The return capsule from the Chinese SJ-10 mission landed in Mongolia on Monday April 18th. Image: Xinhua.
We’ve solved many of the problems associated with space travel. Humans can spend months in the zero-gravity of space, they can perform zero-gravity space-walks and repair spacecraft, they can walk on the surface of the Moon, and they can even manage, ahem, personal hygiene in space. We’re even making progress in understanding how to grow food in space. But one thing remains uncertain: can we make baby humans in space?
According to a recent successful Chinese experiment, the answer is a tentative yes. Sort of.
The Chinese performed a 96-hour experiment to test the viability of mammal embryos in space. They placed 6,000 mouse embryos in a micro-wave sized chamber aboard a satellite, to see if they would develop into blastocysts. The development of embryos into blastocysts is a crucial step in reproduction. Once the blastocysts have developed, they attach themselves to the wall of the uterus. Cameras on the inside of the chamber allowed Chinese scientists on Earth to monitor the experiment.
Duan Enkui, from the Chinese Academy of Sciences, who is the principal researcher for this experiment, told China Daily “The human race may still have a long way to go before we can colonise space, but before that we have to figure out whether it is possible for us to survive and reproduce in the outer space environment like we do on Earth.”
The Chinese say some of the embryos became blastocysts, and are claiming success in an endeavour that others have tried and failed at. NASA has performed similar experiments on Earth, where the micro-gravity conditions in space were duplicated. A study from 2009 showed that fertilization occurred normally in micro-gravity environments, but the eventual birth rate for the micro-gravity subjects was lower than for a 1G control group. The results from this study concluded that normal Earth gravity might be necessary for the blastocysts to successfully attach themselves to the uterus.
It’s important to note that at this point that China has proclaimed success by saying “some” of the embryos developed. But how many? There were 6,000 of them. Until they attach numbers to their claim, the word “some” doesn’t tell us much in terms of humans colonizing space. It also doesn’t tell us whether or not the crucial blastocyst to uterus attachment is inhibited by micro-gravity. Call us pedantic here at Universe Today, but it’s kind of important to know the numbers.
On the other hand, an increase in scientific curiosity related to procreating in space is a healthy development. The ideas and plans for missions to Mars and an eventual long-term presence in space are heating up. Making babies in space might not that relevant right now, but issues have a way of sneaking up on us.
The full results of this Chinese experiment will be interesting, if and when they’re made public. They may help clarify one aspect of the whole “making babies in space” problem. But in the bigger picture, things are still a little cloudy.
On shuttle mission STS-80, 2-cell mouse embryos were taken into space micro-gravity for 4 days. None of them developed into blastocysts, while a control group on the ground did. Another experiment in 1979, aboard Cosmos 1129, had male and female rats aboard. Though post-experiment results showed that some of the female rats had indeed ovulated, none of them gave birth. Two of the females even got pregnant, but the fetuses were reportedly r-absorbed.
Still, we have to give credit where its due. And the Chinese study has shown that mammal blastocysts can develop from embryos in micro-gravity. Still, there’s more to the space environment than low gravity. The radiation environment is much different. One study called the Space Pup study, led by principal investigator Teruhiko Wakayama, from the Riken Center for Developmental Biology, Japan, hopes to shed some light on that aspect of reproduction in space.
Space Pup will take sample of freeze-dried mouse sperm to the ISS for periods of 1, 12, and 24 months. Then, the samples will be returned to Earth and be used to fertilize mouse eggs.
There’s a lot more to learn in the area of reproduction in space. The next steps will involve keeping live mammals in space to monitor their reproduction. It’s not like ISS astronauts need more work to do, but maybe they’ll like having some animals along for company.
Maybe we’ll need to think outside the box when it comes to procreation in space. Maybe some type of in-vitro procedure will help humans spread the love in space. Or maybe, we’ll need to look to science fiction for inspiration. After all, countless alien species seem to be able to reproduce effectively, given the right circumstances.
This image needs no caption. But just in case, this is a still from the 1979 movie Alien. Image: 20th Century Fox.
An artistic representation of Gliese 832 c against a stellar nebula background. A new paper says Gliese 832 might be home to another planet similar to this, but in the habitable zone. Credit: Planetary Habitability Laboratory at the University of Puerto Rico, Arecibo, NASA/Hubble, Stellarium.
Earth may have a new neighbour, in the form of an Earth-like planet in a solar system only 16 light years away. The planet orbits a star named Gliese 832, and that solar system already hosts two other known exoplanets: Gliese 832B and Gliese 832C. The findings were reported in a new paper by Suman Satyal at the University of Texas, and colleagues J. Gri?th, and Z. E. Musielak.
