Mars Not a Budgetary Priority

The NASA's 2013 budget was recently released and, surprise of surprises, Mars is on the cutting table.  It is not all bad news since the James Web Space Telescope is being funded, as are studies on future trips to Saturn's moon Enceladus as well as Uranus.  However, further work on a Europa mission has been shelved for now as well.  Of course, NASA put a very positive spin on the proposed budget:

"This budget in-sources jobs, creates capabilities here at home -- and strengthens our workforce, all while opening the next great chapter in American exploration," NASA Administrator Charles Bolden said. "And as we reach for new heights in space, we're creating new jobs right here on Earth, helping to support an economy that's built to last."

The NASA budget includes $4 billion for space operations and $4 billion for exploration activities in the Human Exploration Operations mission directorate, including close-out of the Space Shuttle Program, and funding for the International Space Station, $4.9 billion for science, $669 million for space technology and $552 million for aeronautics research. 

It was very important to put that "jobs" piece and "built to last" into this budget spin, with little time for dreaming these days.  However, not everyone is convinced.  The Planetary Society has his own take on this new budget in a press release titled "Proposed FY 2013 Budget Would Devastate Planetary Science in NASA":

NASA’s planetary science program is being singled out for drastic cuts, with its budget dropping by 20 percent, from $1.5 billion this year to $1.2 billion next year. The steep reductions will continue for at least the next five years -- if the Administration’s proposal is not changed. This would strike at the heart of one of NASA’s most productive and successful programs over the past decade. 

If Congress enacts the proposed budget, there will be no “flagship” missions of any kind, killing the tradition of great missions of exploration, such as Voyager and Cassini to the outer planets. NASA’s storied Mars program will be cut drastically, falling from $587 million for FY 2012 to $360 in FY 2013, and forcing missions to be cancelled. The search for life on other potentially habitable worlds -- such as Mars, Europa, Enceladus, or Titan -- will be effectively abandoned.

“People know that Mars and Europa are the two most important places to search in our solar system for evidence of other past or present life forms, said Jim Bell, Planetary Society President, “Why, then, are missions to do those searches being cut in this proposed budget? If enacted, this would represent a major backwards step in the exploration of our solar system.”

It is interesting that one source is talking about exploration in the regions of Saturn and Uranus while another implies an end to all such missions.  And of course this is not the final budget. It is no fun reading these budget documents, but I may give it a try to make some sense of all of this.  The bottom line, of course, is that we have some lean years ahead of us and this White House may be more interested in locating jobs on Earth than life on other planets. This is the new reality (or maybe it has always been thus, but better packaged).

Great Images: Spitzer Captures a Quadruple-Star System

Here is a great image from NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory:

This artist concept depicts a quadruple-star system called HD 98800. The system is approximately 10 million years old, and is located 150 light-years away in the constellation TW Hydrae. 

HD 98800 contains four stars, which are paired off into doublets, or binaries. The stars in the binary pairs orbit around each other, and the two pairs also circle each other like choreographed ballerinas. One of the stellar pairs, called HD 98800B, has a disk of dust around it, while the other pair does not.

Although the four stars are gravitationally bound, the distance separating the two binary pairs is about 50 astronomical units (AU) -- slightly more than the average distance between our sun and Pluto.

Billions of Planets Throughout the Galaxy

A recent issue of Science News noted how scientists are now estimating that the Milky Way galaxy has 100 billion planets or more.  This works out to an average of 1.6 planets per star.  And smaller planets like ours are more common than large planets.  Pretty impressive stuff considering it was only a few years back when we were seeking evidence of any planets outside of our solar system. 

The Science News article states,

To make their estimate, the scientists used data that had been gathered from 2002 to 2007 by surveys looking for the temporary brightening in a distant star’s light caused by the gravity of a body passing in front of it. If that passing body is a star with planets, the system causes a predictable boost in the distant star’s light, revealing the presence of the closer planet.

So my question now is whether this estimate would also include planets that are not circling stars.  It seems unlikely.  Last year NASA reported,

The discovery indicates there are many more free-floating Jupiter-mass planets that can't be seen. The team estimates there are about twice as many of them as stars. In addition, these worlds are thought to be at least as common as planets that orbit stars. This would add up to hundreds of billions of lone planets in our Milky Way galaxy alone...The survey is not sensitive to planets smaller than Jupiter and Saturn, but theories suggest lower-mass planets like Earth should be ejected from their stars more often. As a result, they are thought to be more common than free-floating Jupiters.

So now we are looking at 300 billion or more planets throughout the galaxy.  While we strive for Mars today, the possibilities for the future are mind-boggling. 

