the rise of Ad Blockers, and Facebook - our traditional revenue sources via quality network advertising continues to decline. And unlike so many other news sites, we don't have a paywall - with those annoying usernames and passwords.

Our news coverage takes time and effort to publish 365 days a year.

If you find our news sites informative and useful then please consider becoming a regular supporter or for now make a one off contribution.

Read this article:

Norway Launches Microsatellites built by Toronto's Space Flight Laboratory - Space Daily

Jerome Strach

July 17th, 2017

On July 16, 2017, a SpaceX building at Port Canaveral was reported to have had a fire on its rooftop. The small fire was quickly extinguished by firefighters. Photo Credit: Google Maps

Brevard County firefighters responded to a fire located at the recently-leased SpaceX building at Magellan Road and Grouper Road next to Port Canaveral. The fire was reported by a passer-by at 4:45 p.m. EDT (20:45 GMT) July 16, 2017.

Several minutes later, numerous fire units responded to the location along with support ambulances and Brevard County sheriff deputies. The building was found to have a rooftop fire, which was easily accessed by a ladder truck and was extinguished, according to Florida Today, by 8 p.m. EDT (00:00 GMT July 17).

Brevard County Fire Rescue found the structure to be unoccupied at the time of arrival, and Brevard County Sheriffs Office Public Information Officer Tod Goodyear confirmed no evacuation was required. The only injury reported was a firefighter that suffered from a heat stress related injury and was transported to a local hospital by ambulance.

Captain Brian Dennison of the Cape Canaveral Fire Department told SpaceFlight Insider the fire occurred where contractors were doing some refurbishment to the building. SpaceX has been leasing the building since March 2017.

SpaceXs contractors were doing the work, and that would have been either Thursdayor Friday this past week, Dennison said. At this point were still unsure of a cause and an origin of the fire, but it was in the area of where they were doing work on the roof.

The building will remain under the control of the Cape Canaveral Fire Department until the Florida State Fire Marshal arrives on scene to begin its investigation. Dennison said SpaceX personnel are also on site and prepared to begin anywater damage mitigation that might be required.

SpaceXs John Taylor, tweeted out gratitude for the quick response by BrevardCounty Fire Rescue and Cape Canaveral Fire Rescue. He said there was no damage to any SpaceX equipment or hardware.

Tagged: Brevard County Fire Rescue Cape Canaveral Lead Stories Port Canaveral SpaceX

Jerome Strach has worked within the Silicon Valley community for 20 years including software entertainment and film. Along with experience in software engineering, quality assurance, and middle management, he has long been a fan of aerospace and entities within that industry. A voracious reader, a model builder, and student of photography and flight training, most of his spare time can be found focused on launch events and technology advancements including custom mobile app development. Best memory as a child is building and flying Estes rockets with my father. @Romn8tr

Original post:

Small fire extinguished at SpaceX building in Port Canaveral - SpaceFlight Insider

Mashable

Get to know 4 private spaceflight companies that could be the future Mashable Almost any space nerd will tell you that the future of the space industry hinges upon private spaceflight. Of course, almost anyone with an interest in tech and ... Commercial spaceflight company reveals plans for lunar outpostThe Space Reporter all 5 news articles »

More:

Get to know 4 private spaceflight companies that could be the future - Mashable

SpaceFlight Insider

July 16th, 2017

From left to right, Buzz Aldrin, Jeff Bezos, Harrison Schmitt, Michael Collins, and Walt Cunningham at the 2017 Apollo 11 ShareSpace Foundation Gala. Photo Credit: Tom Cross / SpaceFlight Insider

KENNEDY SPACE CENTER, Fla. Under one of the three surviving Saturn V Moon rockets, Buzz Aldrins ShareSpace Foundation hosted a gala and auction in honor of mankinds first footsteps on another world on Saturday, July 15, 2017.