Gliese 832B is a gas giant similar to Jupiter, at 0.64 the mass of Jupiter, and it orbits its star at 3.5 AU. G832B probably plays a role similar to Jupiter in our Solar System, by setting gravitational equilibrium. Gliese 832C is a Super-Earth about 5 times as massive as Earth, and it orbits the star at a very close 0.16 AU. G832C is a rocky planet on the inner edge of the habitable zone, but is likely too close to its star for habitability. Gliese 832, the star at the center of it all, is a red dwarf about half the size of our Sun, in both mass and radius.
The newly discovered planet is still hypothetical at this point, and the researchers put its mass at between 1 and 15 Earth masses, and its orbit at between 0.25 to 2.0 AU from Gliese 582, its host star.
The two previously discovered planets in Gliese 832 were discovered using the radial velocity technique. Radial velocity detects planets by looking for wobbles in the host star, as it responds to the gravitational tug exerted on it by planets in orbit. These wobbles are observable through the Doppler effect, as the light of the affected star is red-shifted and blue-shifted as it moves.
The team behind this study re-analyzed the data from the Gliese 832 system, based on the idea that the vast distance between the two already-detected planets would be home to another planet. According to other solar systems studied by Kepler, it would be highly unusual for such a gap to exist.
As they say in their paper, the main thrust of the study is to explore the gravitational effect that the large outer planet has on the smaller inner planet, and also on the hypothetical Super-Earth that may inhabit the system. The team conducted numerical simulations and created models constrained by what’s known about the Gliese 832 system to conclude that an Earth-like planet may orbit Gliese 832.
This can all sound like some hocus-pocus in a way, as my non-science-minded friends like to point out. Just punch in some numbers until it shows an Earth-like planet, then publish and get attention. But it’s not. This kind of modelling and simulation is very rigorous.
Putting in all the data that’s known about the Gliese 832 system, including radial velocity data, orbital inclinations, and gravitational relationships between the planets and the star, and between the planets themselves, yields bands of probability where previously undetected planets might exist. This result tells planet hunters where to start looking for planets.
In the case of this paper, the result indicates that “there is a slim window of about 0.03 AU where an Earth-like planet could be stable as well as remain in the HZ.” The authors are quick to point out that the existence of this planet is not proven, only possible.
The other planets were found using the radial velocity method, which is pretty reliable. But radial velocity only provides clues to the existence of planets, it doesn’t prove that they’re there. Yet. The authors acknowledge that a larger number of radial velocity observations are needed to confirm the existence of this new planet. Barring that, either the transit method employed by the Kepler spacecraft, or direct observation with powerful telescopes, may also provide positive proof.
So far, the Kepler spacecraft has confirmed the existence of 1,041 planets. But Kepler can’t look everywhere for planets. Studies like these are crucial in giving Kepler starting points in its search for exoplanets. If an exoplanet can be confirmed in the Gliese 832 system, then it also confirms the accuracy of the simulation that the team behind this paper performed.
If confirmed, G832 C would join a growing list of exoplanets. It wasn’t long ago that we knew almost nothing about other solar systems. We only had knowledge of our own. And even though it was always unlikely that our Solar System would for some reason be special, we had no certain knowledge of the population of exoplanets in other solar systems.
Studies like this one point to our growing understanding of the dynamics of other solar systems, and the population of exoplanets in the Milky Way, and most likely throughout the cosmos.
A new paper says that a Super-Earth may have formed in our Solar System and been swallowed by the Sun. Image Credit: ESA/Hubble, M. Kornmesser
Our Solar System sure seems like an orderly place. The orbits of the planets are predictable enough that we can send spacecraft on multi-year journeys to them and they will reliably reach their destinations. But we’ve only been looking at the Solar System for the blink of an eye, cosmically speaking.
The young Solar System was a much different place. Things were much more chaotic before the planets settled into the orbital stability that they now enjoy. There were crashings and smashings aplenty in the early days, as in the case of Theia, the planet that crashed into Earth, creating the Moon.
Now, a new paper from Rebecca G. Martin and Mario Livio at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, says that our Solar System may have once had an additional planet that perished when it plunged into the Sun. Strangely enough, the evidence for the formation and existence of this planet may be the lack of evidence itself. The planet, which may have been what’s called a Super-Earth, would have formed quite close to the Sun, and then been destroyed when it was drawn into the Sun by gravity.
In the early days of our Solar System, the Sun would have formed in the centre of a mass of gas and dust. Eventually, when it gained enough mass, it came to life in a burst of atomic fusion. Surrounding the Sun was a protoplanetary disk of gas and dust, out of which the planets formed.
What’s missing in our Solar System is any bodies, or even rocky debris in the zone between Mercury and the Sun. This may seem normal, but the Kepler mission tells us it’s not. In over half of the other solar systems it’s looked at, Kepler has found planets in the same zone where our Solar System has none.
A key part of this idea is that planets don’t always form in situ. That is, they don’t always form at the place where they eventually reach orbital stability. Depending on a number of factors, planets can migrate inward towards their star or outwards away from their star.
