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ESA and Arianespace have signed a contract planning the launch of ESA’s new IXV (Intermediate eXperimental Vehicle) on Europe’s new Vega Rocket in 2014. Vega is Europe’s new small launch system and it is designed to complement the heavy Ariane 5 and medium Soyuz Rocket systems launched from French Guiana.
The small rocket is capable of a wide range of payloads up to 1.5 tonnes, compared to Ariane 5 which can lift 20 tonnes, making it especially suitable for the commercial space market. The Vega Rocket will launch the IXV into a suborbital trajectory from Europe’s Spaceport in French Guiana, IXV will then return to Earth as if from a low-orbit mission, to test and qualify new critical technologies for future re-entry vehicles.
The IXV will reach a velocity of 7.5km/s at an altitude of around 450km and then re-enter the Earth’s atmosphere gathering data about its flight. The vehicle will encounter hypersonic and supersonic speeds and will be controlled with complex avionics, thrusters and flaps.
Once the vehicle’s speed has been reduced enough, it will deploy a parachute, descend and land safely in the Pacific Ocean.
This flight will record data for the next five VERTA missions (Vega Research and Technology Accompaniment – Programme), which will demonstrate the systems re-usable versatility.
Two launches a year are planned for the new programme and construction of infrastructure including mission control and communications networks is currently underway.
Development and completion of the design, manufacturing and assembly is now underway for a flight window between January and September 2014.
The United States Air Force’s second flight of the X-37B – is headed into extra innings. Known as the Orbital Test Vehicle 2 (OTV-2) this robotic mini space shuttle launched from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station’s Space Launch Complex 41 (SLC-41) on Mar. 5, 2011. Although the U.S. Air Force has kept mum regarding details about the space plane’s mission – it has announced that the OTV-2 has exceeded its endurance limit of 270 days on orbit as of the end of November.
The OTV is launched atop a United Launch Alliance (ULA) Atlas V 501 rocket. The space plane is protected within a fairing until it reaches orbit. After separation, the diminutive shuttle begins its mission.
OTV mission USA-226, as it is officially known, is by all accounts going smoothly and the spacecraft is reported to be in good health. The U.S. Air Force has not announced when OTV-2 will be directed to land.
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The fact that the space plane will continue to orbit beyond what its stated limits are highlights that the OTV has greater capabilities than what was officially announced. The first OTV flight launched in April of 2011 and landed 224 days later at Vandenberg Air Force Base in California. The U.S. Air Force is undoubtedly being more judicious with fuel stores on board the robotic spacecraft, allowing for a longer duration flight.
Much like NASA’s retired fleet of space shuttle orbiters, the OTV has a payload bay that allows for payloads and experiments to be conducted on-orbit. What payloads the U.S. Air Force has had on either mission – remains a secret.
Boeing has announced that the X-37B could be modified to conduct crewed missions to and from orbit. Tentatively named the X-37C, this spacecraft would be roughly twice the size of its unmanned cousin. If this variant goes into service it would be used to transport astronauts to and from the orbiting International Space Station (ISS).
The X-37B has become a bit controversial of late. Members of the Chinese press have stated that the space plane raises concerns of an arms race in space. Xinhua News Agency and China Daily have expressed concern that the OTVs could be used to deliver weapons to orbit. The Pentagon has flatly denied these allegations. The clandestine nature of these flights have led to a wide variety of theories as to what the OTVs have been used to ferry to orbit.
I love looking at unusual cloud formations, and these have to be some of the most intriguing. These long, horizontal rolls of clouds are called “cloud streets” and NASA’s Terra satellite had a “drive by” of these clouds, observing them over Hudson Bay, Canada on November 20, 2011 at 12:25 p.m. EST (17:25 UTC). These rows of clouds stretch from northwest to southeast over the Hudson Bay.
Cloud streets are long lines or bands of cumulus clouds that usually form within the lower one to three kilometers of the atmosphere, and come from eddies in the atmosphere.
