A $600 Million Ride to the Moon?

The Russians made an offer sometime back to Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos to see how much he wanted to go to the moon - $200 million to circle the moon in a Soyuz spacecraft. When Mr. Bezos said he wanted Russia to test the mission first, the Russians agreed for another $400 million. I guess anything is possible with a few dollars on your pocket.

Of course, Mr. Bezos said no and now he hopes to create new space tourists via his company Blue Origin at a much lower costs. I think this is a much better way to spend his funds.

You can read the full story at Space.com.

Siri Goes to Alpha Centauri

Talk is growing concerning sending robotic missions to other planets, in this case the planets in the Alpha Centauri system.  That's right, a mission of many tiny, light-propelled spacecraft traveling at 20 percent the speed of light would leave our solar system to explore the great beyond.  Each little "probe" would cost about the same as an iPhone.  And this proposed voyage to our closest neighboring star system would take only 20 years.

The project is called "Breakthrough Starshot" and it involves space financier Yuri Milner (of the earlier "Breakthrough Listen"), cosmologist Stephen Hawking, and Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg. This is quite a cast of characters sure to encourage more interest and funding.

Here is what they are proposing:

...with current rocket propulsion technology, it would take tens or hundreds of millennia to reach our neighboring star system, Alpha Centauri. The stars, it seems, have set strict bounds on human destiny. Until now.

In the last decade and a half, rapid technological advances have opened up the possibility of light-powered space travel at a significant fraction of light speed. This involves a ground-based light beamer pushing ultra-light nanocrafts – miniature space probes attached to lightsails – to speeds of up to 100 million miles an hour. Such a system would allow a flyby mission to reach Alpha Centauri in just over 20 years from launch, and beam home images of possible planets, as well as other scientific data such as analysis of magnetic fields.

Breakthrough Starshot aims to demonstrate proof of concept for ultra-fast light-driven nanocrafts, and lay the foundations for a first launch to Alpha Centauri within the next generation. Along the way, the project could generate important supplementary benefits to astronomy, including solar system exploration and detection of Earth-crossing asteroids.

Of course, the challenges facing such a mission are enormous, and the initiative has a long list of topics that need to be resolved first, such as battery design, light sail strength, the risks of interstallar dusk, focusing light beams, communication over great distances, and more.  In other words, this mission will not take off tomorrow.  But the $100 million contribution from Mr. Milner will certainly help to get things started.

Trial runs in our own solar system are part of the planning stages.  For instance, we could send a small spacecraft to Pluto in about 3 days rather than 9 years.  So even without reaching distant planets, this project could transform how we study our own solar system.  

Great Image: Close Up of the Milky Way

The image above is one of 700 stitched together to show us the Milky Way galaxy in its full beauty as viewed from Earth's Southern Hemisphere.  These images were taken by the APEX telescope in Chile’s Atacama Desert. National Geographic reports it took about 3 years to collect all of these images.  You can also scroll through the entire set of images at the National Geographic link.  An impressive feat!

Flawless Blue Origin Rocket Landing

With all the recent praise of SpaceX's successful landing of its Falcon 9 reusable rocket, let's not forget that Blue Origin also had a successful landing of its New Shepard reusable rocket recently as well. Blue Origin CEO Bezos said it best in this Tweet:

Flawless BE-3 restart and perfect booster landing.  CC chutes deployed. @BlueOrigin

--Jeff Bezos (@JeffBezos) April 2, 2016

 You can watch the landing in this clip from Blue Origin.

A Whole New Trajectory for Weapons of War

I have heard of beating swords into ploughshares, but converting intercontinental missiles into space rockets?  That is a new one, but I like the idea.

Orbital ATK Vice President Barron Beneski has proposed using decommissioned intercontinental ballistic missiles (such as the Peacekeeper above) for new purposes.  It makes a lot of sense, particularly for a company that lacks its own rockets.  Orbital ATK was using old Soviet-era rockets until one exploded.  Now its Cygnus cargo ship resupplying the International Space Station is hooking a ride on competitor rockets. 

Of course, no good idea goes unopposed, and Virgin Galactic is trying to spike this idea because Orbital ATK may become a competitor. 

This is the other side of private sector space competition - everyone wants to have the best rocket and not really share the profits.  Left to itself, we will be back to the huge space companies with few new ideas.  I think the decommissioning idea is a good one - reuse old rockets for space purposes and allow the Air Force to unload some inventory that is expensive to maintain.  And these rockets can be sold to any party, not just Orbital ATK, to maintain a level playing field. 

SpaceX: Success!

