A Beautiful Planet - Blue Planet Part II

You may remember the IMAX film Blue Planet from 1990.  It was an fascinating adventure with views of the Earth from the NASA space shuttle missions.  It also provided plenty of warnings about what we needed to do to protect the planet. 

The latest IMAX film A Beautiful Planet is more or less an update of that earlier film 26 years later, but this time focusing on views from the International Space Station (which was a good choice since we now lack a space shuttle program). 

The IMAX film premiered yesterday and can be seen across the nation at IMAX theaters. 

The Martian: Art May Create Reality

"When I saw the U.S. film 'The Martian', which envisages China-U.S. cooperation on a Mars rescue mission under emergency circumstances, it shows that our U.S. counterparts very much hope to cooperate with us."

--Comments by Xu Dazhe, the chief of the China National Space Administration, quoted in a Reuters article 

NASA Was Worried About Crew Morale

A Slate story discussing women in space shared this earlier perspective from a 1970s NASA paper:

It is possible that woman, qualified from a scientific viewpoint, might be persuaded to donate her time and energies for the sake of improving crew morale. 

I am glad they threw in that "scientific viewpoint" so this astronaut could understand her crewmates in various ways.

The article is about how the space agency is coming to terms with "female needs," which seemed to be the lesser concern years ago. You can read about fears of "menstrual disturbances" and more.

I hope no one brings this up at a committee hearing. I really do not want to hear a male Senator try to wrap his head around the issue. The next thing you know we will be discussing separate bathrooms on the space station. 

Note: In case you are wondering, everyone uses the same toilet on the space station. The toilet below is on the Zvezda Service Module. 

Amazing Views of Planet Earth

It is worth looking back down once in awhile on this big blue marble called Earth. We are searching the heavens to find what we already have - an amazing planet that can meet all of our needs if we can learn how to live within its limits.

This NASA video taken from the International Space Station shows a surface that is stunningly beautiful. As Carl Sagan has said, 

The beauty of a living thing is not the atoms that go into it, but the way those atoms are put together.

The arrangement of atoms on our home planet never fails to cause awe and wonder. 

For other great space station clips go to this NASA YouTube site. 

Spuds on Mars

Maybe Matt Damon's character in The Martian was on to something. NASA is looking into growing potatoes on the Martian surface.  Fortunately, Peru can offer about about 4,500 varieties, so it is possible the perfect match can be found.  Maybe we will get a Red Planet potato for use both on-world and off-world.

In a Wall Street Journal interview, NASA planetary scientist Chris McKay stated, “I think we’ll be able to find varieties of potatoes that will grow at cold and low-pressure conditions. That would be interesting to know for Mars applications.”  

And when he says cold he means it - averaging minus 84 degrees Fahrenheit, with lows going to minus 284 degrees. Add to that high amounts of radiation and you have created a difficult scenario for any garden. 

Potato tests in Peru will help to determine the strongest varieties for possible replanting on Mars. Hopefully, this region in the New World can be the springboard for expanding life on another planet. 

All of this good news in that we have moved past "Will we go to Mars?" and on to "How will we live on Mars?" 

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.