Tissint Metorite: Mars Rocks Earth

We have heard a number of theories about comets and meteorites seeding life here on earth, and recently we saw even more evidence of outside interference.  According to The Meteoritical Society, last July the Maritain Tissint meteorite (see photo to right) crashed in the Moroccan desert:

At about 2 am local time on July 18, 2011, a bright fireball was observed by several people in the region of the Oued Drâa valley, east of Tata, Morocco. One eyewitness, Mr Aznid Lhou, reported that it was at first yellow in color, and then turned green illuminating all the area before it appeared to split into two parts. Two sonic booms were heard over the valley. In October 2011, nomads began to find very fresh, fusion-crusted stones in a remote area of the Oued Drâa intermittent watershed, centered about 50 km ESE of Tata and 48 km SSW of Tissint village, in the vicinity of the Oued El Gsaïb drainage and also near El Ga’ïdat plateau known as Hmadat Boû Rba’ ine. The largest stones were recovered in the El Ga’ïdat plateau, whereas the smallest one (a few grams) closer to the El Aglâb Mountains. One 47 g crusted stone was documented as being found at 29°28.917’ N, 7°36.674’ W. 

Are such meteorites odd?  Not really, though eye-witness stories of such landings are odd.  And this particular lot of rocks is pretty sizable, with one meteorite fragment weighing more than 2 pounds.  Back in 2001, a Discover Magazine article noted that "...up to 5 percent of the rocks launched from Mars land on Earth within 10 million years. Many arrive much sooner— some within a few years."  Moreover, one scientific team noted that "...50 billion Martian rocks landed on Earth during the first 500 million years of the solar system. Of those, about 20,000 rocks struck Earth within a decade. And throughout the subsequent 4 billion years, as many as 5 billion more Martian meteoroids journeyed our way. If life ever existed on Mars, it's quite possible that it contaminated Earth repeatedly."  This is an impressive amount of material littering the Earth.

Interestingly enough, you can now buy the Tissint meteorite as well as many other just like it.  Of course, a piece of the Tissint meteorite will cost about 10 times the price of gold.  In fact, it is not too hard to find a place selling meteorites.  Check out Galactic Stone and Ironworks, where you can purchase various meteorite specimens.  For example, to the right is the Bensour meteorite fragments on sale for $6 apiece.  According to the sellers, the meteorite has a similar story to the Tissint meteorite:

In February of 2002, nomads in the remote Saharan desert near the Moroccan-Algerian border saw a shower of meteorites rain down.  These meteorites turned out to be a beautiful LL6 chondrite that is well-known for it's dark black crust and contrasting light-grey matrix with metal flecks.   

It is pretty amazing that NASA and the European Space Agency are still devising a mission to bring back Martian samples while they are literally dropping out of the sky.  Don't tell Congress since they will most likely organize inexpensive rock hunts on Earth rather than billion dollar missions to Mars.

Moon or Bust: Newt Style

While I wish our political discussions where geared towards Mars, it appears our moon is back on the table as the ultimate destination in the near future.  Republican presidential candidate Newt Gingrich has been discussing the merits of a moon base at his recent campaign appearances. In fact, he is already looking at delegate counts for his third term as president since the moon base will be an established post with 13,000 residents by the end of his term, by his reckoning at least.  Yes, these moon colonists can apply for statehood. 

In a recent interview, Neil DeGrasse Tyson noted that Newt has been bashing government with one hand and then touting the Apollo program and first landing on the moon on the other hand.  Dr. Tyson pointed out that government has a role in funding risky ventures, be it Columbus and his journey to the New World or Lewis and Clark as they explored an expanding America. 

Jon Stewart had it right when he noted that Newt has more interest in statehood for a non-existent moon colony then 500,000 Americans situated in Washington, DC.  One wonders if Newt has any interest in science on the moon or only campaigning for statehood on the moon.  And we may need to set some boundaries with the Chinese and Russians if they already have some similar claims.  Maybe we can buy out the Russians as we did with Alaska and give the Chinese the dark side of the moon.  So many possibilities.

I support the idea of big thinking for our space program, and maybe we need to piggy-back on silly political aspirations to do something at all.  As Great Britain's Telegraph noted recently,

Both the United States and to a greater extent Europe are suffering from a collective sense of ennui, a lack inspiration or purpose, which has manifested itself in a decline in invention and innovation. Nothing better illustrates America’s decline than the technological improvements of its space programme, or lack of them. The LA Times noted last year, when NASA announced plans “to build a heavy launch vehicle capable of sending astronauts beyond low-Earth orbit by 2025", that it would be only "slightly more powerful than the 1960s-era Saturn V that launched Americans to the moon”. How shameful.

If we needed the Cold War to get to the moon, maybe we need a pompous politician to break earth orbit.  I just wish we had even bolder aspirations than repeating the past.  If this base is a more practical port for later adventures, then it may have merit.  If it is only to thumb our nose back at the remaining earthlings, then I believe we can do better things with our money.