Aldrin was joined by fellow Apollo 11 astronaut Michael Collins, Walt Cunningham (Apollo 7), Jack Schmitt (Apollo 17), as well as former space shuttle astronauts Mae Jemison (STS-47), Winston Scott (STS-72 and STS-87) and Terry Virts (STS-130 and Soyuz TMA-15M), as well as NewSpace entrepreneur Jeff Bezos.

The event was held just five days prior to the 48th anniversary of the Apollo 11 Moon landing that saw Aldrin and Neil Armstrong become the first humans to set foot on Earths closest celestial neighbor, the Moon. The duotouched down on the Moons Sea of Tranquility (Mare Tranquillitatis) on July 20, 1969, the first of six crewed landings on the lunar surface.

The ShareSpace Foundation is a nonprofit organization formed to encourage young people to pursue careers in S.T.E.A.M. (Science, Technology, Engineering, the Arts and Math). Aldrin conveyed these statements in the days leading up to this weekends gala.

As we approach the 50thanniversary of the Moon Landing, its my ultimate ambition to lay the foundations that will inspire and support the next generation to become space pioneers. I passionately believe that we can land people on Mars by 2040. To do this we need to provide our future space pioneers with the right educational tools and motivation and we need the funding to do so, Aldrin stated via a release. By attending the event, guests are invited to play a historical role in the advancement of Mars exploration by sharing our vision and supporting our ambitions. Humanity needs to explore, to push beyond current limits, just like we did in 1969. I want to do everything I can to lay the groundwork.

All profits from ticket sales as well as other fundraising efforts went to the non-profit ShareSpace Foundation.

Tagged: Apollo 11 Buzz Aldrin's ShareSpace Foundation Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex Saturn V The Range

SpaceFlight Insider is a space journal working to break the pattern of bias prevalent among other media outlets. Working off a budget acquired through sponsors and advertisers, SpaceFlight Insider has rapidly become one of the premier space news outlets currently in operation. SFI works almost exclusively with the assistance of volunteers.

Read the rest here:

ShareSpace Apollo 11 Gala held under KSCVC's Saturn V - SpaceFlight Insider

Soyuz 2.1a a moment after launch on July 14. Photo: Roscosmos.

The Space Flight Laboratory (SFL) announced the successful launch of two Norwegian microsatellites developed and built by SFL for the Norwegian Space Center with support from the Norwegian Coastal Authority, Space Norway, and the European Space Agency (ESA). The Soyuz 2.1a rocket carrying the two satellites launched from Baikonur on Friday, July 14, and also carried payloads for Planet, Astro Digital, Spire, and GeoOptics.

Shortly after launch both Norweigian satellites made contact with ground stations in Svalbard and Vardo, Norway. Both satellites are healthy based on initial telemetry, and commissioning is underway.

The first satellite, dubbed NORsat 1, carries an Automatic Identification System (AIS) receiver to acquire messages from maritime vessels, a set of Langmuir probes to study space plasma characteristics, and a Compact Lightweight Absolute Radiometer (CLARA) to measure total solar irradiation and variations over time. Kongsberg Seatex, the University of Oslo and the Physikalisch-Meterologisches Observatorium Davos World Radiation Center provided the payloads.

The second satellite, NORsat 2, also carries an AIS receiver, but in addition has a Very High Frequency Data Exchange (VDE) payload that will enable higher bandwidth two-way communication with ships. Kongsberg Seatex provided both payloads. According to SFL, NORsat 2 will be the first satellite to provide VDE services to Norway. Adding VDE enables increased messaging capacity, better reliability of message delivery, and increased range of ship-to-shore and ship-to-ship communication beyond direct line of sight, according to the company.

SFL used its NEMO platform for NORsat 2, and the satellite was integrated in Toronto along with NORsat 1. SFL developed the relatively large deployable Yagi antenna for the VDE payload in collaboration with the University of Torontos Electromagnetics Group.

