Really Rocket Science

Mars Madness is on the rise in Tucson, the Arizona Daily Star reports. That’s because on May 25th, NASA’s Phoenix Mars Lander is scheduled to touch down on the red planet. The event is significant in Tucson because the University of Arizona’s Lunar and Planetary Lab team is leading the mission’s science and built some of the instruments.

But the fever is spreading well beyond Arizona for this risky mission:

Fewer than half of attempts to land on Mars have succeeded, but planetary scientists leading the Phoenix Mars mission are cautiously optimistic. So far, all looks good, they say.

Public events to celebrate the landing are planned for at least 110 sites around the world, including London and Paris. There’s even a virtual landing bash planned, in Second Life, which is a virtual social world on the Internet.

Just how risky and difficult is it to put a lander on the surface of Mars? To answer that question, check out this excellent video from NASA’s Jet Propulsion laboratory. (NASA has done a fantastic job promoting the mission and landing in the style of a summer movie blockbuster):

The Phoenix Mars Mission website provides additional detail:

At 125 km (78 miles) above the surface, Phoenix will enter the thin martian atmosphere. It will slow itself down by using friction. A heat shield will protect the lander from the extreme temperatures generated during entry. Antennas located on the back of the shell which encases the lander will be used to communicate with one of three spacecraft currently orbiting Mars. These orbiters will then relay signals and landing info to Earth.

After the lander has decelerated to Mach 1.7 (1.7 times the speed of sound), the parachute is deployed. Shortly after the parachute is deployed, the heat shield is jettisoned, the landing radar is activated, and the lander legs are extended. The lander continues through the Martian atmosphere until it comes within 1 km (.6 miles) of the Martian surface. At this point, the lander separates itself from the parachute. It then throttles up its landing thrusters and decelerates.

When Phoenix is either at an altitude of 12 m (39 ft) or traveling at 2.4 m/s (7.9 ft/s), the spacecraft begins traveling at a constant velocity. The landing engines are turned off when sensors located on the footpads of the lander detect touchdown.

As we’ve mentioned, only half of all international attempts to land on Mars have succeeded. Back in 1999, the Mars Polar Lander (MPL) went missing as it entered Mars’s atmosphere, and its fate has been a mystery ever since. But now there is a chance for a member of the public to locate the missing spacecraft and help work out what went wrong, thanks to a new "Spot the Spacecraft" challenge: 

The High-Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE), based at the University of Arizona in Tucson, has a raft of images of the MPL’s projected landing area, but scans of the huge images came up blank.

So now, the HiRISE team’s blog has published 18 images, and has challenged the public to find the lost lander.

Can you find the MPL? The images can be viewed here. 

We’ll report more on the landing of the Phoenix Mars Lander after the 25th. 

Very cool announcement from NASA this afternoon, uncovering the most recent supernova from 140 years ago:

"We can see some supernova explosions with optical telescopes across half of the universe, but when they’re in this murk we can miss them in our own cosmic backyard," said Stephen Reynolds of North Carolina State University in Raleigh, who led the Chandra study. "Fortunately, the expanding gas cloud from the explosion shines brightly in radio waves and X-rays for thousands of years. X-ray and radio telescopes can see through all that obscuration and show us what we’ve been missing."

Astronomers regularly observe supernovae in other galaxies like ours. Based on those observations, researchers estimate about three explode every century in the Milky Way.

"If the supernova rate estimates are correct, there should be the remnants of about 10 supernova explosions that are younger than Cassiopeia A," said David Green of the University of Cambridge in the United Kingdom, who led the Very Large Array study. "It’s great to finally track one of them down."

The tracking of this object began in 1985, when astronomers, led by Green, used the Very Large Array to identify the remnant of a supernova explosion near the center of our galaxy. Based on its small size, it was thought to have resulted from a supernova that exploded about 400 to 1000 years ago.

Twenty-two years later, Chandra observations revealed the remnant had expanded by a surprisingly large amount, about 16 percent, since 1985. This indicates the supernova remnant is much younger than previously thought.

That young age was confirmed in recent weeks when the Very Large Array made new radio observations. This comparison of data pinpoints the age of the remnant at 140 years – possibly less if it has been slowing down – making it the youngest on record in the Milky Way.

Besides being the record holder for youngest supernova, the object is of considerable interest for other reasons. The high expansion velocities and extreme particle energies that have been generated are unprecedented and should stimulate deeper studies of the object with Chandra and the Very Large Array.