Update:  I enjoyed Jonah Goldberg's somewhat humorous take on big government projects, such as a lunar mission, in the February 20, 2012, edition of National Review:

...if you're going to go Keynesian, it might as well be on big cool stuff that helps define you as a nation for the better, inspires little kids in positive ways, encourages scientific education and training, helps create a whole generation of creative people (Steve Jobs, Steven Spielberg, and countless others were defined by their love of the space program), intimidates our enemies, and gets us one giant step closer to a Taco Bell on the moon.  You can't put a price on that.

The End of "LIFE" (And the Russian Mars Probe)

It’s another unexpected event in space exploration, always a risky business.  Rest assured that The Planetary Society will continue to press forward and seek answers to those deep questions: Where did we come from, and are we alone?

 -- Bill Nye
    CEO, The Planetary Society

I received this email a few days ago and now I read the Planetary Society's LIFE experiment, as well as the Russian probe Phobos-Grunt, came crashing down into the Pacific ocean yesterday (see my earlier piece).  It was a sad ordeal for the Russian space program, made worse by some Russians looking for someone to blame.  According to Canada's National Post, the Russians are looking at the internal causes of this failure. 

That's more encouraging then what we heard a few days ago where Roscosmos chief Vladimir Popovkin indicated the West may have been to blame for the probe's problem.  Of course, not only did the probe contain a U.S. experiment (LIFE) but also a Chinese probe.  It was a truly international effort.  I hope we are getting past finger-pointing now, but it is not encouraging when the only country getting us to the International Space Station may think we are sabotaging their space program. 

What About the Worst Science Stories

We finished up 2011 with the biggest science stories, but what about the duds?  Fortunately, the magazine The Scientist came up with a list of the top science scandals of 2011.  Sadly, not every scientist is showing the greatest judgement or demonstrating a high level of integrity.  Five examples cited by the article related to (1) Diederik Stapel and his multiple problematic papers, (2) mice and chronic fatigue syndrome, (3) genes associated with extreme longevity, (4) arsenic-based life, and (5) change skeptic Edward Wegman. 

One of my earlier pieces discussed the arsenic-based life story when it first broke.  In fact, it was a NASA announcement, which only makes the error more serious. As I even noted then, there was great skepticism about this finding from the outset.  However, the paper has not been retracted.  Hence, the controversy continues. 

Such scandals are quite destructive at a time when much of the public is looking for reasons to ignore difficult choices and retreat to a more comfortable position where everything that needs to be known has been settled.  Risk-taking is a natural part of science, as is trial and error.  We just need to recognize those errors, learn from them, and move on.  Publishing these errors as new knowledge does great harm.

10 Biggest Science Stories

London's Guardian newspaper recently posted The Year's 10 Biggest Stories in science.  Of these stories, four touched upon astronomy, space travel, or the origins of our universe.  These stories were:

-- Flying faster than the speed of light just might be possible after all:  Discusses the CERN experiment that found neutrinos may have been traveling faster than light.

-- The best candidate for finding life on another world has been pinpointed by astronomers:  Notes how the Kepler telescope found Kepler 22-b, a planet 600 lights years away that is about 2.4 times the size of earth and sits within the "goldilocks zone."  With an average surface temperature of 22C (72 F), a solar orbit of 290 Earth days, and the possibility of water, the newly identified planet may be able to harbor life as we know it.

-- Mars continue to be a tricky place to reach:  The article notes that of the past 38 Mars missions, 19 have failed.  The Russian's most recent failure was not encouraging. 

-- We learned that the Higgs boson really does exist:  Scientists reported earlier in December that the Higgs boson, or the substance that gives all other particles their mass, may have been found. This offers some important insights into the origins of our universe.

Yes, it has been a pretty interesting year.  Now if we could only find a way to travel faster than light, we might have a chance to explore worlds such as Kepler 22-b.  Of course, we may need to do a better job getting to Mars before we worry about traveling elsewhere in the galaxy.

More on Musk (and Mars)

Yesterday Slate reported that Elon Musk is predicting that the first SpaceX mission to Mars could be as soon as 10 years from now.  Musk stated,  "Ultimately we don't really want 10,000 people on Mars...We want millions."  This is an impressive boast, and even more impressive if he has the resources to promise something that even the White House (and other countries) dare not utter. 

According to Musk at the National Press Club, “I would argue also on that scale should fit life becoming multiplanetary. And in fact I think, [after] consciousness, it’s the next step. You really kind of need consciousness to design vehicles that can transport life over hundreds of millions of miles of irradiated space to an environment that they did not evolve to exist in.”  Here is the part of the speech.

It is nice to have a few big thinkers in the room.  First we need to dream (and write it down), and then we need to act.  Someone contact NASA!

