Report that EELV is viable as Ares alternative 'not accurate,' Coppinger reports

Delta IV Heavy

NASA via Rob Coppenger @ FlightGlobal's Hyperbola, following good journalist practice, has posted a correction to reports first headlined by NASASpaceFlight.com. The erroneous conclusion drawn from the Areospace Corporation study was then picked up by Lunar Pioneer Research Group's blog Lunar Networks and has since been withdrawn.

"NASA managers are reviewing an independent analysis," NASA told Hyperbola Wednesday.

Headlines had appeared reporting Areospace Corporation's study concluded that Evolved Expendable Launch Vehicle (EELV) boosters were adequate to support NASA's Constellation, program, "(u)nder evaluation was not accurate," NASA told Coppenger. "The Aerospace report...is not finished."

Lunar Network reported yesterday that a study "by the Aerospace Corporation "conducted at the request of NASA to disprove the viability of an option to switch Orion to an alternative Evolved Expendable Launch Vehicle (EELV) has found both the Atlas V Heavy and Delta IV Heavy are capable of launching Orion on both ISS and Lunar missions."

Lunar Networks, especially on behalf Lunar Pioneer Research Group, regrets the error.

Coppenger recommends a more thorough reading of theAerospace Corporation's Aerospace Safety Advisory Panel 2008 annual Report.

"While is says nothing about EELV suitability for launching Orion, " Coppenger writes, "there is one entry that is very interesting. Acting (NASA) administrator Christopher Scolese is quoted as saying, when asked by the (Panel) "what was harder than you expected."

"Designing Ares and Orion to have improved operational characteristics over our Shuttle and EELV system," Scolese is quoted.

Coppenger also recommends reading former NASA Administrator Michale Griffin's answers to the Panel's question picked up in their Annual Report.

Griffin blasts Obama's plans for NASA

In an opinion piece by Mark Whittington of Associated Content former NASA administrator Mike Griffin blasts the Obama administration's Office of Management and Budget (OMB) for quietly planning to transform NASA into a "Potemkin Space Program," Griffin said.

Griffin was appointed NASA Administrator by President Bush in 2005 and resigned in December. President Obama has yet to appoint Griffin's successor. He was recently appointed an eminent scholar and professor by the University of Alabama at Huntsville. The accusations were delivered during a speech to a National Space Club Dinner on Friday, April 17.

The term "Potemkin Village" refers to an artificial American town constructed in the former Soviet Union for the purpose of training agents to live underground in the United States during the Cold War.

Read the Article HERE.

Moon and Venus, April 22

The western-western hemisphere enjoyed a spectacular occultation of Venus, just past inferior conjunction, by the old pre-dawn Moon, April 22, 2009. The Moon's libration swung the small dark floor of the mini-basin (and mascon) of Grimaldi into highlighted view. (Photo by Johnny Horne, Backyard Universe, The Fayetteville Observer, North Carolina.)

Johnny Horne is photo editor for the Observer, where he has worked for more than 30 years. Johnny has been an amateur astronomer since age 10 and is now a contributing editor for Sky and Telescope magazine. He has led astronomical expeditions to Mexico, Africa, the Caribbean and Iceland. In 2004 the IAU designated the asteroid 11132 Horne in his honor.

Life on Earth without the Moon?

Although Bruce Dorminey does not bring up a curious possibility that Earth's atypical magnetic field, perhaps resulting from tidal forces acting upon Earth's internal magma-ocean, he still did a fair job summing up the latest thinking that life on Earth might not be possible without the presence of Earth's Moon.

By driving the tides, our lunar companion may have jump-started biology--or at least accelerated its progression - The ocean tides mirror life itself. Their ebb and flow pay homage to the cyclic nature of the cosmos along even the most secluded seashores. But is life itself also ultimately a fluke of the tides?

If so, life may ultimately owe its origins to our serendipitously large moon. The sun and wind also drive the ocean's oscillations, but it is the moon's gravitational tug that is responsible for the lion's share of this predictable tidal flux.

Our current Earth–moon system, according to the prevailing theory of lunar formation, reflects our solar system's early game of planetary billiards, when colliding planetary embryos created entirely new versions of themselves—in the case of our own planet, a disproportionately large natural satellite in close orbit.

It all started some 4.5 billion years ago when, as theory has it, our nascent Earth was blindsided by a Mars-size planetary embryo, believed to have spun Earth into its initial fast rotation of roughly 12 hours per day. The molten mantle thrown into orbit after the catastrophic lunar-forming impact quickly coalesced into our moon. Within a few thousand years, Earth cooled to an object with a molten surface and a steam atmosphere. Life emerged some 700 million years later, or about 3.8 billion years ago.