Martin and Livio, the authors of the study, think that our Solar System did form a Super-Earth, and rather than it migrating outward, it fell into the Sun. According to them, the Super-Earth most probably formed in the inner regions of our Solar System, on the inside of Mercury’s orbit. The fact that there are no objects there, and no debris of any kind, suggests that the Super-Earth formed close to the Sun, and that its formation cleared that area of any debris. Then, once formed, it fell into the Sun, removing all evidence of its existence.
The authors also note another possible cause for the Super-Earth to have fallen into the Sun. They propose that Jupiter may have migrated inward to about 1.5 AUs from the Sun. At that point, it got locked into resonance with Saturn. Then, both gas giants migrated outward to their current orbits. This process would have shepherded a Super-Earth into the Sun, destroying it.
Some of the thinking behind this whole theory involves the size of the inner terrestrial planets in our Solar System. They’re very small in comparison to other systems studied by the Kepler Mission. If a Super-Earth had formed in the inner part of our System, it would have dominated the accretion of available material, leaving Mercury, Venus, Earth and Mars starved for matter.
A key idea behind this study is what’s known as a dead zone. In terms of a solar system and a protoplanetary disk, a dead zone is a zone of low turbulence which favors the formation of planets. A system with a dead zone would have enough material to allow Super-Earths to form in-situ, and they would not have to migrate inward from further out in the system. However, since large planets like Super-Earths take a long time to fully form, this dead zone would have to be long-lived.
If a protoplanetary disk lacks a dead zone, it is likely too turbulent for the formation of a Super-Earth close to the star. A turbulent protoplanetary disk favors the formation of Super-Earths further out, which would then migrate inwards towards the star. Also, a turbulent disk allows for quicker migration of planets, while a pronounced dead zone inhibits migration.
As the authors say in the conclusion of their study, “The lack of Super–Earths in our solar system is somewhat puzzling given that more than half of observed exoplanetary systems contain one. However, the fact that there is nothing
inside of Mercury’s orbit may not be a coincidence.” They go on to conclude that in our Solar System, the likely scenario is the in situ formation of a Super-Earth which subsequently fell into the Sun.
There are a lot of variables that have to be fine-tuned for this scenario to happen. The young solar system would need a dead zone, the depth of the turbulence in the protoplanetary disk would have to be just right, and the disk would have to be the right temperature. The fact that these things have to be within a certain range may explain why we don’t have a Super-Earth in our system, while over half of the systems studied by Kepler do have one.
The varying brightness in Pluto's atmosphere is caused by atmospheric gravity waves, or buoyancy waves. Image: NASA/New Horizons/Johns Hopkins APL/SWRI
New Horizons’ historic journey to Pluto and beyond continues to provide surprises. As data from the spacecraft’s close encounter with Pluto and its moons arrives at Earth, scientists are piecing together an increasingly intriguing picture of the dwarf planet. The latest discovery is centred around Pluto’s atmosphere, and what are called ‘atmospheric gravity waves.’
Atmospheric gravity waves are a different phenomenon than the gravity waves that were detected for the first time in February, 2016. Those gravity waves are ripples in the fabric of space time, first predicted by Albert Einstein back in 1916. After years of searching, the LIGO instrument detected gravity waves that resulted from two black holes colliding. The discovery of what you might call ‘Einsteinian Gravity Waves’ may end up revolutionizing astronomy.
New Horizons has revealed surprise after surprise in its study of Pluto. Its atmosphere has turned out to be much more complex than anybody expected. It’s composed of 90% nitrogen, with extensive haze layers. Scientists have discovered that Pluto’s atmosphere can vary in brightness depending on viewpoint and illumination, while the vertical structure of the layered haze remains unchanged.
Scientists studying the New Horizons’ data think that atmospheric gravity waves, also called buoyancy waves, are responsible. Atmospheric gravity waves are known to exist on only two other planets; Earth and Mars. They are typically caused by wind flowing over obstructions like mountain ranges.
The layers in Pluto’s atmosphere, and their varying brightness, are most easily seen when they are backlit by the Sun. This was the viewpoint New Horizons had when it captured these images on its departure from Pluto on July 14, 2015. The spacecraft’s Long Range Reconnaissance Imager (LORRI) captured them, using time intervals of 2 to 5 hours. What they show is the brightness of the layers changing by 30% without any change in their height above the surface of the planet.
LORRI, as its name suggests, is a long range image capture instrument. It also captures high resolution geologic data, and was used to map Pluto’s far side. The principal investigator for LORRI is Andy Cheng, from the Applied Physics Laboratory at Johns Hopkins University, in Maryland. “Pluto is simply amazing,” said Andy Cheng. “When I first saw these images and the haze structures that they reveal, I knew we had a new clue to the nature of Pluto’s hazes. The fact that we don’t see the haze layers moving up or down will be important to future modelling efforts.”
