Nancy has been with Universe Today since 2004, and has published over 6,000 articles on space exploration, astronomy, science and technology. She is the author of two books: "Eight Years to the Moon: the History of the Apollo Missions," (2019) which shares the stories of 60 engineers and scientists who worked behind the scenes to make landing on the Moon possible; and "Incredible Stories from Space: A Behind-the-Scenes Look at the Missions Changing Our View of the Cosmos" (2016) tells the stories of those who work on NASA's robotic missions to explore the Solar System and beyond.
Follow Nancy on Twitter at https://twitter.com/Nancy_A and and Instagram at and https://www.instagram.com/nancyatkinson_ut/
Hubble and its most recent science image. Credit: NASA
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The space shuttle mission to repair and update the Hubble Space Telescope has been delayed. Mission managers were aiming for a February 2009 launch for STS-125 flight for the fifth and final shuttle mission to the Hubble Space Telescope. The replacement component for the data handling system that recently caused problems for the telescope not be ready by February, and now NASA is looking for a May 2009 launch. On a positive note, the “other” shuttle mission waiting in the wings, STS-126 to the International Space Station, is looking good and is go for launch. Current launch date is set for November 14 at 7:55 p.m. EST.
“We now have done enough analysis of all the things that need to happen with the flight spare unit to know that we cannot be ready for a February launch,” said NASA’s Astrophysics Division Director Jon Morse at NASA Headquarters in Washington. The spare Science Instrument Command and Data Handling system unit will replace one that failed on Hubble in late September, causing the agency to postpone the servicing mission, which had been targeted for Oct. 14.
A significant anomaly occurred during testing of the unit and NASA says six and a half months of further testing is needed before the it can be certified to fly. NASA’s plan is to have the spare unit ready to ship in the April 2009 timeframe so as to support a May 2009 launch. sts-126 mission. Credit: NASA
Endeavour’s STS-126 flight, set to launch on November 14 will feature important repair work to the station and prepare it for housing six crew members during long-duration missions. The primary focus of the 15-day flight and its four planned spacewalks is to service the station’s two Solar Alpha Rotary Joints, which have not been working correctly. They allow the station’s solar arrays to track the sun. Endeavour will carry about 32,000 pounds to orbit, including supplies and equipment necessary to double the crew size from three to six members in spring 2009. The new station cargo includes additional sleeping quarters, a second toilet and a resistance exercise device.
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Numerous news articles recently have reported problems with the Ares rocket. Some articles detailed critical design flaws, others wondered if Ares was doomed, others reported that Ares was on the US Congress’s “chopping block,” and still others purported that a different launch architecture would be superior to the Ares design. So many rumors were floating around that NASA felt the need to hold a press briefing yesterday to address the rumors and calm any fears that the Constellation program was on the verge of collapse. At the briefing, NASA officials said that while there are some challenges for the program to overcome, Ares is making outstanding progress toward flight. “Some recent news reports about Ares have been inaccurate and draw false conclusions,” said Steve Cook, who leads the development of the rocket.
But isn’t that what everyone expected them to say? Are they telling the truth? To get an unbiased look at the state of the Constellation program, Universe Today contacted Dr. Scott Pace, who is the Director for the Space Policy Institute at George Washington University in Washington, DC. Pace said the problems facing Ares are typical and not insurmountable, and that Constellation is the right choice for our country’s space program. “In my view,” said Dr. Pace, “if the nation is going to return to the Moon and eventually send humans to Mars, then political and technical realities argue that the Ares I, Orion, and Ares V are the way to go.”
Pace said the only reason not to use the Constellation architecture is if our nation decides it is content with staying in low Earth orbit or decides to cease its participation in government sponsored human spaceflight.
Pace discussed some of the issues being debated for the Ares rocket. “From my perspectives, there are a couple of things going on that can be broken down into 1) normal technical issues, 2) system engineering issues, and 3) architecture issues,” said Pace. Dr. Scott Pace. Courtesy Dr. Pace
He said the thrust oscillation issue is a typical issue with all solid propellant motors and there are multiple ways to solve it. “As an analogy,” said Pace, “the pogo issue with Saturn on its first flights was much more serious.”
