Really Rocket Science

Watch a Delta II launch the GPS Block 2R military navigation satellite on Thursday, 16 November. Live feed from the Kennedy Space Center. 

Here’s the latest from Spaceflight Now:

WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 15, 2006
2230 GMT (5:30 p.m. EST)

Preparations continue for tomorrow’s launch of the Boeing Delta 2 rocket carrying a replacement satellite for the Global Positioning System, but bad weather at Cape Canaveral is threatening to delay the liftoff. Launch will be possible between 2:17 and 2:30 p.m. EST (1917-1930 GMT).

A cold front will be sliding through Central Florida on Thursday, and Air Force forecasters expect the Cape to feel the brunt of the stormy weather between 3 and 11 a.m. A severe weather watch has been issued.

Gradual clearing is predicted later in the day, but rain, lingering thunderstorms and thick clouds still pose a high concern for the mid-afternoon launch. There is a 70 percent chance that conditions will be unacceptable at liftoff time.

Mission managers will meet before dawn to assess the latest weather outlook and determine if it’s safe to retract the mobile service tower from around the rocket at pad 17A. Winds cannot exceed 39 knots for the move, plus officials must be confident of no hazardous weather looming on the horizon that could harm the rocket while it stands exposed on the pad for the final hours of the countdown.

Tower rollback is targeted to occur around 6 a.m. The retraction could be postponed a couple of hours without impacting the launch time.

Air Force officials say their strategy, assuming weather is safe enough to retract the tower, will be pressing forward with the launch opportunity. An early decision to scrub is unlikely unless the launch time forecast gives absolutely no hope of allowable conditions, they said. As of right now, there is that 30 percent chance that the storms will clear in time.

The outlook for Friday is beautiful, forecasters say.

NASA is rolling out the space shuttle Discovery to the launch pad this week for a December 7th launch that will carry Sweden’s first astronaut, Christer Fuglesang, to the International Space Station for a 5-week stay.

The BBC reports on the mission, and Fugelsand’s long journey to space: 

In the thick of a complicated series of tasks to rewire the station – hopefully without serious interruption to the resident crew aboard – will be Sweden’s first astronaut, Christer Fuglesang.

He is a 49-year-old particle physicist who joined the European Space Agency (Esa) astronaut corps 14 years ago….

Fuglesang expected to train with Nasa, but found himself on a pioneering assignment to Russia instead. It was 1993 and Europe was preparing for a dedicated research mission aboard the now-defunct Russian space station Mir.

"The toughest part was to learn the Russian language," Fuglesang said. "At that time, we didn’t have any interpreters. There was no material in English. We really had to do everything in Russian."…

German-born astronaut Thomas Reiter, who currently is serving as a crewmember on the International Space Station (ISS), ended up being assigned to the Euromir flight….

Though this will be Fuglesang’s debut space flight, he will have his hands full. Fuglesang is paired with veteran Nasa astronaut Robert Curbeam for the first two spacewalks of the mission.

During the first outing, the pair will install a new external truss segment onto the station’s structural backbone. Two days later, another spacewalk is planned to begin critical work to hook up the station’s permanent electrical and cooling systems.

The ISS mission won’t be all work and no play, however, especially as the holidays approach. Fuglesang already has plans to share some of Sweden’s famous delicacies with his fellow crewmembers:

"Two products that Arla have developed have been approved by NASA and they will feature on NASA’s list of foods that the astronauts can choose from," the Danish-Swedish dairy company said in a statement on Friday.

The two products are a dried milk consisting of lactic pro-biotic bacteria and fruit-flavoured yoghurts that Arla has spent "many years" developing.

Christer Fuglesang, set to be the first Swede in space, has already selected raspberry yoghurt for the duration of the 12-day mission.

Fuglesang hopes to introduce his fellow crew members to other Swedish delights such as dried elk, crispbread and, "seeing as we’re approaching Christmas, gingerbread," the Swedish Space Agency said.

And thus, another first: this may be — as far as we know — the first serving of dried elk on a space mission. 

NASA’s Cassini orbiter has recorded something never before seen on another planet — "a hurricane-like storm at Saturn’s south pole with a well-developed eye, ringed by towering clouds."