According to NASA’s Earth Observatory and the Goddard Space Flight Center Flickr page, cloud streets form when cold air blows over warmer waters, while a warmer air layer—or temperature inversion—rests over top of both. The comparatively warm water of Hudson Bay gives up heat and moisture to the cold air mass above, and columns of heated air—thermals—naturally rise through the atmosphere. As they hit the temperature inversion like a lid, the air rolls over like the circulation in a pot of boiling water. The water in the warm air cools and condenses into flat-bottomed, fluffy-topped cumulus clouds that line up parallel to the wind.
Hudson Bay is a large body of saltwater located in northeastern Canada. Also in the image, are several snow-covered islands in Hudson Bay. The larger island to the north is South Hampton Island, and the smaller island east is Coats Island, and further east is Mansel Island.
Says Rob Manning, Curiosity Chief Engineer at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif – in an exclusive interview with Universe Today for all fans of Curiosity and the unprecedented voyage of Science and Discovery about to take flight to Mars on November 26. Manning was also the Chief Engineer for the Entry, Descent and Landing (EDL) of NASA’s phenomenally successful Spirit, Opportunity and Phoenix Mars robotic explorers.
Read Rob Manning’s special greeting about Curiosity to readers of Universe Today below.
Meet Rob and other JPL Mars engineers in the cool Video describing the ‘Challanges of Getting to Mars’ – below
Curiosity is NASA’s next Mars rover and her MMRTG nuclear power source has been installed at the launch pad through special access panels in the Atlas booster payload fairing and protective aeroshell on Nov. 17.
The huge 1-ton robot is now due to blastoff for the Red Planet on Saturday, November 26 at 10: 02 a.m. EST from Space Launch Complex-41 at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, Florida. The launch window is open for one hour and 43 minutes.
Liftoff was postponed by one day to replace a battery in the on board flight termination system required in case the rocket were to veer off course.
Here is the very latest Curiosty update status from JPL’s Rob Manning as of Sunday evening – Nov. 20
“All seems well here at JPL in Pasadena,” Manning told me.
“We are having our last rehearsal at 1:30 a.m. on Monday, Nov 21.
“Weird ! As of a few hours ago the last human hands (in gloves) closed out the hatch door on the entry aeroshell and the two large doors in the rocket fairing have been closed. What is weird about it is that finally finally she is powered up and alone.”
“She has never been this alone before. Ironically all eyes are still upon her. Our team is monitoring her vitals 24-7,” Manning explained.
“The Challenges of Getting to Mars’ – Video caption: Meet Curiosity Chief Engineer Rob Manning and more members of the Curiosity Mars Rover Engineering Team at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory explain the final assembly of Curiosity at the Kennedy Space Center and how Curiosity will land use the rocket assisted Sky Crane.
“By this time next week, Curiosity will be heading for the home she was meant for.”
“Soon she will feel the cold walls of deep space on her radiators. The x-band transmitter and receiver will have an broken view of the sky (with Earth but a shiny blue dot off to her left). The penetrating rays of the sun will push electrons out of the solar panels and keep her battery charged. (And perhaps a few solar flares will pass by, just to keep things interesting.)”
“Earth can be a rough place for a rover not designed for our planet. Worse are those of us who have poked and prodded, tested beyond spec and pushed in ways that can only be done on Earth.”
“Sometimes we over-do it and push near the breaking point. We are not perfect after all but we need to know that she will do what needs to be done for her very own survival. Well she seems to have survived us.”
“Of course Curiosity will never really be alone. We are right there with her every step of the way. She is us.”
“I will be at JPL during launch,” said Manning.
The JPL team is also working day and night to insure that the do or die Mars Insertion burn fires as planned.
“Once the Deep Space Network acquires the signal, I want to be there to make sure that we did not fail her and that the transition from being the Atlas’s payload to interplanetary cruise is as painless as possible.”
