Putting the New NASA Telescope to Work

Do you remember the story about those two telescopes the National Reconnaissance Office provided to NASA earlier this year?  Well, NASA issued a request for information (RFI) on Monday to determine how to use them in "innovative and imaginative" ways. 

NASA's Michael Moore, a senior program executive, stated the potential uses can "...range from simple balloon flights to complex missions in science using new technologies under development and the capabilities available with the International Space Station and our commercial space flight partners."

If you have any ideas, you have until January 7, 2013, to submit them to NASA.  The RFI allows only four pages for your idea, so do not be too wordy.  The submissions will be discussed at a 2-day workshop on February 5 and 6, 2013, in Huntsville, AL, with a final report on these proceedings to be finalized May 2013.

By The Way: The World is Not Ending

In about a month's time, or on December 21, 2012, to be exact, the world is supposed to end.  I just wanted to remind everyone again that this may be a slight exaggeration.  Hence, commence with your Christmas shopping. 

The story of the Mayan calendar that supposedly foretold this disaster was updated earlier this year based on findings in Xultún, Guatemala.  The wall paintings, some of the few remaining writings from a period almost obliterated by the book-burning Spanish, tells a story of time being recycled rather than ending.  As the New York Times wrote:

Rest assured, however, that nothing written on those walls foretells the world coming to an end on Dec. 21, 2012, as some have feared through a misinterpretation of the Maya Long Count calendar. That date is simply when one cycle of the Maya calendar ends and a new one begin...A change in the Long Count cycle, said Dr. Aveni, an astroarchaeologist, is like the odometer of a car rolling over from 120,000 to 130,000. “The car gets a step closer to the junkyard as the numbers turn over,” he said. “The Maya just start over.”

Amazon.com did well last holiday when everyone was buying books about the coming disaster, just like they will now do well with more books debunking this story.  Never underestimate the profitability of gullibility.

Happy Birthday, Carl Sagan!

Okay, I am a few days late since his birthday was last Friday (November 9), but I did not want the occasion to pass without a quick note.  While Dr. Sagan passed away about 16 years ago, his papers, books and television series Cosmos, as well as the Carl Sagan Memorial Station on Mars, are constant reminders of the talents and hard work he brought to astronomy and cosmology.  He was the great popularizer of science, as well as a social critic forever warning us of our blind spots.  In this 1994 interview with Anne Kalosh, he voiced his concerns:

We live in a society absolutely dependent on science and technology and yet have cleverly arranged things so that almost no one understands science and technology. That's a clear prescription for disaster. 

A nice way to remember Dr. Sagan is to listen to his words in this video about this Pale Blue Dot we call home. 

Senator Coburn's Waste Book and NASA

Last month, Senator Coburn recently released his 2012 Waste Book, a government waste-watching effort of his for many years running. The Senator notes in his foreword:

Thousands, millions and even billions of dollars in an annual budget in excess of $3.7 trillion may not seem like much to Washington politicians, but these days a dollar can make a big difference for families on fixed budgets.

His latest report targets 100 government programs, including a number of government research programs.  And this year spending on space exploration is one of his targets, including (1) $947,000 spent by NASA's Advanced Food Technology Project to develop about 100 food items that could be consumed on Mars; (2) $1.6 million on apps to market the space program, such as Starlite, a "massive multiplayer online game to simulate the journey to Mars and the life of astronauts on the planet," and a free Xbox download Mars Rover Landing; (3) $771,000 for NASA to maintain a Lessons Learned Information System containing scientific information said to be outdated and little used; (4) $12.4 million for a new visitor center at NASA's Stennis Space Center facility in Mississippi; and (5) $300,000 in defense funds to support the 100-Year Starship Initiative's September symposium for interstellar discussion and related activities. 

While the Senator is looking for "waste," maybe he needs to learn a little more about how science works.  For instance, the Mars food project sounds like an excellent idea if we truly have our eyes set on a trip to the Red Planet. As part of the program, we are told:

Six volunteers will head into a barren landscape in Hawaii to simulate a 120-day Mars mission. In exchange, they receive an all-expenses-paid trip, plus $5,000 each, for completing the journey.
Volunteers will perform the activities Mars explorers might do, including wearing space suits and taking “Navy showers,” in order to see how different foods might affect their moods and health. In keeping with the purpose of the food study, one of the stated primary procedures for the participants is to “consume only ‘instant’ foods and foods prepared from shelf stable ingredients…and rate these foods.”Preparation for this extreme food-tasting challenge starts before the 120-day “mission.” Participants will attend a four-day workshop, and a two-week training exercise in the months leading up to the simulation, slated for early 2013.