But four billion years ago a cooling Earth already had an ocean, but remained barren. The moon was perhaps half as distant as it is now, and as a result, the ocean tides were much more extreme.

At an average distance of 235,000 miles (380,000 kilometers), the moon is currently receding from Earth at a rate of 1.5 inches (3.8 centimeters) per year. As it does, Earth's own spin rate is slowing. And, in the process, roughly three terawatts of gravitational energy is shed into pushing around the oceans annually.

Read the SciAm Gedanken HERE.

Aerospace Safety Advisory Panel Annual Report: The Gap unavoidable

NASA's Aerospace Safety Advisory Panel has issued it's Annual Report dashing hopes for additional Space Shuttle missions, reiterating many of the same safety issues mentioned here two days ago. The thirty-year-old program has safety limits put in place after Columbia greatly limiting its range of use, beyond its present flights designed to complete the International Space Station.

The panel also conflicts with recent publicity summarizing a report issued by the Congressional Budget Office that the Constellation program will need "billion more" than already slated now and in the "out-years" to become viable and tests of the Ares-X1, later this year, are needed before further conclusions should be made.

The panel also does not share optimism by many that Commercial Orbital Transportation Services projects (COTS), already awarded twenty ISS cargo re-supply missions by NASA made to SpaceX and Orbital Sciences, will be able in time to perform manned missions to ISS to evade an inevitable "gap" in U.S. manned missions into Space prior to Constellation. Although cautious to admit concerns about relying on the Russian Soyuz to carry astronauts to and from ISS in the interim, the Panel cited its 40-year-record of demonstrated reliability.

Mark Matthews of The Orlando Sentinel's Right Stuff has details.
The Aerospace Safety Advisory Panel's Annual Report (pdf) can be downloaded HERE.

Photo Album from FIRST Robotics International

And William Pomerantz at the Google Lunar X-Prize blog The Launch Pad has posted an excellent and representative selection of shots taken before, during and after the 2009 FIRST Robotics International finals in Atlanta, April 12. A great crowd and a hopeful look forward at tomorrow's planetary scientists and engineers.

Someone is this crowd will be going to the Moon.

See it HERE.

Odyssey MOON interview at Space Symposium

Engineering TV has posted a video interview of Bob Richards, CEO of Odyssey Moon, taken at their display booth during the 25th International Space Symposium.

Read and watch the feature HERE.

LCROSS target "E" named for Fred Whipple

The International Astronomical Union (IAU) has designated the crater on the Moon, LCROSS target crater "E," second closest to the lunar North Pole after popular British astronomer and writer Fred Whipple (1906-2004).

Hat Tip to Danny Caes and Jim Mosher
via LPOD and the LCROSS Observation Group.

The Space Shuttle's Limitations

Once again, the "once in a lifetime" opportunity presented last September of seeing two Space Shuttles, Atlantis and Endeavour, deployed for launch at the same time is seen at Kennedy Space Center. It speaks well of the skillful personnel at the Cape, but also speaks volumes of what the U.S. has been forced to recognize about the limitations of our Space Shuttle.

After an incredible logistical ballet following Hurricane Ike, and after the Hubble Space Telescope encountered unforeseeable mechanical problems before a reluctant repair mission could be launched, the remaining STS timeline was juggled.

Easy to say, but difficult to trace out in a flowchart. The mighty crawlers originally built to move Apollo-Saturn stacks from the massive Vehicle Assembly Building out to Pad 39 have had quite a workout moving Space Shuttle missions outside the VAB, back in and back out again, back and forth with remarkable care and skill at KSC.

The thirty-year-old Shuttle program has taught us all many things only historians in the future may be able to properly chronicle. Engineers, scientists, even bureaucrats and politicians have had an opportunity to learn realities they might otherwise have never discovered.

Though the program never delivered on its original selling points of convenience, cost, safety or reliability the future seen in 1971 was characterized by twin shuttle deployments as a common occurrence. Still, the Shuttle has delivered to us a range of lessons at least as complicated as the machine itself.

It is with safety in mind that Endeavour once again stands ready to launch as hopefully a very low-probability rescue mission (STS-400) for the crew of Atlantis, set to perform one final HST repair mission (STS-125) in May.

After the loss of Columbia in 2003 it was decided the Shuttle would never again be launched into an orbit that made emergency rendezvous with the International Space Station beyond the range of the fuel needed for such an orbital alignment of plain and altitude.

Without a second Shuttle programed and dedicated for a possible rescue mission and because the orbital inclination of ISS is 51 degrees from the equator this decision effectively put any Shuttle mission not specifically dedicated to ISS out of bounds.