SpaceX has done it!  Earlier today the space company's Falcon 9 rocket successfully landed on a drone platform off the coast of Florida following a successful launch of a Dragon cargo ship towards the International Space Station. Long-awaited good news for all. 

President Obama was also impressed, tweeting:

Congrats SpaceX on landing a rocket at sea. It's because of innovators like you & NASA that America continues to lead in space exploration.

— President Obama (@POTUS) April 8, 2016

Update:  The Dragon cargo ship safely arrived at the International Space Station yesterday (April 10th).  One of the items delivered is BEAM, or the Bigelow Expandable Activity Module, which will serve as inflatable space habitat attached to the station.

Han Solo Wasn't So Tough

A piece by Kenneth Chang in the New York Times recently noted the asteroids in our asteroid belt would be nothing like what you saw the Millennium Falcon navigate in Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back. Wait, George Lucas misled us?

In his entertaining and informative article, Mr. Chang produces a few figures on the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter, and then adds this: 

 S. Alan Stern, the principal investigator for the New Horizons mission to Pluto wrote that when his spacecraft passed through the asteroid belt in 2006, the chance of collision was “almost vanishingly small — far less than one in one billion.”

So, Lucas was exaggerating, and our spacecraft heading to the outer planets were never in jeopardy.  I feel much better.  But what about that asteroid monster?
 

International Space Station Traffic Jam

Things are getting busy up there in low Earth orbit.  The other week Orbital ATK sent up a Cygnus cargoship.  And then Russian resupply ship Progress 63 (animation shown above) was launched from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan on March 31st.  Progress 61 had to undock and depart to make way for Progress 63. 

And now SpaceX is preparing for another Dragon resupply run on April 8th with a crew of mice to see how their little bodies handle space.  The mice will later be dissected and sent back to Earth for further study.  Scott Kelly did a little better than that with his mission. 

It is nice to see this complex interchange becoming so routine with the private sector playing a growing role.  A good sign for future cooperation and space projects. 

Quotable: Was Galileo Overrated?

"...he was not the only telescopic astronomical observer at the time, and all the discoveries he made were made independently and contemporaneously by others in Britain, Germany, even Italy. This point is hard to reconcile with the modern myth because even if Galileo had never used a telescope, it would not have changed anything in the history of astronomy."

-From an article by Thony Christie in his Aeon article titled "Galileo’s Reputation is More Hyperbole Than Truth." 

Scott Kelly: He Was Lucky

I thought this was a fun article on a year in space from Matt Novak at Paleofuture called Everything That Happened On Earth While These Guys Spent aYear in Space.  He highlights a few things that Scott Kelly missed out on, including Scott Walker, Donald Trump, Chipolte, the Apple Watch, and hover boards. I expect Mr. Kelly was well informed while on the International Space Station, yet also pretty busy and with little time to keep up on such important news.  That said, now that he is back, I would not be surprised if he chooses a quiet cabin in the woods to escape this silliness one more time.

Great Image: Flight of the Phoenix

You may disagree with a friend about what a particular cloud formation resembles, but the image in the aurora above is pretty clear. This image was captured in the night sky of Iceland.  Pretty impressive.  And the updated image below shows you what was else was in the sky.  It looks like quite a show.

Here is a little more from NASA's Astronomy Picture of the Day:

All of the other aurora watchers had gone home. By 3:30 am in Iceland, on a quiet night last September, much of that night's auroras had died down. Suddenly though, a new burst of particles streamed down from space, lighting up the Earth's atmosphere once again. This time, unexpectedly, pareidoliacally, they created an amazing shape reminiscent of a giant phoenix. With camera equipment at the ready, two quick sky images were taken, followed immediately by a third of the land. The mountain in the background is Helgafell, while the small foreground river is called Kaldá, both located about 30 kilometers north of Iceland's capital Reykjavik. Seasoned skywatchers will note that just above the mountain, toward the left, is the constellation of Orion, while the Pleiades star cluster is also visible just above the frame center. The new aurora lasted only a minute and would be gone forever -- possibly dismissed as an embellished aberration -- were it not captured in the featured, digitally-composed, image mosaic.

Image Credit:  Hallgrimur P. Helgason; Rollover Annotation: Judy Schmidt

Studying Methane on Mars

One of the tasks of the ExoMars mission on its way to Mars is to study the methane in the Red Planet's atmosphere. Specifically, we want to know more about its source since we know life can create the gas. Of course, geology and other factors could also be at work.

