Happy Birthday, Dr. Hawking!

While much of the buzz this month related to the Academy Award Best Actor nomination of Eddie Redmayne for his portrayal of Stephen Hawking in The Theory of Everything, the astonishing story is that Dr. Hawking celebrated his 73rd birthday earlier this month (January 8).  In addition to the amazing feats of man in space, we need to think of the amazing feats of man on Earth, one of whom devised brilliant theories changing our understanding of the universe while suffering with ALS since age 21, as well the others who supported him, be it his family and friends, or the doctors and engineers that made his existence better and his ideas known.

So often space exploration is thought of in terms of rockets and the brute ability to escape the gravity of this earth, and it is in part, but given man has never gone farther than the moon, all that we know about this remarkable galaxy is based the ideas, experimentation, and observation by multitudes on Earth, be it theories of black holes and the origin of the universe, to the application of theories, to telescopic investigations that now allow us to ponder billions of Earth-like planets in our own galaxy.  And who knows if some of the theories may lead us beyond brute force into something more amazing that allows us to physically explore this galaxy of ours.  Just as Hellenistic astronomers would be amazed by what we have learned and the solar system objects we have visited (mechanically), the story continues and hopefully the future will take us to new places we cannot even imagine today. 

As Dr. Hawking stated, “We are just an advanced breed of monkeys on a minor planet of a very average star. But we can understand the Universe. That makes us something very special.”

A Helicopter on Mars?

While rovers have been the rage up to now, it seems helicopters may have a role to play as well.  NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) recently announced it is developing a 2.2 pound prototype to assist rovers with reconnaisance:

Each NASA rover has delivered a wealth of information about the history and composition of the Red Planet, but a rover's vision is limited by the view of onboard cameras, and images from spacecraft orbiting Mars are the only other clues to where to drive it. To have a better sense of where to go and what's worth studying on Mars, it could be useful to have a low-flying scout.

Being solar-powered, the little craft will be able to fly only a few minutes a day.  But that should be enough to give the rover a better idea about its surroundings.  You can watch a video from JPL discussing the testing of the helicopter given the different environment on Mars. 

Learning About Home From Exoplanets

New Scientist magazine recently had an interesting article on how our study of exoplanets has raised questions about the beginnings of our own solar system.  In the piece, Mercury May Be the Sole Survivor of a Planetary Pile-up, the author notes that a number of planetary systems being seen elsewhere in the galaxy have small, rocky planets in an orbit closer to their suns than Mercury is to our sun.  The speculation now is that this may be the normal order of things in younger solar systems and over time the collision of these smaller planets may create one larger survivor such as Mercury.  Of course, these rocky planets could also pulverize one another into dust unless they are made of stronger stuff, which may explain why Mercury survived given its considerable iron core. 

This is another fascination off-shoot of our search for other planets and potential life in our galaxy.  While we are looking at the present situation in our neighborhood, we may learn quite a bit about our past as well.  And we are in the very early stages of our search.

Image Credit:  NASA Discovery Program.  Shows the process of collision and accretion created the four rocky, or terrestrial, planets of our inner solar system — Mercury, Venus, Earth, and Mars.

The Beagle Has Landed!

Earlier today on the Beagle2 website, this was still the concluding entry on the mission: 

Beagle 2 was due to land on Mars on 25th December 2003. The spacecraft was successfully ejected from Mars Express on 19th December 2003. Nothing has been heard from Beagle 2 and the mission is presumed lost.

Well, now we know that the United Kingdom's Beagle 2 Mars Lander (model shown below) made it to the surface of Mars.  As shown in the NASA image above from the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO), the lander, parachute, and cover were all located close together.  NASA noted:

 Analysis of the images indicates what appears to be a partially deployed configuration, with what is thought to be the rear cover with its pilot/drogue chute (still attached) and main parachute close by. Due to the small size of Beagle 2 (less than 7 feet, or 2 meters across for the deployed lander) it is right at the limit of detection of HiRISE, the highest-resolution camera orbiting Mars. The targets are within the expected landing area at a distance of about three miles (five kilometers) from its center.

 A European Space Agency press release expressed relief that the Beagle's story was now known: 

"We are very happy to learn that Beagle-2 touched down on Mars. The dedication of the various teams in studying high-resolution images in order to find the lander is inspiring,” says Alvaro Giménez, ESA’s Director of Science and Robotic Exploration. 

