Really Rocket Science

NASA’s STEREO Mission is set to launch this evening at 8:53 PM EST and things seem to be going well, according to the mission website:

"The STEREO mission is about to begin. Safely installed atop a Boeing Delta II rocket, the twin spacecraft are ready for launch Wednesday at 8:38 p.m. EDT. The vehicle’s second stage was loaded with storable propellants on Monday. The launch weather forecast remains favorable, with virtually no concerns. High pressure behind a passing front has brought pleasant conditions for the next two days. There is still only a 5% chance of weather violating launch constraints, due to possible development of thick clouds."

The launch blog will start reporting the happenings starting two hours before the launch (around 7pm EST).

The STEREO (Solar TErrestrial RElations Observatory) Mission, for those who don’t already know, intends to use stereoscopic 3D vision to construct a complete picture of a sun and the nature of solar flares. In addition to helping us know a great deal more about the world’s most important star, the mission should help us learn how we can best protect future astronauts from the dangerous effects of solar flares.

The Nihon Keizai Shimbun reported that Japanese DTH service SKY Perfect is merging with satellite operator JSAT, which provides carriage for the satellite TV service. The news report prompted this reply from SKY Perfect:

SKY Perfect is currently looking into strengthening its relationship with and possible merger with JSAT, but nothing definite, including the stock transfer ratio, has been decided on at this stage. SKY Perfect will immediately disclose if anything on this matter is decided.

But Reuters goes a little deeper:

Japanese satellite broadcaster Sky Perfect Communications Inc. will acquire satellite communications company JSAT Corp. and create a holding company next spring, the Nihon Keizai business daily reported in its evening edition on Wednesday.

The paper said Sky Perfect will become a holding company, while creating a new entity for its operations. The holding company will bring the new firm and JSAT under its umbrella.

Each JSAT share will likely be swapped for about 4 shares in the holding company, the paper said.

Based on Sky Perfect’s closing share price on Wednesday, the deal would value JSAT at around 93.7 billion yen ($786 million), 7.5 percent below actual market capitalisation.

Shares in Sky Perfect closed down 1.9 percent at 65,700 yen, and JSAT ended down 2.4 percent at 284,000 yen. They underperformed the benchmark Nikkei average’s 0.48 percent fall.

Sky Perfect currently does not own JSAT shares. JSAT, which transmits programming for Sky Perfect’s Sky PerfecTV, holds a 6.9 percent stake in Sky Perfect.

Interesting to note SKY Perfect, the leading satellite TV service in Japan, started up its own IPTV service, OptiCast. For about $25 (3,000 yen), you get 68 channels.  Such a deal.

Looks like there were no winners in the X Prize Cup’s space elevator cup competition this past weekend in Las Cruces, NM. The competition, which  we wrote about last week, put twenty teams against one another in two categories, climbing and tether strength. According to an article on earthtimes.org:

Although none of the teams were declared winners, the University of Saskatchewan Team (USST) was just two seconds short of winning the prize, as they managed to climb 200-foot- high carbon fiber ribbon in two seconds over the time allotted to them.

While there weren’t any winners, this year teams did far better than they have previously, according to Ben Shelef, an executive at the Spaceward Foundation that sponsored the competition. Shelef reminded those interested interested in the competition that:

"For year one, we attracted seven teams and didn’t climb the tether. This year we had four teams make it up to the top, and one came very close to claiming the prize. We didn’t want to make the competition too easy and we can’t make it too hard, so it looks like we are walking the line."

Interested in taking a stab at the challenge during next year’s cup? Looks like you might have an even greater incentive to succeed: Shelef announced that the prize money from this year’s competition will rollover to next year’s, leaving the climbing and tether strength competitions with a combined purse of $500,000.

Even if it means having to take the stairs this year, building the (space) elevator next year has become even sweeter…

The latest on Wildblue’s upgrade from 10/24/06 Skyreport:  

The date to which WildBlue Communications planned on reopening its currently-inoperable spot beams – shut down for system upgrades – has been pushed back another month to ensure the software has been thoroughly tested. To avoid potential network disruptions for the company’s subscribers, WildBlue has extended its network upgrade schedule from Nov. 1 to Dec. 1 of this year.