"No other object in the galaxy has properties like this," Reynolds said. "This find is extremely important for learning more about how some stars explode and what happens in the aftermath."

More images here.

Here’s an animation from the Chandra X-Ray Observatory:

In order to determine the age of G1.9+0.3, astronomers needed to track how quickly it is expanding. By comparing a radio image from 1985 to a Chandra image taken in 2007, scientists see the ring of debris expand. The expansion rate was confirmed with another radio observation with the VLA in 2008. The difference in size between these images gives clear evidence for expansion, allowing the age of the remnant and the time since the original supernova explosion (about 140 years) to be estimated.

Appears NASA is ready to loan out used tires from the Space Shuttle’s landing gear:

NASA is seeking outside organizations interested in a unique outreach opportunity using main landing gear tires from space shuttle missions. The long-term loan of these tires may be used to educate, inspire or inform the public about NASA’s scientific and technological achievements through art, sculpture, furniture, building structures, exhibits or other innovative uses of the artifacts. These items may not be used for the promotion of any organization or entity, or for commercial purposes.

Given the limited number of these tires and the estimated response, NASA is requesting that interested organizations submit proposals for their use, allowing the agency to choose those that best meet NASA’s education and outreach objectives.

We currently have in inventory approximately 30 flown space shuttle main landing gear tires for this opportunity. In addition, we have a number of non-flown space shuttle tires (submitters should state their preference in proposal). Data on specific flights for each tire are available in Attachment I. Tires flown on specific missions or on a certain orbiter may be requested, although NASA cannot guarantee that all requests will be fulfilled.

Hey, you never know where they’ll end up. Maybe on the program "American Chopper" — you may recall the Teutels visited Johnson Space Center in 2005 when they were preparing to build the "Shuttle Bike" (delivered that August). Buy it on Amazon: it ran in season 5, episodes 5 and 6. Watch video clips here.

Really difficult to send a text from up here with these gloves on…..

Here’s an interesting tidbit from England:

 Text messaging is almost five times more expensive than receiving information from the Hubble Space Telescope, research has indicated.

A typical text costs 5p so if you send one megabyte of data by text – equivalent to 7,490 messages – it will cost around £375.

However, a researcher found that if you send one megabyte of data from the Hubble telescope, which is 370 miles into space, it costs a relatively cheap £85.

If you divide £85 by the number of messages in a megabyte, the equivalent cost of sending a text from the space telescope is just over 1p.

Scientist Dr Nigel Bannister, of Leicester University, worked out the figures and said they showed mobile phone users were paying far too much to text….

He said: "The bottom line is texting is at least four times more expensive than transmitting data from Hubble – and is likely to be substantially more than that."

Our first reaction to Dr. Bannister’s (personal webpage here; University of Leicester here) research was one of profound skepticism. Maybe it wasn’t quite apples to apples to compare data transmissions from Hubble with SMS messages. And surely, we thought, he neglected to include the astronomical (no pun intended) costs of Hubble’s Control Center, for example, which runs four rotating flight teams from Space Telescope Operations Control Center (STOCC) at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md.

Nope, says Dr. Bannister:

He said the mobile phone prices looked even more "astronomical" when you considered that he had added all the costs of staff and processing to the price of the Hubble data transmission.

Without those extra costs, the amount of data in a text could cost as little as 0.1p.

We’re still not convinced, but the low cost of texts may explain why Hubble keeps poking us so freely on Facebook.

(More info on Hubble can be found here.)

So you’ve bought your little corner of the universe through the International Star Registry, but you want more to give yourself a chance at immortality.

After all, in 5 billion years, when our sun is in its last throes, the name of your star won’t be worth the paper its printed on, because the paper itself will be incinerated.

What you want is a record for someone else — or something else — to find, an intergalactic message in a bottle that says, I was here.

Now, thanks to NASA and the Kepler mission, you can have just that:

Finally, the chance for your name to be carried into space has come.

When the Kepler Mission rockets away from Earth, a DVD containing perhaps millions of human names will be on board.

"This mission will provide our first knowledge of Earth-like planets beyond our solar system," said Kepler Mission principal investigator William Borucki.

The Kepler Mission is scheduled for launch in February 2009 from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. There is no limit to the number of names that can be submitted, officials said.