“It will be a bit of a surprise if we did not have a bit of a surprise – but we are ready and so is Curiosity”
Curiosity and the Atlas V booster that will propel her to Mars will roll out to Launch Pad 41 at the Florida Space Coast on Friday morning, Nov. 24, the day after the Thanksgiving holiday.
NASA TV will carry the MSL launch live
After a 10 month interplanetary journey to Mars, Curiosity will plummet through the atmosphere and fire up the rocket powered descent stage and ‘Sky Crane’ to safely touchdown astride a layered mountain at the Gale Crater landing site in August 2012.
Curiosity has 10 science instruments to search for evidence about whether Mars has had environments favorable for microbial life, including the chemical ingredients for life. The unique rover will use a laser to look inside rocks and release the gasses so that its spectrometer can analyze and send the data back to Earth.
Complete Coverage of Curiosity – NASA’s Next Mars Rover launching 26 Nov. 2011
Read continuing features about Curiosity by Ken Kremer starting here:
Imagine yourself as an astronaut performing scientific experiments and crowd-stunning aerobatics. Suddenly, ear-stinging, blaring alarms go off. Mission Control radios that all space station personnel should evacuate to the rescue vehicles because a piece of deadly space debris is headed your way.
This scenario isn’t science fiction. In June of 2011, Universe Today reported that “six crew members on board the International Space Station were told to take shelter in…two Russian Soyuz spacecraft.” As more satellites reach the end of their operational lives, there will be more space junk emergencies in space and on the ground, undoubtedly with less pleasant results. Our young space faring society has been lucky so far: the ISS has been able to steer clear of space junk, and falling, uncontrolled satellites have thankfully fallen into the oceans. But one day our luck will run out.
There is hope, however. A new paper titled Removing Orbital Debris with Lasers published on arXiv proposes using a high-power pulsed laser system from Earth to create plasma jets on pieces of space debris, slowing them slightly, causing them to re-enter and burn up in the atmosphere or fall into the ocean.
Claude Phipps and his team from a high-tech company named Photonic Associates outlined their method, called Laser Orbital Debris Removal (LODR) which uses 15-year-old laser technology which is now readily available.
The team recognized that “thirty five years of poor housekeeping in space have created several hundred thousand pieces of space debris larger than one cm in the …low Earth orbit (LEO) band.” These may not seem like large objects, but with the energy density of dynamite, even a large paint chip can cause major damage.
Removing debris is an urgent task because the amount of debris currently in space poses “runaway collisional cascading,” with objects colliding with each other, creating even more pieces of debris.
There are other solutions besides creating a plasma jet, but they tend to be both less effective and more expensive. A laser could be used to grind down an object into dust, but this would create an uncontrollable molten spray, making the problem worse.
Grappling the object or attaching a de-orbiting kit can both be effective. Unfortunately, they require a lot of fuel due to the need to accelerate to catch the object, which leads to more a more costly solution – about $27 million per object. Finally, there is the nuclear option of releasing a gas, mist, or aerogel to slow down objects, but this would affect both operational and non-operational spacecraft.
In their paper, Phipps and his team say that removing space junk by creating a jet of plasma of a few seconds in length with a laser is the best solution, costing only $1 million per big object removed and a few thousand for small objects. Furthermore, smaller objects can be de-orbited in merely one orbit, and a constellation of “167 different objects can be addressed (hit with a laser) in one day, giving 4.9 years to re-enter” the atmosphere.
All 167 objects must carefully be tracked as to not change their paths of doom for the worse; however, it is possible to use the system to adjust orbits of space junk. That being said, current levels of space debris tracking are not adequate to implement LODR, but there is a dual benefit of easier removal and better avoidance with improve debris tracking. Better tracking will then allow for better control of the re-entry point and orbit modification with LODR, if necessary.