Overall, Pluto and its system of moons has turned out to be a much more dynamic place than previously thought. A geologically active landscape, possible ice volcanoes, eroding cliffs made of methane ice, and more, have woken us up to Pluto’s complexity. But its atmosphere has turned out to be just as complex and puzzling.
New Horizons has departed the Pluto system now, and is headed for the Kuiper Belt. The Kuiper Belt is considered a relic of the early Solar System. New Horizons will visit another icy world there, and hopefully continue on to the edge of the heliosphere, the same way the Voyage probes have. New Horizons has enough energy to last until approximately the mid-2030’s, if all goes well.
This annotated artist's conception illustrates our current understanding of the structure of the Milky Way galaxy. Image Credit: NASA
Astronomers have found a pair of stellar oddballs out in the edges of our galaxy. The stars in question are a binary pair, and the two companions are moving much faster than anything should be in that part of the galaxy. The discovery was reported in a paper on April 11, 2016, in the Astrophysical Journal Letters.
The binary system is called PB3877, and at 18,000 light years away from us, it’s not exactly in our neighborhood. It’s out past the Scutum-Centaurus Arm, past the Perseus Arm, and even the Outer Arm, in an area called the galactic halo. This binary star also has the high metallicity of younger stars, rather than the low metallicity of the older stars that populate the outer reaches. So PB3877 is a puzzle, that’s for sure.
PB3877 is what’s called a Hyper-Velocity Star (HVS), or rogue star, and though astronomers have found other HVS’s, more than 20 of them in fact, this is the first binary one found. The pair consists of a hot sub-dwarf primary star that’s over five times hotter than the Sun, and a cooler companion star that’s about 1,000 degrees cooler than the Sun.
Hyper-Velocity stars are fast, and can reach speeds of up to 1,198 km. per second, (2.7 million miles per hour,) maybe faster. At that speed, they could cross the distance from the Earth to the Moon in about 5 minutes. But what’s puzzling about this binary star is not just its speed, and its binary nature, but its location.
Hyper-Velocity stars themselves are rare, but PB3877 is even more rare for its location. Typically, hyper velocity stars need to be near enough to the massive black hole at the center of a galaxy to reach their incredible speeds. A star can be drawn toward the black hole, accelerated by the unrelenting pull of the hole, then sling-shotted on its way out of the galaxy. This is the same action that spacecraft can use when they gain a gravity assist by travelling close to a planet.
This video shows how stars can accelerate when their orbit takes them close to the super-massive black holes at the center of the Milky Way.
But the trajectory of PB3877 shows astronomers that it could not have originated near the center of the galaxy. And if it had been ejected by a close encounter with the black hole, how could it have survived with its binary nature intact? Surely the massive pull of the black hole would have destroyed the binary relationship between the two stars in PB3877. Something else has accelerated it to such a high speed, and astronomers want to know what, exactly, did that, and how it kept its binary nature.
Barring a close encounter with the super-massive black hole at the center of the Milky Way, there are a couple other ways that PB3877 could have been accelerated to such a high velocity.
One such way is a stellar interaction or collision. If two stars were travelling at the right vectors, a collision between them could impart energy to one of them and propel it to hyper-velocity. Think of two pool balls on a pool table.
Another possibility is a supernova explosion. It’s possible for one of the stars in a binary pair to go supernova, and eject it’s companion at hyper-velocity speeds. But in these cases, either stellar collision or supernova, things would have to work out just right. And neither possibility explains how a wide-binary system like this could stay intact.
Fraser Cain sheds more light on Hyper-Velocity Stars, or Rogue Stars, in this video.
There is another possibility, and it involves Dark Matter. Dark Matter seems to lurk on the edge of any discussion around something unexplained, and this is a case in point. The researchers think that there could be a massive cocoon or halo of Dark Matter around the binary pair, which is keeping their binary relationship intact.
As for where the binary star PB3788 came from, as they say in the conclusion of their paper, “We conclude that the binary either formed in the halo or was accreted from the tidal debris of a dwarf galaxy by the Milky Way.” And though the source of this star’s formation is an intriguing question, and researchers plan follow up study to verify the supernova ejection possibility, its possible relationship with Dark Matter is also intriguing.
In this March 2002 image, John Grunsfeld, former astronaut and associate administrator of NASA's Science Mission Directorate, is shown in space shuttle Columbia's cargo bay during the STS-109 Hubble servicing mission. Credits: NASA
In this March 2002 image, John Grunsfeld, former astronaut and associate administrator of NASA’s Science Mission Directorate, is shown in space shuttle Columbia’s cargo bay during the STS-109 Hubble servicing mission. Credits: NASA
Five time space shuttle astronaut and current NASA science chief John Grunsfeld – best known as the ‘Hubble Hugger’ for three critical and dramatic servicing and upgrade missions to the iconic Hubble Space Telescope – his decided to retire from the space agency he faithfully served since being selected as an astronaut in 1992.