“Not knowing what happened to Beagle-2 remained a nagging worry. Understanding now that Beagle-2 made it all the way down to the surface is excellent news,” adds Rudolf Schmidt, ESA’s Mars Express project manager at the time.

The Beagle2 website has an interesting Q&A on the chances of a rover stumbling upon it:

Is there any chance that NASA's rovers can go and find Beagle 2? Beagle 2 has landed in the Isidis Planitia basin (about 90 degrees East, 10 degrees North). Spirit has landed in the Gusev Crater (about 175 degrees East, 15 degrees South). Opportunity is due to land on the Meridiani Planum (about 354 degrees East, 2 degrees South). In Earth terms this is approximately equivalent to Beagle 2 being in Sri Lanka (in the Indian Ocean), Spirit being in Fiji (in the Pacific Ocean) and Opportunity being south of Ghana (in the South Atlantic Ocean). Mars is about half the diameter of Earth, but even with these figures you can get an idea of how far apart the landing sites are. The NASA rovers can travel up to about a kilometre (0.6 miles) at an average rate of about 1 cm/sec (approximately 0.036 kmph or 0.02 mph), so contact with Beagle 2 would not be remotely possible.

Although NASA could not help with the rovers, but it certainly helped with the MRO. 
 

Top Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Univ. of Arizona/University of Leicester. The image was taken in 2014 by NASA's MRO's HiRISE camera.

Bottom Image Credit:  Beagle 2 website.  All rights reserved Beagle 2.

SpaceX and the Falcon 9 Hard Landing

The good news about SpaceX's fifth cargo mission to the International Space Station (ISS) is that the cargo itself arrived at the station.  Of course, it arrived during a week when the occupants had to evacuate to one end of the station after a potential ammonia leak that turned out to be a false alarn, but that is not the fault of SpaceX. 

And what did the Dragon bring to the station?  Here is what SpaceX reported in its press kit:

The Dragon spacecraft will be filled with more than 5, 200 pounds of supplies and payloads, including  critical materials to support 256 science and research investigations that will occur during Expeditions 42 and 43. Science payloads will enable model organism research using fruit flies and will study flatworms to better understand wound healing in space.

One science payload is the Cloud – Aerosol Transport System (CATS), a laser remote sensing experiment that will orbit on the International Space Station. CATS will characterize and measure the worldwide distribution of clouds and aerosols: tiny particles that make up haze, dust, air pollutants and smoke. Knowing where aerosols are in the atmosphere can be critically important, as these particles can affect weather, climate, airplane safety, and human health. NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Maryland, developed the instrument. For more on CATS, visit: www.nasa.gov/cats

The mission also delivers an IMAX camera for filming during four increments and tools that will be used in future spacewalks to prepare the station for the installation of the new international docking adapters. After four weeks at the space station, the spacecraft will return with over 3,600 pounds of cargo and packaging, including crew supplies, hardware and computer resources, science experiments, space station hardware and trash.

But with all this success, the mission was not what SpaceX wanted because the Falcon 9 first stage did not successfully land on the sea-based platform (though it did reach it).  Well, now we have some video and shots below of the hard landing from Elon Musk. Back to the drawing board.

Image Credits:  SpaceX

Noteworthy Quote: Too Much Reliance on the Russians

“Russia’s status as the current gatekeeper of the International Space Station could threaten our capability to explore and learn, stunting our capacity to reach new heights and share innovations with free people everywhere...The United States should work alongside our international partners, but not be dependent on them.”

-  Statement by Senator Ted Cruz, newly installed chairman of the Senate Commerce Subcommittee on Space, Science and Competitiveness, which oversees the NASA program (as quoted in The Hill). 

Image Credit:  NASA

Neil deGrasse Tyson Gets HIs Own Show

After last year's successful stint with Cosmos, Dr. Tyson appears to be heading for a show of his own making rather than a remake of someone else's vision. He has already generated a following with his astronomy-related radio program Star Talk, and that will be the name of his new show this April on the National Geographic Channel. 

While Dr. Tyson can be a lightening rod at times when he challenges the prevailing public mood, as was the case with his Christmas tweet, his insights and sense of humor each week via his own program is good for science and the space program overall. I only wish we had more astronomers and astrophysicists scrambling to get such science into every American living room. 