Launch from KSC to rendezvous with ISS requires either a launch to the north-northeast along the eastern seaboard of the United States or south-southeast over the Caribbean Sea and western South Atlantic. Both insertion angles require more energy than a launch toward the due east which takes fuller advantage of Earth's rotational speed of more than 300 meters per second at the latitude of Cape Canaveral.

The plain of the ecliptic, where the orbital plains of Earth and Moon, and most of the Solar System, are all between 48 degrees north and south of the equator. Missions are most efficiently launched eastward and into alignment with the orbits of these other destinations.

Deploying Hubble high over tropical latitudes near the equator also allowed uninterupted exposures for images anywhere in both the northern and southern skies.

Another concern for ISS is the South Atlantic Anomaly, a lower-than-average warp in the Van Allen belts, ionizing radiation trapped along Earth's magnetic field lines and mostly above Low Earth Orbit. You can see it designated as the SAA on NASA mission control mission maps, and at its much high orbital inclination ISS must travel through this area for minutes at a time during four or five of 15.5 daily orbits.

ISS was constructed in a high orbital inclination to accommodate our Russian partners' higher latitude launch facilities, when persuading them to de-orbit Mir and to instead refit the Zvezda module for installation as what is now the Russian section of the station.

Hubble, like Columbia on its final trip, was launched eastward from Cape Kennedy within the hold of Discovery nineteen years ago this month, on April 25, 1990, seven years later than original planned. Aside from the amazing corrections resolving its improperly ground mirror, which was immediately diagnosed upon First Light, Hubble has also been repaired, renewed and highly upgraded during four intense and high flying Shuttle servicing missions in 1993, 1997, 1999 and 2002.

This coming fifth servicing mission to Hubble was originally scrubbed because of dangers known to be inherent in the Shuttle's design, terribly confirmed by Columbia (which was also the last Shuttle to rendezvous with HST in 2002). Popular sentiment for the remarkable Hubble prevailed and billions have now been spent on this final rendezvous to keep the aging but still unique vehicle working for more years to come.

May's capture and repair of Hubble is not without dangers other than the obvious post-Columbia.

While the mission will be performed in Hubble's much less inclined orbital plain, it again takes the Shuttle more than 200 kilometers higher than ISS.

Its higher orbit keeps Hubble stationed 559 kilometers over Earth, while latest information shows ISS orbiting between 347 and 358 kilometers. Yet, because the ISS orbits closer to Earth's rarefied upper atmosphere the Shuttle faces a high probability of encountering debris in general and particularly debris from the Cosmos and Iridium collision in February.

NASA has reportedly calculated odds of an impact from debris on STS-125 at 1/185, outside the 1/200 flight protocol limits. But flight planners have waved this limit for this last exceptional Space Shuttle mission.

More problematic is the present weakness in the interplanetary magnetic field, resulting from what is believed to be the deepest and longest minimum in solar activity in more than a century.

The hull of the Space Shuttle is an effective shield from a weak solar wind and even Coronal Mass Ejections, though these last can occur at any point in the solar cycle.

But not cosmic rays, made of both very heavy and medium weight elemental particles, like iron or aluminum, stripped of electrons and ranging from medium to super energy levels, traveling near the speed of light.

The best protection against these interstellar bullets is under the blanket of Earth's atmosphere. Earth's magnetic field does bend and sometime deflect lower-energy cosmic rays but their high speed prevents the highest energy particles from changing course in time to prevent an impact on machines and personnel in Space.

On the Moon it is estimated a full 15 meters of lunar regolith would be need to be shoveled over a habitation to provide the same levels of protection human take for granted at sea level on Earth.

Far from protecting astronauts, the hull of spacecraft merely breaks apart the most energetic cosmic rays into a cone of secondary particles, a choice between being shot point blank with a pistol or with a shot gun from across the room.

The best protection astronauts have, interestingly, is an active local star. The resulting interplanetary magnetic field at its most energetic protects the inner Solar System from fully half of this interstellar radiation.

Cosmic rays are more rare than solar wind and, far more dangerous Coronal Mass Ejections, but the incidence of cosmic rays is twice than at Solar Max a few years ago.

A trip to the inside edge of of Earth's trapped radiation belts, low likelihood of solar activity and even a doubled incidence of cosmic rays over a short trip, even to the Moon, does not put the STS-125 crew outside NASA's standards. A trip to Mars, however, using present technology is certain to exceed those standards, putting Mars-treking astronauts just beyond the 4/100 chance of dying of radiation exposure over their remaining projected lifespan.