And a quick look at the "outdated" Lessons Learned Information System shows information from the 1970s through 2012, so I am not sure what the report finds so troubling.  Finally, I am glad someone is thinking in terms of 100 years since Congress is unable to think past the next election.  Here is the mission of the 100-Year Starship Initiative:

100 Year Starship will pursue national and global initiatives, and galvanize public and private leadership and grassroots support, to assure that human travel beyond our solar system and to another star can be a reality within the next century.  100 Year Starship will unreservedly dedicate itself to identifying and pushing the radical leaps in knowledge and technology needed to achieve interstellar flight while pioneering and transforming breakthrough applications to enhance the quality of life on earth. We will actively include the broadest swath of people in understanding, shaping, and implementing our mission.

That said, money does not grows on trees and projects should held accountable, particularly in this time of tight budgets.  Yet this summary of problems strikes me more as overeager staffers trying to have fun at the cost of science so their boss can make a splash.  We need to have a real discussion about the merits of each program find ways to get even more funding to promising ideas that steer us towards a better future.

Great Images: The Ant Nebula

The image at right, titled the Ant Nebula, was first captured in 1997 by the Hubble Space Telescope and is available on Hubblesite.org.  The accompanying description of what we are seeing may say something about our own future as well:

From ground-based telescopes, the so-called "ant nebula" (Menzel 3, or Mz 3) resembles the head and thorax of a garden-variety ant. This dramatic NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope image, showing 10 times more detail, reveals the "ant's" body as a pair of fiery lobes protruding from a dying, Sun-like star.

The Hubble images directly challenge old ideas about the last stages in the lives of stars. By observing Sun-like stars as they approach their deaths, the Hubble Heritage image of Mz 3 — along with pictures of other planetary nebulae — shows that our Sun's fate probably will be more interesting, complex, and striking than astronomers imagined just a few years ago. 

Though approaching the violence of an explosion, the ejection of gas from the dying star at the center of Mz 3 has intriguing symmetrical patterns unlike the chaotic patterns expected from an ordinary explosion. Scientists using Hubble would like to understand how a spherical star can produce such prominent, non-spherical symmetries in the gas that it ejects. 

One possibility is that the central star of Mz 3 has a closely orbiting companion that exerts strong gravitational tidal forces, which shape the outflowing gas. For this to work, the orbiting companion star would have to be close to the dying star, about the distance of the Earth from the Sun. At that distance the orbiting companion star wouldn't be far outside the hugely bloated hulk of the dying star. It's even possible that the dying star has consumed its companion, which now orbits inside of it, much like the duck in the wolf's belly in the story "Peter and the Wolf." 

A second possibility is that, as the dying star spins, its strong magnetic fields are wound up into complex shapes like spaghetti in an eggbeater. Charged winds moving at speeds up to 1000 kilometers per second from the star, much like those in our Sun's solar wind but millions of times denser, are able to follow the twisted field lines on their way out into space. These dense winds can be rendered visible by ultraviolet light from the hot central star or from highly supersonic collisions with the ambient gas that excites the material into florescence.

Space Quotes: President Kennedy

We have learned more about President Kennedy now that we have greater access to his secret tapings from the Oval Office.  One quote in particular recently noted in a New York Times article caught my eye:

In a meeting in November 1962, the president bluntly told James Webb, the NASA administrator, that putting a man on the moon was his top priority. Mr. Webb said it was more important to understand the environment of space, prompting Mr. Kennedy to say, “If we get second to the Moon, it’s nice, but it’s like being second anytime.” 

Mr. Webb continued to push back, prompting the president to spell it out: “I’m not that interested in space,” he said, only in beating the Russians. 

As I have noted here earlier, the arms race was the controlling issue in the 1960s.  This only confirms it further.  Maybe we need to start considering how we can beat the Chinese or at least ensure they do not eventually beat us at our own game. 

New Moons Around Pluto

While Pluto might no longer be considered a planet, NASA still plans to visit the dwarf planet via New Horizons in July 2015.  Launched in 20016, the New Horizons space craft is already half-way to Pluto after passing Uranus. 