As for the launch pad drift problems and cross-wind limits on launch, these issues, too, have multiple solutions. “The fast start up of solids compared to liquids means less time to ‘drift,’” said Pace. “However, if a solid goes bad, it goes real bad, and that’s why the abort motor system on the Orion has to be proven to work from the launch pad up to high altitude.”
Pace believes a potentially more serious issue that should be resolved by modeling and test flights are the bending moments of the SRB “stick” itself in flight. “It’s built out of segments, not a single structure and lacks the stiffing of attachment to an External Tank (as with Shuttle and the Ares V design). This is a classic systems engineering problem,” said Pace, and deferred that NASA engineers are more qualified to comment on that issue.
Other issues are criticisms over the architecture choice of Ares I and V, over using an EELV (Evolved Expendable Launch Vehicle) for Orion or the DIRECT 2.0 design of the “Jupiter” rockets. The Jupiter rockets for the DIRECT 2.0 project. Credit: DIRECT 2.0
“The EELVs don’t have the performance to launch a 6-person Orion to ISS or take a 4-man crew to the Moon,” said Pace. “If one built a 3-4 person Orion to go only to ISS, it begs the question of what to do with the other ISS crew in an emergency and creates a potential government competitor for COTS providers.”
Pace said the use of EELV’s also means trying to creating a separate vehicle to provide lift to go to the Moon and Mars. “One could do the Moon with multiple EELV launches (as the Chinese might do with their Long March 5) at additional cost and risk over an Ares I and Ares V launch combination,” said Pace. “But you’re not going to Mars without a heavy-lifter like Ares V.”
Pace continued, “So, if we truly would like to go to Mars, build an Ares V and use it to make going to the Moon efficient. If we’re using an Ares V, separating humans onto a Ares I that shares much of the industrial base with the current Shuttle makes sense. This also allows an Orion capsule that can meet ISS and lunar requirements.”
Pace said EELVs could be useful for cargo to the ISS and, if someone were to pay for man-rating, they may even be useful for COTS crew missions. “But they can’t do the baseline government job of assuring U.S. human access to space.”
To make the Constellation program a success, Pace said NASA will need to focus on configuration control and consistency of analytical models, making sure the avionics interfaces are sufficient and being able to obtain adequate funding of full-scale tests.
* Author’s note: As an addendum, Dr. Pace said he has no problem with adding that he recently worked for NASA’s Program Analysis & Evaluation office, a fact I did not include in the article. “I understand that some may see that as a bias and perhaps relevant,” he said. Dr. Pace was named the Director of SPI in May 2008.
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What lurks in the eerie fractures of Enceladus that slash across the moon’s south polar region? The Cassini spacecraft will make a Halloween flyby of Enceladus and focus its cameras and other optical remote sensing instruments on the mysterious tiger-stripe-like features seen on this strange moon of Saturn. This flyby comes just over three weeks after a previous flyby of the same moon, and then just a few days later, on November 3, Cassini will make a flyby of Titan, on the inbound leg of its orbit around the ringed world. What tricks do the Cassini scientists have up their sleeves for this flyby? Will we be treated to some spectacular images? And what about those spooky sounds from Saturn?
For the Oct. 31 flby, the spacecraft will zoom by the Enceladus at 17.7 km/sec (39,600 mph, cruising just 197 km (122 miles) from the moon’s surface. Cassini will approach the moon on a fast, inclined trajectory over the northern hemisphere and will depart over the southern hemisphere. The closest approach occurs on October 31st at 17:14:51 UT over latitude 28° S and longitude 97° W. The Optical Remote Sensing (ORS) instruments are at the focus of the science operations during this fly-by. The Imaging Science Subsystem camera will execute a sophisticated series of images starting just 2 minutes after closest-approach, obtaining images of the south polar “tiger stripes” at resolutions as high as 8.4 m/pixel. Enceladus will be in eclipse (in Saturn’s shadow) for about 2.5 hours, starting about 50 minutes after closest-approach.
