The End of Rosetta

As the United States sends a spacecraft towards a distant asteroid, the European Space Agency was watching a different story as its explorer the Rosetta spacecraft came to an end.

Today the Rosetta spacecraft "crashed" into 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko at about 2 miles per hour. Okay, maybe it was a soft landing. So now the comet hosts two ESA spacecraft - Rosetta and the earlier probe Philae. 

The mission taught us more about both comets and the early development of our own planet. For instance, the theory that the Earth's water came from earlier comments bombarding the surface seems less certain since the water on the comet was not too dissimilar.  However, the question about the role of comets in the development of life was more positive.

Rosetta project scientist Matt Taylor promised the science was just beginning:

Inevitably, we now have new mysteries to solve. The comet hasn’t given up all of its secrets yet, and there are sure to be many surprises hidden in this incredible archive. So don’t go anywhere yet – we’re only just beginning.

Travel to Mars Will Be Routine

At this week's International Astronautical Congress in Mexico, Elon Musk gave us all a better idea of his plans for traveling to Mars.

Musk believes we can have a self-sustaining city on Mars in 40 to 100 years  by sending continuous rockets filled with about 200 passengers. Each passenger would pay about $200,000 apiece, and he promised the 80-day trip would be fun. 

And why stop there? Musk believes the same system can travel throughout the solar system. Hence, a vacation to Europa would be possible.

You have to admit the man has vision and great confidence. I like it and hope we can see his dream become a reality. 

You can watch his talk here.

New Movies: Arrival

On November 11th, Paramount will release its new film Arrival.  Starring Amy Adams, Jeremy Renner, and Forest Whitaker, it is the age-old tale of what do we will do with such visitors: 

When mysterious spacecrafts touch down across the globe, an elite team - lead by expert linguist Louise Banks (Amy Adams) - is brought together to investigate. As mankind teeters on the verge of global war, Banks and the team race against time for answers – and to find them, she will take a chance that could threaten her life, and quite possibly humanity.

It seems our fascination with such scenarios is endless, and in this case we have another Jodie Foster-like hero to show us the way.  We will soon learn if we looking at ET or War of the Worlds?  I am hoping for something similar to Contact, but I want to be surprised.

Chinese Space Station and More

Earlier this month China launched the Tiangong-2 ("Heavenly Palace") into orbit to replace the  Tiangong-1, which has been in orbit for the last 5 years and is expected to fall back to Earth late next year. These are really test missions that will lead to a permanent space station, planned for 2020.

Let's not forget that China has already placed a rover on the Moon (the Yutu shown above) and plans to send a rover to Mars in 2020 (see images below). All of which shows the nation is willing to find its own way of other nations do not wish to cooperate. 

Just as we have competition between the private sector entities in the U.S. space industry, maybe this competition between nations, which also includes countries such as India and Japan, is a smart way to allow different approaches and technologies to flourish. While I think an interstellar mission may need more centralization, we are far from that now (at least at the human level) and the competition in the meantime may help us to reach that goal more quickly. 

So best wishes to China and the other space-faring nations. 

Red Planet Radio

It never hurts to listen to another podcast while commuting or working around the house, so why not try The Planetary Society's Red Planet Radio?

Episode three covered a number of interesting topics including:

• Why SpaceX only reuses the first stage of the Falcon 9.
• What SpaceX Mars colonisation logistics may look like.
• Fuel options on Mars (Methane or Hydrogen) and tradeoffs between the two.
• Who might be the first people to go to Mars? SpaceX Engineers / NASA astronauts.
• Mars collaboration going forward with ESA, JSA, China, and others.
• Ion engines and “going the long way around” to Mars, to reach it outside of transfer windows.
• Why asteroid mining from Mars is more appealing than from Earth.
• Comparing the discovery of the Americas to Mars exploration.

Plenty to ponder. Check it out.

Massive Meteorite in Argentina

A 30-ton meteorite? That's right, and unearthed earlier this month in Argentina. Said to have hit the Earth between 4,000 and 6,000 years ago, the meteorite was named "Gancedo" after a local town. And it seems the locals have known about it for hundreds of years. 

You can read more about Gancedo in the Sky and Telescope story.

Quote: Clinton Supports Mars Mission

"Today, thanks to a series of successful American robotic explorers, we know more about the Red Planet than ever before...A goal of my administration will be to expand this knowledge even further and advance our ability to make human exploration of Mars a reality.” 

--Hillary Clinton in response to a question and released Sept. 13th by ScienceDebate.org. She also noted how she wrote to NASA as a child. 