Startalk Radio - Fun Astronomy

I have been listening to Neil de Grasse Tyson on the StarTalk podcast and find that it is a fun mix of news, culture, science, and quite often topics on astronomy and astrophysics. Dr. Tyson, a well know astrophysicist, as well as the Frederick P. Rose Director of the Hayden Planetarium at the Rose Center for Earth and Space, brings a lot of energy to the Discovery-funded program.  While I am not always a fan of the loud music starting the show and name-dropping that is bound to occur in each episode, I will give him credit for bringing audiences into a realm where they might otherwise be afraid to venture. 

Here are a few episodes from this year:

-- Oscar-winning actress and comedian Whoopi Goldberg joins Neil to talk about her love of science, and how it eventually led to her role as Guinan on Star Trek, the Next Generation. 

-- Actor Alan Alda, comedian Eugene Mirman, and more great guests discuss the state of science literacy and take audience questions that explore just how weird and funny science can be.

-- Every now and then it's good to take a tour around your own backyard. Space scientists Steve Squyres and Heidi Hammel, comedian Chuck Nice, and Bill Nye the Science Guy join Neil in a look around our own corner of the cosmos.

Of course, Dr. Tyson is also the host of NOVA's scienceNOW, which has brought some interesting stories to the television.  He is a great popularized of science, which may rub some folks the wrong way (particularly his colleagues) yet offers a valuable service to a society where scientific opinion is often discounted for a variety of political reasons.  Whether he is showing up on Comedy Central's Daily Show or HBO's Real Time, he is pushing for more science funding as well as greater dreaming in our society.

As Carl Sagan played the serious scientist in his 1980s PBS series Cosmos, Dr. Tyson bring a comedic, frat boy style to his series to keep the topics light and interesting.  Of course, we also have the grandfatherly approach of Morgan Freeman on his Science Channel series Through the Wormhole to add to the balance.

It is odd that we have so many terrific science programs on television and populating the Internet, and yet Americans seem to be moving away from clear, scientific thinking on the issues facing us, be it the environment or the exploration of our universe.  How can we be starving in the midst of such plenty?

Let the Mission Begin - Curiosity and Mars

The Curiosity rover is on its way to Mars after a successful NASA launch yesterday.  In about 8 and a half months the rover will start its exploration of the Martian surface and tell us more about the origins and current state of the planet.  This is a success for NASA after the recent loss of another Mars mission, this one Russian and Chinese, which ended in low Earth orbit. 

NASA's $2.5 billion mission to Mars marks an expensive recovery from the space agency's unreadiness in 2009, which led to more than a 50 percent increase in the mission's cost.  But all of that is behind us as we watch the mission from here on Earth and learn about more than 1 billion years of Martian history once Curiosity starts crawling around Gale Crater. And while Curiosity is probing one part of Mars, the earlier rover Opportunity is continuing a separate mission elsewhere on the planet's surface.  So two U.S. rovers are crawling across the planet while we determine our future plans to send humans to the Red Planet.  This is one small step that will hopefully engage the American public (as well as the President) for such a mission.

Is the Space Program Running Out of Fuel?

I have written in the past about a lack of vision in the U.S. space program, but I did not expect to write about the potential loss of fuel for our spacecraft.  A recent NPR story, The Plutonium Problem: Who Pays For Space Fuel?, noted how the U.S. space program may face problems obtaining plutonium-238 for its spacecraft and rovers.  For instance, the new Mars rover Curiosity will use 8 pounds of plutonium-238 as part of its exploring on the martian surface.  

The article quotes Len Dudzinski, the program executive for radioisotope power systems at NASA headquarters, who stated, "Because the United States has access to plutonium-238, we are the only country that has ever sent a science mission beyond Mars."  Other spacecraft, from the Voyager missions to the more recent Cassini, are dependent upon this fuel. 

As always, the issue is resources or, more specifically, budget battles.  Who should pay for this fuel, NASA or the Department of Energy?  Of course, budget battles have become much more acrimonious in recent years, with many projects such as the James Webb Space Telescope being held hostage (though even this battle was positively resolved recently, giving me a little more hope).  

This is a tough time to find extra funds for anything, but NASA needs to push such projects and the President needs to be the Agency's advocate.  We are already stumbling about looking for the next space vehicle as well as the next place to visit, which has not been an inspiring picture to date.  But we are dangerously close to grounding all of our projects if we lack the fuel to continue. Yes, maybe new fuels will be found, but I would not walk away from anything right now until we have proven alternatives.  If we want to remain part of the space race (or even space jog), we need to have some basic items to continue.  I hope our leaders in DC realize this.

Note:  NPR reported on this very same issue in September 2009. And Space News reported that the Russians were holding on their plutonium-238 supplies back in December 2009.  This is not a new problem, but I guess Congress needs to be reeducated on a regular basis.

Russian Space Program: Good and Bad News

Well, the good news is that Russia has now had it's second International Space Station (ISS) success.  The first was noted in my earlier entry, when the Soyuz resupply mission left for the ISS.  The second successful launch was Monday, when a U.S. astronaut and two Russian cosmonauts left Kazakstan on their way to the station so that they could relieve the three existing crew members who return to earth next week. 