In preparation for the flight, the Hubble space telescope has been monitoring Pluto's neighborhood to make sure the New Horizons spacecraft does not smack into any unknown objects.  This turned out to be a pretty good idea since Hubble has already discovered two new moons over the course of about a year. 

In July 2011, NASA announced the discovery of a fourth moon, labeled P4.  This new moon has a diameter of only 8 to 21 miles, making it small enough to escape detection all of these years but large enough to cause problems for a NASA mission.  And this past July, Hubble located Pluto's fifth moon, P5 (yes, this naming is quite creative).  P5 is even smaller than P4.  Oddly, NASA's New Horizons website has yet to announce this discovery.  The graphic below provides some size comparisons.

Remember, Hubble located the second and third moon, Nix and Hydra, back in 2005.  The largest moon, Charon, was discovered in 1978 by the U.S. Naval Observatory.  Pluto and its moons reside inside the Kuiper Belt about 3 billion miles from the Sun.

If you are looking for more on why Pluto is no longer a "real" planet, you can always read Mike Brown's book How I Killed Pluto and Why It Had It Coming.  Mike Brown is the Richard and Barbara Rosenberg Professor of Planetary Astronomy at the California Institute of Technology,  As he explains, not everyone was happy with his discovery of 10th planet, Eris:

My daughter Lilah, now five years old, is mad at me for killing Pluto. When I began a project 13 years ago to chart the slowly-moving objects of the distant outer solar system, my goal was never to pull Pluto off of its cherished planetary pedestal. I wanted to be a planet discoverer, like William Herschel or Clyde Tombaugh before me. I had a strong feeling that somewhere out there something bigger than Pluto was lurking, and I knew that whoever found it would get to claim the mantle as the only living planet discoverer. 

I was right. Something bigger than Pluto was out there (or at least something more massive than Pluto; sizes are a little harder to pin down precisely) and one January morning in 2005, my small team of astronomers and I found it. We announced the discovery of the 10th planet to an unsuspecting world late on the afternoon of Lilah’s 22nd day of life. A little after her first birthday, though, the doors to the planetary club were locked and Pluto and my own discovery were kicked out on the curb. The solar system was down to only eight planets.

Is ARC Still Active?

I have been linking my site to the Alliance to Rescue Civilization (ARC) for some time now but the site has been inactive for years.  For example, the last news clipping was from August 2006.  It is really unclear if this group is kaput or has merged into something else.  The mission of ARC was to

... protect the human species and its civilization from destruction that could result from a global catastrophic event, including nuclear war, acts of terrorism, plague and asteroid collisions. To fulfill its mission, ARC is dedicated to creating continuously staffed facilities on the Moon and other locations away from Earth. These facilities will preserve backups of scientific and cultural achievements, and of the species important to our civilization. In the event of a global catastrophe, the ARC facilities will be prepared to reintroduce lost technology, art, history, crops, livestock and,if necessary, even human beings to the Earth.

We certainly still need something like ARC to deal with potential problems here on Earth, though it appears the ARC team has moved on to other (more important?) matters.

The genesis of ARC goes back to William E. Burrow's 2006 book The Survival Imperative: Using Space to Protect Earth.  In the summary to the book, we read:

We are living through one of the most dangerous times in human history. Nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons technology are proliferating, and missile technology is falling into more and more hands. Extreme natural disasters like hurricanes, floods, fires, and earthquakes, are becoming increasingly costly - not only in dollars, but in lives - as population expands. Environmental crises threaten to provoke massive famines and widespread social collapse. Asteroids the size of battleships streak within striking distance of the earth every year.

Not much has changed over the past few years, so the idea of a project to preserve some of what we have and know is a fine idea.  Unfortunately, it does not appear to be on NASA's radar, so more will need to be done by other public and private groups.

Some government efforts are already underway.  For example, the Millennium Seed Bank Partnership at the Kew Royal Botanic Gardens in the UK has been storing seeds with its partners in 50 countries to ensure we do not  lose them to extinction (see the Wakehurst Seed Bank area to the right).  The Partnership already has stored more than 10 percent of the world's seeds and aims for 25 percent by 2020.

Norway's government established the Svalbard Global Seed Vault on Spitsbergen island deep inside a mountain (see below).  This is often called the Doomsday Vault.  The Vault stores duplicates, or back ups, of seed samples from around the world. Given its location, deep within thick rock, the Vault can keep its seeds in a frozen state for thousands of years even if the location were to lose power. Of course, with global warming and even disasters that can readily change the Earth's atmosphere may change that equation. 