Blue Origin Joins the Big League

It wasn't long ago Elon Musk was laughing about Blue Origin's successful return of the New Shepard reusable rocket because it was suborbital. Well, Elon, you may not be laughing now that Blue Origins is planning to go head-to-head with the United Launch Alliance and SpaceX by building its own heavy-lift rocket for major off-Earth missions.

The New Glenn rocket (playing on an astronaut's name again) at 313 feet will be almost as large of the workhorse Saturn V rocket at 363 feet, and pack quite a punch with multiple BE-4 engines.

Jeffrey Bezos is certainly looking towards a future beyond space tourism, stating: 

New Glenn is designed to launch commercial satellites and to fly humans into space...The three-stage variant—with its high specific impulse hydrogen upper stage—is capable of flying demanding beyond-LEO missions.

Of course, Mr. Bezos could still work with tourists, but now they can go to the Moon or Mars for a vacation.  This is a very big deal that shuffles the cards again in the private space industry.

Good Timing with Virgin Galactic Back Online

With all the discussion about the SpaceX mishap, it was just the right time for Virgin Galactic, another space pioneer, to show it was back on its feet (or, more to the point, back in the air).  The image above shows Virgin Mother Ship Eve carrying the Virgin Spaceship Unity for its first flight ever over Mojave, CA on Thursday September 8, 2016.  This represents the return on a Virgin Galactic spaceship after the crash two years ago in the desert that was ultimately blamed on human error. 

In its press release on this mission, Virgin Galactic stated,

Throughout the entire 3 hour and 43 minute test flight, the flight crew as well our mission controllers and ground crews did the hard work of supporting a crewed test flight of a spaceflight system—great practice for our eventual flights to space...With this flight in the books, our team will now analyze a mountain of flight data, learning what worked well and what could be improved for our next flight test. Only when that analysis is done, along with detailed vehicle inspections, some already-planned work, and potentially more captive carry flights, will we be ready to move into the next phase of test flight.

Just another sign that we need to learn from our mistakes and keep moving forward. 

SpaceX: Keep Pushing the Limits

"Despair is always the wrong response to a failure during exploration and it isn’t disciplined engineering. When the entire crew of Apollo was burned alive in a capsule test, President Johnson pushed our moon mission forward and engineers delivered. When Space Shuttle Challenger exploded, President Reagan proudly redoubled our commitment to space, we fixed the launch system and we built a great space station. When Columbia broke up on reentry we engineered work arounds and completed the Space Shuttle program with pride. Once again, America’s brightest engineers will collect the data, analyze the failure, improve the system and move us forward into the future."

--Statement by Greg Autry, Assistant Professor with The Lloyd Greif Center for Entrepreneurial Studies in the Marshall School of Business at the University of Southern California, in a Space News editorial.

SpaceX Leads Investigation of Rocket Explosion

It appears SpaceX will take the lead on the investigation of the Falcon 9 explosion on September 1, though NASA, the Air Force, the Federal Aviation Administration, and others will participate.  The fact that this was a commercial operation allows SpaceX to stay in the lead.  You may recall that last year's explosion involving a NASA mission was also investigated by SpaceX, much to the consternation of some in Congress. 

Elon Musk has a lot on his hands these days.  After so much praise earlier this summer, the explosion has set him back at a time he is struggling with cash problems at Telsa and SolarCity.  And even though the satellite destroyed in the recent explosion was insured, SpaceX may still need to pay another $50 million to satellite owner Space Communication Ltd. 

Even given such bleak news, SpaceX still remains an enormously innovative and successful company suffering some growing pains but still very much on the right track.  And such incidents are unlikely to shake the industry's faith in greater diversification of vendors, thought insurance rates are certain to go up.  In addition, some companies may start to wonder about the advantage of cheaper launches given the increased risk.  This can only help the industry stalwart United Launch Alliance.

The investigation should tell us more about whether this was a fluke or a design problem.  On Friday, Mr. Musk tweeted:

Still working on the Falcon fireball investigation. Turning out to be the most difficult and complex failure we have ever had in 14 years.

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) September 9, 2016

Star Trek: 50 Years Later

On the 50th anniversary of the first showing of Star Trek television series, it is worth reading the statements of scientists who carry out the real mission of exploring strange new worlds, seeking out new life and new civilizations, and boldly going where no one has gone before.  This piece from NASA's Exoplanet Exploration Program gives you a good cross-section of scientists impacted by the television series.

