A Little Break...

After a number of years focusing on the plans for Mars, I will be taking a break from this blog. The signs are encouraging for now, and I hope the trend continues. In the meantime, look up, dream, and push your leaders for more funds for space. The future belongs to those who plan for it.

Traffic at the International Space Station

This has been a busy weekend on the International Space Station (ISS), where the amazing has become mundane. 

First, a Russian Soyuz spacecraft delivered three new crew members to the station - US astronaut Robert Shane and Russian cosmonauts Sergei Ryzhikov and Andrei Borisenko.  One could even argue a fourth crew member accompanied them - the relics of Saint Seraphim of Sarov.  

Second, Orbital ATK's Cygnus cargo ship also arrived at the ISS.  Orbital ATK knows these missions are not mundane having lost a rocket and Cygnus cargo ship two years ago.

Someday we may see such traffic heading to the Moon and Mars as well.  However, the Orbital ATK mishap, SpaceX rocket explosions, and recent ExoMars lander failure shows that the space industry is still facing enormous risks. Fortunately, all of the missions just named did not involve human passengers. That adds a whole new level of risk and related risk management. 

Image Credit:  The photo at the top from NASA shows the new six-member Expedition 49 crew gathers in the Zvezda service module. The three newest arrivals (front row from left) Andrey Borisenko, Sergey Ryzhikov and Shane Kimbrough talk to family members and mission officials back on Earth. In the back row from left are, Kate Rubins, Anatoly Ivanishin and Takuya Onishi. The bottom photo shows the Orbital ATK Cygnus cargo ship arriving at the ISS and is also from NASA.

Lander Debris Spotted on Mars

NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter has identifies debris from the European Space Agrency's ExoMars lander.  NASA noted:

This comparison of before-and-after images shows two spots that likely appeared in connection with the Oct. 19, 2016, Mars arrival of the European Space Agency's Schiaparelli test lander. The images are from the Context Camera on NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter.

Separately, NASA provided its own statement on the lost lander, pointing out the difficulty of landing on Mars:

ESA and its international team have added an important achievement to the exploration of Mars by putting the Trace Gas Orbiter into orbit around the Red Planet as a platform for science investigation and communication infrastructure...Landing a spacecraft on Mars is extremely challenging. We admire the initiative and development of the teams that worked on the Schiaparelli lander that was part of the ExoMars mission.

Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS

Mars Remains an Elusiveness Goal

What started as a hopeful week has ended badly for the European Space Agency (ESA).  It has lost contact with its ExoMars landing craft late into its six minutes descent. The assumption is that the craft crashed on the surface, another victim of the Martian allure. It also raises questions about a planned rover mission.

ESA' General Director Jan Wörner put his best spin on the situation:

Following yesterday's events we have an impressive orbiter around Mars ready for science and for relay support for the ExoMars rover mission in 2020...Schiaparelli's primary role was to test European landing technologies. Recording the data during the descent was part of that, and it is important we can learn what happened, in order to prepare for the future."

This is just one more reminder that none of this is easy. We have to accept a fair amount of risk with these distant missions, and the costs will get higher with manned missions. 

Chinese Astronauts Head to Space Station

Chinese astronauts left for the space station early yesterday, but it was not the International Space Station. We don't extend "international" that far, of course. No, the astronauts are heading to the Chinese station - the Tiangong-2.

Launched aboard a rocket from northern China, the two astronauts will remain on the experimental space station for 30 days as they learn more about the needs for maintaining a more permanent station in the future.  

China continues to show prowess in the space arena, targeting the moon and other locations to more or less duplicate western achievements.  It appears that banning them from the club house has not slowed them down but instead made them more determined. 

ExoMars Lander on it Way to Martian Surface

The European Space Agency's ExoMars mission just started its main mission - landing on Mars.  The lander craft left the spacecraft (Trace Gas Orbiter) yesterday and started its three-day descent.  The lander is the first step before a rover arrives in 2020. 

While Mars missions have been fickle over the years, the news so far is good.  Let's hope the traffic in Mars continues. 

You can follow the mission at this ESA site.

"My God, it's full of galaxies!"

Scientists now believe we have underestimated the number of observable galaxies by a factor of 10. That's right, instead of 200 billion galaxies it is more like 2 trillion. That also means a heck of a lot more planets and places for life.