“John Grunsfeld will retire from NASA April 30, capping nearly four decades of science and exploration with the agency. His tenure includes serving as astronaut, chief scientist, and head of NASA’s Earth and space science activities,” NASA announced.
Indeed, Grunsfeld was the last human to touch the telescope during the STS-125 servicing mission in 2009 when he served as lead spacewalker.
The STS-125 mission successfully upgraded the observatory to the apex of its scientific capability during five spacewalks by four astronauts and extended the life of the aging telescope for many years. Hubble remains fully operable to this day!
In April 2015, Hubble celebrated 25 years of operations, vastly outperforming its planned lifetime of 15 years.
“Hubble has given us 25 years of great service. Hopefully we’ll get another 5 to 10 years of unraveling the mysteries of the Universe,” Grunsfeld told me during a recent interview at NASA Goddard.
Astronaut John Grunsfeld performs work on the Hubble Space Telescope on the first of five STS-125 spacewalks. Credit: NASA
In his most recent assignment, Grunsfeld was NASA’s Science Chief working as the Associate Administrator for the Science Mission Directorate (SMD) at NASA Headquarters in Washington, D.C. since January 2012.
“John leaves an extraordinary legacy of success that will forever remain a part of our nation’s historic science and exploration achievements,” said NASA Administrator Charlie Bolden, in a statement.
“Widely known as the ‘Hubble Repairman,’ it was an honor to serve with him in the astronaut corps and watch him lead NASA’s science portfolio during a time of remarkable discovery. These are discoveries that have rewritten science textbooks and inspired the next generation of space explorers.”
Grunsfeld was inducted into the U.S. Astronaut Hall of Fame in 2015.
He received his PhD in physics in 1988 and conducted extensive research as an astronomer in the fields of x-ray and gamma ray astronomy and high-energy cosmic ray studies.
Crew of STS-125, including John Grunsfeld, center, during walkout to Astrovan ahead of launch on May 11, 2009, from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida on final mission to service NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope. Credit: Ken Kremer – kenkremer.com
NASA said that Grunsfeld’s deputy Geoff Yoder will serve as SMD acting associate administrator until a successor is named.
“After exploring strange new worlds and seeking out new life in the universe, I can now boldly go where I’ve rarely gone before – home,” said Grunsfeld.
“I’m grateful to have had this extraordinary opportunity to lead NASA science, and know that the agency is well-positioned to make the next giant leaps in exploration and discovery.”
During his tenure as science chief leading NASA’s Science Mission Directorate Grunsfeld was responsible for managing over 100 NASA science missions including the Mars orbital and surface assets like the Curiosity and Opportunity Mars rovers, New Horizons at Pluto, MESSENGER, upcoming Mars 2020 rover and OSIRIS-Rex as well as Earth science missions like the Deep Space Climate Observatory, Orbiting Carbon Observatory-2, and Global Precipitation Measurement spacecraft -which resulted numerous groundbreaking science, findings and discoveries.
NASA Associate Administrator for the Science Mission Directorate John Grunsfeld, left, New Horizons Principal Investigator Alan Stern of Southwest Research Institute (SwRI), Boulder, CO, second from left, New Horizons Mission Operations Manager Alice Bowman of the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory (APL), second from right, and New Horizons Project Manager Glen Fountain of APL, right, are seen at the conclusion of a press conference after the team received confirmation from the spacecraft that it has completed the flyby of Pluto, Tuesday, July 14, 2015 at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) in Laurel, Maryland. Credit: Ken Kremer/kenkremer.com
Dr. Grunsfeld is a veteran of five spaceflights: STS-67 (1995), STS-81 (1997), STS-103 (1999) STS-109 (2002) and STS-125 (2009), during which time he logged more than 58 days in space, including 58 hours and 30 minutes of EVA in 8 spacewalks.
He briefly retired from NASA in December 2009 to serve as Deputy Director of the Space Telescope Science Institute, in Baltimore, Maryland. He then returned to NASA in January 2012 to serve as SMD head for over four years until now.
NASA Science chief and astronaut John Grunsfeld discusses James Webb Space Telescope project at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland. Credit: Ken Kremer/kenkremer.com
From his NASA bio, here is a summary of John Grunsfeld’s space flight experience during five shuttle flights:
STS-67/Astro-2 Endeavour (March 2 to March 18, 1995) launched from Kennedy Space Center, Florida, and landed at Edwards Air Force Base, California. It was the second flight of the Astro observatory, a unique complement of three ultraviolet telescopes. During this record-setting 16-day mission, the crew conducted observations around the clock to study the far ultraviolet spectra of faint astronomical objects and the polarization of ultraviolet light coming from hot stars and distant galaxies. Mission duration was 399 hours and 9 minutes.