For instance, Marc Rayman, Director and chief engineer for NASA’s Dawn mission, states: 

I started watching the "Star Trek" original series when it was on in reruns, when I was a youngster. I was a very avid "Star Trek" fan. I’d already been a very serious space buff; I knew in the fourth grade that I wanted to get a Ph.D. in physics. I only ever wanted to work for NASA. I started writing to JPL when I was nine years old. Two of the missions I worked on at JPL were Deep Space 1 and Dawn, which I’m working on now. Those are NASA’s only two planetary missions to use ion propulsion. The first time I ever heard of ion propulsion was in a "Star Trek" episode called “Spock’s Brain.”

I am not sure how many television programs today are driving kids into science, unless it is a police lab, but hopefully we will find more hopeful tales in the future and lead more kids to dream about the wider world and universe.  

The Asteroid Mission Begins

Tomorrow is the planned launch date of the Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification, Security and Regolith Explorer (OSIRIS-REx) mission, which has the goal of traveling to a near-Earth asteroid called Bennu.  Once there in 2018, it will retrieve a small sample so it can be studied back hear on Earth by 2023.

Why such a mission?  So we can learn about the origins of the solar system from a 4.5 billion year old rock.

Edward Beshore from the University of Arizona, who serves as the Deputy Principal Investigator for OSIRIS-REx, stated:

We are going to Bennu because we want to know what it has witnessed over the course of its evolution...Bennu's experiences will tell us more about where our solar system came from and how it evolved. Like the detectives in a crime show episode, we'll examine bits of evidence from Bennu to understand more completely the story of the solar system, which is ultimately the story of our origin.

The OSIRIS-REx mission will also be a step towards NASA’s Asteroid Redirect Mission (ARM).  The mission of ARM will be to capture and redirect a near-Earth asteroid to a stable orbit around the moon, at which point astronauts can investigate it. This is seen as a first step before sending humans to Mars. 

This video will explain more about the mission.  You can also learn more about the NASA mission here.

Update:  OSIRIS-REx was successfully launched on Thursday and has started its trip to Bennu.

Video: A Simple Star Wars Tale

And now for something completely different.  This paper animation Star Wars video from Eric Power uses Jeremy Messersmith's mellow tune Tatooine as the background music.  It all comes together well and does a nice job summarizing the original trilogy.  I am not sure the next three movies in the series would work so well - the story may be too complex with endless moving parts.

Below are the lyrics to the song (you should already know the movies) as well as information on the artist:

Twin suns of Tatooine
Taught me everything I know
Twin suns of Tatooine
Taught me everything I know  

There's room up there for second chances
Singles are fine but doubles are fantastic
I'd like to think that there's a star for me and you
Spinning round, falling for one another  

Twin suns of Tatooine
Taught me everything I know
Twin suns of Tatooine
Taught me everything I know  

Solos are fine but duets are romantic
A pair is grand but a trio'd be disastrous
I'd like to think that there's a star for me and you
Spinning round, falling for one another

New Images of Jupiter from Juno

Juno has sent back additional images showing Jupiter up close.  It includes the "never-before-seen perspective" on Jupiter's south pole, shown below.  Go here for more from NASA. 

Great Image: Glaciers From Space

The spectacular image above was taken by one of the European Space Agency's Copernicus Sentinel satellites.  Here is ESA's explanation of what we are seeing:

The Upsala Glacier in Argentina’s Los Glaciares National Park is pictured in this Sentinel-2A image from 22 January 2016. 

The park was named a UNESCO World Heritage site in 1981 and is the largest in the country, covering an area of over 7000 sq km. 

Many glaciers in the national park and in the wider Patagonian Ice Field have been retreating during the last 50 years because of rising temperatures. Upsala Glacier has retreated more than 3 km in the past 15 years. 

Glaciers are the largest reservoirs of freshwater on our planet, and their melting or growing is one of the best indicators of climate change. Satellite data can help to monitor changes in glacier mass and, subsequently, their contribution to rising sea levels.  

Taking a closer look at the terminus of the Upsala Glacier, we can see how icebergs have broken off and are floating in the water of the upper reaches of Lake Argentino. The lake’s unique colour is attributed to ‘glacier milk’ – suspended fine sediment produced by the abrasion of glaciers rubbing against rock. 

The darker lines following the flow of the glacier are moraines: accumulations of rock, soil and other debris – including glacial milk – that have been deposited by the glacier.