The Space Shuttle, as the most complicated machine ever built represents a true high water mark, using 1970's era avionics and spacecraft design. But our present technology is known to be insufficient to handle the known hazards of what might be accomplished in coming decades.

Far beyond just new booster designs or newer long-term goals and exciting new spacecraft, crossing those very real roadblocks is an uncelebrated plan at the heart of the long-overdue Constellation program. The Space Shuttle program definitely stands in the way.

The sight of twin Shuttles being readied on Pad 39 may once have represented that program's promise, but today it represents its limitations.

Lunar Dust: Phenomena and Hazard

The dusty moon and the Solar Wind, (Fig. 3 from "Neutral Solar Wind Generated by Lunar Exospheric Dust at the Terminator, Collier and Stubbs (2008).

NASA's progress with R&D deemed vital prior to "extended human activity on the Moon," as explicitly detailed by the Space Studies Board in 2007, was recently graded in a point by point follow-up progress report. Among these "mitigation of the lunar dust hazard" to personnel and equipment was given the highest marks for the work methods but a low grade for progress made.

Far from being the jagged surreal landscape pictured in early artist's renderings before the Space Age, the lunar surface close-up turned out to be surprisingly smooth, the hills rounded and the Ground Truth very, very dusty. Since the Apollo Era the Moon's history has turned out to be one of continuous bombardment, by objects large and small. Seemingly without weather or tectonics, and immensely old, the Moon may be the Rosetta Stone to unlocking the history of the Solar System.

From the standpoint of machine and Human visitor, however, the steady micro-bombardment of basaltic lava fields and anorthositic Highlands over billions of years has resulted in a surface covered with hyper-fine rock that literally gets into everything, including the ear nose and throat.

It is abrasive and sticky, in the micro-electrostatic sense, and presents a big road block to progress in lunar exploration. More than a dangerous and hazardous nuisance, scientists believe extended human activity may disrupt or cloud what lessons might be learned from the dust while still in "a pristine state." The long-term changes and day-to-day hazards of living in the inner solar system, particularly that part where the Earth spends its time, can't be easily discovered on or near the Earth. But the Moon is a perfect laboratory for this and other studies.

Senator Harrison Schmitt, twelfth and last to set foot on the Moon in 1972, notes the immediate surface of the Moon is "overturned roughly every twenty million years." Mixed with Solar Wind, heavy and light cosmic rays, magnetic plasmas, meteors, etc. its now generally accepted that some of the lighter microscopic dust particles pick up sufficient electrostatic charge from the solar wind to repel away from the surface to heights as high as orbiting spacecraft.

Among the great unknowns, as this dusty wavefront follows the terminator around the Moon's surface, are its true extent and if this dynamic process alters standards used to measure the age of larger lunar features.

Immediately below, is news of a study accepted for publication by Geophysical Research Letters, of the American Geophysical Union (AGU.) In his new study, Brian O'Brien "analyzed the behavior of dust on horizontal and vertical solar cells in one of the Apollo dust-detecting experiments. On the first morning of the experiment, the lunar module – 130 meters (426 feet) away from the dust detector – took off from the Moon's surface. The blast of exhaust gases completely cleansed a dusty horizontal solar cell, because it was illuminated only by weak early-morning light and thus the adhesive force of dust was faint. But only half the dust covering the vertical cell was removed by the blast, because its surface faced east – into more intense sunlight– and thus the sticky forces were stronger."

A quick tour of the 16mm films of each manned lunar landing, as shot through the starboard triangular pilot window, shows why Apollo astronauts quickly learned to expect to see a fan of dust from the descent stage about 40 meters above their landing site. It is now understood some of this dust was actually blown off the Moon entirely, to escape velocity.

An interesting exception was the landing of Apollo 17, where Dr. Schmitt excitedly confirms "very little dust" being kicked up until much closer to the surface. Interestingly, this longest and last field expedition is remembered for the experiences of Captain Gene Cernan and Senator Schmidt with the affect of lunar dust, inside and outside the ascent stage cabin, and also for their direct detection of fast-moving lateral "winds" of lunar dust by an experiment designed to measure Solar Wind.

A dusty Moon seemed to be a problem earlier dismissed after Neil Armstrong did not need his contingency tether to pull himself from a kind of lunar quick sand that many believed he might encounter when making that first Small Step. But as these missions demonstrated, the Moon is, indeed a very dusty place, not unlike the ground on Earth following the collapse of a pyroclastic cloud.

Studies abound on this (large or small) migration, as well as the dangerous mechanical and health hazards of lunar dust as a pressing and official central problem for engineers and planetary scientists alike.

The former want working methods of exploring the Moon while the latter is concerned with at least one very compelling reason for studying the Moon in the first place.