In a letter written to its dealer base obtained by SkyREPORT, WildBlue said it expects "many or all of the beams that reopen will have to be suspended again before our second satellite is operational. How long they stay open for new orders is dependent on how much additional capacity was added by the upgrade and at the rate at which new orders are being entered."

The date extension comes on the heels of WildBlue’s announcement with satellite TV provider EchoStar and its DISH Network to provide customers with a high-speed internet solution. The push back has affected DISH dealers as well forcing the company to issue a statement of its own.

In a letter posted on its dealer website, DISH said it will be suspending new customer orders in certain regions affected by the extension and have taken the measures to "ensure quality service levels for current WildBlue customers in the affected beams."

DISH said it was encouraging its dealers to enter "as many orders as possible prior to the suspensions" because those "will be able to be installed after the suspensions take place." Both companies urged their dealers to create a waiting list for the customers who placed their orders after the suspensions because the stoppage will be "relatively short."

WildBlue said its new satellite is slated for launch before the end of this year and will become operational sometime during the first quarter of 2007.

Via MosNews.com: 

An unmanned Russian cargo ship carrying 2.76 U.S. tons of supplies, equipment and gifts blasted off Monday en route to the international space station, a space official quoted by AP said.

The Progress M-58 mounted atop a Soyuz-U booster rocket lifted off at 5:41 p.m. from the Baikonur cosmodrome in Kazakhstan and entered orbit about 10 minutes later, Federal Space Agency spokesman Valery Lyndin said.

The ship was scheduled to reach the orbiting station Thursday evening, delivering fresh fruit and vegetables, compact discs and DVDs and other gifts to the station’s current crew — cosmonaut
Mikhail Tyurin, U.S. astronaut Michael Lopez-Alegria and German astronaut Thomas Reiter.

Also included in the shipment, according to Itar-Tass, will be equipment for repairing a Russian-built Elektron oxygen generator, which overheated last month, spreading burnt-rubber smell and leaking potassium hydroxide.

While the incident forced the crew to don masks and gloves in the first emergency ever declared aboard the 8-year-old orbiting outpost, Russian and U.S. space officials downplayed it, saying crew members’ lives were never in any danger.

Longtime Really Rocket Science readers will recall our intrepid reporting on the "Ipod From Space" rumor that went around the Internets back in March.

As it turned out, there was no grand marketing plan to unveil an Ipod that was viewable from space. But since then, at least one Ipod has gone into space: Anousheh Ansari brought her Ipod with her when she became the first female space tourist (and first female Muslimin in space) when she travelled to the International Space Station last month. (Ansari blogged about her cosmic music selection here.)

Hey, who doesn’t like a little electronic diversion on a long commercial flight? 

All of this is to say that sometimes a technological and design break through isn’t really rocket science — but it can change the world nonetheless. 

And today, on the Ipod’s fifth birthday, we doff our hats to the beautiful design and transformative power of what is — let’s face it — not much more than a portable hard drive with an occassionally buggy OS.

But our Ipods are something we just can’t imagine living without. And that, ultimately, is the most meaningful testament  to any technology.

But we’re not alone in singing the Ipod’s praises today: it’s been hailed as "The Perfect Thing" and "The Poster Child for the 21st Century."

Everyone from Queen Elizabeth to the janitor in our building has one. It’s been to space. Thousands of them have entertained our troops abroad. And they’ve changed the way we purchase and listen to music — transforming the entire music industry in the process.

Not bad for a cute little piece of plastic.

Armadillo Aerospace’s  lunar lander impressed quite a few people at the XPrize Cup in Las Cruces this weekend. Aero-News Net gives this account:

 …the final flight on Saturday, the one that would have earned Armadillo the first tier prize, was frustrated when minor damage done in the previous landing caused a series of events that initiated an inflight abort when the vehicle banked too aggressively shortly after liftoff, and the vehicle went down, damaging itself beyond the ability to fly again.

Following up on Spektor’s post on Wednesday about the Wirefly X-Prize Cup (which begins today in Las Cruces, New Mexico), Space.com reports that the first first Mark-1 X-Racer will be known as the Thunderhawk:

 Unveiling the Thunderhawk [image] today at the Wirefly X Prize Cup, RRL officials said that the moniker beat out names like Banshee and Sky Warrior in an online contest that generated more than 2,000 submissions from fans around the planet.