And speaking of the Copernicus Sentinel satellites, ESA has a scare the other day when a small piece of space debris hit a Sentinel 1-A satellite.  The before and after pictures are provided below.  Fortunately, the satellite continued with normal operations.  The debris was thought to be only about 1 millimeter in size.  ESA's Head of Space Debris Office Holger Krag noted:

Such hits, caused by particles of millimetre size, are not unexpected...These very small objects are not trackable from the ground, because only objects greater than about 5 cm can usually be tracked and, thus, avoided by manoeuvring the satellites.

The Science of Star Trek on the Smithsonian Channel

 Tonight you can watch the Smithsonian Channel's special Building Star Trek.  The summary for the program states:

When "Star Trek" first aired in 1966, it expanded the viewers' imaginations about what was possible in their lifetimes. Today, many of the space-age technologies displayed on the show, like space shuttles, cell phones, and desktop computers, have already gone from science fiction to science fact. Other innovations, like warp drive, teleportation, and medical tricorders are actively in development. Join us as we celebrate the 50th Anniversary of "Star Trek" - a show that continues to inform, enrich, and inspire.

I hope the new television series bring back some of that inspiration.  This summer's blockbuster Star Trek Beyond did nothing for me.  It was no different than all the other super hero films that are more about blowing things up than building things.  One can only hope the new Star Trek: Discovery can bring back both the technology and ideas that can inspire a new generation of fans. 

SpaceX Statement on Rocket Explosion

SpaceX released this statement yesterday regarding Thursday's rocket explosion in Florida:

SpaceX has begun the careful and deliberate process of understanding the causes and fixes for yesterday's incident.  We will continue to provide regular updates on our progress and findings, to the fullest extent we can share publicly.

We deeply regret the loss of AMOS-6, and safely and reliably returning to flight to meet the demands of our customers is our chief priority.  SpaceX's business is robust, with approximately 70 missions on our manifest worth over $10 billion.  In the aftermath of yesterday's events, we are grateful for the continued support and unwavering confidence that our commercial customers as well as NASA and the United States Air Force have placed in us.

Overview of the incident:

 - Yesterday, at SpaceX's Launch Complex 40 at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, an anomaly took place about eight minutes in advance of a scheduled test firing of a Falcon 9 rocket. 

- The anomaly on the pad resulted in the loss of the vehicle.

- This was part of a standard pre-launch static fire to demonstrate the health of the vehicle prior to an eventual launch. 

- At the time of the loss, the launch vehicle was vertical and in the process of being fueled for the test.  At this time, the data indicates the anomaly originated around the upper stage liquid oxygen tank.  Per standard operating procedure, all personnel were clear of the pad.  There were no injuries.

To identify the root cause of the anomaly, SpaceX began its investigation immediately after the loss, consistent with accident investigation plans prepared for such a contingency.  These plans include the preservation of all possible evidence and the assembly of an Accident Investigation Team, with oversight by the Federal Aviation Administration and participation by NASA, the United States Air Force and other industry experts.  We are currently in the early process of reviewing approximately 3000 channels of telemetry and video data covering a time period of just 35-55 milliseconds. 

As for the Launch Pad itself, our teams are now investigating the status of SLC-40.  The pad clearly incurred damage, but the scope has yet to be fully determined.  We will share more data as it becomes available.  SpaceX currently operates 3 launch pads – 2 in Florida and 1 in California at Vandenberg Air Force Base.  SpaceX's other launch sites were not affected by yesterday's events.  Space Launch Complex 4E at Vandenberg Air Force Base is in the final stages of an operational upgrade and Launch Complex 39A at Kennedy Space Center remains on schedule to be operational in November.  Both pads are capable of supporting Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy launches.  We are confident the two launch pads can support our return to flight and fulfill our upcoming manifest needs.

Again, our number one priority is to safely and reliably return to flight for our customers, as well as to take all the necessary steps to ensure the highest possible levels of safety for future crewed missions with the Falcon 9. We will carefully and thoroughly investigate and address this issue.

SpaceX Rocket Explodes

Bad news for SpaceX and therefore NASA - a Falcon rocket exploded in Florida earlier today in preparation for a commercial satellite launch this weekend. Luckily, no one was hurt, but the rocket and satellite were destroyed. 

I am sure we will learn much more in the days to come. 

Update:  Mark Zuckerberg is not happy he just lost a $200 million Israeli satellite that was to assist Africa with the Internet.  On his Facebook page he stated:

As I'm here in Africa, I'm deeply disappointed to hear that SpaceX's launch failure destroyed our satellite that would have provided connectivity to so many entrepreneurs and everyone else across the continent.

Fortunately, we have developed other technologies like Aquila that will connect people as well. We remain committed to our mission of connecting everyone, and we will keep working until everyone has the opportunities this satellite would have provided.