A team lead by Christopher Conselice of the University of Nottingham, U.K., looked at one small patch of sky and discovered 10 times more galaxies than ever expected.  His team used data taken from the Hubble Space Telescope and other observatories.  This sampling appears to be similar to the Kepler approach when it too viewed a patch of sky to project the sample of discovered exoplanets to entire night sky.  You can read the team's paper here.

Conselice noted:

It boggles the mind that over 90 percent of the galaxies in the universe have yet to be studied. Who knows what interesting properties we will find when we discover these galaxies with future generations of telescopes? In the near future, the James Webb Space Telescope will be able to study these ultra-faint galaxies,

The quote in the title of this piece comes from the HubbleSite, which notes:

In Arthur C. Clarke's novel "2001: A Space Odyssey," astronaut David Bowman exclaims, "My God, it's full of stars!" before he gets pulled into an alien-built wormhole in space. When the Hubble Space Telescope made its deepest views of the universe, astronomers might have well exclaimed: "My God, it's full of galaxies!"

As is often the case, reality mimics science fiction and then runs with it far beyond what we imagined.

A Consensus Horizion Goal?

Space News Magazine asked the two presidential candidates about the space program and Mars.  Trump provided short, noncommittal responses, whereas Clinton said more but still did not make any big leaps.  Here is her statement on Mars:

Today, thanks to decades of successful American robotic explorers, we know more about the universe than ever before. We have learned that asteroids have shaped life on our home planet and will likely affect our future. Their scientific value and their potential as a resource make them valuable targets for further exploration. Many of the technologies we need to send astronauts to an asteroid can also serve as foundational technologies that will be necessary to make human exploration of Mars possible. 

While President Kennedy set NASA on a course to win the race against Russia to get to the moon, today, human spaceflight is a global endeavor, with astronauts and cosmonauts living and working together on the International Space Station — a remarkable facility developed with 15 international partners. America should continue to push the boundaries of space and lead a global effort of exploration.

I have always been an enthusiastic supporter of human space flight. My administration will continue to invest in this worthwhile endeavor. Mars is a consensus horizon goal, though to send humans safely, we still need to advance the technologies required to mitigate the effects of long-duration, deep-space flight.

Clinton certainly has more information in her response, but no real actionable goals.  And it depends what we want to "mitigate."  Set the bar too high and even the Moon is too far for us. 

I guess we cannot expect much more until after the election. However, if the current campaign "topics" continue into the presidency it may be hard to get any leadership on this issue in the future as well. 

Obama and Mars: A Little Too Late

"We have set a clear goal vital to the next chapter of America's story in space: sending humans to Mars by the 2030s and returning them safely to Earth, with the ultimate ambition to one day remain there for an extended time. Getting to Mars will require continued cooperation between government and private innovators, and we're already well on our way."

--President Obsma in a CNN editorial earlier today, and less than a month from choosing a new president with a new set of space priorities. But while NASA may drift, maybe the "private innovators" will keep us on track.

Musk May Be Our Only Hope for Mars

I was reading a piece in ARS Technica about the potential pivot of a Clinton administration back to the Moon rather than Mars.  Physicist Neal Lane, who was a science advisor to Bill Clinton and may informally advising Hillary, recently stated:

We’ve been to the Moon but we didn’t stay very long...So the US really ought to consider, in my view, leading international expeditions back to the Moon and to other bodies in the Solar System, and perhaps eventually Mars, and work[ing] with other countries to ensure free access to space. I think the new president could find this to be a real opportunity for leadership.

This is somewhat disappointing, though we already have an administration that chose an asteroid over the Moon and Mars.  I was hoping we could do both the Moon and Mars between NASA and the private sector.

SpaceX's Elon Musk provided a better vision the other week with his mission to Mars.  Maybe the private sector needs to take on Mars with NASA stays local (a reverse of expected roles, but an increasingly plausible scenario).

Boeing appears to agree, and seems to be calling for a private sector space race.  Boeing's Chief Executive Officer Dennis Muilenburg made the following statement at a Chicago meeting:

I’m convinced the first person to step foot on Mars will arrive there riding a Boeing rocket.

Boeing may be more tied to NASA's apron than Musk, but both will need the support of NASA to make it to Mars. 

Let the space race begin!

Is Travel to Another Star an Immoral Enterprise?