Pluto and Charon. Credit: Antonello Medugno and Daniele Gasparri
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This past summer, a group of seven amateur astronomers from Italy worked on an observation campaign of Pluto, with hopes of capturing an image of its moon, Charon. “Imaging Charon is very difficult and nobody has spotted it with amateur equipment, so far,” said Daniele Gasparri, one of the members of the group. The team made several attempts, and finally, one member of the group, Antonello Medugno, took this interesting image. “After many calculations,” said Gasparri, “we are sure that this image shows clearly Pluto and Charon, for the first time with amateur equipment.” Comparing the image to the graphic which shows the position of Pluto and Charon on the same date, it’s obvious, they nailed it! This is quite a feat considering their equipment was an “amateur” 14-inch telescope! Also, as The Bad Astronomers points out, Charon wasn’t discovered until 1978, and then a 61-inch telescope was used!
Compare their image to one taken by Hubble:
Hubble image of Pluto and Charon. Credit: NASA
Not bad!!
Gasparri is an astronomy student, and a contributor to the Italian astronomy magazine Coelum. With the support of the magazine, he coordinated the effort to image Charon. Medugno used an 14″ Schmidt-Cassegrain telescope, a Starlight Xpress SXV-H9 CCD camera and a R-IR passband filter.
The image was processed using the Lucy-Richardson Algorithm of the RAW image, composed of 21 frames of 6 seconds of exposure each, with a focal of 8900mm. “All data confirm the image: the magnitude, separation, and position angle,” said Gasparri. Nice work! Check out Gasparri’s website of more astronomical images he has taken.
Interacting Galaxies Arp 147. Credit: NASA, ESA, and M. Livio (STScI)
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Yes! (*Fist pump*) The Hubble Space Telescope is back in business.
After overcoming a few glitches in bringing the orbiting Hubble back online, engineers and scientists aimed the telescope’s prime camera, the Wide Field Planetary Camera 2 (WFPC2), at a pair of gorgeous-looking interacting galaxies called Arp 147. Scientists say the image demonstrates the camera is working exactly as it was before going offline, thereby scoring a “perfect 10” both for performance and beauty. And the two galaxies are oriented so they look like the number 10! How cool is that!
Two anomalies in Hubble’s restart caused the B-side of the Science Instrument Control and Data Handling System (SI C&DH-B) and the Advanced Camera for Surveys (ACS) Solar Blind Channel (SBC) to return to a ‘safe hold’ status on October 16. Engineers worked through the problem, and on Oct. 25, the telescope’s science computer began to send commands to the WFPC2. What a relief!
Additional commanding allowed engineers on the ground to assess the instrument’s state of health and verify the contents of the camera’s microprocessor memory.
And so, this first “post-recovery” image shows the two interacting galaxies. The left-most galaxy, or the “one” in this image, is relatively undisturbed apart from a smooth ring of starlight. It appears nearly on edge to our line of sight. The right-most galaxy, resembling a zero, exhibits a clumpy, blue ring of intense star formation.
The blue ring was most probably formed after the galaxy on the left passed through the galaxy on the right. Just as a pebble thrown into a pond creates an outwardly moving circular wave, a propagating density wave was generated at the point of impact and spread outward. As this density wave collided with material in the target galaxy that was moving inward due to the gravitational pull of the two galaxies, shocks and dense gas were produced, stimulating star formation.
The dusty reddish knot at the lower left of the blue ring probably marks the location of the original nucleus of the galaxy that was hit.
Arp 147 appears in the Arp Atlas of Peculiar Galaxies, compiled by Halton Arp in the 1960s and published in 1966. This picture was assembled from WFPC2 images taken with three separate filters. The blue, visible-light, and infrared filters are represented by the colors blue, green, and red, respectively.
The galaxy pair was photographed on October 27-28, 2008. Arp 147 lies in the constellation Cetus, and it is more than 400 million light-years away from Earth.
Artist concept of the Phoenix lander. Credit: NASA
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Cold weather and a dust storm are likely contributors to why NASA’S Phoenix Mars Lander went into a “safe mode” late Tuesday. The lander experienced a low-power fault in the electrical system. While engineers anticipated that a fault could occur due to the diminishing power supply, the lander also unexpectedly switched to the “B” side of its redundant electronics and shut down one of its two batteries. During safe mode, the lander stops non-critical activities and awaits further instructions from the mission team. The good news is that within hours of receiving information of the safing event, mission engineers at JPL and Lockheed Martin in Denver, were successfully able to send commands to restart battery charging. So, it is not likely that any energy was lost. And Phoenix is still Twittering,, which is good news, too!