Read the original post:

Norway Orbits Microsatellites Built by Toronto's Space Flight Laboratory - Satellite Today

July 17, 2017 by Chris Bergin and William Graham

NASA and Boeing are reviewing the status of the TDRS-M launch date following an incident relating to an antennaduring the spacecrafts final launch processing to launch. The spacecrafts launch atop United Launch Alliances Atlas V rocket is currently scheduled to take place on August 3.

TDRS-M:

A flagship launch of the third of the latest generation ofTracking and Data Relay Satellites (TDRS) is facing a review following an incident during closeout processing.

The spacecraft has been preparing for an August launch inside the Astrotech Space Operations facility in Titusville, Florida.

No specifics about the July 14 incident have been provided, with a NASA statement only noting the assessments surround the spacecrafts Omni S-band antenna.

NASA and Boeing are reviewing an incident that occurred during final spacecraft closeout activities, NASA said. The mission team is developing a plan to assess flight acceptance and the schedule forward.

These additional activities are under evaluation for a planned TDRS-M launch Aug. 3, 2017, on an Atlas V rocket from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida.

It is understood this latest incident is not related to a close call that NASA was investigating earlier in the flow. That incident involved the spacecrafts shipping container containing environmental instrumentation which slid a couple of feet on the trailer it was being winched on to.

The processing flow for the mission had already passed several review milestones, specifically the Launch Vehicle Readiness Review (LVRR), Safety and Mission Success Review (SMSR) and the Calibration & Recertification Review (CRR).

The Atlas V that will provide the spacecraft with its ride to orbit is currently being integrated inside the Vertical Integration Facility (VIF) at Space Launch Complex -41 (SLC-41). ULAs flow with the rocket has continued without issue, with the TDRS issue unrelated and upstream to their operations.

The next key milestones in the flow are the Atlas V/TDRS-M MORR (Mission Operations Readiness Review), TDRS-M FRR (Flight Readiness Review) anda final status review, the latter set to take place on July 28.

This will clear the way for Atlas V to launch with TDRS-M on August 3, in a window ranging from 09:02 to 09:42 Eastern, pending the recent incident hasnt caused a delay to the launch date.

The mission will be the 13th spacecraft in NASAs Tracking and Data Relay Satellite System (TDRSS), with TDRS-M becoming the final spacecraft in the set of three third-generation satellites.

The new range are 3,454 kilogram (7,615 lb) satellites which have been manufactured by Boeing and based around the BSS-601 satellite bus.

They have a design life of 15 years. However, todatemost TDRS satellites have significantly exceeded their design expectations. The satellite carries an R-4D-11-300 apogee motor to raise itself into its final orbit and carry out othermaneuvers.

TDRS-M is powered by solar panels, generating between 2.8 and 3.2 kilowatts of power depending on illumination.

The satellite carriess-bandphased array antennae to allow simultaneous communications with five other spacecraft, as well as two steerable antennae providing S, Ku or Ka band coverage to spacecraft requiring communications at a higher data rate. Its this system that is currently being reviewed due to the incident noted by NASA over the weekend.

History of TDRS:

TDRS satellites are used by NASA to provide communications links between spacecraft in orbit includingthe International Space StationandHubble Space Telescope and ground controllers. Part of NASAs Space Network, TDRSS was implemented to reduce NASAs dependence on ground stations and airborne tracking assets.

Use of the network is not restricted to NASA missions; amongst other users United Launch Alliance and others use TDRS to relay data from their rockets during launch, JAXA and the European Space Agency have used TDRS for missions, including HTV and ATV flights to the ISS, and the system is rumoured to be used by the National Reconnaissance Office to supplement its own Satellite Data System, transmitting data from reconnaissance satellites for analysis.

Older satellites in more highly-inclined orbits have been used to relay communications to the AmundsenScott Station at the South Pole; a site not usually accessible to communications satellites due to its extreme latitude.