(Click on the image above to play a movie of the storm.)

From the NASA press release:

 The "hurricane" spans a dark area inside a thick, brighter ring of clouds. It is approximately 8,000 kilometers (5,000 miles) across, or two thirds the diameter of Earth.

"It looks like a hurricane, but it doesn’t behave like a hurricane," said Dr. Andrew Ingersoll, a member of Cassini’s imaging team at the California Institute of Technology, Pasadena. "Whatever it is, we’re going to focus on the eye of this storm and find out why it’s there."

A movie taken by Cassini’s camera over a three-hour period reveals winds around Saturn’s south pole blowing clockwise at 550 kilometers (350 miles) per hour. The camera also saw the shadow cast by a ring of towering clouds surrounding the pole, and two spiral arms of clouds extending from the central ring. These ring clouds, 30 to 75 kilometers (20 to 45 miles) above those in the center of the storm, are two to five times taller than the clouds of thunderstorms and hurricanes on Earth.

Eye-wall clouds are a distinguishing feature of hurricanes on Earth. They form where moist air flows inward across the ocean’s surface, rising vertically and releasing a heavy rain around an interior circle of descending air that is the eye of the storm itself. Though it is uncertain whether such moist convection is driving Saturn’s storm, the dark "eye" at the pole, the eye-wall clouds and the spiral arms together indicate a hurricane-like system.

Distinctive eye-wall clouds had not been seen on any planet other than Earth. Even Jupiter’s Great Red Spot, much larger than Saturn’s polar storm, has no eye or eye-wall and is relatively calm at the center.

This giant Saturnian storm is apparently different from hurricanes on Earth because it is locked to the pole and does not drift around. Also, since Saturn is a gaseous planet, the storm forms without an ocean at its base. 

 Click here to view a movie of the storm.

The Chicago Sun Times reports on a new first along the "Miracle Mile":

If you’re lost on Michigan Avenue, stop in the new Garmin store, and you won’t stay lost for long.

Billed as the world’s first GPS-only store, Garmin, the leader in the U.S. GPS market, on Saturday is opening a two-story, 10,000-square-foot store at 663 N. Michigan, featuring GPS devices for cars, fitness, camping and boating that tap into satellite signals to tell users how to get where they want to go…

[Spokesman Ted Gartner] said Garmin’s products typically are sold in electronics superstores, such as Best Buy and Circuit City, and online at Amazon.com. But, he said, "Our GPS units in stores typically are under glass. In the Garmin store, people will be able to handle them and see how they work…."

The Garmin store was designed by Chicago-based Valerio Dewalt Train Associates Inc. A 30-foot wood wall that runs around the entire store is a dominant feature.

Is this a link to GPS’s heritage as manufacturer of devices used to help outdoors types find their way?

Architect Joe Valerio said the design is intended to be ambiguous. He said the wood "reminds you of the walls of a canyon. Or is it the hull of a boat? Or the fender of a car? It is intentionally mysterious."

The backdrop contrasts with the precision of Garmin products, which, he said, "use GPS technology to make our world much less mysterious and much more understandable."

While the Garmin store in Chicago is the first GPS-only store of its kind in the world, others would dispute that GPS makes the world "less mysterious" and "more understandable." Computing Which? magazine recently conducted a study comparing the use of GPS and traditional road atlases for navigating the cold streets of the UK:

The ‘good old-fashioned’ £8 AA map-book not only beat a sophisticated £220 sat-nav system – costing nearly 28 times more and getting the driver lost down "obscure" country detours – it also knocked the socks off a computer-based route-finder costing £45.

The low-tech road atlas also trounced the Government’s own free online ‘Transport Direct’ website, which was by far the worst, giving motorists incorrect directions, sending them miles out of their way and taking users twice as long to get to their destination.

The findings follow a series of high-profile cases in which motorists – following their in-car sat-nav systems – have found themselves diverted along obscure and unsuitable roads, stuck in fords, rivers, or impassibly narrow lanes.

Even easier, as my wife constantly reminds me, is to stop at the next gas station and ask. But homey don’t play that.

Speaking GPS navigation in cars,  the Central Valley Business Times reports on one way that you shouldn’t use GPS if you’re a car rental agency:

Fox Rent A Car really knew where you were. And charged for it, the state of California says.