Both of these seed banks are a good start, though of course these seeds are being stored Earth-side, which is what ARC was trying to correct by putting this history (and future) into space as well.

Another group with a broader mission is the Lifeboat Foundation. From its mission statement, you might get the impression that the Foundation is more concerned about a human-initiated disaster than a stray asteroid:

The Lifeboat Foundation is a nonprofit nongovernmental organization dedicated to encouraging scientific advancements while helping humanity survive existential risks and possible misuse of increasingly powerful technologies, including genetic engineering, nanotechnology, and robotics/AI, as we move towards the Singularity.

Lifeboat Foundation is pursuing a variety of options, including helping to accelerate the development of technologies to defend humanity, including new methods to combat viruses (such as RNA interference and new vaccine methods), effective nanotechnological defensive strategies, and even self-sustaining space colonies in case the other defensive strategies fail.

At first, I thought the Foundation has some ideas that are closer to what ARC envisioned.  For instance, the Foundation's Ark I is a project is to build a space colony of 1,000 hearty individuals to survive a disaster on Earth.  What is strange is that the initial selling point for the space colony is to escape from a world that continually invades your privacy.  In fact, ARK I is defined as the "ultimate gated community":

On Earth it is essential that diverse groups learn to live in close proximity. It’s hard to live with six or seven billion homo sapiens, and some people can’t seem to do it gracefully. Space settlements offer an alternative to changing human nature or endless conflict — the ability to live in fairly homogeneous groups, as has been the norm throughout hundreds of thousands of years of human existence. Those who can’t get along can be separated by millions of miles of hard vacuum, which in some cases seems necessary. All entry into a space settlement must be through an airlock, so controlling immigration should be trivial.

Hence, the first thought is to run away from a meddling Earth rather than to save its civilization.  This libertarian thread is often more pronounced than any scientific thread.  And why would you want a "homogeneous group" if you are trying to preserve what makes the Earth unique?  What races are you leaving to fend for themselves on Earth?  This is not an ark but rather a luxury cruise ship.

Other ongoing and planned projects include AsteroidShield, LifeShield Bunkers, SeedPreserver, and SunShield (yes, pretty long-term if we are waiting for the sun's red giant phase).  Such projects seem very reasonable in terms of future planning, though I am concerned that this organization might have a preference for who and what survives.

So do we have a solely scientific endeavor to maintain civilization off-planet?  I am still looking but I have not found anything yet.  And I would not mind a couple of competing endeavors so that we do not put all of our eggs in one savior basket.  Maybe the Chinese are working on something.  I will check back later.

A New Black Hole in our Galaxy?

NASA reported last week that the Swift satellite has detected X-rays from a new black hole close to the center of our Milky Way galaxy.  According to a NASA press release: 

"The pattern we're seeing is observed in X-ray novae where the central object is a black hole. Once the X-rays fade away, we hope to measure its mass and confirm its black hole status," said Boris Sbarufatti, an astrophysicist at Brera Observatory in Milan, Italy, who currently is working with other Swift team members at Penn State in University Park, Pa. 

The black hole must be a member of a low-mass X-ray binary (LMXB) system, which includes a normal, sun-like star. A stream of gas flows from the normal star and enters into a storage disk around the black hole. In most LMXBs, the gas in the disk spirals inward, heats up as it heads toward the black hole, and produces a steady stream of X-rays.  

The Milky way may have quite a few black holes.  A February 2012 Mail news story noted:

If the roughly 200 globular clusters in the Milky Way have indeed spawned intermediate-sized black holes, this means that hundreds of them are probably wandering invisibly around the Milky Way, waiting to engulf the nebulae, stars and planets that are unfortunate enough to cross their paths. 

Fortunately, the existence of a few rogue black holes in the neighbourhood does not present a major danger. 

‘These rogue black holes are extremely unlikely to do any damage to us in the lifetime of the universe,’ Holley-Bockelmann stressed. ‘Their danger zone, the Schwarzschild radius, is really tiny, only a few hundred kilometres. There are far more dangerous things in our neighbourhood!’ 

Black holes seem to be quite ubiquitous these days, though I never want to see one in our neighborhood.

SpaceX: Mixed Results

After a rough start, the SpaceX Dragon capsule has reached the International Space Station (ISS) yesterday morning with new supplies.  Unlike the test mission earlier this year, this was the first of hopefully many resupply runs that NASA has contracted for.  The capsule should remain attached to the ISS for about 18 days.