The bad news is that the Russian mission to Mars' moon Phobos is no more.  Phobos-Grunt failed to leave Earth orbit due to a rocket failure and now it is little more than space junk awaiting re-entry sometime next month.  This is a serious setback to the Russian space program that already had a number of problematic launches.  It also marks a setback for China, which had a Mars probe on board, as well as The Planetary Society, which had a soil experiment on the craft.  Some are talking about a possible recovery of certain parts of the spacecraft.  It would be nice if something can be salvaged.

The Space Station is Back in Business

Yesterday's launch of a Soyuz rocket from Kazakhstan has reestablished our link with the International Space Station.  The Russian resupply mission, named Progress M-13M (or Progress 45 to NASA), is the first since a rocket failure last August.  If all goes well, a new crew will replace the current three person crew in November.  

NASA is already looking forward to a six person crew in December:

We congratulate our Russian colleagues on Sunday's successful launch of ISS Progress 45, and the spacecraft is on its way to the International Space Station. Pending the outcome of a series of flight readiness meetings in the coming weeks, this successful flight sets the stage for the next Soyuz launch, planned for mid-November. The December Soyuz mission will restore the space station crew size to six and continue normal crew rotations.

Profile Piece on Elon Musk

The Wall Street Journal had a recent piece on Elon Musk, the South African born founder of SpaceX, Telsa, and SolarCity.  The article contained a nice summary of his various endeavors, including this snapshot of SpaceX:

Around the Dragon, in this cavernous former Boeing 747 factory in Hawthorne, California, 1,500 young engineers and techs are building four more Falcon 9s. Musk has contracts for over 30 more launches worth $3 billion—including $1.6 billion from NASA. If all goes according to plan, in late December his third F9 launch will dock with the International Space Station. This 40-year-old is dreaming the stuff of nations.

With all the media focused on mediocre celebrities in Hollywood, it is nice to see a profile on someone who is really changing the world for the better. 

Fascinating Discoveries Throughout the Galaxy

This past summer astronomers showcased a number of fascinating planetary discoveries, from diamonds in the sky to Star Wars-like home worlds.  Here is a sampling that can only further intrigue observers:

-- Diamond Planet:  Astronomers spotted a "planet" about 4,000 light years away that seems to consist of nothing but diamonds (or at least compressed carbon, which should be the same thing).  "The evolutionary history and amazing density of the planet all suggest it is comprised of carbon -- i.e. a massive diamond orbiting a neutron star every two hours in an orbit so tight it would fit inside our own Sun," said Matthew Bailes of Swinburne University of Technology in Melbourne.

-- Two Sun Planet:  NASA's Kepler spacecraft spotted  a planet revolving around two suns.  Kepler-16, as the new system is known, has two stars that orbit around each other as well as a planet that orbits around both of them every 229 days.  Yes, just as Luke Skywalker stared into binary sunset on Tatooine, it is possible that this can be happening elsewhere in this strange universe of ours.   

-- Super Earths:  The European Southern Observatory located 50 new planets, 16 of which are much larger than our Earth.  One of them, HD 85512 b, is only 35 light years away and estimated to be about 3.6 times the mass of the Earth. This newly discovered planet may also contain liquid water, which is a hopeful sign of potential life. 

All of these new findings come at a time where government programs, including NASA, are under great strain.  Maybe this will energize the debate to keep this area of science alive.  We need to dream to advance as a species, and these discoveries show us that some of our dreams may not even be wild enough to capture the real world (or worlds).

The Chinese Space Station

While the United States recovers from problems with access to the International Space Station (ISS), yesterday China launched a mock component so it could practice maneuvering for a future space station.  The component, named "Heavenly Palace-1," will circle the earth for two years while manned and unmanned dockings are tested.  China will be the third national to have a space station after the United States and Russia should it realize its goal sometime around 2022.

In the meantime, three crew members from the ISS successfully returned to earth on September 16.  The replacement crew is scheduled to return to the ISS on November 14 aboard a Soyuz 28 spacecraft.  If the Russians have trouble meeting this schedule maybe we can hitch a ride with the Chinese.

Hollywood and the Moon: The Undiscovered Country?

In general, the public's mood about our moon has been "been there, done that."  The Apollo missions gave us the opportunity to explore the moon surface, bring back samples, and grab a new perspective on this beautiful planet of ours.  So what do we expect to find on the moon today?  Well, we are still interested in finding pockets of water and the origin of the moon is still somewhat of a mystery.  Is it the remnants of a collision between the earth and a Mars-size planet?  Did the earth have two moons at one time?