STS-81 Atlantis (January 12 to January 22, 1997) was a 10-day mission, the fifth to dock with Russia’s Space Station Mir and the second to exchange U.S. astronauts. The mission also carried the Spacehab double module, providing additional middeck locker space for secondary experiments. In 5 days of docked operations, more than 3 tons of food, water, experiment equipment and samples were moved back and forth between the two spacecraft. Grunsfeld served as the flight engineer on this flight. Following 160 orbits of the Earth, the STS-81 mission concluded with a landing on Kennedy Space Center’s Runway 33, ending a 3.9-million-mile journey. Mission duration was 244 hours and 56 minutes.
STS-103 Discovery (December 19 to December 27, 1999) was an 8-day mission, during which the crew successfully installed new gyroscopes and scientific instruments and upgraded systems on the Hubble Space Telescope (HST). Enhancing HST scientific capabilities required three spacewalks (EVAs). Grunsfeld performed two spacewalks, totaling 16 hours and 23 minutes. The STS-103 mission was accomplished in 120 Earth orbits, traveling 3.2 million miles in 191 hours and 11 minutes.
STS-109 Columbia (March 1 to March 12, 2002) was the fourth HST servicing mission. The crew of STS-109 successfully upgraded the HST, installing a new digital camera, a cooling system for the infrared camera, new solar arrays and a new power system. HST servicing and upgrades were accomplished by four crewmembers during a total of five EVAs in 5 consecutive days. As Payload Commander on STS-109, Grunsfeld was in charge of the spacewalking activities and the Hubble payload. He also performed three spacewalks totaling 21 hours and 9 minutes, including the installation of the new Power Control Unit. STS-109 orbited the Earth 165 times and covered 3.9 million miles in over 262 hours.
STS-125 Atlantis (May 11 to May 24, 2009) was the fifth and final Hubble servicing mission. After 19 years in orbit, the telescope received a major renovation that included the installation of a new wide-field camera, a new ultraviolet telescope, new batteries, a guidance sensor, gyroscopes and other repairs. Grunsfeld served as the lead spacewalker in charge of the spacewalking and Hubble activities. He performed three of the five spacewalks on this flight, totaling 20 hours and 58 minutes. For the first time while in orbit, two scientific instruments were surgically repaired in the telescope. The STS-125 mission was accomplished in 12 days, 21 hours, 37 minutes and 09 seconds, traveling 5,276,000 miles in 197 Earth orbits.
Launch of Space Shuttle Atlantis on STS-125 and the final servicing mission to the Hubble Space Telescope on May 11, 2009 from Launch Complex-39A at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. Credit: Ken Kremer – kenkremer.com
Stay tuned here for Ken’s continuing Earth and planetary science and human spaceflight news.
Learn more about Hubble, NASA Mars rovers, Orion, SLS, ISS, Orbital ATK, ULA, SpaceX, Boeing, Space Taxis, NASA missions and more at Ken’s upcoming outreach events:
Apr 9/10: “NASA and the Road to Mars Human Spaceflight programs” and “Curiosity explores Mars” at NEAF (NorthEast Astronomy and Space Forum), 9 AM to 5 PM, Suffern, NY, Rockland Community College and Rockland Astronomy Club – http://rocklandastronomy.com/neaf.html
Apr 12: Hosting Dr. Jim Green, NASA, Director Planetary Science, for a Planetary sciences talk about “Ceres, Pluto and Planet X” at Princeton University; 7:30 PM, Amateur Astronomers Assoc of Princeton, Peyton Hall, Princeton, NJ – http://www.princetonastronomy.org/
Apr 17: “NASA and the Road to Mars Human Spaceflight programs”- 1:30 PM at Washington Crossing State Park, Nature Center, Titusville, NJ – http://www.state.nj.us/dep/parksandforests/parks/washcros.html
NASA Administrator Charles Bolden and science chief Astronaut John Grunsfeld discuss NASA’s human spaceflight initiatives backdropped by the service module for the Orion crew capsule being assembled at the Kennedy Space Center. Credit: Ken Kremer/kenkremer.com
The amazing stereo view of a broad area informally named Tartarus Dorsa combines two images from the Ralph/Multispectral Visible Imaging Camera (MVIC) taken about 14 minutes apart on July 14, 2015. The first was taken when New Horizons was 16,000 miles (25,000 kilometers) away from Pluto, the second when the spacecraft was 10,000 miles (about 17,000 kilometers) away. Credits: NASA/JHUAPL/SwRI
The amazing stereo view of a broad area informally named Tartarus Dorsa combines two images from the Ralph/Multispectral Visible Imaging Camera (MVIC) taken about 14 minutes apart on July 14, 2015. The first was taken when New Horizons was 16,000 miles (25,000 kilometers) away from Pluto, the second when the spacecraft was 10,000 miles (about 17,000 kilometers) away. Credits: NASA/JHUAPL/SwRI
It’s time to whip out your 3-D glasses to enjoy and scrutinize the remarkable detail of spectacular terrain revealed in a new high resolution stereo image of Pluto – King of the Kuiper Belt! – taken by NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft.
