Can we re-purpose space assets?

Express-AM4: Total loss or a new purpose?

Paul D. Spudis
The Once and Future Moon
Smithsonian Air & Space
 

The Russians launched a communications satellite, the Astrium Express-AM4, in August 2011.  After a failure in its Proton launch vehicle (resulting in loss of contact and control), it was presumed lost.  However, it survived and is trapped in a high-inclination orbit – a 20,000 by 650 km elliptical orbit (inclined 52° from the equator).  Forcing it to operational geosynchronous (GEO) orbit would take most of its fuel, leaving the satellite with a very limited useful lifetime.  The satellite was insured and payment has been collected on the mishap of the launch but the Russians have yet to decide on what to do with this wayward satellite circling Earth in the “wrong” orbit.  Recently they indicated that there is enough fuel to conduct a controlled re-entry and descent, guiding the satellite to a safe, watery grave somewhere in one of the Earth’s oceans.

Must this be the fate of a newly orbiting space asset?  True, it is in the wrong orbit for its original use as a commercial communications satellite, originally headed for 36,000 km above Earth to GEO, but what if instead it were repurposed?  A company called Polar Broadband has an interesting idea about turning this mishap around and using it for a good purpose.  Though not for its original users, they see a way to use this communication satellite for an assignment it is now suited to do.*  Polar Broadband envisions moving this satellite into an elongate orbit with a 24-hour period and apogee (high point) over its southern extreme (52° S) because a satellite in such an orbit can do service as a communications resource for Antarctica.

Antarctica!?  It’s a remote barren landscape!  True it is remote, but the population of this lonely continent swells greatly during southern summer when hundreds of scientists descend down under to conduct a wide variety of scientific studies.  Although there are a few central bases (like McMurdo), communications with teams in the field can be spotty and unreliable.  If this satellite could be positioned into a new orbit, it would appear in the sky for about 16 hours each day, allowing predictable, reliable communications from a variety of locations in Antarctica, including the difficult to access Amundsen-Scott South Polar Station.

An attempt to repurpose this satellite hardware appears to be a win-win for everybody.  The National Science Foundation gets a new satellite asset for safe and productive communications with and operations in the Antarctic, Polar Broadband gets to sell this service to the NSF, and by giving a green light to this endeavor, the Russians will have benefited the international scientific community.  There are no guarantees but the possibility for these rewards make the attempt worthwhile.

Two of the original 5-vehicle swarm having completed the THEMIS mission were re-purposed to become ARTEMIS, exploring the solar-terrestrial and lunar electro-magnetic plasma environment, arriving in lunar orbit after a long, low energy transfer maneuver by way of LaGrange points in 2011. Now these robust spacecraft are part of an American team totaling five unmanned probes now in orbit around the Moon [NASA].

This experiment also holds relevance for future lunar exploration.  What is being proposed for Express-AM4 is to create a reliable satellite  system so that a distant base can communicate with its mission control for science and operations.  Building and operating a working outpost at one of the lunar poles will require high bandwidth communication to remotely control robotic assets and return volumes of scientific and engineering data to Earth.  Acquiring and gaining operational experience with polar communications is a good analog to doing so around the Moon, where we will require similar communications relays with long dwell times over the poles for access to polar spacecraft and robotic vehicles.

The Russians have said that the satellite has suffered extensive radiation damage as a result of its continued passage through the Van Allen radiation belts.  But in its new guise, the satellite would receive far less radiation exposure than it would by going to GEO.  Put to new use, this “lost” satellite could provide vital communications to and between scientific expeditions and assets in Antarctica and provide us with experience relevant to future operations on the Moon.  A wayward communications satellite has presented us with an unexpected and rich opportunity.

Originally published March 19, 2012 at his Smithsonian Air & Space blogThe Once and Future Moon, Dr. Spudis is a senior staff scientist at the Lunar and Planetary Institute. The opinions expressed are those of the author and are better informed than average.

*Update: Controllers deorbited Astrium Express AM4 on Sunday, March 25, despite the last-minute bid to salvage the spacecraft.

The Path of Exploration

Roald Amundsen, first to the South Pole, 100 years ago today.

Paul D. Spudis
The Once and Future Moon
Smithsonian Air & Space

One of the last major milestones in the history of terrestrial exploration was achieved one hundred years ago today – the attainment of the South Pole by Roald Amundsen and his team on December 14, 1911.  His rival, Robert Falcon Scott and crew, were still more than a month away from the pole and (although denying they were in a race) destined for heartbreaking disappointment when they arrived to find the Norwegian flag flapping in the howling Antarctic wind.