Weather conditions at the landing site in the north polar region of Mars have deteriorated in recent days, with overnight temperatures falling to –141F (-96C), and daytime temperatures only as high as -50F (-45C), the lowest temperatures experienced so far in the mission. A mild dust storm blowing through the area, along with water-ice clouds, further complicated the situation by reducing the amount of sunlight reaching the lander’s solar arrays, thereby reducing the amount of power it could generate. Low temperatures caused the lander’s battery heaters to turn on Tuesday for the first time, creating another drain on precious power supplies.
Science activities will remain on hold for the next several days to allow the spacecraft to recharge and conserve power. Attempts to resume normal operations will not take place before the weekend.
“This is a precarious time for Phoenix,” said Phoenix Project Manager Barry Goldstein of JPL. “We’re in the bonus round of the extended mission, and we’re aware that the end could come at any time. The engineering team is doing all it can to keep the spacecraft alive and collecting science, but at this point survivability depends on some factors out of our control, such as the weather and temperatures on Mars.”
The ability to communicate with the spacecraft has not been impacted. However, the team decided to cancel communication sessions Wednesday morning in order to conserve spacecraft power.
Just a day ago, the mission announced plans to turn off four heaters, one at a time, in an effort to preserve power. The faults experienced late Tuesday prompted engineers to command the lander to shut down two heaters instead of one as originally planned. One of those heaters warmed electronics for Phoenix ‘s robotic arm, robotic-arm camera, and thermal and evolved-gas analyzer (TEGA), an instrument that bakes and sniffs Martian soil to assess volatile ingredients. The second heater served the lander’s pyrotechnic initiation unit, which hasn’t been used since landing. By turning off selected heaters, the mission hopes to preserve power and prolong the use of the lander’s camera and meteorological instruments.
But everything is on a downward trend. As the Martian northern hemisphere shifts from summer to autumn, less sunlight is reaching Phoenix’s solar panels. “It could be a matter of days, or weeks, before the daily power generated by Phoenix is less than needed to operate the spacecraft,” said JPL mission manager Chris Lewicki. “We have only a few options left to reduce the energy usage.” But Phoenix is into the fifth month of a 90-day mission — we should all be thankful we’ve had the little lander with us for as long as we have….
Here’s the latest image for the “Where In The Universe” challenge. Take a look at the image and try your hand at guessing where in the Universe this image is from. Give yourself extra points (or a cookie) if you can name the spacecraft responsible for the image. The new way we’re doing this challenge is that we’ll provide the image today, but won’t reveal the answer until tomorrow. This gives everyone a chance to mull over the image and provide their answer in the comment section. Check back tomorrow to see how you did!
UPDATE (10/30): The answer has now been posted below. If you haven’t made your guess yet, no peeking before you do!! From now on, the answers will be given in the same post instead of a new one…so you need to come back and check the original to find out the answer!
Are all your guesses in? It’s now time to reveal the answer to this week’s challenge. This image comes from the STS-115 space shuttle mission in September 2006. Crew members spotted an unidentified object floating away from the shuttle. No one ever really figured out what it was, but it was believed to be debris that floated out of the shuttle’s payload bay. The image was taken by astronaut Daniel Burbank onboard the Space Shuttle Atlantis (here’s the original). It caused a little stir because earlier in the day, the crew recorded a video shot of another object tumbling away from the shuttle.
How did you do?
Some of you had the right answer — great job! The other answers? Well, I commend some of you for your creativity! Come back for another WITU Challenge next week!
Mercury in color. Credit: NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Carnegie Institution of Washington
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Scientists from the MESSENGER mission to Mercury discussed today the results from the spacecraft’s October 6 flyby of the closest planet to the sun. The probe has produced several science firsts and is returning hundreds of new photos and measurements of the planet’s surface, atmosphere and magnetic field. The images show a battered surface, and we now have pictures and data of parts of Mercury’s surface that have never been examined by a spacecraft. “The region of Mercury’s surface that we viewed at close range for the first time this month is bigger than the land area of South America,” said Sean Solomon, principal investigator and director of the Department of Terrestrial Magnetism at the Carnegie Institution of Washington. “When combined with data from our first flyby and from Mariner 10, our latest coverage means that we have now seen about 95 percent of the planet.”