The largest California-based independent car rental company illegally slapped surcharges on those who traveled outside a three-state area and unlawfully forced customers to buy liability insurance, according to California Attorney General Bill Lockyer.

How did it know where its customers were driving? The state says it tracked its cars with GPS (Global Positioning Satellite) devices.

Fox paid nearly $750,000 in damages and penalties to settle the consumer privacy case. It would have been cheaper to throw in an atlas.

If you’re like most RRS readers you probably have an old satellite dish (or seven) sitting around your place and loathe the idea of parting with perfectly good electronics. This being the case, here are some ideas…

1. Solar Death Ray Hot Dogs
   
   It’s probably not the most efficient way to cook a dog, but for a brat in the desert its hard to beat.
2. Redneck Deer Stand
   
   Sure, you could just make stand completely out of wood, but, come on, where’s the sport in that. Now if only we could figure out a way to use the ’82 Gremlin on cement blocks on the front lawn…
3. WiFi Antenna
   

   Certainly the most useful idea even if its not the most exciting.

Anyone have any other suggestions?

Ok, honestly, what could be cooler than having your name — yes, YOUR name — on a future piece of space junk? Well, I can probably think of a few things (a free donut, a good massage, etc.), but having your name blasted in to space does seem pretty cool.

If you agree, you should check out MIT and Georgia Tech’s Your Name In Space project, which aims to put "America’s most ambitious student spacecraft" up in the sky with the "tax-deductible" support of people looking for their "space in space". The Boson Globe had the story yesterday, but the project website gets a little more specific:

"In 2010, a small unmanned research spacecraft designed by students will launch into Earth’s orbit. The science on board will help pave the way for humankind to explore our solar system. We invite you to participate in this landmark mission by uploading content to be printed on our spacecraft…

Choose a location on the outside of the spacecraft and get pictures of your content photographed in space. Choose a location inside the return vehicle, and after five weeks in orbit we’ll return to you the actual piece of spacecraft hardware which carried your image into orbit."

The best part? Even if you can’t pony up the cold hard cash (a donation as small as $35 gets you a picture of your name or image on the craft before the flight, $250 gets you piece after reentry), you can still send your name up into the heavens. While financial supporters get a photograph of their name/logo/etc. in space or even a piece of the spacecraft following the mission, anyone can provide their name and information and have it encoded on to a DVD that will hitch a ride on the craft during its journey. Sure, it might not be a trip aboard the ISS, but, for now, its the next closest (and far cheaper) alternative.

We like their blog.

What is THAT? Is it the Big Kahuna landing for Election Day in Florida? No, that’s an Antonov 124 delivering the AMC-18 satellite at Cayenne’s Rochambeau International Airport. The satellite, scheduled for launch in December, is now being transferred to Europe’s Spaceport.

The great science blog, Science-a-go-go, posted in an interesting story last night about an interesting last ditch solution to global warming problems, should the ice caps melt and, as Al Gore predicted, the sea start filling up lower Manhattan. The great idea? Some "sun parasols," according to University of Arizona’s Roger Angel.

"Angel’s plan involves launching a flotilla of trillions of small free-flying spacecraft a million miles above Earth into an orbit aligned with the sun, called the L1 Lagrange orbit. The spacecraft would form a long, cylindrical cloud about 4,000 miles in diameter and 60,000 miles in length. About 10 percent of the sunlight passing through the length of the cloud would be diverted away from Earth, uniformly reducing sunlight by about 2 percent over the entire planet. Enough to balance the heating caused by a doubling of atmospheric carbon dioxide in Earth’s atmosphere, believes Angel."

Not a half bad plan, but, if you ask me, I think we might be a little better off beating this problem to the pass, parking our harms, and enjoying a few crisp, fall bike rides.

A Delta IV rocket launches at 5:53 a.m. on Nov. 4 from Vandenberg’s Space Launch Complex-6. The rocket carried a Defense Meteorological Satellite Program satellite in to space. The satellite will transition into a polar earth orbit to provide weather forcasts for servicemembers on battlefields around the world. (U.S. Air Force photo/Joe Davila)