In a recent Aeon article titled Would it be Immoral to Send Out a Generation Starship, Neil Levy brings up some interesting points about space travel, noting:

Those of us who worry that their doing so limits the children’s right to an open future should be even more worried by locking children in to a much greater extent than dreamt of by the Amish. After all, adults can, and do, leave Amish communities. But no one gets to leave the generation ship, and few or none will get to choose what role they play aboard.

One can argue that any exploration brings risk, and taking one's family drags them along into that risk.  The United States was a risk for enormous numbers of families, and children had little say in the voyage nor their role in the new world.  In fact, most the world's children are still locked into their parents circumstances.  Only in recent years has the choice for young adults been much wider, but we may need to narrow options in the future if we want to leave this third rock from the Sun.

This may be the twisted morality of species expansion and protection.  For instance, we need the non-democratic military to ensure a democratic society.  Does that make sense?  Such inconsistencies will be with us for some time.  That does not mean we do not try to find new ways to expand options, but of we may have to settle for a less perfect "world" if we want to settle another world. 

Great Image: The Dunes of Mars

While Bill Nye may see Mars as a barren wasteland, it can also be a beautiful and magical place.  The frost-covered dunes above show this to be true. 

Here is NASA's explanation of what we see in the image: 

Sand dunes cover much of this terrain, which has large boulders lying on flat areas between the dunes. It is late winter in the southern hemisphere of Mars, and these dunes are just getting enough sunlight to start defrosting their seasonal cover of carbon dioxide. Spots form where pressurized carbon dioxide gas escapes to the surface. 

NASA's High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HIRISE) aboard the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter captured this image on March 27, 2016. 

Image Credit: NASA/JPL/University of Arizona

Great Image: Statue of Liberty

Above is an impressive image of a nebula called the "Statue of Liberty." I guess we all see what we already know. Younger astronomers may see Harry Potter. 

Here is the story from NASA about Nebula 3576:

What's happening in the Statue of Liberty nebula? Bright stars and interesting molecules are forming and being liberated. The complex nebula resides in the star forming region called RCW 57.  This image showcases dense knots of dark interstellar dust, bright stars that have formed in the past few million years, fields of glowing hydrogen gas ionized by these stars, and great loops of gas expelled by dying stars. A detailed study of NGC 3576, also known as NGC 3582 and NGC 3584, uncovered at least 33 massive stars in the end stages of formation, and the clear presence of the complex carbon molecules known as polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs). PAHs are thought to be created in the cooling gas of star forming regions, and their development in the Sun's formation nebula five billion years ago may have been an important step in the development of life on Earth. The featured image was taken at the Cereo Tolodo Inter-American Observatory in Chile.

Image Credit & Copyright: S. Mazlin, J. Harvey, R. Gilbert, & D. Verschatse (SSRO/PROMPT/UNC)

Nye Will Not Pay $200,00 for a Barren Rock

“I’m open-minded but skeptical that anyone actually wants to live out his or her life on Mars any more than anyone wants to colonize Antarctica...Mars is an exotic place and in some ways very romantic. But it’s cold, barren and you can’t even breathe.”

--Bill NYE the Science Guy, head of The Planetary Society, discussing SpaceX's plan to settle Mars in the near future at a cost of about $200,00 per passenger, as quoted in the Huffington Post.

New Questions about the SpaceX Explosion

I was surprised to read a Washington Post piece stating the United Launch Alliance (UAL) was part of the investigation surrounding the September 1st Falcon rocket explosion 

The article, titled "Implication of Sabotage Adds Intrigue to SpaceX Investigation," stated investigators wanted access to a UAL facility:

As part of the investigation, SpaceX officials had come across something suspicious they wanted to check out, according to three industry officials with knowledge of the episode. SpaceX had still images from video that appeared to show an odd shadow, then a white spot on the roof of a nearby building belonging to ULA, a joint venture between Lockheed Martin and Boeing.

The piece also notes the ongoing rivalry between the firms. 

This is very odd, but hopefully just the results of a very wide investigation rather than real suspicions about a competitor.  We have enough issues with foreign spying and competition without any issues stateside.

One can understand frustration at UAL given SpaceX's rise, as noted in this story from April: 

United Launch Alliance plans to cut up to 875 jobs, or about one-quarter of its workforce, before the end of 2017 to better compete against rivals bankrolled by billionaire entrepreneurs including Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos, ULA's chief executive said on Thursday.

That said, we still need to see this as an American initiative if not an Earth initiative as we plans for a trip to Mars.  I expect all the competitors understand this and will play by the rules.