Moon dust hazard influenced by Sun's elevation

In the 1960s and 1970s, the Apollo Moon Program struggled with a minuscule, yet formidable enemy: sticky lunar dust. Four decades later, a new study reveals that forces compelling lunar dust to cling to surfaces — ruining scientific experiments and endangering astronauts' health —change during the lunar day with the elevation of the sun.

The study analyzes the interactions on the Moon among electrostatic adhesive forces, the angle of incidence of the sun's rays, and lunar gravity. It concludes that the stickiness of lunar dust on a vertical surface changes as the sun moves higher in the sky, eventually allowing the very weak lunar gravity to pull the dust off.

The study has been accepted for publication in Geophysical Research Letters, a publication of the American Geophysical Union (AGU.)

"Before you can manage the dust, you have to understand what makes it sticky," says Brian O'Brien, the sole author of the paper. His analysis is the first to measure the strength of lunar dust's adhesive forces, how they change during the lunar day – which lasts 710 hours – and differ on vertical and horizontal surfaces. O'Brien used data from the matchbox-sized Dust Detector Experiments deployed on the Moon's surface in 1969 during the Apollo 11 and Apollo 12 missions.

Lunar dust has long been described as the No. 1 environmental hazard on the Moon. It causes miscellaneous havoc: from destroying scientific equipment deployed on the lunar surface — dusty surfaces absorb more sunlight and make devices overheat — to creating blinding dust clouds that interfere with lunar landings. It also may be a health hazard to space travelers, since dust clinging to space suits detaches when astronauts reenter their lunar module. It then floats free in zero gravity, ready to be inhaled, during the 3-day journey back to Earth.

Lunar dust particles are minuscule, with an average size of 70 micrometers, the thickness of a human hair. The particles get positively charged by photoelectric effects caused by powerful solar ultraviolet radiation and X-rays — the thin lunar atmosphere does not attenuate solar radiation — generating strong electrostatic adhesive forces which compel the specks of dust to cling to surfaces of scientific instruments and space suits.

In his new study, O'Brien analyzed the behavior of dust on horizontal and vertical solar cells in one of the Apollo dust-detecting experiments. On the first morning of the experiment, the lunar module – 130 meters (426 feet) away from the dust detector – took off from the Moon's surface. The blast of exhaust gases completely cleansed a dusty horizontal solar cell, because it was illuminated only by weak early-morning light and thus the adhesive force of dust was faint. But only half the dust covering the vertical cell was removed by the blast, because its surface faced east – into more intense sunlight– and thus the sticky forces were stronger.

O'Brien found that later, as the sun rose and the angle of incidence of the sun's rays on the dusty vertical surface facing east decreased, the electrostatic forces on the vertical cell weakened. The tipping point was reached when the sun was at an angle of about 45 degrees: then the pull of lunar gravity counteracted the adhesive forces and made the dust start falling off. All dust had fallen by lunar night.

"These are the first measurements of the collapse of the cohesive forces that make lunar dust so sticky" O'Brien says.

In 1965, NASA selected O'Brien, an Australian physicist who was then a professor of Space Science at Rice University in Houston, Texas, to be the principal investigator in one of seven lunar experiments designed for the Apollo Program. O'Brien started researching lunar dust in 1966 because he feared for an instrument he developed that was to be left behind on the Moon by the Apollo 14 mission. He worried that the device, which measured the flux of charged particles, would end up covered in dust and ruined. Lunar dust is "a bloody nuisance," he says.

In 1970, O'Brien published a paper which he says proved that rocket exhaust gases from the Apollo 11 Lunar Module had lofted dust and debris which then coated the surface of a lunar seismometer — the first instrument deployed by human hands on a celestial body. The seismometer then overheated by 50 degrees and failed after three weeks' operation. An official 1969 NASA report was incorrect in stating that no contamination had occurred, O'Brien says.

But it wasn't until late 2006, when O'Brien learned from NASA's website that the space agency had misplaced data tapes from its dust-detecting experiments, that he decided to revisit his own set of 173 tapes. NASA had sent him these tapes one by one in 1969 and 1970, when he was working at the Department of Physics at University of Sydney. He took them with him when, in 1971, he moved to Perth for a new job. O'Brien's tapes are now the only known record of data from those vintage experiments.

Working alone and self-funded, the 75-year-old scientist dedicated two years to analyzing paper charts printed out in 1969 and 1970 from the magnetic tapes, which contain 6 million measurements, most of them yet to be analyzed.

For future Moon and Mars missions, O'Brien offers a practical solution to the dust hazard: Use a wide sun-proof shed, to block the rays that enhance dust's adhesive forces.