First-generation TDRS satellites were deployed from the Space Shuttle, with an Inertial Upper Stage used to raise them into geostationary orbit. These spacecraft, whichwerebuilt by TRW, were designed for a seven-to-ten year service life.

The first TDRS satellite TDRS-1 was deployedduring STS-6, the maiden flight of Challenger, in April 1983.

During the launch ofTDRS-1the Inertial Upper Stage malfunctioned. A two-stage solid-fuelled vehicle, the first stage of the IUS performed nominally however during the second stage burn control of the vehicle was lost.

The satellite was deployed into an orbit with a perigee approximately 13,000kilometers(8,000 mi, 7,000nmi) below geosynchronous orbit, with its period five and three-quarter hours shorter than expected.

Despite this partialfailurethe satellite was able to recover to its operational orbit, making a series of firings with itsmaneuveringthrusters which gradually raised the perigee over the period of several months. TDRS-1 exceeded its design life almost four times over, finally being decommissioned in June 2010 after its final amplifier failed.

Following the malfunction during the TDRS-1 launch and anomalies on several other flights, concerns over the reliability of the IUS resulted in knock-on delays for the TDRSSprogram. STS-12, which had been slated to deploy the second satellite, TDRS-B,was canceled and the payload reassigned to STS-51-E.

Challenger was rolled out to Launch Complex 39A in February 1985;howevera faulty timer in the TDRS satellite forced NASA torollbackanddestackthe orbiter. STS-51-E wascanceled, withChallenger flying the STS-51-B mission instead.

TDRS-B was finally ready to fly in early 1986, as the primary payload of STS-51-L. Launched on 28 January,Challenger disintegrated 73 seconds later with the loss of her crew and payload.

As a result of the failure, the designation TDRS-2, which would have been given to TDRS-B upon the completion of initial on-orbit testing, was never assigned typically for a program with separate launch and on-orbit designations in the event of a launch failure the on-orbit designation is reassigned to the next successful mission to avoid gaps in the sequence.

When Space Shuttle missions resumed in 1988,TDRS-3 was the primary payload for the return-to-flight mission, STS-26, flown by Discovery. TDRS-3 remainsoperable,and is located at 49 degrees west as a reserve satellite.STS-29, also flown by Discovery, successfully deployed TDRS-4which operated until late 2011 and was decommissioned in March 2012.

TDRS-5 was deployed by Atlantis during STS-43, withEndeavour launching TDRS-6 during STS-54; these two spacecraft, the last from the original order, remain in operation located at 161 degrees west and 62 degrees west.

The last first-generation satellite, TDRS-7, was ordered as a replacement for TDRS-B and incorporates some enhancements over the other satellites, while still being based on the same TRW bus.

It was deployed by STS-70 in1995,and remains in operation at 85 degrees East (275 degrees West) as TDRS-Z, covering the so-called Zone of Exclusion between the operational West and East satellites; TDRS-9 and TDRS-10.

Three second-generation TDRS satellites were built by Hughes Space and Communication, later part of Boeing, and launched between 2000 and 2002. These BSS-601-based spacecraft were launched by Atlas IIA rockets.

TDRS-8 was found to have a defective antenna, resulting in reduced performance compared to expectations before launch.

The TDRS-9 and 10 spacecraft suffered from the same fault, however as a result of the problem with TDRS-8 it could be found and corrected while they were still on the ground.

TDRS-9 also suffered from apressurizationproblem in its propulsion system, which resulted in it taking six months to reach its operational orbit. TDRS-9 and 10 are located at 41 degrees and 174 degrees west as the operational TDRS-East and TDRS-West satellites respectively. TDRS-8 is located at 89 degrees east (271 degrees West).

The first two third-generation satellites were ordered in December 2007, with the contract including options for NASA to order two further spacecraft. TDRS-11, known as TDRS-K at the time of launch, was the first third-generation satellite to fly riding an Atlas V into orbit.

TDRS-L, the second of the original two orders, while one of the options was exercised in late 2011 at a cost of $289 million. That satellite, TDRS-M, is the one to be launched next.