The mission was off to a shaky start on Sunday when one of the nine first-stage engines shut down shortly after the launch.  According to SpaceX:

Approximately one minute and 19 seconds into last night’s launch, the Falcon 9 rocket detected an anomaly on one first stage engine. Initial data suggests that one of the rocket’s nine Merlin engines, Engine 1, lost pressure suddenly and an engine shutdown command was issued. We know the engine did not explode, because we continued to receive data from it. Panels designed to relieve pressure within the engine bay were ejected to protect the stage and other engines. Our review of flight data indicates that neither the rocket stage nor any of the other eight engines were negatively affected by this event.

What  SpaceX did not mention in its press release is that the engine failure probably doomed an Orbcomm satellite that was hitching a ride on the resupply run.  According to an Orbcomm press release:

The OG2 prototype satellite, flying as a secondary payload on this mission, was separated from the Falcon 9 launch vehicle at approximately 9:00 pm EST. However, due to an anomaly on one of the Falcon 9’s first stage engines, the rocket did not comply with a pre-planned International Space Station (ISS) safety gate to allow it to execute the second burn. For this reason, the OG2 prototype satellite was deployed into an orbit that was lower than intended. ORBCOMM and Sierra Nevada Corporation engineers have been in contact with the satellite and are working to determine if and the extent to which the orbit can be raised to an operational orbit using the satellite’s on-board propulsion system.

This was presumably the first of nine satellites that Orbcomm hopes to place into orbit via SpaceX.  If SpaceX wants a revenue stream beyond NASA, it will need to ensure the Falcon 9 rocket is error free in the future.  Nonetheless, the ISS mission is another big step for the company.

Update:  On October 28th, SpaceX's Dragon capsule safely landed in the Pacific Ocean with return cargo, including scientific samples.  This completes the first private sector resupply missions of the ISS.  

Science Friday: Mars Contamination

Last month NPR's Science Friday program had an interesting story on the Curiosity mission, noting how the craft may have been contaminated prior to its launch.  Specifically, the program noted that part of Curiosity's drill may have been exposed to microbes on Earth before the rover launched to Mars. 

During the broadcast, Catharine Conley, NASA’s planetary protection officer, walks the listener through NASA sterilization procedures, as well as the risk to the Mars mission.  The bottom line is that Ms. Conley is troubled by sloppy procedures but not too concerned about the mission since Gale Crater is not expected to have any water or ice, which would be subject to Earth contamination.

Another piece on the matter from The Christian Science Monitor notes:

“Water or ice near the surface in Gale Crater was not a significant probability,” said David Lavery, program executive for solar system exploration at NASA headquarters. “We weighed that against the risks of not having a bit mounted in the drill prior to launch, and the specter of not being able to drill any holes at all on Mars.”

“Of course, there is always a possibility that Mars will surprise us,” Lavery said.

Given the significant investment and hopes related to this mission, it would have been best to follow procedure and not jeopardize any aspect of the critical science.  Hopefully, NASA made the right decision.  The Monitor article goes on to state:

Conley’s predecessor at NASA, John D. Rummel, a professor of biology at East Carolina University, said, partly in jest: “It will be a sad day for NASA if they do detect ice or water. That’s because the Curiosity project will most likely be told, ‘Gee, that’s nice. Now turn around.'"

I recommend subscribing to the Science Friday podcast.  You will also be able to tap into other great Mars stories such as:

-- Martian Lab Made in Manhattan (Aug. 10, 2012):  

Curiosity carries one of the most "complicated instruments ever to land on the surface of another planet," according to NASA. The rover's  "Sample Analysis at Mars" -- which can take dirt and crushed rock from the Red Planet and analyze those samples for indicators of alien life -- was partly built in the Big Apple by Honeybee Robotics. Flora Lichtman got a tour of the facility.

-- Mars Excitement: Back to the Future (Aug. 08, 2012):

The excitement about the first pictures of Mars' surface coming back from the Curiosity mission to Mars is déjà vu all over again. I recall being at Jet Propulsion Laboratory during the Viking missions to Mars back in the mid 1970s and feeling the joy and exhilaration of seeing the first pictures ever sent back to Earth from another planet when Viking 1 touched down in July 1976. Think about it: The first pictures ever sent back from the surface of another planet! 