The amazing new stereo Plutonian image focuses on an area dominated by a mysterious feature that geologists call ‘bladed’ terrain – seen above – and its unlike anything seen elsewhere in our solar system.
Its located in a broad region of rough highlands informally known as Tartarus Dorsa – situated to the east of the Pluto’s huge heart shaped feature called Tombaugh Regio. The best resolution is approximately 1,000 feet (310 meters).
The stereo view combines a pair of images captured by New Horizons Ralph/Multispectral Visible Imaging Camera (MVIC) science instruments. They were taken about 14 minutes apart on during history making first ever flyby of the Pluto planetary system on July 14, 2015.
The first was taken when New Horizons was 16,000 miles (25,000 kilometers) away from Pluto, the second when the spacecraft was 10,000 miles (about 17,000 kilometers) away.
The blades align from north to south, typically reach up to about 550 yards (500 meters) high and are spaced about 2-4 miles (3-5 kilometers). Thus they are among the planets steepest features. They are “perched on a much broader set of rounded ridges that are separated by flat valley floors,” according to descriptions from the New Horizons science team.
This color image of Pluto taken by NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft shows rounded and bizarrely textured mountains, informally named the Tartarus Dorsa, rise up along Pluto’s terminator and show intricate but puzzling patterns of blue-gray ridges and reddish material in between. This view, roughly 330 miles (530 kilometers) across, combines blue, red and infrared images taken by the Ralph/Multispectral Visual Imaging Camera (MVIC) on July 14, 2015, and resolves details and colors on scales as small as 0.8 miles (1.3 kilometers). Credits: NASA/JHUAPL/SWRI
Mission scientists have also noted that the bladed terrain has the texture of “snakeskin” owing to their “scaly raised relief.”
In the companion global image from NASA (below), the bladed terrain is outlined in red and shown to extend quite far to the east of Tombaugh Regio.
The composite image was taken on July 13, 2015, the day before the closest approach flyby, when the probe was farther away thus shows lower resolution. It combines a pair of images from two of the science instruments – a Ralph/Multispectral Visible Imaging Camera (MVIC) color scan and an image from the Long Range Reconnaissance Imager (LORRI).
This global view of Pluto combines a Ralph/Multispectral Visible Imaging Camera (MVIC) color scan and an image from the Long Range Reconnaissance Imager (LORRI), both obtained on July 13, 2015 – the day before New Horizons’ closest approach. The red outline marks the large area of mysterious, bladed terrain extending from the eastern section of the large feature informally named Tombaugh Regio. Credits: NASA/JHUAPL/SwRI
The MVIC scan was taken from a range of 1 million miles (1.6 million kilometers), at a resolution of 20 miles (32 kilometers) per pixel. The corresponding LORRI image was obtained from roughly the same range, but has a higher spatial resolution of 5 miles (8 kilometers) per pixel, say officials.
Scientists have developed several possible theories about the origins of the bladed terrain, including erosion from evaporating ices or deposition of methane ices.
Measurements from the Linear Etalon Imaging Spectral Array (LEISA) instrument reveal that that this region “is composed of methane (CH4) ice with a smattering of water,” reports New Horizons researcher Orkan Umurhan.
He speculates that “the material making up the bladed terrain is a methane clathrate. A clathrate is a structure in which a primary molecular species (say water, or H2O) forms a crystalline ‘cage’ to contain a guest molecule (methane or CH4, for example).”
But the question of whether that methane ice is strong enough to maintain the steep walled snakeskin features, will take much more research to determine a conclusive answer.
Umurhan suggests that more research could help determine if the “methane clathrates in the icy moons of the outer solar system and also in the Kuiper Belt were formed way back before the solar system formed – i.e., within the protosolar nebula – potentially making them probably some of the oldest materials in our solar system.”
Pluto continues to amaze and surprise us as the data streams back to eagerly waiting scientists on Earth over many more months to come – followed by years and decades of painstaking analysis.
This new global mosaic view of Pluto was created from the latest high-resolution images to be downlinked from NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft and released on Sept. 11, 2015. The images were taken as New Horizons flew past Pluto on July 14, 2015, from a distance of 50,000 miles (80,000 kilometers). This new mosaic was stitched from over two dozen raw images captured by the LORRI imager and colorized. Annotated with informal place names. Credits: NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Southwest Research Institute/Marco Di Lorenzo/Ken Kremer/kenkremer.com
During New Horizons flyby on July 14, 2015, it discovered that Pluto is the biggest object in the outer solar system and thus the ‘King of the Kuiper Belt.”
The Kuiper Belt comprises the third and outermost region of worlds in our solar system.
Pluto is the last planet in our solar system to be visited in the initial reconnaissance of planets by spacecraft from Earth since the dawn of the Space Age.