How can a light-push from a laser modify an orbit? While the laser doesn’t blast the debris out of the air, it is still effective because of the nature of orbital mechanics.
Imagine a cubesat that needs to be disposed of in a low altitude, perfectly circular orbit. The tap from a high powered laser and the plasma jet generated would push the cubesat out, farther away from Earth (higher in altitude) and into a more elliptical orbit.
This might seem like a horrible idea during the time the cubesat spends at a higher altitude, but as it comes half circle, it clips the atmosphere at a lower altitude since the ellipse is warped due adjustments by the laser. Since a low altitude corresponds to more drag, the cubesat slows down and locks into a lower orbit. This is why highly elliptical orbits are called transfer orbits, as they change lanes on the highway of space. Now, with the transfer orbit complete, the cubesat is slowed enough so that its orbit can no longer be achieved by the cubesat. The cubesat then falls out of the sky.
The meat of the research for LODR deals with the atmosphere as the laser can become unfocused if the atmospheric turbulence is not addressed. LODR is complicated because the turbulence in the atmosphere causes distortions like those you see above a road on a hot summer’s day or like those you see when looking through a glass bottle. This complication is in addition to the aiming ahead needed to hit a target, just like the aiming ahead needed to hit a running player in dodgeball.
There are two ways to cancel turbulence. First, one can shine a laser at a known spot in the atmosphere, exciting the sodium atoms at that location. Knowing the height of this dot in the sky, the system can then flex the reflecting mirror to bring the dot into focus moment-by-moment. It can then fire freely.
A second way involves the use of a Phase Conjugate (PC) mirror, otherwise known as a retroflector, which could automatically undo turbulence by sending light who’s phase variation has been reversed. That is to say it will send back an “oppositely distorted” laser beam whose distortion is un-done by the atmosphere creating a sharp laser beam.
LODR is not a silver bullet. Wired reports that “the main criticism of such a project would come from the international community, which might fear that a powerful enough laser could be used for military purposes such as hitting enemy satellites.” Wired then conducted an interview with Kessler; NASA’s former Senior Scientist for Orbital Debris Research who said, because of the politics involved, “any laser proposal is dead on arrival.” However, Phipps asserts to Wired that “If we get the right international cooperation, no one would believe the laser to be a weapon in sheep’s clothing.”
There are still unaddressed problems, as Kessler points out, hitting the wrong part of a space object would have disastrous results. “You might hit the wrong part of a satellite or could vaporize enough to cause it to explode.” In spite of that, careful study of the object could avoid any danger.
An unusual October storm dumped wet heavy snow across much of the Northeast US over the weekend, as much as 32 inches (81 centimeters) in some areas. Nicknamed “Snowtober,” the storm left as many as 3 million people without power at the snowstorm’s peak, and was blamed for the deaths of at least 10 people. In this images from the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA’s Terra satellite, a swath of snow sweeps from West Virginia northeastward to Maine, as seen on Oct. 30, 2011. Clouds hover east and west of the snow, blocking the satellite sensor’s view of western Pennsylvania and parts of the Atlantic Ocean.
The storm broke snowfall-total records in many cities, with strong winds and heavy tree damage as the heavy snow easily clung to trees which still had their leaves, snapping branches and power lines.
The National Polar-orbiting Operational Environmental Satellite System Preparatory Project, or NPP, launched successfully on a Delta 2 rocket early today at at 5:48 a.m. EDT 09:48 GMT (or precisely at 2:48:01.828 a.m. PDT, according to NASA’s Twitter feed). The next generation satellite will measure both global climate changes and key weather variables, as well as test new technologies for future Earth observing satellites.
The spacecraft has also successfully separated and is now in orbit. The separation video is below.
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When it comes to space flight pedigrees, few companies have one that can compare to Aerojet’s. The California-based company has a resume on space operations that is as lengthy as it is impressive. Universe Today sat down with Julie Van Kleeck – the firm’s vice-president of space and launch systems business unit.