A recent Discovery article highlighted one more culprit- comets. In a research paper, NASA's Marc Fries stated: 

Individual instances of  methane detection on Mars have been reported on five occasions via Earth-based telescopic observations, once by the ESA Mars Express mission over a two-month period, and eight times by the Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) rover. For all instances, Mars experienced a close interaction with  the  orbit  of   a  periodic  comet  within  16  days  previous  to  the  observation  of   methane.  Moreover, all methane  observations  correlate  with  interactions  between  Mars  and  seven  comets.  These  comets  have  all been previously identified as the likely sources of  meteor showers on Mars.

An interesting idea. And more scientific speculation about our solar system, similar to guesses about the source of the mysterious bright spots on Ceres (see below), that demonstrates how much we do not yet know about our own neighborhood.

Planned Disaster

International Space Station (ISS) replenishment work continued with yesterday's launch of the Orbital ATK Cygnus cargoship. Everything went as planned.

Now the question is whether a planned disaster will also go well.  In May, the ISS will release the Cygnus cargoship so it can be set afire in space. This controlled burn will help NASA understand and prepare for such potential disasters in the future.

It is all very interesting. SpaceX is trying to safely retrieve all of its equipment whereas Orbital ATK, which doesn't even have its own rockets, is intentionally destroying its only asset.

Update:  The Cygnus cargoship arrived safely at the ISS on March 26th.  Here is a video of the capture of the ship.

New Crew Arrives at the Space Station

A new crew of one American and two Russians safely arrived at the International Space Station (ISS) over the weekend after launching from Kazakhstan.  The American astronaut, Jeff Williams, is preparing to break Scott Kelly's record for the amount of time on the ISS.  So much for long term laurels. 

What is interesting is that Mr. Williams is 58 years old still going for the record, while Mr. Kelly is retiring from the program at the age of 52.  Mr. Williams will be the oldest NASA astronaut ever serving on an ISS mission.  Back in 2000 he was on an Atlantis shuttle mission helping to construct the ISS. 

You can follow Mr. Williams blog here. 

A New Mars Mission Begins

A new mission to Mars started Monday with the launching of the ExoMars orbiter from Kazakstan. Designed to analyze the Martian atmosphere, the Trace Gas Orbiter and Schiaparelli probe, also called the Entry, Descent and landing demonstrator Module, will take about 7 months to reach Mars.  The ExoMars mission site highlights the goals of the mission:

• Search for signs of past and present life on Mars;
• Investigate how the water and geochemical environment varies; and
• Investigate Martian atmospheric trace gases and their sources.

While NASA was once a partner with the European Space Agency on this mission, the Russian Federal Space Agency is the new partner.  Part two involving a rover will launch sometime in 2018.

Both Europe and Russia have had some Mars SNAFUs in the recent past, so they know the dangers involved in these missions.  More observers, probes, and rovers should assist us in our understanding of Mars and its potential for visitors at some later point. 

Pay Attention Presidential Candidates

US space organizations are wasting no time explaining the space needs of the nation in time for the upcoming presidential election, not that I think a vote for Hillary or Trump will be based on Mars and rockets.  The paper, titled "Ensuring U.S. Leadership in Space," can be found here.

In describing the paper, the Space Foundation notes:

For nearly 60 years, U.S. government and private sector investment and partnerships in space have been critical to the nation and our world. They make possible a $330 billion global space industry, establish new technologies, revolutionize national security, enable and extend our global communication networks, help us understand our own planet better and inspire millions of Americans to study science, technology, engineering and mathematics.

Yet there still remain serious challenges to U.S. leadership in space that the next administration and congress will have to address. The white paper outlines the challenges that the U.S. space program faces, including unpredictable budgeting, foreign competition and workforce trends. In addition to detailing the challenges, the paper explores sensible policy recommendations to address and overcome them, actions necessary to continue our nation's leadership in space.

Here are some observations from the paper:

-- Despite its significant accomplishments, NASA’s funding has fallen to historically low levels (adjusted for inflation) – below where it was during the mid-1990s – squeezing the agency’s ability to develop new missions for human exploration, astronomy, planetary science, Earth science, solar science, technology development, and aeronautics research, which has led to cost and schedule inefficiencies for ongoing programs and missions.

-- Currently, only China and Russia are capable of launching humans into space. The U.S. now depends upon Russia to launch American astronauts to the International Space Station (ISS). Between 2012 and 2017, NASA will pay Russia over $2.1 billion to ferry astronauts to and from the ISS. Fully funding NASA’s commercial crew program to restore U.S. capability for independent access to the ISS and low Earth orbit remains paramount.  