This month NASA launched the Gravity Recovery and Interior Laboratory (GRAIL) on a Delta II rocket.  GRAIL will map the gravitational field to better understand the nature of the moon and its evolution to what it is today.  This follows a number of other recent missions, such as the June 2009 launch of an Atlas 5 rocket, which allowed NASA to begin the process of locating new landing sites for future moon missions using the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, while also checking for water using the Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite. 


So with these past explorations and new questions, you would think we have enough science to create a few interesting stories about the moon.  Not really.  If you look at two summer movies you will see different spins on the Apollo missions, both of them pretty crazy.  First, you have Transformers:  Dark of the Moon, where the entire moon mission was to salvage an alien spacecraft from Cybertron that crash-landed on the dark side of the moon.  Then we had Apollo 18, a movie that covers the supposedly last Apollo mission designed to place sensors on the moon to detect Soviet ICBMs.  Of course, things went awfully wrong. 

Interestingly enough, NASA set up a page on Apollo 18 to comment on the film footage and the veracity of such a mission.  I am hoping this was some fun publicity and not any real concern on the part of the space program that Americans could be confused.  The NASA statement points out "There never was a DoD-dedicated Apollo mission and no astronauts named Anderson, Walker or Grey were ever selected for NASA's astronaut corps, as the movie depicts, or failed to return from the moon."  Are you convinced now?  In fact, it is odd that the film used the astronaut names Benjamin Anderson, Nathan Walker and John Grey rather than the names of the astronauts originally slated for the mission (of course, this was just a proposed rotation schedule):  Richard Gordon,Vance Brand, and Harrison Schmitt.

This makes me wonder if it is time for NASA to deny some other ideas spinning around Hollywood these days.  For instance:

--  Moon (2009):  Does NASA have plans to mine Helium-3 on the moon with clones?
-- The Dark Side of the Moon (1990):  Does the dark side of the moon have a link with the Bermuda Triangle?
-- Cat-Woman of the Moon (1953):  I think you know the question here.

The Risks of the Space Program

So what are we to make of the August 24th failure of Blue Origin's spacecraft failure?  We should not be surprised that spacecraft will occasionally fail when we are testing new ideas and concepts.  So in that sense there is little to surprise the space community.  However, I am surprised that it took an intrepid reporter to even learn about it rather that the company coming clean immediately.  Not all that encouraging when NASA is funding this company. 

On September 2nd, Blue Origin's website reported the failure, noting

...last week we lost the vehicle during a developmental test at Mach 1.2 and an altitude of 45,000 feet. A flight instability drove an angle of attack that triggered our range safety system to terminate thrust on the vehicle. Not the outcome any of us wanted, but we're signed up for this to be hard, and the Blue Origin team is doing an outstanding job. We're already working on our next development vehicle.

This is a simple upbeat version of events, which is what I would expect from any forward-looking organization.  So why the delay?  I would hate to see our private sector programs go the way of the Chinese and Russians where only successes get reported.  We need to know about the good and bad since this is the learning process.

Let's get back to work and keep testing and trying.  We need these projects to get our astronauts back into low-earth orbit.  With the recent failure of the Russians in this area, we need as much redundancy as we can muster.

Oops...There Goes Our Lifeline

The recent failure of Russia's Soyuz-U rocket five minutes into its mission just ripped a hole in plans to rely on other countries to supply the International Space Station (ISS).  Not that the U.S. has many choices right now while it waits for private cargo missions (see previous article).  The six astronauts on the ISS were awaiting these supplies, though NASA stated the station is well-stocked for now.  This was the first failure of the Russian resupply missions in the last three decades and could not come at a worse time given the lack of redundancy in the space program.  NASA is looking at all contingencies, including delaying the rotation of the crew.  Russia was planning to ship up three replacement crew members in September.  The US kept the shuttle program running just long enough to complete the ISS.  It would be a tragedy if we find we cannot get back and forth to this $100 billion space station.  The last thing we need is more space junk circling the earth.  Keep your fingers crossed.

Update:  An August 29th news story noted Russia planned to delay the return of the current ISS crew (from September 8 to September 16) and delay the launch of a new crew (from September 22 to sometime in October or November).  This is not a good sign. "If for any reason we will not be able to deliver the crew before the end of November we will need to review all possibilities, including leaving the station unmanned," stated the article quoting Alexei Krasnov, who leads the manned flights at Roskosmos.  Slate magazine had an interesting article titled "The Space Station Without Us."  The positive news is the ISS can last in orbit for some time without us.  The negative news is that the ISS would become a white elephant right at the point it is fully functional.

Who is NASA Betting on for Cargo Flights?

The other week NASA awarded $10 million in contracts to seven firms to support the development of cargo flights to the International Space Station.  These seven firms are:

-- Virgin Galactic in Mojave, California;
-- Armadillo Aerospace in Heath, Texas;
-- Near Space Corp. in Tillamook, Oregon;
-- Masten Space Systems in Mojave, California;
-- Up Aerospace Inc. in Highlands Ranch, Colorado;
-- Whittinghill Aerospace LLC in Camarillo, California; and
-- XCOR in Mojave, California.