At the end of this year – in November – the Name in Space DVD will be mounted on the exterior of the spacecraft. A video of the DVD being mounted on the spacecraft will be taken and posted on the Kepler Mission Web site before the spacecraft is shipped to NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in December.

"It’s a way for the public to participate in our space program," said David Koch, deputy principal investigator for the Kepler Mission. "We’re looking for several million names. … The only limitation is people’s interest."

A copy of the DVD with all of the names and messages will also be given to the Smithsonian Institution’s National Air and Space Museum in Washington, D.C.

You can submit your name for free on the Kepler Mission website, where you can also learn more about the spacecraft and the mission:

The Kepler photometer is a simple single purpose instrument. It is basically a Schmidt telescope design with a 0.95-meter aperture and a 105 deg² (about 12 degree diameter) field-of-view (FOV). It is pointed at and records data from just a single group of stars for the four year duration of the mission. …

An Earth-trailing heliocentric orbit with a period of 372.5 days provides the optimum approach to meeting of the combined Sun-Earth-Moon avoidance criteria within the Boeing D2925-10 (Delta-II) launch vehicle capability (launch videos). In this orbit the spacecraft slowly drifts away from the Earth and is at a distance of 0.5 AU (worst case) at the end of four years.  Telecommunications and navigation for the mission are provided by NASA’s Deep Space Network (DSN).

And for a better understanding of the craft your name will eternally be sailing (or at least drifting) upon, check out the video above from YouTube.

Came across this in a recent UPI news item that read "Baniak and de Cooker sign agreement" — I know some Polish and the word "baniak" means "cooking pot" so I got a chuckle out of it.  

But seriously, as the European Community expands, will the European Space Agency (ESA) begin enlisting new members? Yes they will, with Poland joining ESA’s PECS (Plan for European Cooperating States) recently:

Europejska Agencja Kosmiczna dokonała ostatecznej selekcji wniosków na projekty w ramach Programu dla Europejskich Państw Współpracujących (PECS), realizowanego na podstawie Porozumienia o Europejskim Państwie Współpracującym między Rządem Rzeczypospolitej Polskiej a Europejską Agencją Kosmiczną (ESA), podpisane w Warszawie w dniu 27 kwietnia 2007 r.

ESA zaakceptowała ostatecznie 18 projektów jako spełniające wymogi włączeniado PECS oraz odnoszące się do jej bieżących lub planowanych działań. Podpisanie Karty działań PECS jest planowane na dzień 25 kwietnia 2008 w Ministerstwie Gospodarki.

Now in English, via the ESA:

On 28 April 2008 Poland reinforced its relations with ESA by signing the Plan for European Cooperating State Charter. This is a direct follow up to the signing of the European Cooperating State Agreement in April 2007.
 
The Plan for European Cooperating State (PECS) Charter was signed in Warsaw by Rafal Baniak, Secretary of State in the Polish Ministry of Economy, and Chris de Cooker, Head of the International Relations Department of ESA.

By signing the Charter, Poland now becomes the fourth European country to subscribe to PECS. Hungary signed the Charter in November 2003, the Czech Republic in November 2004 and Romania in February 2007.

The Polish scientific community has been active in space endeavors, with the most recent contribution was the development of the ARISS antenna on the Columbus module (an amateur radio set-up operating in the 1260 to 2400 MHz bands), mostly from Wrocław University of Technology. The Columbus module, as we blogged back in February, was launched aboard STS-122.

Korean astronaut Yi So Yeon Lee used the ham radio when she was at the ISS. Read and listen here.

Mrs. Voorhees is dead, and Camp Crystal Lake is shut down, but a camp next to the infamous place is stalked by an unknown assailant. Is it Mrs. Voorhee’s son Jason who didn’t drown in the lake some 30 years before?

No, this post is not about the Friday the 13th / Jason Part 2 horror movie (and April fools day was April, not May 1st). The real story is about the Jason-2 spacecraft and the Ocean Surface Topography Mission to launch on Sunday, June 15th (not Friday, June 13th):

PASADENA, Calif. – A NASA and French Space Agency (CNES) spacecraft designed to continue a long-term survey of Earth’s oceans has arrived at Vandenberg Air Force Base, Calif., for final launch preparations. The new satellite will study ocean circulation and the effect oceans have on weather, climate and how Earth is responding to global climate change.