The Amundsen-Scott polar drama time stamps a major shift in our thinking about the meaning of exploration.  This shift in our perception of what it means to explore holds ramifications to today’s debates on space policy.  Traditionally, exploration is a very personal activity.  It involves someone’s decision to see what lies over the next hill.  This act is exploration in its purest sense; it dates from the Stone Age and is principally responsible for humanity’s reach into all corners of the Earth.  This exploration is undirected and random –motivated by the human desire to scratch that unrelenting itch of curiosity.  You finance and outfit yourself and go, while adhering to the maxim, “It is easier to ask for forgiveness than to get permission.”

As society grew and evolved, a different type of exploration emerged.  For difficult or expensive journeys to far corners of the globe, people pooled their knowledge and resources to collectively explore the unknown by creating government-sponsored projects.  Until modern times, such exploration was considered to include not only discovery and initial characterization, but also utilization, exploitation and eventually colonization – all with an eye toward wealth-creation.  By the end of the 19th Century, the regions of the world unclaimed by western powers were all but gone, gobbled up in a frenzy of imperial land-grabs by industrially developed nations.  All that was left were the seas (whose freedom of access for all nations was guaranteed by the British Royal Navy) and the North and South Poles.

The shift of attention to the poles coincided with the rise of science and with it, a significant change in the “exploration” ethic.  It was actually thought at one point in the late 19th Century that all nature had been finally and thoroughly explained.  After numerous failed attempts to find a Northwest Passage to the Pacific north of Canada (economic motivation), expeditions to the polar regions began to focus on scientific observations and measurements (knowledge gathering).  This shift in emphasis also coincided with a global rise of nationalist conscience, the idea that some nations were destined to discover and conquer remote parts of the Earth.  Given the global extent of the British Empire at that time, the English were particularly susceptible to this idea.

These various motivations were threaded together in the early 20th Century as science joined with nationalistic chest-thumping to create government-sponsored scientific expeditions to remote locales.  Important and difficult expeditions requiring teamwork and pooled resources became national exploration efforts.  Science became a fig leaf rationale for realpolitik global power projection.  There was still the occasional “because it’s there” type of expedition to some remote mountain or plateau but most often it was privately financed.

And so we come to the Space Age, which in basic terms has followed the knowledge-gathering template of polar exploration.  A new movement for national power projection in space has yet to fully emerge.  National security may be the only motivator of sufficient political power to launch an earnest, national drive into space.  Traditionally the military conducts exploration in peacetime.  In the late 18th Century, Royal Navy Captain James Cook conducted three expeditions to the Pacific – not for pure science but rather for applied science – to improve navigation for commerce and other purposes.

Perhaps this link to applied science may guide us toward a new understanding of the term “exploration,” or rather, to recover an old meaning that has been lost.  The idea of exploration leading to exploitation (currently tossed aside in the modern equation of exploration and science) could serve as the “new” guiding principle for modern spaceflight.  By making space the singular preserve of science and politics, both are ill served, much to the determent of humanity.  For now, we remain wedded to the template of launch, use, and discard – a modus suitable to an occasional, expensive and limited presence in space but one wholly inappropriate for undertaking the creation of a modern, permanent space faring infrastructure.  Instead, beginning with the creation of a reusable, extensible cislunar space faring system, we should learn how to use space for national interests by using the Moon and its resources.  This will require a long-term research and development project geared to acquiring the understanding and ability to gather and use the resources available to us in space in order to routinely access, explore and exploit cislunar space and the frontier beyond.

This model of a national space program fits the classic understanding of exploration – we go into space as a society and what we do there must have societal value.  Because cislunar space has critical economic and national security value, we need to create a system that can routinely accesses that region of space with robots and people.  Hence, I advocate resource production bases on the Moon, reusable systems, and the build-up of a cislunar spaceflight infrastructure.  Some may not consider this to be “exploration” but the great explorers of history exploited and settled after they found and described.

The attainment of the South Pole one hundred years ago today shifted the meaning of the word exploration and boxed us into an artificial separation of the concepts of discovery and use.  That modern connotation is both arbitrary and historically incorrect.  Exploration includes exploitation and we can exploit the Moon – our nearest planetary neighbor – to create a permanent space faring capability. The development of cislunar space is exploration in the classic sense – a plunge into the unknown:  Can we do this?  How hard is it?  What benefits – beyond those we can recognize now – might we realize from it?   History shows that such undertakings promote new discoveries by opening windows of innovation and generating new streams wealth creation.