The maximum amount that can go to any one contractor over the 2-year contract period is $5 million. While this is not a significant amount of money for budding space companies, it is still an incentive to develop the next generation of cargo missions.
 
California is certainly well represented on this list of companies.  And I find the names of companies that I do not often see in the news, such as Masten Space Systems (see image for their reusable launch vehicle).  Back in May, Masten announced plans to perform a series of demonstration flights of a Vertical Takeoff Vertical Landing (VTVL) reusable suborbital launch vehicle from Launch Complex 36 at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station.  While the company's website is silent on a date for this launch, earlier media stories indicate it was to happen sometime in 2011.

Masten Space Systems has other goals in addition to cargo.  For example, the company was also the winner of the 2009 Northrup Grumman Lunar Lander X Challenge.  You can see a video of their entry here.  Armadillo Aerospace took second place in this contest.  The X PRIZE Foundation has done a lot of great work over the years encouraging new ideas and inventions. 

NASA is also hopeful.  "The government's ability to open the suborbital research frontier to a broad community of innovators will enable maturation of the new technologies and capabilities needed for NASA's future missions in space"  said NASA Chief Technologist Bobby Braun at NASA Headquarters in Washington.

Let's hope these private sector ventures get off the ground super quick - America's ability to continue as a space-faring nation depends upon it.

NASA's Robotic Efforts

With the human role in space being curtailed by the last Shuttle mission, we will need to keep interest alive through a variety of robotic missions.  Fortunately, this has not been a problem.  Here are some of the most recent adventures and plans for later this year:

-- Vesta Visit:  The spacecraft Dawn approached the asteroid Vesta last month and will later visit the "dwarf planet" Ceres.  Dawn will spend the next year studying Vesta and returning plenty of data to keep scientists busy for years to come.  Both visits will help NASA to better understand how the solar system was formed. 

-- Jupiter Mission:  Earlier this month NASA launched Juno for its 5-year journey to the giant planet.  As with the Vesta/Ceres visits, NASA is trying to glean more information about the early solar system.  For instance, through mapping Jupiter’s gravitational and magnetic fields, NASA expects to discover more about the planet’s interior structure and mass of the core. Juno will arrive at Jupiter in August 2016, probe the planet and its moons for about a year, and eventually crash into its surface (or clouds). 

-- New Mars Rover:  NASA recently selected the landing site for the next Mars rover, which is part of the Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) and known as Curiosity (remember, we still have Opportunity roving around the Red Planet, while Spirit is now just that).  Our next martian visit will be touring the Gale Crater, a 96-mile-wide depression close to the planet's equator (see below).  And its not all depression since this crater has a three-mile high mountain at its center.  And NASA scientists are particularly interested in some of the colored material in the crater since it could offer information on organic molecules.  Talk about varied terrain.  The launch of the MSL and rover are planned for November.

Martian Sunset

NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory continues to share great images of Mars, and this particular video helps you to realize how amazing the Spirit rover mission was over its six year mission.  Between January 2004 and March 2010, the little craft was uncovering the mysteries of Mars.  While we all talk of human missions, these images helped me to understand how fascinating the first glimpses of a new world can be, whether containing in a spacesuit or viewed via a robot.  All of it impresses me.

Go here for more on the Spirit rover's legacy.  And for an even better video experience, I recommend you download the videos above via JPL's free video podcast.

Was the Shuttle Worth the Cost?

As I noted in my last piece, Shuttle mission cost estimates range from $450 million and $1.5 billion per launch.  What did we get for this outlay?  The opinions vary, but here are a few comments summing up the Shuttle program.

John P. Shannon, Manager, Space Shuttle Program Office (from the July 20, 2011, article in Aviation Week, Space Shuttle Boss: Lessons Justified Cost)

"The U.S. gained the most capable, sophisticated spacecraft ever flown, with a safety record better than any other existing launch vehicle."

"...the tangible accomplishments in the program’s 30 years—135 flights, 852 astronauts flown to orbit, 3.5 million lb. of cargo mass delivered and 179 payloads deployed."

"Critics of the shuttle sometimes point back to hyperbole from 40 years ago. There were promises of cheap, routine access to space. However, these promises were made by a NASA that had a total of 25 human orbital spaceflights (four Mercury, 10 Gemini, 11 Apollo). It could be argued that NASA did not have the experience to make those promises at that time. The shuttle, as designed, would never approach those goals, but as the sole American human spaceflight vehicle, it served as a tremendous learning tool. Where we are today in our understanding of how to live, work and operate in the space environment is far beyond where we were after Apollo and Skylab."