-- Carl Sagan's Welcome to Mars (Aug. 08, 2012):

Shortly before his death in 1996, astronomer and science broadcaster Carl Sagan recorded a message for future Mars explorers:

"Maybe we’re on Mars because of the magnificent science that can be done there — the gates of the wonder world are opening in our time. Maybe we’re on Mars because we have to be, because there’s a deep nomadic impulse built into us by the evolutionary process — we come, after all, from hunter-gatherers, and for 99.9% of our tenure on Earth we’ve been wanderers. And the next place to wander to is Mars. But whatever the reason you’re on Mars is, I’m glad you’re there. And I wish I was with you."

Last Chance to Participate in the MARS Project

Today is the last day to volunteer as a crew member for The Mars Society's Mars Desert Research Station, a project that has been underway for more than a decade:

In order to help develop key knowledge needed to prepare for human Mars exploration, and to inspire the public by making sensuous the vision of human exploration of Mars, the Mars Society has initiated the Mars Analog Research Station (MARS) project. A global program of Mars exploration operations research, the MARS project will include four Mars base-like habitats located in deserts in the Canadian Arctic, the American southwest, the Australian outback, and Iceland. In these Mars-like environments, we will launch a program of extensive long-duration geology and biology field exploration operations conducted in the same style and under many of the same constraints as they would on the Red Planet. By doing so, we will start the process of learning how to explore on Mars.

Each Station's centerpiece is a cylindrical habitat, "The Hab," an 8-meter diameter, two-deck structure mounted on landing struts. Peripheral external structures, some inflatable, may be appended to the Hab as well.

Each station will serve as a field base to teams of four to six crew members: geologists, astrobiologists, engineers, mechanics, physicians and others, who live for weeks to months at a time in relative isolation in a Mars analog environment. Mars analogs can be defined as locations on Earth where some environmental conditions, geologic features, biological attributes or combinations thereof may approximate in some specific way those thought to be encountered on Mars, either at present or earlier in that planet's history. Studying such sites leads to new insights into the nature and evolution of Mars, the Earth, and life.

It sounds like a great experiment that allows for greater participation in the planning of a future Mars journey.  Go here for the application if you want to be a member of the MARS crew.  Other volunteer opportunities are also available here. 

Note:  Each research team has its own mission patch.

Great Images: Pillar and Jets

More and more I find the beauty of space is more astounding than any artist can imagine here on Earth.  To the right is a fascinating NASA-provided image captured by the Hubble Space Telescope:
  
This Hubble photo is of a small portion of one of the largest-seen star-birth regions in the galaxy, the Carina Nebula. Towers of cool hydrogen laced with dust rise from the wall of the nebula. The pillar is also being pushed apart from within, as infant stars buried inside it fire off jets of gas that can be seen streaming from towering peaks. 

The much larger image shown below was released in 2007 to celebrate the 17th anniversary of the launch of the Hubble Space Telescope:

...a 50-light-year-wide view of the central region of the Carina Nebula where a maelstrom of star birth — and death — is taking place. This image is a mosaic of the Carina Nebula assembled from 48 frames taken with Hubble's Advanced Camera for Surveys. The Hubble images were taken in the light of neutral hydrogen during March and July 2005. Color information was added with data taken in December 2001 and March 2003 at the Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory in Chile. Red corresponds to sulfur, green to hydrogen, and blue to oxygen emission. 

If you are trying to locate the Pillars and Jets within the larger image, you can zoom the photo here.  Take a look in the upper right quadrant.

A Second Space Station?

I am not so sure the accomplished very much with our current International Space Station, and yet NASA is now proposing a second station.  This new station, called the "gateway spacecraft," would be located on the far side of the moon at the Earth-Moon Lagrange Point 2, approximately 38,000 miles from the moon and 277,000 miles from Earth.  At this spot the spacecraft would be in an equilibrium between the Earth and moon, thereby requiring little energy to remain in place.  Construction would begin sometime around 2019.

And what would this new station do?  Presumably it will serve as a way-station for trips to the moon and Mars. Now that sounds a little more intriguing than simply circling the Earth, which can be done by any satellite.  Mark K. Matthews in the Orlando Sentinel writes: 

Potential missions include the study of nearby asteroids or dispatching robotic trips to the moon that would gather moon rocks and bring them back to astronauts at the outpost. The outpost also would lay the groundwork for more-ambitious trips to Mars' moons and even Mars itself, about 140 million miles away on average...