Originally published December 14, 2011 at his Smithsonian Air & Space blog The Once and Future Moon, Dr. Spudis is a senior staff scientist at the Lunar and Planetary Institute. The opinions expressed are those of the author and are better informed than average.

Concordia: "If I can make it there..."

Based on the first compartment in ESA's MELISSA project, a black water recycling system is under construction for Concordia research base in Antarctica. The Concordia Station is a scientific base built in Antarctica by the French Polar Institute (IPEV) and the Italian Antarctic Programme (PNRA). Credit: IPEV

"Winter in Antarctica is harsh. Temperatures occasionally going as low as -84ºC, permanent darkness and isolation are only some of the conditions that crews at the Antarctic station Concordia have to brave. These challenging circumstances could help prepare for future human space exploration missions."

As the Summer Solstice peaked daylight length in the Northern Hemisphere, June 21, my thoughts turned to the deepest south, Antarctica, the subject of intense study continually since the International Geophysical Year fifty years ago. At one time, no human or animal life could be found there. The mean average population is now 5,000, military, science and ancillary personnel who have given us a large body of data on human adaptation made possible by high technology.

Even at 35 degrees north of the equator, the night passes quickly, from twilight's end to its beginning, barely 8 hours, and a never-setting Sun north of the Arctic Circle. In contrast, at Byrd Station, the Sun dipped below the horizon to stay weeks ago, and the twilight will precede dawn for half a month before it is seen again. To say life in Antarctica is one of extremes is an understatement. Mitigation of the disorienting effects on circadian rhythm have provided vital clues on how humans will eventually live with two week days and nights, or a Sun almost never sets at all, if Armstrong Station is ever built.

In short, life in Antarctica has become our first opportunity to understand what life will be like on the Moon, and on Mars. It's an easy bet if life were impossible to maintain on the continent of Antarctica, with no aboriginal human experience as guide, life on the Moon would be unthinkable. The same can be said of life in low Earth orbit, which on the launch of STS-127 Endeavour, hopefully on July 11, can safely be said for only 500 persons since 1961.

It may well be recorded one day that without our gathered experiences of living in Antarctica and for months in low Earth orbit, survival on the Moon would have been impossible. Looking even further down the road, we are likely to admit without similar experience adapting to life on the Moon, our trips beyond it would have been folly.

With these things in mind, ESA has just posted a brief feature on life and the French and Italian Concordia Station in Antarctica on the part of that agency's website devoted to Human Spaceflight and Exploration.

It's worth a look HERE.

Return to the Moon: Shaping a new exploration agenda

Some view the new Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station as an analog for an outpost on the Moon. Antarctica is the coldest, highest, driest and windiest of the continents on Earth, and the lest hospitable to human life. U.S. Antarctic research is carried out under the auspices of the National Science Foundation (Credit: NSF)

From the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics, "Return to the Moon, Shaping a new exploration agenda"

From Marshall Space Flight Center, an excellent, brief and very informed (pdf) overview of how the Moon stands squarely in the middle of any and all attempts to practically expand manned and unmanned space exploration.

Overcoming the difficulties and achieving the promise of permanent manned habitation of Earth's Moon is the essential cornerstone, like Low Earth Orbit, the essential second step we must take if humans are to survive mass extinction, a hazard we cannot avoid by keeping all our eggs in one planet's basket.

With that comes the technological development that will answer the basic questions presented by deep space exploration. An excellent read, and heads up to Barbara A. Cohen, a fellow lunatic at Marshall, for bringing this article to our attention.

Download the pdf HERE.

New Lunar Meteorite Found In Antarctica

Although last year's inclement weather resulted in fewer Antarctic meteorite recoveries than usual, scientists have recently discovered that one of the specimens is a rare breed -- a type of lunar meteorite seen only once before.

The new specimen was found by a field party from the U.S. Antarctic Search for Meteorites program (ANSMET) headquartered at Case Western Reserve University. The meteorite was discovered on Dec. 11, 2005, on an icefield in the Miller Range of the Transantarctic Mountains, roughly 750 km from the South Pole.