Lawrence Krauss,  professor and director of the Origins Project at Arizona State University (from the July 22, 2011, editorial in the Wall Street Journal, The Shuttle Was a Dud But Space Is Still Our Destiny)

"Yes, there have been highlights, and such things as the Hubble Space Telescope launch and repair missions were not only exciting, but useful. However, the real question is whether they were necessary to achieve the science goals. The initial repair mission was required because of poor engineering on the ground, which may be the fault of the decision to deploy the telescope from the space shuttle."

"Certainly, the shuttle program can't be justified on the grounds that it helped us build the International Space Station. The station is a largely useless international make-work project that was criticized by every major science organization in this country. All that can be said for its scientific justification is that it now houses a $2 billion particle-physics experiment that managed to avoid serious scientific peer review early on; otherwise it certainly would not have been recommended for funding."

What Now? - Shuttles and Observatories

With the final Shuttle flight underway, the America space program is now reliant on the Russians for trips to the International Space Station (ISS) before it can become reliant on the private sector that has yet to prove its mettle.  Yesterday President Barack Obama called the crews of Atlantis and the International Space Station and discussed the future of the space program, noting that the U.S. space program is proud to partner with the Russians and other nations.  Of course, we are completely dependent on such partnerships now. 

So what will it cost us to get American astronauts to the $100 billion ISS in the future?   NASA has negotiated a rate of $43 million to $63 million per astronaut on a Russian Soyuz capsule after buying about 46 seats through 2016 when the first U.S. commercial craft are expected to be available.  Given that a Shuttle launch is estimated to cost from $450 million to $1.5 billion apiece (there are many calculations out there depending on what you throw in the cost bucket), this is quite a deal for now.  For example, the last Atlantis mission carries only four astronauts, which works out to $112.5 million to $375 million per seat.  Of course, this does not include the cost of the Shuttle's primary purpose - lifting non-human payload into space. That said, considering that the cost of the entire Russian space program is estimated to be only $2 billion per year, maybe the Russians are onto something in these dire days of government funding. 

And speaking of funding, for those who thought that less money on human travel might loosen funds for more non-human missions, the James Webb space telescope offers an example of how funds may not be flowing elsewhere in NASA. The House of Representatives would like to cease funding of this $6.5 project due to cost overruns, even though billions have already been spent to date and nothing else is on the drawing board to replace the Hubble telescope when it reaches its endpoint.  Without a Shuttle to keep the Hubble in running order, NASA may soon lack a space telescope should the Jame Webb get knocked out of orbit on the Hill.  Unlike the Hubble, the James Webb space telescope will operate in an orbit outside the Earth's atmosphere, thereby offering a more accurate view of the cosmos.  If the President is serious about partnerships he should understand that a number of nations have money running on the James Webb telescope. 

Hitching rides with the Russians and now no Hubble replacement.  This is not where we need to be if we plan to be a leader in space exploration. 

More Astronomy Podcasts

Last October I wrote that a video podcast I enjoyed, This Week in Space, had run out of steam and ceased production.  Well, over time I found other podcasts that kept me abreast of events in astronomy.  Here are a few I recommend:

-- Deep Astronomy:  This video podcast is a nice collection of astronomical events delivered in a variety of ways by Tony Darnell, sometimes as a newscast referring to webpages and other times as a more elaborate narrated film.  I recently watched the piece on free-floating planets and was fascinated with the tale of hundreds of billions such planets throughout the galaxy.  You can view it on YouTube or pull it down on iTunes. 

-- Spacevidcast: Unlike Deep Astronomy, this video podcast has a number of narrators telling stories about the space program.  For instance, I recommend the video podcast on the NASA art show in Washington, DC, which I discussed in my last blog entry.  You can view these programs on YouTube or pull it down on iTunes. 

-- NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory:  This video podcast is another great way to stay on top of emerging issues, such as the new Mars rover.  This computer-generated animation of the future rover mission gives you a good idea of the complexities involved on getting to the planet's surface.  I had visions of Wall-E dancing through my head as the rover went about conducting its analysis.  Again, the videos are available on YouTube and iTunes. 

NASA's Commissioned Art

It was news to me that NASA has been contracting for art since the 1960s, including works from artists such as Andy Warhol and Annie Leibovitz.  And now these works are on display in Washington, DC, at the Air and Space Museum in an exhibit called NASA/Art: 50 Years of Exploration.  NASA has been collecting this art since 1962 and now has more than 3,000 items.  And what does each artist get for their work?  About $2,500 nowadays and the chance to add to this great national collection.  Norman Rockwell's commission was $800 back in 1965 when he provided this oil painting Grissom and Young, portraying Gemini astronauts Gus Grissom and John Young preparing for their first mission.  Go here for more of these great works.

 Sunrise Suit-up by Martin Hoffman, 1988, mixed media. 

 

Gemini Launch Pad by James Wyeth, 1964, watercolor on paper.