"Getting closer to understanding the physics of the lunar dust problems means moving one giant step towards management of the hazards," O'Brien says.

LRO as vital precursor to survival on the Moon

After holding our breath for the better part of the past four decades, the original Lunar Pioneer Research Group anxiously awaits the successful launch of the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, our appetite's whetted by the work of LOIRP and the methodical work of NASA and countless scientists preparing for "extended human activity on the Moon."

As we've endorsed on more than one occasion, the Lunar Precursor Robotics Program is properly deemed essential if what we know about the place of importance the Moon must have in Human destiny will ever to become more widely known. On this issue, at least, we are in full agreement with the National Academy's Space Studies Board.

Those who feel as we do, that a commitment to lunar exploration holds a central role in the ultimate survival of civilization, would do well to take the little time needed to download and read the seminal report issued by the Academy, The Scientific Context for the Exploration of the Moon (2007).

Understanding the progress, advances and delays NASA is making in long-term planning and development (a difficult undertaking for any federal agency necessarily dependent on Congress) seems divided between those who have read this report and those who have not.

In the short-term, from inside the high-pressure stream of snippets issuing 24/7 from PhysOrg.com is a brief report on LRO and its place in the long-term goal of doing the kind of important science in a wide variety of fields on the Moon that 5,000 individuals regularly carry out in the almost equally inhospitable Antarctica.

That PhysOrg.com snippet can be read HERE.

NASA Budget and Policy Season underway

The legendary Vehicle Assembly Building (VAB) at KSC
endured it's worst natural battering at the hands of
Hurricane Frances in 2004.

Forecasters may call for a relatively mild Hurricane Season in 2009, but no threat to NASA's long-term planning can compare to the annual tug of war federal budget fight in Congress.

Space Florida in Washington for California Space Week:

Space Florida will join California Space Authority (CSA) officials next week in Washington D.C. to spend four days meeting with federal officials regarding vital space policy issues. Topics to be discussed include sustaining America's leadership in space, addressing export control restrictions, space commercialization issues and FAA licensing processes, in addition to the utilization of the International Space Station . Currently, a majority of NASA research destined for the ISS is processed through the Space Florida-owned Space Life Sciences Laboratory (SLSL) at Kennedy Space Center.

"This is the second year we will join forces with our coalition partners like the California Space Authority to address space issues on a federal level," noted Space Florida President Steve Kohler. "Our united work is vital to ensuring the U.S. develops competitively in the global space marketplace."

Topics to Include ITAR Reform and U.S. private participation in the International Space Station past 2005.

Sponsors of this year's California Space Week event in Washington include SpaceX, Raytheon, Boeing, Lockheed Martin, Aerojet, AIAA, Stellar Solutions, United Paradyne Corporation, and Sea Space Corporation.

Read S.F. press release from SpaceRef HERE.

From the Wall Street Journal

Lawmakers Pressure NASA to Delay Shuttle's Retirement

By Andy Pasztor

The faltering economy threatens to disrupt plans to retire the U.S. space-shuttle fleet next year and free up funds to develop a new generation of manned spacecraft.

With Florida and parts of Texas particularly hard hit by the recession, their congressional delegations are maneuvering to stave off thousands of additional layoffs there by delaying shuttle retirements.

Concerns about adding to local unemployment rolls recently prompted Democratic Sen. Bill Nelson of Florida to put language into a budget bill providing an extra $2.5 billion that could keep the shuttles flying through 2011. A House-Senate conference committee is considering the matter, even though officials at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration are pushing to end the program a year earlier.

The crux of the problem is that NASA can't afford to keep the orbiter going and also accelerate work on its next family of multibillion-dollar rockets and exploration vehicles. NASA managers worry that extending the 1980s-vintage shuttles past 2010 poses significant safety problems. They also believe such a step would preclude robust funding of replacement systems, and likely end up lengthening the currently projected five-year gap between the final shuttle mission and the anticipated maiden flight of its replacement.

Read the Article HERE.

And the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) lays it on thick with it's normal agenda-driven "non-partisan" two-billion penny's worth in a NASA annual assessment Report (pdf), HERE.

Crawford Transportables' Trials and Tribulations of Moonbuggy Competition

SatNews.com

Crawford’s Transportables’ crew has geared up for the event at the U.S. Space & Rocket Center several times with its C-band uplink trucks.

This year, engineer-in-charge Jim Conner was alongside 75 teams of high school and collegiate students who designed, built and raced their way to the finish line with lightweight, human-powered buggies on a simulated lunar surface.

Footage of this event was for Crawford’s client Arcata Associates, a contractor for NASA.