The Ocean Surface Topography Mission, called OSTM for short, will be flown on the Jason-2 spacecraft, which was transported on April 24 from its manufacturer, Thales Alenia Space, in Cannes, France, to Toulouse, France. It was loaded onto a Boeing 747 aircraft for its trans-Atlantic journey and after refueling in Boston, it arrived April 29 at Vandenberg Air Force Base. Following final tests, it will be integrated onto a United Launch Alliance Delta II launch vehicle in preparation for a planned launch in June.

With the launch of this satellite, the science of precisely measuring and studying the height of the sea surface across Earth’s oceans will come of age. Continuous collection of these measurements began in 1992 with the NASA/CNES Topex/Poseidon mission and continued in 2001 with NASA/CNES’s Jason-1 mission, which is currently providing near-real-time data to a variety of users. The addition of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and the European Organization for the Exploitation of Meteorological Satellites (EUMETSAT) as partners on OSTM/Jason-2 begins transitioning the responsibility for collecting these data to weather and climate forecasting agencies, which will use them for short-range and seasonal-to-long-range ocean forecasting.

The Ocean Surface Topography Mission/Jason-2 is an international and interagency mission developed and operated as a four-party collaboration among NASA; NOAA; the French Space Agency, Centre National d’Etudes Spatiales; and EUMETSAT.

And this may have one of the more practical applications among NASA projects:

The 15-plus-year climate data record that this mission will continue is the only one capable of addressing how ocean circulation is linked to climate change and how global sea level, one of the most important consequences and indicators of global climate change, is changing.

Satellite observations of Earth’s oceans have revolutionized our understanding of global climate by improving ocean models and hurricane forecasts, and identifying and tracking large ocean/atmosphere phenomena such as El Niño and La Niña. The data are used every day in applications as diverse as, for example, routing ships, improving the safety and efficiency of offshore industry operations, managing fisheries and tracking marine mammals.

After this spacecraft launches, Jason fans can start anticipating their next event – the launch of the next Jason flick. When does it launch? You guessed it – Friday, 13 February 2009.

Since it’s a nice day, I’ve had too much coffee, and I feel like dancing (with my usual lack of rhythm), we’re going to kick off the Earth Day post with a little Kanye West, Earth Day-style:

I’m a big Earth Day fan, maybe because it reaches back to my Wisconsin roots. In September 1969, Gaylord Nelson, a U.S. Senator from the Dairy State, proposed a nationwide demonstration focused on the environment for the following spring. Senator Nelson’s idea to put the environment on the national political agenda means that, today, Earth Day is being observed by millions of people in over 170 countries.

With Global Warming an urgent concern (to me, at least), Earth Day has more significance than ever. NASA reports that 2007 was tied as Earth’s second-warmest year:

Climatologists at the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) in New York City have found that 2007 tied with 1998 for Earth’s second warmest year in a century.

“It is unlikely that 2008 will be a year with truly exceptional global mean temperature,” said Hansen. “Barring a large volcanic eruption, a record global temperature clearly exceeding that of 2005 can be expected within the next few years, at the time of the next El Nino, because of the background warming trend attributable to continuing increases of greenhouse gases.”

The eight warmest years in the GISS record have all occurred since 1998, and the 14 warmest years in the record have all occurred since 1990.

Goddard Institute researchers used temperature data from weather stations on land, satellite measurements of sea ice temperature since 1982 and data from ships for earlier years.

This year (beyond the Kanye video), lots of attention is being paid to alternative energy options, particularly with rising gas prices. Wired has an article on how eSolar—with backing from Google’s philanthropic foundation, Google.org—is working on using sunlight-reflecting mirrors to generate steam:

For proof, look no further than the fat $130 million investment scooped up by eSolar, a company whose basic solar power strategy — using sunlight-reflecting mirrors to generate steam — was all but abandoned in the 1980s, and has recently recently caught investors’ attention again.

The money, from Google’s philanthropic arm, Google.org, and venture capital firms Idealab and Oak Investment Partners, will go towards the construction of eSolar’s first functioning solar power plant.

“ESolar’s long term is to become a viable replacement for all fossil fuel,” said Robert Rogan, a Cal Tech Ph.D. and eSolar’s executive vice president for corporate development. “The reason Google invested in us is that they saw the potential of this technology to beat the cost of using coal.”