The three primary satellites in the constellation are the TDRS-East, TDRS-West and TDRS-Z satellites;howeverall of the operable spacecraft aside from TDRS-3 are in operational use.

(Images via NASA, ULA, Boeing and L2 Historical.To join L2, click here:https://www.nasaspaceflight.com/l2/)

See more here:

TDRS-M launch date under review following pre-launch incident - NASASpaceflight.com

Tomasz Nowakowski

July 16th, 2017

ESAs Asteroid Impact Mission is joined by two triple-unit CubeSats to observe the impact of the NASA-led Demonstration of Autonomous Rendezvous Technology (DART) probe with the secondary Didymos asteroid, planned for late 2022. Image & Caption Credit: ESA / ScienceOffice.org

While there is currently no imminent asteroid threat and none of the known near-Earth objects (NEOs) is on collision course with our planet, humanity should be prepared for the worst. With that thought in mind, NASA and ESA are developing the Asteroid Impact and Deflection Assessment (AIDA) mission; its main goal is to demonstrate the kinetic impact technique that could change the motion of a potentially hazardous asteroid.

The AIDA mission will consist of two spacecraft sent to the binary asteroid called 65803 Didymos. Built by ESA, the Asteroid Impact Mission (AIM) will be launched in October 2020 and is expected to be injected into the orbit of the larger asteroid. NASAs contribution to this endeavor, the Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART), will be launched into space nearly one year later and slated to crash into the smaller asteroid in October 2022. AIM will be just in place to observe the impact and study its aftermath.

This mission, in partnership with ESA and NASA, will allow us to validate the technology of the kinetic impactor and also to improve our understanding of threatening asteroids, Patrick Michel, AIM/AIDA investigator at the Cte dAzur Observatory (OCA), told Astrowatch.net.

LEFT: Artists rendering of ESAs desk-sized Asteroid Impact Mission (AIM). Image Credit: ESA Science Office. RIGHT: Artists rendering of NASAs Demonstration of Autonomous Rendezvous Technology (DART) spacecraft. Image Credit: NASA

Therefore, the mission would be essential for the most one of the most important asteroid deflection technology the kinetic impactor. In particular, AIDA will demonstrate the feasibility of this technique based on the data gathered by observing DARTs crash into Didymos moon with a velocity of about six km/s. AIM will orbit the asteroid in order to perform detailed before-and-after observations of the structure of the space rock itself, as well as its orbit, to thoroughly characterize the kinetic impact and the consequences.

To make sure a technique is valid and that we know how to use it, we need a test. Otherwise, we can talk, but it will remain on paper and we cannot guarantee anything. And this is why we still push for the AIDA space mission to happen, Michel said.

He noted that the success of AIDA will have many implications for planetary defense, science, and asteroid mining because the knowledge needed for these three aims is essentially the same. According to Michel, it will prove that asteroids are the only natural risk that we can predict and prevent by making the necessary steps.

AIDA, if done, will accomplish the step that will allow us to tell the future generations: we did our duty, we have now a validated tool to prevent the risk! And it will also come with science and technology returns, which contributes to [inspiring] young generations, Michel noted.

The AIM spacecraft is still in its conceptual phase. When it comes to DART, the probe was recently moved by NASA from concept development to preliminary design phase.

Tagged: AIDA AIM Asteroid Didymos DART NASA The Range

Tomasz Nowakowski is the owner of Astro Watch, one of the premier astronomy and science-related blogs on the internet. Nowakowski reached out to SpaceFlight Insider in an effort to have the two space-related websites collaborate. Nowakowski's generous offer was gratefully received with the two organizations now working to better relay important developments as they pertain to space exploration.