Van Kleeck spoke extensively about the company’s rich history, its legacy of accomplishments – as well as what it has planned for space missions of the future.
Universe Today:Hi Julie, thanks for taking the time to chat with us today.
Van Kleeck: “My pleasure!”
Universe Today:How long has Aerojet been in business and what exactly is it that your company produces?
Van Kleeck: “We’ve been in the space business – since there was a space program – so since at least the 50s. We’ve dealt with both launch systems as well as space maneuvering systems, those components that enable spacecraft to move while in space.”
Universe Today:What about in terms of human space flight, when did Aerojet get involved with that?
Van Kleeck: “We first started working on the manned side of the house back during the Gemini Program, from there we progressed to Apollo, then shuttle and we hope to be involved with SLS (Space Launch System) as well.”
Universe Today: I understand that your company also has an extensive history when it comes to unmanned missions as well, care to tell us a bit about that?
Van Kleeck: “We have been on every discovery mission that has ever been launched, we have touched every part of space that you can touch.”
Universe Today:Some aerospace companies only produce one product or service, why is Aerojet’s list of offerings so diversified?
Van Kleeck: “We’re quite different than our competitors in that we provide a very wide-range of products to our customers. We’ve provided the liquid engines that went on Titan and now we provide the solids that go on the Atlas V launch vehicle as well as the small chemical and electrical propulsion systems that are utilized on some satellites.”
Universe Today:Does this mean that Aerojet places more importance on one space flight system over others?
Van Kleeck: “We view each of the products that we produce as equally important. Having said that, the fact that Aerojet offers a diversity of products and understands each of them well – sets us apart from our competitors. Firms that only produce one type of product tend to work to sell just that one product, whereas Aerojet’s extensive catalog of services allows us to be more objective when offering those services to our customers.”
Universe Today:When you look back, what is one of the most interesting projects that Aerojet has been involved with?
Van Kleeck: “I think as I look back over the past decade, New Horizons comes to mind, it was the first Atlas to launch with five solids on it. I look at that mission in particular as a major accomplish for not just us – but the country as well.”
Universe Today:What does the future hold for Aerojet?
Van Kleeck: ”We’re working on the Orion crew capsule right now with both liquid propulsion for it as well as solid propulsion for the abort test motor. We’re very much looking forward to seeing Orion fly in the coming years. We are currently putting into place the basic infrastructure to support human space exploration. We are working with both commercial crewed as well as Robert Bigelow to provide propulsion systems that work with their individual system – because no one system fits everyone. We are pleased to be offer systems for a wide variety of space exploration efforts.”
Universe Today:Julie, thanks for taking the time to chat with us today!
Van Kleeck: “No problem at all – it was my pleasure!”
Aerojet’s products will be on full display Nov. 25 as, if everything goes as planned the Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) rover Curiosity is set to launch on that day. Four of the company’s solid rocket motors or SRMs will help power the Curiosity rover on its way to the red planet.
For a taste of what Aerojet’s SRMs provide – please view the NASA video below.
A new satellite that will test key technologies and instruments for the next generation of climate and weather-monitoring satellites is scheduled to launch on Friday, Oct. 28, 2011. The NPOESS Preparatory Project (NPP) mission has a planned liftoff from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California at 5:48 a.m. EDT/2:48 a.m. PDT.
NASA put out this video last week and we missed covering it, but this is a very interesting little video that takes you on a narrated global tour of tens of millions of fires detected from space between July 2002 and July 2011. Yes, that’s right, tens of millions of fires on Earth, and these aren’t tiny little campfires — they are big enough to be seen from space. The video was created from new satellite data visualizations, and is combined with satellite views of vegetation and snow cover to show how fires relate to seasonal changes. The research helps scientists understand how fire affects our environment on local, regional and global scales. Continue reading “As the World Burns: Satellites Watch Fires Around the World”