The world headquarters of the Rocket Racing League is based here. The RRL aims to debut its first NASCAR-style races in late Fall 2007 – a first-of-its-kind aerospace sports and entertainment league formed by X Prize founder Peter Diamandis and Granger Whitelaw, a two-time Indy 500 champion team partner….

The fan submitting the winning name is Michael Higgins of New Market, Maryland. He’s an engineer and manager working in the composite pressure vessel industry serving life-support and aerospace/defense applications.

Higgins outlined today how he came up with the Thunderhawk moniker.

“The aircraft, with its rocket propulsion, combines thunderous sound with brilliant flame and light. So I worked up several names focused on thunder and light, and tried to connect those with a bird of prey,” he explained. 

Higgins said he expected the RRL races will put rocket propulsion technology in front of thousands of people through thrilling events. 

“They should generate public interest in rockets and space, much like the famous air races of the 1920s and 1930s did during the golden era of aviation,” Higgins said.

The contest began January 30 and attracted over 2,000 submissions. The top 1,000 names were whittled down to ten semi-finalists by a panel of RRL judges. Fans then were able to vote for their favorite name from the top ten on AOL. 

Nearly 20,000 votes were cast via AOL, selecting Thunderhawk the most popular name.

The live webcast from events at the Wirefly X-Prize Cup is now up; Really Rocket Scientists like us (who couldn’t attend in person) will be glued to the webcast and news coming out of Las Cruces today and tomorrow. (On-demand video from the event can be found here.)

The MetOp satellite was finally launched into polar orbit on 19 October 2006 on a Soyuz rocket:

The Soyuz 2-1a, an enhanced version of the Soyuz launcher, lifted off from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan right on schedule at 10:28 p.m. local time (04:28 p.m. UTC, 06:28 p.m. in Paris). It is the 1,714th launch of a rocket from the Soyuz family.

Starsem and its Russian partners confirmed that the Fregat orbital stage accurately injected Eumetsat’s MetOp-A satellite into its Sun-Synchronous Orbit (SSO). The Fregat upper stage was ignited twice to place MetOp-A into orbit 1 hour, 8 minutes after lift-off.

The MetOp-A satellite will provide more precise details about atmospheric temperature and moisture profiles, invaluable for weather forecasting and climate monitoring. The MetOp program was jointly established by the European Organisation for the Exploitation of Meteorological Satellites (EUMETSAT) and the European Space Agency (ESA). Their main partners in this co-operative venture are the Centre National d’Etudes Spatiales (CNES) in France and the United States National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).

For this flight, Starsem used the upgraded Soyuz 2-1a, flown with the new ST fairing. The 2-1a configuration features improved navigation accuracy and control capability provided by a digital control system. The 2-1a configuration also enables Starsem to introduce the ST payload fairing with an external diameter of 4.1 meters and a length of 11.4 meters.

This latest successful launch by Soyuz reflects the industrial capabilities of the Samara Space Center (TsSKB-Progress) and the skills of all the operating teams, working under the authority of the Russian Federal Space Agency (Roscosmos).

Starsem is responsible for the international marketing and operation of Soyuz launchers. Its shareholders are Arianespace, EADS, Roscosmos and the Samara Space Center.

Check out the launch highlights.

That’s the question many are asking when they see this stunning new image of the merging Antennae galaxies taken by the Hubble Space Telescope:

Reuters explains: 

A seemingly violent collision of two galaxies is in fact a fertile marriage that has birthed billions of new stars, and an image released on Tuesday gives astronomers their best view yet.

The new image of the Antennae galaxies allows astronomers working with the orbiting Hubble Space Telescope to distinguish between new stars and the star clusters that form them.

Most of these clusters, created in the collision of the two galaxies, will disperse within 10 million years but about 100 of the largest will grow into "globular clusters" — large groups of stars found in many galaxies, including our own Milky Way.

The Antennae galaxies, 68 million light years from Earth, began to fuse 500 million years ago.

The image serves as a preview for the Milky Way’s likely collision with the nearby Andromeda Galaxy, about 6 billion years from now.

So if you’ve ever gotten the feeling that everything was heading towards a tremendous smash-up — well, you’re right.

You can zoom in on the above image at the HubbleSite.