Follow this link:

AIDA mission to validate crucial asteroid deflection technology - SpaceFlight Insider

Jason Rhian

July 16th, 2017

An incident with NASAs TDRS-M occurred during closeout activities on Friday, July 14. Photo Credit: Vikash Mahadeo / SpaceFlight Insider

TITUSVILLE, Fla. During closeout activities for the final third-generation Tracking and Data Relay Satellite (TDRS-M), an incident occurred to the spacecrafts Omni S-band antenna. This occurred on Friday, July 14, about two-and-a-half weeks prior to the satellites scheduled launch.

Both NASA and the satellites manufacturer, Boeing, are reviewing what happened at theAstrotech Space Operations building in Titusville, Florida, where the satellite was being readied for flight.

TDRS-M, which will be renamed TDRS-13 upon reaching orbit, was set to launch atop a United Launch Alliance Atlas V 401 rocket from Cape Canaveral Air Force Stations Space Launch Complex 41 in Florida on August 3.

At present, it is unclear if this incident will impact the planned launch date with a recent statement on NASAs TDRS-M Status Update page noting: The mission team is developing a plan to assess flight acceptance and the schedule forward.

Tagged: Boeing Lead Stories NASA TDRS-M Urgent

Jason Rhian spent several years honing his skills with internships at NASA, the National Space Society and other organizations. He has provided content for outlets such as: Aviation Week & Space Technology, Space.com, The Mars Society and Universe Today.

Go here to read the rest:

TDRS-M spacecraft damaged during closeout activities - SpaceFlight Insider

STORY WRITTEN FORCBS NEWS& USED WITH PERMISSION

Processing images from the camera aboard NASAs Juno spacecraft orbiting Jupiter has turned into a cottage industry of sorts, as rank amateurs, accomplished artists and experienced researchers turn relatively drab raw images into shots ranging from whimsical to spectacular and everything in between.

The question is, how accurately do they reflect reality, and is there any way for the casual observer to judge the result?

Unlike other NASA spacecraft, the JunoCam imager aboard the Juno spacecraft was added to the mission primarily for public outreach. Its pictures have no bearing on the missions scientific objectives, which rely on a suite of eight other instruments to study Jupiters interior structure, its gravity and magnetic fields and its immediate environment.

JunoCams images are only lightly processed by the cameras builder Malin Space Science Systems of San Diego and immediately posted on line. What happens after that is up to the public.

Once its in their hands, we have no control, nor do we want to exert any, over what they do with the data, said Candy Hansen, a senior scientist at the Planetary Science Institute and the JunoCam instrument lead. So we have gotten everything from careful scientific-type processing to incredibly whimsical works of art. So its a little bit, for you, a buyer-beware situation.

Even so, she said, were all in, in the sense that I dont have a team of scientists and image processors waiting in the wings in case the public doesnt show up. We dont have a budget, we dont have staff or anything like that. So we are entirely, 100 percent, relying on the public. And some of them have done fabulous work.

Juno is the first spacecraft to be sent into an orbit around Jupiters poles, and JunoCam was designed primarily to capture detailed images of the planets heretofore unseen polar regions.

Because of weight, volume and power restrictions, the spacecraft could not support an advanced telescopic camera. Instead, it was equipped with a relatively simple imager with what amounts to a fish-eye lens. Malin Space Science Systems provided a similar camera to photograph the Curiosity rovers descent to Mars.

While JunoCam is not as powerful as the sophisticated telescopes and sensors launched aboard other NASA probes, Junos elliptical orbit carries it closer to Jupiter than any other spacecraft, within a few thousand miles of the giant planets cloud tops. As a result, JunoCams wide-angle views provide exceptional detail and more context than more powerful narrow-angle instruments.

But how realistic are the publics interpretations of JunoCam images? With other NASA spacecraft, the viewer can have confidence the photos were processed and reviewed by scientifically competent team members and that the images reflect some sort of scientific reality.

With public processing, as Hansen said, its more a case of buyer beware, and the relatively bland raw images lend themselves to Photoshop-type manipulation. To Hansen, the line between a scientifically accurate image and one that takes liberties with the data is the minute you depart from true color.