The MErcury Surface, Space ENvironment, GEochemistry, and Ranging, or MESSENGER, spacecraft flew by Mercury shortly after 4:40 a.m. EDT, on Oct. 6. It completed a critical gravity assist to keep it on course to orbit Mercury in 2011 and unveiled 30 percent of Mercury’s surface never before seen by a spacecraft.
The spacecraft’s science instruments operated throughout the flyby. Cameras snapped more than 1,200 pictures of the surface, while topography beneath the spacecraft was profiled with a laser altimeter. The comparison of magnetosphere observations from the spacecraft’s first flyby in January with data from the probe’s second pass has provided key new insight into the nature of Mercury’s internal magnetic field and revealed new features of its magnetosphere. The magnetosphere is the volume surrounding Mercury that is controlled by the planet’s magnetic field.
It was discovered that the planet’s magnetic field is highly symmetric.
The probe’s Mercury Laser Altimeter, or MLA, measured the planet’s topography, allowing scientists, for the first time, to correlate high-resolution topography measurements with high-resolution images.
“The MLA collected altimetry in regions where images from MESSENGER and Mariner 10 data are available, and new images were obtained of the region sampled by the altimeter in January,” said Maria Zuber, co-investigator and head of the Department of Earth, Atmospheric, and Planetary Sciences at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. “These topographic measurements now improve considerably the ability to interpret surface geology.”
The Mercury Atmospheric and Surface Composition Spectrometer observed Mercury’s thin atmosphere, known as an exosphere. The instrument searched for emissions from sodium, calcium, magnesium, and hydrogen atoms. Observations of magnesium are the first detection of this chemical in Mercury’s exosphere. Preliminary analysis suggests that the spatial distributions of sodium, calcium, and magnesium are different. Simultaneous observations of these spatial distributions, also a first for the spacecraft, have opened an unprecedented window into the interaction of Mercury’s surface and exosphere.
Spacecraft images also are revealing for the first time vast geologic differences on the surface.
“Now that MESSENGER’s cameras have imaged more than 80 percent of Mercury, it is clear that, unlike the moon and Mars, Mercury’s surface is more homogeneously ancient and heavily cratered, with large extents of younger volcanic plains lying within and between giant impact basins,” said co-investigator Mark Robinson of Arizona State University in Tempe.
Is a spaceflight or zero-g flight in your future? Better start training! Credit: Zero-G.
Is a personal spaceflight or zero-g experience on your Bucket List? If so, how do you prepare for this once-in-a-lifetime event? How can you get the most out of your flight and create a lasting memory?
With several commercial spaceflight companies preparing to launch suborbital tourist flights within the next several years, leaders from the industry predict more people will fly to space in the next decade than have made the journey so far since the dawn of the Space Age.
At the International Symposium for Personal and Commercial Spaceflight (ISPCS) in October, 2008 in Las Cruces, New Mexico, a few “seasoned” space flyers provided advice for those hoping to get astronaut wings, or at least experience what zero-gravity feels like. Former astronaut Dan Barry and Peter Diamandis, the Zero Gravity Corporation CEO and co-founder of Space Adventures, shared their experiences and offered a list of tips on how to get ready to fly in space.
1. Train for the physical experience:
Mercury astronauts on the Vomit Comet. Credit: NASA
Both Barry and Diamandis said training is essential. NASA astronauts train for about two years before they can be assigned to a flight. Space Adventures has a three-to six month training regimen for orbital flights, and Virgin Galactic requires three days of pre-flight training. Even Zero-G has a short orientation before their parabolic flights.
“You want to eliminate every single experience that doesn’t have to do with space,” said Barry. So, if you’re going on a space flight, first take a zero-g flight to know what zero gravity feels like and how your body might react. Some people get nauseous; some aren’t affected. If there’s the possibility of getting sick, you’ll want to know how to deal with it in zero-g.
Centrifuge training is also encouraged to provide the sensations of G-forces at launch. “You don’t want to be overwhelmed by the experience,” or only remember that you were scared or freaked out, said Barry. “You don’t want that memory to erase your zero-g experience, that unique $200,000 experience you’re having.”