It gives purpose to the Orion space capsule and the Space Launch System rocket, which are being developed at a cost of about $3 billion annually. It involves NASA's international partners, as blueprints for the outpost suggest using a Russian-built module and components from Italy. And the outpost would represent a baby step toward NASA's ultimate goal: human footprints on Mars.

This is encouraging, if funding can be located.  What is interesting is that I am seeing very little discussion outside of the Orlando story.  I hope to learn more about this story and this possibility.

Note:  The photo used above is from NASA:

The International Space Station can be seen as a small object in upper left of this image of the moon in the early evening Jan. 4 in the skies over the Houston area flying at an altitude of 390.8 kilometers (242.8 miles). The space station can occasionally be seen in the night sky with the naked eye and a pair of field binoculars.

David Brooks on Elon Musk

Last week's piece by New York Time's David Brooks, Temerity at the Top, was an interesting article on why America needs more Elon Musks.  Brooks holds up Elon Musk as an example of an immigrant who transformed the American economy, and the American dream, through his efforts.

...if growth is ever going to rebound, the U.S. will need a grandiosity rebound and the policies that encourage rich people with brass: immigration policies that attract people like Musk, tax rates that encourage risk and government policies that boost them along (SpaceX has benefited greatly from NASA, and Tesla received a big government loan).

Most of all, there has to be a culture that gives two cheers to grandiosity. Government can influence growth, but it’s people like Musk who create it. Stories like his are worth repeating because maybe some reader will think: What grand transformational process do I want to be a part of? If Musk pinioned his life to the Internet, electric cars and interplanetary travel, what are my projects? 

A BusinessWeek profile cited by Brooks is also worth viewing to learn more about Musk and his projects.  In terms of SpaceX, the author of the profile had this to say about the plant:

One group of workers is assembling the protective casing that will go around a satellite for a potential customer—the governments of both Canada and Thailand are interested, Musk says. Next year, SpaceX looks to launch eight flights, and as many as 16 the following year. If it hits those goals, SpaceX would be handling the majority of the world’s commercial spaceflights. (Companies like Virgin Galactic are offering trips for tourists.) In three years, SpaceX intends to send people to the space station for $20 million each, rather than the $63 million charged today. SpaceX may be Musk’s most solid performer—it already turns a profit as it works through its backlog of orders.
 
I agree with Brooks.  We need both dreamers and solid cooperation between the private sector and the federal government to bring America to the next level.  The private space cowboys are a good place to start.

Another Curiosity Landing Simulation

Just as astronomy has benefited from private citizens scanning the heavens with their own telescopes or offering some of their computer capacity to search for extraterrestrial life, private citizens are now assisting with videos and other media to make the space achievements more dramatic for the public.  I provided one example last month from Andrew Bodrov, and this month we have Bard Canning's painstakingly created "Curiosity Descent" covering Curiosity's landing on the Martian surface.  This video covers events from the heat shield separation all the way to the landing and Curiosity's panning the landscape.  A separate video shows how Mr. Cannin was able to create the video.  It's a fun presentation  And while it is not science, but rather a simulation (I covered NASA's pre-landing simulation earlier), it can only bring greater attention to NASA's amazing adventure.

In an interview, Mr. Canning stated:

My aim with this video was to bring the wonder of the Mars Science Laboratory mission to a wider audience.  To this end, I had to make the video a little more ‘Hollywood’ than its previous incarnations. I expected some backlash for this, but as you can see, the response has been overwhelmingly positive.

Last Word: India Defends Mars Mission

 

Given all the press criticizing India's plan to visit Mars, India's Prime Minister Manmohan Singh defending his nation's decision (as quoted in a recent article in The Times of Oman):

Questions are sometimes asked about whether a poor country like India can afford a space programme and whether the funds spent on space exploration, albeit modest, could be better utilised elsewhere," Singh said in a speech...This misses the point that a nation's state of development is finally a product of its technological prowess.

The statement was made as India successfully launched its 100th space mission placing two foreign commercial satellites into orbit.  Of course, the article then goes on to note that "42 percent of Indian children aged under five are underweight due to malnutrition."

TED Video: Project Orion

If you have a few minutes, you should watch the fascinating video from TED where George Dyson describes Project Orion, a planned mission funded by the United States Air Force (USAF) in the late 1950s and early 1960s.  George's father, Freeman Dyson, was part of the team working on the mission.  NASA wanted nothing to do with it.