SpaceX Resupply Delays

The International Space Station will need to wait a little longer for its supplies. SpaceX has delayed its Dragon resupply mission until tomorrow (January 10) though it had originally planned to send the mission today after it scrubbed the Tuesday launch. 

While the resupply mission has become routine, the Saturday mission will also attempt to land the first stage of the Falcon 9 rocket on an ocean platform (shown above). If successful, we are seeing the first of what should be many more reusable rockets. 

SpaceX continues to push the private sector industry to new heights, though it has plenty of battles back here on the surface.  For instance, it still has a lawsuit against the Pentagon concerning competition for rockets and now the Air Force has delayed its clearance of SpaceX rockets for such competition by another 6 months.  It makes the vacuum of space look enticing.

Update:  Earlier Saturday the launch to the space station was a success but the platform landing of the first stage of the Falcon 9 rocket failed.  SpaceX is not discouraged and testing will continue. 

Great Image: Our Neighboring Galaxy

Above is an amazingly clear Hubble image of the Andromeda Galaxy, a mere 2.5 million light years away.  NASA offers a startling analogy regarding this clarity: 

The Hubble Space Telescope is powerful enough to resolve individual stars in a 61,000-light-year-long stretch of the galaxy’s pancake-shaped disk. It's like photographing a beach and resolving individual grains of sand. And there are lots of stars in this sweeping view -- over 100 million, with some of them in thousands of star clusters seen embedded in the disk...Because the galaxy is only 2.5 million light-years from Earth, it is a much bigger target in the sky than the myriad galaxies Hubble routinely photographs that are billions of light-years away. This means that the Hubble survey is assembled together into a mosaic image using 7,398 exposures taken over 411 individual pointings. 

Image credit: NASA, ESA, J. Dalcanton, B.F. Williams, and L.C. Johnson (University of Washington), the PHAT team, and R. Gendler

We Are Not Alone...

That is, we are not alone in our efforts to study the solar system and dream as a nation. This is good news, and yet also a little troubling since we saw ourselves as the smartest kid on the block (though one could argue that was not even the case with Russia during the Cold War until the Apollo landing).  While the Orion mission is a bold step forward, it is not clear where that step is leading as Congress debates destinations such as asteroids, the Moon, and Mars.  And the White House seems to be taking a back seat rather than voicing a vision. 

If you look at the traffic in space, you can see the "space race" is turning into rush hour:  Here are a few examples:

- Europe:  The Rosetta mission was a great accomplishment.  Landing a probe on a comet is no small task, and the European Space Agency (ESA) should be elated with this accomplishment.  ESA is also working with Russia on a new mission to Mars, something that the U.S. backed out of earlier.  Hence, alliances are forming with the U.S. being sidelined.

- China:  China continues to work on its plans for a space station and took further steps last year in its efforts to return samples from the moon.  China already has a rover on the Moon's surface. 

- Japan:  Japan launched the Hayabusa 2 mission last month (pictured above) heading for a 3,000-foot-wide asteroid named 1999 JU3.  NASA and the Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) plan to share asteroid samples.

- Russia:  The Russians continue to build most of the rockets we depend upon, have discussed pulling out of the International Space Station so they can build their own station, and recently restated plans to put cosmonauts on the Moon.  Whether or not Russia will have the budget to do these things in coming years will depend upon economics as much as science and technology given the state of the Russian economy. 

- India:  India joined the big leagues last year with its successful Mars Orbiter Mission, which put a spacecraft in orbit around the Red Planet. India is also taking steps to build a new rocket and capsule for future manned missions.

- Private Sector:  In addition to the various national missions, the private sector has its own plans, including Planetary Resources mining asteroid, Mars One bringing humans to Mars, SpaceX hopefully allowing the U.S. to move away from Russian rockets, and Bigelow designing inflatable space stations (see photo) for both science and tourism. 

All of the activity is encouraging, and maybe it will give the NASA and the Congress a swift kick in the pants, letting them know that the world will not stand idle while Rome (or budgets) burn and committees fiddle.  Competition helped us get to the Moon, and it may do so again. 

Image Credits:  Hayabusa 2 from JAXA and inflatable space station from Bigelow.