2. Plan for what you want to do on the flight:
Richard Garriott on board the ISS. Credit: Richardinspace.com
Plan the things you want to do on your flight and make sure you have the time to do them. Richard Garriott just returned from his trip to the ISS, and he had several experiments planned and a regimen of things he wanted to accomplish. You don’t want to return from your flight and be disappointed you didn’t have the time or opportunity to do all the things you wanted, or that you forgot to something you had planned. You might not get the chance to do it ever again.
3. Get to know the people you are going to fly with:
The crew of STS-96. Credit: NASA
Barry said the most important part of preparing for spaceflight is knowing who you’re going to fly with. “You have to be able to trust your lives with each other,” he said. You’re also going to have a lot in common with your fellow space flyers. “Obviously, you’re all nuts to be doing this,” Barry laughed. “You’re going to meet people who are just as passionate, just as thrilled, and just as motivated as you are. These are the people you’re going to share this experience with. Make them your friends.”
So, now you’ve completed pre-flight training and you’re ready for your flight. Perhaps the most important advice Barry and Diamandis provided is what to do during your flight.
4. Make a memory.
“You really want to focus on the things that are unique about the spaceflight and take time to experience the moment,” said Barry. He stressed this advice isn’t unique to people going on short duration spaceflights, but any time people have the opportunity for a once-in-a-lifetime experience, they should take the time to step back, take a look at where they are and what they are doing and “cement” that moment in their minds.
Barry said several astronauts took him aside before his first spaceflight and told him the same thing. “Astronaut Tom Akers told me, ‘I don’t want what happened to me to happen to you. I did four spacewalks, and in the course of those space walks I never once looked at Earth. I don’t have any memories from being in space. You need to take the time to look down at the Earth and look where you are.'”
Another astronaut, Bob Cabana told Barry “Take time to make a memory. At multiple points in the flight, stop and cement those things into your memory.”
Dan Barry and Rick Husband on STS-96. Credit: NASA
“And so I made sure I did that, and these are the things I’ll always have with me,” Barry said as he relayed one of his memories, a moment from his STS-96 flight in 1999 that he shared with Rick Husband, who was later killed in the Columbia space shuttle accident. “Rick was up on the flight deck, and he hollered, ‘Yo! Dan! You have got to come up here right now!’ Rick is looking out the window at the southern tip of South America, and there below us is an undulating ribbon of neon light. It was the Aurora Australius. And it was just gorgeous. I took a minute to look at Rick and look out the window. I am so grateful now for that memory,” Barry said with his voice breaking slightly. “It will be with me for the rest of my life. So, when you’re up there, take the time to cement a memory in your mind. Stop taking pictures, stop playing with the juice ball and just cement the moment.”
Diamandis agreed, and said the same is true for a Zero-G flight. “Take one zero-g parabola (there are 15 for each Zero-G flight) and do nothing, and I guarantee it will be the single memory you take away from the experience, where you’re not trying to gobble down M&M’s or something. Just float through the cabin, or if you’re with a loved one, wrap your arms around each other and just experience the moment. It’s like no other experience you’ve ever had.”
5. Plan for your post-flight experience, too.
Barry said, “When you get off the flight, and even if you have some memories locked in, it’s very possible you’ll say, ‘Is that it? Is it over?'” Post flight can be a severe let-down after the anticipation leading up to the experience. Barry said many first time flyers at NASA had significant psychological issues after their flight.
Barry and Diamandis stressed it’s important to have something planned post-flight to celebrate your experience. “It’s vital to have something positive planned so it’s not just over,” Barry said.
NASA astronauts usually tour the country after their flight to share their experiences. If you’ve just shelled out a huge chunk of change for your space flight, a world tour might not be possible. But share your experience with others. Show people your pictures, talk about what you felt, saw and experienced.
SpaceShip One Landing. Credit: Richard Seaman
And remember those people you just flew with that you took the time to get to know? “Schedule reunions,” said Barry. “We always do, for sure.”
“This is something you’ve wanted to do your whole life,” Barry continued. “Don’t just make it a five minute experience. Training encompasses so much more than just being physically ready to fly. Make sure you’re ready psychologically, too, and that requires thinking about what you’ll do afterwards.”
Will this experience change you?
Barry said the question he gets asked the most is, does spaceflight change a person – do space flyers experience the “Overview Effect” of seeing their life and the world in a new way?