As Mr. Dyson explains, this highly classified project was designed to put a man on Saturn, a feat that no one really talked about since given our difficulty in even envisioning a manned trip to Mars.  In the video, Mr. Dyson describes a Marriott hotel-sized, 8 million ton, nuclear-bomb propelled (2,000 to 3,000 bombs required) space craft that would take approximately 8 passengers to a moon of Saturn, possibly Io, Ganymede, Enceladus, Titan, or Mimas.   A larger version was also being planned for Jupiter that could carry a crew of 7 with room for an additional 7 scientists.  

The Orion Project was halted in 1965, most likely in reaction to the new restrictions under the Partial Test Ban Treaty of 1963.  But what  an amazing tale of big ideas, and, I suppose, silly ideas given the planned fuel.  However, Mr. Dyson claims the design may be one of the few off-the-shelf ideas for intercepting a planet killer asteroid, which may be why NASA has purchased some of the material from Mr. Dyson's archives (since NASA misplaced its copies, if they were ever shared with them). 

Mr. Dyson tells more in his 2002 book

The improbable story of the wildest idea-a space craft powered by hydrogen bombs-to come out of the space race.

It was the late 1950s. The Cold War was raging. Sputnik had made its voyage and the space race was on. In America, it was the age of tail fins and "duck and cover," but it was also a time of big ideas and dreams. On his way to school one day, George Dyson learned of a truly fantastical idea: massive space vehicles that would be powered by explosions of multiple hydrogen bombs. Among the brilliant minds behind this project was George's father, the eminent physicist Freeman Dyson. 

Project Orion chronicles this fascinating episode in U.S. scientific research, while capturing a unique time in American history and culture. The project brought together a cadre of brilliant physicists, the first such assemblage since the Manhattan Project of fifteen years earlier. In an idyllic seaside community in southern California-the very picture of 1950s suburban prosperity-a handful of scientists, tackled a massive project that required the ingenuity of an engineer and the vision of a great theoretician. Their work-ambitious but ultimately futile-took place against the political and cultural backdrop of the Cold War, when nuclear technology spelled both promise and terror.

Dyson's prodigious historical and scientific research, combined with his personal reminiscences and connections, make for a lively, richly detailed narrative.

Three cheers for big ideas, and we can only hope that other highly classified projects are thinking long term about space exploration.  Of course, I would prefer a more open debate with the involvement of NASA rather than some military-only application.  However, as I noted earlier, the USAF seems to prefer its own parallel space program. 

Great Images: Dione and Rhea

You might think you are watching daughter cells, as as one planet splits into two.  But what you really see are two of Saturn's moon, Dione and Rhea, passing your sight of vision in their orbits while still very far apart.  Here is the explanation from Discover Magazine:

...the top moon there is Dione, and the bottom one is Rhea. As Cassini flew by them, Dione was closer (a little more than 1.1 million km or about 690,000 miles), and Rhea farther away (1.6 million km or 1 million miles). The angle of Cassini’s trajectory was just right such that Dione passed right in front of Rhea, and it snapped this image just as it happened.

"Think of Neil Armstrong and Give Him a Wink"

Earlier today astronaut Neil Armstrong passed away at the age of 82.  His first walk on the moon's surface, an amazing feat regardless of nationality or politics, set America on the path of great achievements in space. 

NASA released this statement from his family:

We are heartbroken to share the news that Neil Armstrong has passed away following complications resulting from cardiovascular procedures.

Neil was our loving husband, father, grandfather, brother and friend.

Neil Armstrong was also a reluctant American hero who always believed he was just doing his job. He served his Nation proudly, as a navy fighter pilot, test pilot, and astronaut. He also found success back home in his native Ohio in business and academia, and became a community leader in Cincinnati.

He remained an advocate of aviation and exploration throughout his life and never lost his boyhood wonder of these pursuits.

As much as Neil cherished his privacy, he always appreciated the expressions of good will from people around the world and from all walks of life.

While we mourn the loss of a very good man, we also celebrate his remarkable life and hope that it serves as an example to young people around the world to work hard to make their dreams come true, to be willing to explore and push the limits, and to selflessly serve a cause greater than themselves.

For those who may ask what they can do to honor Neil, we have a simple request. Honor his example of service, accomplishment and modesty, and the next time you walk outside on a clear night and see the moon smiling down at you, think of Neil Armstrong and give him a wink.