Read SatNews.com HERE.

University of Houston on lunar surface navigation

Adaptability is the key to keeping track of explorers and vehicles and giving them good directions, investigators say

Angela Hopp

If NASA is going to successfully establish a permanent human presence on the moon, it must be able to accurately track and direct its crew members and exploration vehicles, and the space agency has charged a University of Houston research team with helping it do just that.

"If they just stay in close proximity to where they land, they can't get a lot of information. They have to travel long distances," explained Heidar Malki, the associate dean of research at UH's College of Technology. "Now, what happens if they travel and get lost? On Earth, we have GPS, global positioning system, and we can pinpoint those things. But on the moon, we don't have that capability."

Malki's group is helping to create a navigation system that will allow explorers to contact their lunar base, find their way back to it and communicate with each other.

"Navigation systems today need consistent and reliable measurements to generate a good solution," said Steve Provence, a UH graduate who, as a NASA employee, is working with the team.

The first step is to identify which sensors best suit the environments and tasks at hand, Malki said. Then it's a matter of keeping the lines of communication clear and giving near-perfect directions.

Provence said there are more than a dozen lunar-surface navigation sensors under development in industry, at universities and at the Johnson Space Center, and it is unclear which will work the best. He's generating mathematical models with data from the most promising candidates.

It's up to the UH team, during the two-year project, to take the modeled sensor output and develop an algorithm that will help determine the lunar navigation accuracy NASA can expect to achieve.

On the moon, Provence said, explorers will need multiple sensors, including ones that work like cell-phone towers, odometers on the wheels of the vehicles, and even satellites like those used for GPS.

"We are trying to stitch together the measurements from each," he said. "The first big issue is timing. Each sensor will give us updates at different intervals. Some will report once per second, like GPS, and others may be faster or slower. This may not sound hard, but combining all these measurements into a good reliable solution is tough."

Even more challenging, perhaps, is keeping astronauts informed if some sensors become unavailable to them. If they travel into craters or over the horizon, for instance, their view of navigation towers will be obscured, and they will lose contact with those sensors, Provence said.

Malki emphasizes that the navigation system has to be more robust than the norm and has to adapt to the sensor input changes and still provide good information in the end.

The UH team will classify various sensors with respect to range, accuracy, reliability, power consumption, cost and computational-processing requirements. Using the selected sensors, they will develop estimation algorithms to provide accurate lunar tracking and navigation.

"If a sensor fails, you might still get data, but it will be unreliable," said Karolos Grigoriadis, a professor of mechanical engineering at the Cullen College of Engineering and a co-investigator on the project. "Your algorithm should be able to recognize the bad data and disregard it."

The UH team has expertise in various estimation approaches. One such approach uses "neural networks," or simply computational models made up of artificial neurons. The networks themselves are adaptable – some would say intelligent – in that their operations can change if the information they receive indicates they should.

"Neural networks try to mimic biological systems," said Malki. "The way that we learn things is by examples – trial and error. Neural networks work basically the same way. By presenting examples, we try to teach the networks to learn."

Once they do, they are tested with new data to see if or how they can produce similar results, said Malki, who has done neural network research for NASA before. During a fellowship at the agency's Ames Research Center, he worked on a project aimed at controlling vibration on Blackhawk helicopters.

Grigoriadis, director of the graduate program in aerospace engineering, focuses on mathematical model-based control and estimation methods that provide system regulation and tracking.

"One type of sensor alone most probably will not do the job. A challenge is to provide seamless integration of various sensors that inevitably will have different properties," he said. "The fault-tolerance of the overall navigation process – or the ability of it to work properly despite certain failures – is essential."

Ultimately, Provence said, the team has to look at what he calls "the worst-case scenario."

"Basically, if the rover drives away from the base and breaks down 20 or so miles away, the astronaut has to get out and walk back. Our best guess is that he needs to get to within about 1,800 feet of the base before he can see it. The problem is, he may have started at the broken rover with a navigation error that's pretty big, and it's only going to get worse as he moves along, seeing as how all errors grow with time," he said.

Surrey Space Centre to develop lunar rovers

Hat Tip: ParabolicArc

"Surrey Space Centre is joining forces with one of China’s top engineers to develop lunar rovers.

The Royal Academy of Engineering is to provide funding for UK-based space engineer Dr Yang Gao to develop a new generation of lunar rovers, used to explore the surface of the moon.

It is hoped the developments will pave the way for future moon exploration, including the proposed Moonraker lander mission by the UK and China’s Chang’e programme, which is in its second phase and successfully launched its lunar orbiter Chang’e 1 in November 2007.