The minute you start making the blue a little bluer and the red a little redder, now youve enhanced the color. And when you really go to the sort of wild ends of the color palette, then I would call it exaggerated. If youre just plain making up things, then its false color.

So should viewers wanting to learn more about Jupiter prefer realistic lighting and color to enhanced or exaggerated images?

Let me argue against that, she said. Our human eye-brain combination is better at seeing details that are there when you exaggerate it a bit, when you enhance it a bit. The details, you can see (them) if you know what youre looking for in the true color images. But its so subtle, its really, like, washed out. I would say we learn a lot by looking at enhanced color images because it pops more to the eye-brain combo.

Raw images from JunoCam are posted on a website Hansen helps manage. Each raw image includes the same view shot in green, blue and red filters and then a slightly processed color view that is a combination of all three. The public can download those images, process them in a wide variety of ways and upload the results back to the website.

As long as the processed images relate to Jupiter, and dont contain unrelated or objectionable material, they are re-posted and available for anyone to download. All are in the public domain, although uploaders can opt to restrict commercial usage.

Hansen cited several processors for their work, including Bjrn Jnsson, who she said goes to great lengths to ensure realistic lighting and color, and Sen Doran, a graphic artist whose enhanced images are incredibly beautiful, they are drop-dead gorgeous.

Gerald Eichstdt, a mathematician and software developer, devised code to ensure uniform lighting across an image, Hansen said, adding Im urging him to write up an actual science paper and get some credit for all that work, at least in the scientific community.

In an email exchange with CBS News, Doran said his images are based on Eichstdts work, adding my aim is to provide an aesthetic enhancement to what he has done.

I use a range of techniques in Photoshop to extract detail and enhance subtleties in the source image, he wrote. This can develop into quite a large set of actions and layers each with different non-destructive adjustments and masks. These layers are treated with various blend modes to provide finer control in mixing toward the final image.

I also use exposure settings to draw the eye and give volume to the image. Knowing when to stop is intuitive, and in some cases I will scrap what I have done and start again.

He said he was inspired by the work of Jnsson and Justin Cowart, whose images provide realistic renderings of Jupiter. Their work is beautiful.

Last Monday, Juno flew over Jupiters Great Red Spot for the first time, a highly anticipated event. The Great Red Spot is the largest, most powerful storm in the solar system, stretching more than 10,000 miles across. Within minutes of the first raw images being posted, image processors around the world began uploading their interpretations.

People must have been just sitting there waiting with Photoshop open! Hansen laughed. Within 45 minutes, I already had a queue to approve. This has really been fun.

Said Doran: We are only at the start of coming to grips with this data, and in time I expect to see very many beautiful and harmonious treatments.

Visit link:

Jupiter images thrill, inspire public participation - Spaceflight Now

This new, detailed global mosaic color map of Pluto is based on a series of three color filter images obtained by the Ralph/Multispectral Visual Imaging Camera aboard New Horizons during the NASA spacecrafts close flyby of Pluto in July 2015. The mosaic shows how Plutos large-scale color patterns extend beyond the hemisphere facing New Horizons at closest approach, which were imaged at the highest resolution. North is up; Plutos equator roughly bisects the band of dark red terrains running across the lower third of the map. Plutos giant, informally named Sputnik Planitia glacier the left half of Plutos signature heart feature is at the center of this map. Note: Click on the image to view in the highest resolution. Image & Caption Credit: NASA/JHUAPL/SwRI

Using actual New Horizons data and digital elevation models of Pluto and its largest moon, Charon, mission scientists have created flyover movies that offer spectacular new perspectives of the many unusual features that were discovered and which have reshaped our views of the Pluto system from a vantage point even closer than the spacecraft itself.