“For one thing, just having your personal childhood dream come true changes you,” he said. “Seeing the earth from above the sky gives you a new perspective.” Barry said what impressed him the most was the thinness of the atmosphere, and how events in one part of the world can affect another. “You can see smoke from Amazon fires go all the way to Hawaii; there are dust storms that go across the world,” he said.
Peter Diamandis at the 2008 ISPCS. Credit: ISPCS and NMSU
Additionally, if you’ve been on an orbital flight where you’ve been in zero gravity for several days, it will take your body several days to re-acclimate to gravity again.
“When I got into orbit, I adjusted just fine,” said Barry. “Within 10 minutes you learn how to get around the cabin, no problem. Soon, you’ve learned a new sport, which is flying. It feels like you have a magic power!”
But coming back to Earth is different. “After coming home, three days later I was still walking into walls. Your body changes, you get used to zero-g very easily, but adapting to Earth again is hard.” Barry said he forgot about having to put items down – he expected them to just float. “Spouses are told not to hand a baby to an astronaut who has just returned from space,” he said, quite seriously.
So, are you ready to go on a flight to space? Virgin Galactic has over 200 people signed up for their suborbital flights, and they hope to make their first tourist flights in 2010. Other companies like XCOR and Rocketplane hope to fly around that time frame, as well. Space Adventures has taken six tourists so far to visit the International Space Station, and the company is even taking reservations for an orbital flight to the moon. But even if you don’t have $200,000 in spare change for a suborbital trip or $35 million for a ride on a Soyuz rocket to the space station, you can experience a zero gravity flight on board the Zero-G aircraft for about $5,000.
It appears the end is nigh for the Phoenix Mars Lander. Today, engineers have begun to shut down some of the lander’s instruments and heaters. But this is in hopes of extending the mission by saving power as available sunlight begins to wane with the approach of Martian autumn. But at the same time, the spacecraft requires more power to run heaters in order to survive as the temperatures decline. “If we did nothing, it wouldn’t be long before the power needed to operate the spacecraft would exceed the amount of power it generates on a daily basis,” said Phoenix Project Manager Barry Goldstein of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif. “By turning off some heaters and instruments, we can extend the life of the lander by several weeks and still conduct some science.”
Today, commands were sent to disable the first heater, one that warms the robotic arm, the robotic arm camera and the TEGA instrument – the Thermal and Evolved Gas Analyzer. Likely, this means no more digging and no more “baking and sniffing” of soil samples. Engineers say by shutting down this heater, they’ll save 250 watt-hours of power.
Before power was shut down to the arm and the camera, Phoenix took one last image of the “Holy Cow” ice patch underneath the lander.
Over the next several weeks, four survival heaters will be shut down, one at a time, in an effort to conserve power. The heaters serve the purpose of keeping the electronics within tested survivable limits. As each heater is disabled, some of the instruments are also expected to cease operations. The energy saved is intended to power the lander’s main camera and meteorological instruments until the very end of the mission.
Engineers are also preparing for solar conjunction, when the sun is directly between Earth and Mars. Between Nov. 28 and Dec. 13, Mars and the sun will be within two degrees of each other as seen from Earth, blocking radio transmission between the spacecraft and Earth. During that time, no commands will be sent to Phoenix, but daily downlinks from Phoenix will continue through NASA’s Odyssey and Mars Reconnaissance orbiters. At this time, controllers can’t predict whether the fourth heater would be disabled before or after conjunction.
In the final step, Phoenix engineers may turn off a fourth heater — one of two survival heaters that warm the spacecraft and its batteries. This would leave one remaining survival heater to run out on its own.
“At that point, Phoenix will be at the mercy of Mars,” said Chris Lewicki of JPL, lead mission manger.
The Phoenix team has parked the robotic arm on a representative patch of Martian soil. No additional soil samples will be gathered. The thermal and electrical-conductivity probe (TECP), located on the wrist of the arm, has been inserted into the soil and will continue to measure soil temperature and conductivity, along with atmospheric humidity near the surface. The probe does not need a heater to operate and should continue to send back data for weeks.
Throughout the mission, the lander’s robotic arm successfully dug and scraped Martian soil and delivered it to the onboard laboratories. “We turn off this workhorse with the knowledge that it has far exceeded expectations and conducted every operation asked of it,” said Ray Arvidson, the robotic arm’s co-investigator, and a professor at Washington University, St. Louis.