This 142.2 g black rock, slightly larger than a golfball and officially designated MIL 05035, was one of 238 meteorites collected by ANSMET during the 2005-2006 austral summer. Heavy snows limited search efforts during much of the remainder of the six-week field season, making this meteorite, discovered just 600 m from camp, a particularly welcome find.

Scientists involved in classification of Antarctic finds at NASA's Johnson Space Center and the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of Natural History said the mineralogy and texture of the meteorite are unusual. The new specimen is a very coarse-grained gabbro, similar in bulk composition to the basaltic lavas that fill the lunar maria, but its very large crystals suggest slow cooling deep within the Moon's crust. In addition, the plagioclase feldspar has been completely converted to glass, or maskelynite, by extreme shock (presumably impact events). The new specimen most closely resembles another Antarctic meteorite, Asuka 881757, one of the oldest known lunar basalt samples.

Like the other lunar meteorites, MIL 05035 is a piece of the Moon that can be studied in detail in the laboratory, providing new specimens from a part of the lunar surface not sampled by the US Apollo program. Many researchers believe that Apollo visited some of the most unusual and geochemically anomalous regions of the Moon, and lunar meteorites, knocked off the surface of the Moon by random impacts, give us samples that are more representative of the Moon as a whole. The highly-shocked nature of MIL 05035 suggests an old age and may provide new constraints on the early intense bombardment of the Earth-Moon system, improving our understanding of the history of the Earth's nearest neighbor and aiding NASA's efforts toward a return to the Moon.

Following the existing protocols of the U.S. Antarctic meteorite program, scientists from around the world will be invited to request samples of the new specimen for their own detailed research. Details concerning initial characterization of the specimen and sample availability are available through the Antarctic Meteorite Newsletter, available on the Web and mailed to researchers worldwide.

Discovery of this meteorite occurred during the fourth full field season of a cooperative effort by the National Science Foundation (NSF) and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) to enhance recovery of rare meteorite types in Antarctica, in the hopes new martian samples would be found.

The US Antarctic Meteorite program is a cooperative effort jointly supported by NSF, NASA and the Smithsonian Institution. Antarctic field work is supported by grants from NSF and NASA to Case Western Reserve University; initial examination and curation of recovered Antarctic meteorites is supported by NASA at the Astromaterials Curation facilities at the Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas; and initial characterization and long term curation of Antarctic meteorite samples is supported by NASA and the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of Natural History in Washington, D.C.

April Twilight on Amundsen-Scott

The 10-meter South Pole Telescope with the faintest remaining glow of the sun that had set several weeks earlier. The telescope is located at Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station, Antarctica. Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station is one of three U.S. research stations on the Antarctic continent. All of the stations are operated by the National Science Foundation's U.S. Antarctic Program (USAP). Further information about USAP is available Here. To learn more about the South Pole Telescope, visit the facility's Web site. (Date of Image: April 2008) Credit: Keith Vanderlinde, National Science Foundation.

Everyone and their dog, with a website, is reporting the large mottled disk rising in the east Saturday evening will be the largest full moon of 2009, another perigee Full Moon, some fourteen percent larger than average because it is occurring almost simultaneous to our Moon's orbital perigee, or 50,000 miles closer than its mean distance. A look out the window and at calsky.com, etc., all rightly indicate a cloud shrouded apparition of the Near Side locally, so you might suppose I'll be missing out.

Not a chance. I've enjoyed haunting blue Moon-lit skies the past two nights, watching the Sunrise over the Marius Hills to the best libration-driven angles of deep south Malapert long enough to wear out sixteen AA batteries powering one telescope's drive. Those of you with a favorable view of tonight's Full Moon, which rises here in about two hours and will reach absolute Full over North America in 0.29 days (and will be up far longer than the Sun will be here in the Northern Hemisphere, more than 14 hours) congratulations.

But it is the times when the Near Side's features are in relief that their secrets are bestowed, and the next few evenings after tonight's spectacle promise to be clear once again, and you can bet I'll be tracing out the shadowed relief as the sun sets once again, begining with Crisium and the eastern limb.

I'm going to need more batteries.

In the meantime, rather than show a picture of a familiar Full Moon, courtesy of the National Science Foundation, above is a picture of the 10-Meter South Pole Telescope at Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station, Antarctica - as far South as anyone on Earth can be, last April and "the faintest remaining glow of the sun that had set several weeks earlier."

Image Credit: Keith Vanderlinde, National Science Foundation - Download the high-resolution JPG version of the image. (803 KB)