This dramatic Pluto flyover begins over the highlands to the southwest of the great expanse of nitrogen ice plain informally named Sputnik Planitia. The viewer first passes over the western margin of Sputnik, where it borders the dark, cratered terrain of Cthulhu Macula, with the blocky mountain ranges located within the plains seen on the right. The tour moves north past the rugged and fractured highlands of Voyager Terra and then turns southward over Pioneer Terra which exhibits deep and wide pits before concluding over the bladed terrain of Tartarus Dorsa in the far east of the encounter hemisphere.

Digital mapping and rendering were performed by Paul Schenk and John Blackwell of the Lunar and Planetary Institute in Houston.

Video courtesy of NASA

Tagged: Charon Jet Propulsion Laboratory NASA New Horizons Pluto The Range

Formed in 1958, NASA is one of the preeminent space agencies currently in operation, is the only organization to land astronauts on the surface of the Moon, to carry out extended missions on the planet Mars and more.

Read the original:

NASA releases New Horizons flyover video - SpaceFlight Insider

TORONTO, ON--(Marketwired - July 14, 2017) - The Space Flight Laboratory (SFL) announced today the successful launch of two Norwegian microsatellites developed and built by SFL for the Norwegian Space Centre with support from the Norwegian Coastal Authority, Space Norway, and the European Space Agency. The Soyuz-2.1a rocket carrying the satellites into orbit launched from Baikonur at 06:36:49 UTC Friday 14 July 2017.

Shortly after launch both satellites were contacted from ground stations in Svalbard and Vardo, Norway. Both satellites are healthy based on initial telemetry, and commissioning is underway.

The first satellite, dubbed NORsat-1 carries a state-of-the-art Automatic Identification System (AIS) receiver to acquire messages from maritime vessels, a set of Langmuir probes to study space plasma characteristics, and a Compact Lightweight Absolute Radiometer (CLARA) to measure total solar irradiation and variations over time. The payloads were provided by Kongsberg Seatex, the University of Oslo and the Physikalisch-Meterologisches Observatorium Davos World Radiation Center.

The satellite is approximately 15 kilograms with main body dimensions of 20x30x40cm. NORsat-1 utilizes SFL's Next-generation Earth Monitoring and Observation (NEMO) platform, and will serve the Norwegian Coastal Authority in monitoring maritime traffic while also performing ground breaking science.

The second satellite, NORsat-2 also carries an AIS receiver, but in addition has a VHF Data Exchange (VDE) payload that will enable higher bandwidth two-way communication with ships. Both payloads were provided by Kongsberg Seatex. NORsat-2 will be the first satellite to provide VDE services to Norway. Adding VDE enables increased messaging capacity, better reliability of message delivery, and increased range of ship-to-shore and ship-to-ship communication beyond direct line of sight.

SFL's NEMO platform was used for NORsat-2, and the satellite was integrated in Toronto along with NORsat-1. The relatively large deployable Yagi antenna for the VDE payload was developed by SFL in collaboration with the University of Toronto's Electromagnetics Group.

About Space Flight Laboratory (SFL)

SFL builds big performance into smaller, lower cost satellites. Small satellites built by SFL consistently push the performance envelope and disrupt the traditional cost paradigm. Satellites are built with advanced power systems, stringent attitude control and high-volume data capacity that are striking relative to the budget. SFL arranges launches globally and maintains a mission control center accessing ground stations worldwide. The pioneering and barrier breaking work of SFL is a key enabler to tomorrow's cost aggressive satellite constellations. (www.utias-sfl.net)

Image Available: http://www.marketwire.com/library/MwGo/2017/7/14/11G142712/Images/SFL_Image_1_-_NORsat-1_JPG-46a698b41fcab485aa8289f314ad0fa1.jpg Image Available: http://www.marketwire.com/library/MwGo/2017/7/14/11G142712/Images/SFL_Image_2_-_NORsat-2_JPG-c85758bf42d3ba08af7a8e173527c807.jpg

See original here:

Norway Successfully Launches Microsatellites built by Toronto's Space Flight Laboratory - Marketwired (press release)