-- Space is an increasingly congested, contested, and competitive domain in which space-based assets are threatened by orbital debris as well as cyber and kinetic attacks. Moreover, there is risk introduced by both unintentional and intentional interference (jamming) of radio frequencies by both terrestrial and space-based systems. This puts human missions at risk and threatens the safety of all space platforms.

It is not a very optimistic picture.  To see Russia and China ahead of us on space capabilities is disturbing yet not surprising.  Whoever sits in the White House next year if the theme is restoring America then this is one area where it can be done.  Social benefits are certainly important, yet the ability to see something larger than ourselves is also important for a nation.  And it can be accomplished with focus and not an overwhelming amount of funds.  Are we up to it?

Astronaut Kelly Announces His Retirement

"My career with the Navy and NASA gave me an incredible chance to showcase public service to which I am dedicated, and what we can accomplish on the big challenges of our day. I am humbled and excited by new opportunities for me to support and share the amazing work NASA is doing to help us travel farther into the solar system and work with the next generation of science and technology leaders."

-- Astronaut Scott Kelly announcing his plans to retire from NASA April 1st.   For more on his career visit here.

J.J. Abrams Takes on a Real Space Story

J.J. Abrams has been the king of space stories over the years with his reworking of the Star Trek stories in the movies (with mixed success in my opinion) to his continuation of the Star Wars movies (where he went the other extreme and took no chances).

Now he has a real story to tell. Mr. Abrams is involved in a new series called Moon Shot all about the Google Lunar XPrize.  While his involvement is minimal, that's the way it works in Hollywood - names are everything.  

Here are the basics on the Lunar XPrize competition:

 Created in 2007, the mission of the Google Lunar XPRIZE is to incentivize space entrepreneurs to create a new era of affordable access to the Moon and beyond.

 The competition’s $30 million prize purse will be awarded to teams who are able to land a privately funded rover on the moon, travel 500 meters, and transmit back high definition video and images.

The lunar efforts run through 2017 when the launches should occur.  So the the nine-part series has years of activities to share.  Here is a trailer for the documentary.

Moon Shot will premiere on Google Play March 15th and YouTube and March 17th. I just hope they don't reboot the XPrize by throwing in time travel.

Great Image: The Tarantula Nebula

What a sight! An amazing cluster of light, energy, matter, and beauty (from afar). Can  you imagine this taking up half the night sky? No one would go indoors (that is, if they could even see it nowadays with the amount of light pollution from cities). 

Here is the full story on the image:

The Tarantula Nebula is more than a thousand light-years in diameter, a giant star forming region within nearby satellite galaxy the Large Magellanic Cloud, about 180 thousand light-years away. The largest, most violent star forming region known in the whole Local Group of galaxies, the cosmic arachnid sprawls across this spectacular composite view constructed with space- and ground-based image data. Within the Tarantula (NGC 2070), intense radiation, stellar winds and supernova shocks from the central young cluster of massive stars, cataloged as R136, energize the nebular glow and shape the spidery filaments. Around the Tarantula are other star forming regions with young star clusters, filaments, and blown-out bubble-shaped clouds In fact, the frame includes the site of the closest supernova in modern times, SN 1987A, at the lower right. The rich field of view spans about 1 degree or 2 full moons, in the southern constellation Dorado. But were the Tarantula Nebula closer, say 1,500 light-years distant like the local star forming Orion Nebula, it would take up half the sky.

Image Credit & Copyright: Processing - Robert Gendler, Roberto Colombari

Data - Hubble Tarantula Treasury, European Southern Observatory 

SpaceX: The Company Can't Get It Up

Maybe tomorrow will be the day. SpaceX has already scrubbed an SES-9 communications satellite launch four times now for various reasons, according to Spacenews:

- First scrub - liquid propellant issue;

- Second scrub - liquid propellant again;

- Third scrub - a boat strayed into the launch area; and 

- Fourth scrub - high winds.

SpaceX has already delayed this launch from last fall, so it needs to prove it can deliver quality launches on time. It seems the delays relate more to future SpaceX plans - reusable rockets - rather than current needs. 

NextGov noted that the super-cooled fuel was an essential part of obtaining sufficient density for the Falcon 9 rockets to return after placing their payload. It's the very technology that promises future benefits that is frustrating customers today.

I expect the current customers can wait a few days. The next launch could occur as early as tomorrow. Yet I also bet Mr. Musk is biting his nails and rethinking his options going forward.

Update: The good news is that the fifth launch attempt on Friday was successful. The satellite is up. The bad news is that the returning rocket did not successfully land on the drone barge.