The company’s core technology is an implementation of concentrating solar power, which uses mirrors to turn liquid into steam that drives standard electricity-generating turbines. CSP, also sometimes called solar thermal, is considered a promising replacement for fossil fuel power plants, particularly the coal plants that generate more than half of U.S. electricity. It’s been around for decades, last seeing popularity in the early 1980s, when oil hit an inflation-adjusted price of $82 per barrel. Higher oil prices make fossil fuel plants more costly, making it easier for alternative technologies to compete. (Oil is currently trading for more than $115 a barrel, its highest level ever.)

"Amid a flurry of legal wranglings, charges and countercharges, a North Salt Lake company and three former associates are in a tug-of-war over nuclear-powered space tugs, with perhaps billions of dollars at stake," the Salt Lake Tribune reports:

IOSTAR and its founder and CEO have filed suit against the three former associates, alleging theft of corporate secrets in order to develop competing satellites. In a counterclaim, the three allege that the CEO has misappropriated millions of dollars and violated tax and securities law.

To date, no satellites have been developed, let alone launched. IOSTAR has seen its board of directors implode through dismissals or resignations. And a tangled web of companies and current and former officers is caught in the legal crossfire. 

IOSTAR’s dream of a nuclear-powered satellite that could serve as a tug pulling other satellites from a low orbit, where it’s cheaper to launch them into their proper orbits, is shared by many companies. Last December, Loral wanted in on the Space Tug proposal:

The Space System/Loral-team would use the company’s proven 1300-series satellite bus as a refuelable space tug that would remain in orbit for as long as 10 years. After docking with and escorting an essentially dumb cargo vessel to the [International Space Station], the vehicle would also remove it from the station and allow it to be deorbited over an ocean. 

While the space tug legal wranglings work themselves out in Utah, the ESA’s Automated Transfer Vehicle (ATV) — the "most powerful space tug ever built" — is proving to be an indispensable ISS supply ship.

Approximately every 17 months, ATV is scheduled to carry 7.7 tonnes of cargo to the Station 400 km above the Earth. An onboard high precision navigation system will automatically guide ATV on a rendezvous trajectory towards ISS, where it will dock with the Station’s Russian service module Zvezda.

We blogged about ATV’s launch last month. The ISS is getting good use out of the ATV, as today’s status report from the ISS indicates. ATV1 is scheduled to undock from the ISS in August of this year.

"Der Junge aus Potsdam habe recht" — that’s what NASA said, as reported by the Potsdamer Neueste Nachrichten over the weekend. Translation: The boy from Potsdam is right:

Ein Potsdamer Schüler hat die Gefahr eines Asteroideneinschlags richtig berechnet und damit die Nasa blamiert. Was der 13-Jährige für das Jahr 2036 voraussagt, ist alles andere als beruhigend.

NASA figured there was a 1 in 45,000 chance the Apophis asteroid could collide with Earth. More like 1 in 450, according to Nico Marquardt. Here’s the story in English, via the AFP:

A 13-year-old German schoolboy corrected NASA’s estimates on the chances of an asteroid colliding with Earth, a German newspaper reported Tuesday, after spotting the boffins had miscalculated.

Nico Marquardt used telescopic findings from the Institute of Astrophysics in Potsdam (AIP) to calculate that there was a 1 in 450 chance that the Apophis asteroid will collide with Earth, the Potsdamer Neuerster Nachrichten reported.

NASA had previously estimated the chances at only 1 in 45,000 but told its sister organisation, the European Space Agency (ESA), that the young whizzkid had got it right.

The schoolboy took into consideration the risk of Apophis running into one or more of the 40,000 satellites orbiting Earth during its path close to the planet on April 13 2029.

Those satellites travel at 3.07 kilometres a second (1.9 miles), at up to 35,880 kilometres above earth — and the Apophis asteroid will pass by earth at a distance of 32,500 kilometres.

If the asteroid strikes a satellite in 2029, that will change its trajectory making it hit earth on its next orbit in 2036.

Both NASA and Marquardt agree that if the asteroid does collide with earth, it will create a ball of iron and iridium 320 metres (1049 feet) wide and weighing 200 billion tonnes, which will crash into the Atlantic Ocean.

The shockwaves from that would create huge tsunami waves, destroying both coastlines and inland areas, whilst creating a thick cloud of dust that would darken the skies indefinitely.

The 13-year old made his discovery as part of a regional science competition for which he submitted a project entitled: "Apophis — The Killer Astroid."