Together Dr Gao, who is a lecturer in space autonomy at the space centre of the University of Surrey, and Associate Professor Hehua Ju of the Beijing University of Technology will develop technology and information exchanges with China and India.

Both engineers will investigate onboard guidance, navigation and control systems for a lunar rover in a bid to allow the vehicle to operate autonomously."

Read ParabolicArc post HERE.

SpaceX teams with Argentina's CONAE

SPACEX SIGNS ARGENTINA'S SPACE AGENCY FOR TWO FALCON 9 LAUNCHES

Pair of SAOCOM Earth Observation Satellites to Launch between 2012 & 2013

Space Exploration Technologies (SpaceX) has signed an agreement with CONAE, Argentina's National Commission on Space Activity, for two launches aboard SpaceX's Falcon 9 medium-to-heavy lift vehicle. The flights will send the SAOCOM 1A and 1B Earth observation satellites into sun-synchronous orbits, where they will provide imagery for natural resources monitoring, as well as emergency and disaster management.

The identical SAOCOM satellites each carry an L-band Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) instrument. Among other civil applications, the main purpose of the constellation is the measurement of the soil moisture over the Pampa Húmeda in Argentina. The two SAOCOM satellites will join four X-band SAR COSMO-SkyMed satellites from the Italian Space Agency (ASI), creating the Italian-Argentine System of Satellites for Emergency Management (SIASGE) constellation. The first three of the ASI satellites were launched in 2007 and 2008 with the fourth expected to fly in 2010.

"SpaceX is excited to be CONAE's launch service provider for the SAOCOM 1A and 1B missions," said Elon Musk, CEO and CTO of SpaceX. "The Falcon 9 launch vehicle has been designed to the highest level of reliability and performance; we look forward to helping ensure the success of the SAOCOM satellites."

The inaugural flight of Falcon 9 is scheduled for this year, with the first Dragon spacecraft scheduled to fly on a subsequent launch, both from SpaceX's launch facility at Cape Canaveral, Florida.

CONAE (Comisión Nacional de Actividades Espaciales, or in English, National Space Activities Commission) is Argentina's civilian agency in charge of national space activities. They have launched three satellites to date, and have numerous joint space efforts with Argentine industry and academia, as well as governmental space agencies around the world, including NASA, CSA, AEB/INPE (Brazil), ASI, CNES, ESA and other international agencies.

Duncan Jones, Director of "Moon"

Popular Mechanics interviews Moon director
Duncan Jones

Erin McCarthy

"Duncan Jones, the movie's director, wanted to make the kind of gritty sci-fi film that he feels is no longer being made. The writer and director walks PM's Digital Hollywood through DIY FX on a budget, answering to astronauts at NASA and the difference between artificial intelligence and anthropomorphized computers. Plus, check out the Moon trailer HERE."

"I read a book by Robert Zubrin, Entering Space. It was all about how we could financially justify colonizing the solar system; there was a chapter on colonizing the moon and using helium-3 as a source for fusion power. It did seem to be a very logical argument about why you would have a reason to set up a moon base. I think one of the things that is limiting about NASA leading the space race is that everything they do is researched, but it doesn't have any direct relevance to how it affects our lives. But with helium-3, there is a very direct link to how we could use that as a resource here on Earth and why it would be profitable."

Jones, after receiving favorable from private screenings for cinematic legends Terry Gilliam and Neil Gaiman, says he now anxiously awaits a review from Ridley Scott. His next project, though not a squeal, takes up where the world portrayed in Scott's 1982 classic Blade Runner leaves off, in not-to-distant future Berlin.

Read the Popular Mechanics interview HERE.

NASA Conflict of Interest Concern

Congressional Quarterly (CQPOLITICS) 20090415

Kathryn A. Wolfe

"The contract in question, worth $1.2 billion over five years, is for managing and operating NASA’s system of space-to-ground receivers and transmitters that allow the agency to communicate with its spacecraft, including astronauts in orbit.

The contract was awarded to ITT Corp., which beat out Honeywell Technology Solutions, Inc., which had held the contract in various permutations for decades. NASA’s inspector general and the Science Committee are both investigating the matter."

Read the Post HERE.

First Quarter Mosaic by Peter Lawrence

Spectacular Mosaic of First Quarter Moon (Detail of Descartes
Formation central Lunar Highlands seen above - Can you spot
the Landing Site of Apollo 16?) Full Image Here.

The capabilities of so-called "amateur" telescope operators these days continues to fascinate me. Interestingly, the invention of the Charge-Coupled Device (CCD) at the heart of all video and still digital cameras is a direct spin off of Color-TV cameras used to show live Moonwalks forty years ago.