New Horizons remains on target to fly by a second Kuiper Belt Object (KBO) on Jan. 1, 2019 – tentatively named PT1, for Potential Target 1. It is much smaller than Pluto and was recently selected based on images taken by NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope.
Stay tuned here for Ken’s continuing Earth and planetary science and human spaceflight news.
Learn more about NASA Mars rovers, Orion, SLS, ISS, Orbital ATK, ULA, SpaceX, Boeing, Space Taxis, NASA missions and more at Ken’s upcoming outreach events:
Apr 9/10: “NASA and the Road to Mars Human Spaceflight programs” and “Curiosity explores Mars” at NEAF (NorthEast Astronomy and Space Forum), 9 AM to 5 PM, Suffern, NY, Rockland Community College and Rockland Astronomy Club – http://rocklandastronomy.com/neaf.html
Apr 12: Hosting Dr. Jim Green, NASA, Director Planetary Science, for a Planetary sciences talk about “Ceres, Pluto and Planet X” at Princeton University; 7:30 PM, Amateur Astronomers Assoc of Princeton, Peyton Hall, Princeton, NJ – http://www.princetonastronomy.org/
Apr 17: “NASA and the Road to Mars Human Spaceflight programs”- 1:30 PM at Washington Crossing State Park, Nature Center, Titusville, NJ – http://www.state.nj.us/dep/parksandforests/parks/washcros.html
Lasers like this one, at the VLT in Paranal, help counteract the blurring effect of the atmosphere. Powerful arrays of much larger lasers could hide our presence from aliens. (ESO/Y. Beletsky)
Of course we all know that aliens want to take over Earth. It’s in all the movies. And after they take over, they could do whatever they want to us puny, weak Earthlings. Enslavement? Yup. Forced breeding programs? Sure. Lay eggs in our bellies and consume our guts for their first meal? Why not.
But here at Universe Today, we’re science-minded types. We love the science fiction, but don’t take it too seriously. But someone we do take seriously when he has something to tell us is Stephen Hawking. And when he warned us that aliens might want to conquer and colonize us, it lent gravity to the whole discussion around contact with aliens. Should we reach out to alien civilizations? Will we be safe if they find us? Or should we try to conceal our presence?
If we choose concealment, then a new paper from two astronomers at New York’s Columbia University have good news for humanity. The authors of the paper, Professor David Kipping and graduate student Alex Teachey, say that lasers could be used to hide Earth from alien prying eyes.
At the heart of this whole idea are transits. When a planet passes in between its star and a distant observer, the star’s light is dimmed, and that’s called a transit. This is how the Kepler spacecraft detects exo-planets, and it’s been remarkably successful. If alien species are using the same method, which makes sense, then Earth would be easily detectable in the Sun’s habitable zone.
According to Kipping and Teachey, lasers could be used to mask this effect. A 30 MW laser would be enough to counter the dimming effect of Earth’s transit in front of the Sun. And it would only need to be turned on for 10 hours, once every year, since that’s how long Earth’s transit takes.
But that would only take care of the dimming effect in visible light. To counter-act the transit dimming across the whole electromagnetic spectrum would require much more energy: a 250 MW cloak of lasers tuned all across the spectrum. But there might be a middle way.
According to an interview with the paper’s authors in Science Daily, it might take only 160 MW of lasers to mask biological signatures in the atmosphere. Any prying alien eyes would not notice that life had ever come into being on Earth.
Should we decide that we do indeed want to be colonized, or forced to take part in breeding programs, or be enslaved, then the same system of lasers could be used to amplify the transit effect. This would make it easier, rather than harder, for aliens to detect us. In fact, according to the authors, these lasers could even be used to communicate with aliens, by transmitting information.
Of course, there’s one other element to all this. For this to work, we have to know where to aim the lasers, which means we have to know where the alien civilization is. And if we’re worried about them coming to get us, they will have more advanced technology than us. And if they have more advanced technology than us, they will for sure already have laser cloaking like the type talked about here.
So who’ll be the first to blink, and turn off their laser cloaking and allow detection?
Orbital ATK Cygnus CRS-6/OA-6 space freighter arrives for capture and berthing at the International Space Station on Saturday, March 26, 2016 at 6:51 a.m. EDT. Credit: NASA/ESA/Tim Peake
Orbital ATK Cygnus CRS-6/OA-6 space freighter arrives for capture and berthing at the International Space Station on Saturday, March 26, 2016 at 6:51 a.m. EDT. Credit: NASA/ESA/Tim Peake
KENNEDY SPACE CENTER, FL – Following a perfectly executed three day orbital rendezvous, NASA astronaut and Expedition 47 Commander Tim Kopra successfully reached out with the International Space Station’s robotic arm, Canadarm2, grabbed hold and captured Orbital ATK’s commercial Cygnus cargo freighter at 6:51 a.m. EDT, this morning, Saturday, March 26, 2016.
The ISS and Cygnus were soaring some 250 miles (400 kilometers) over the Indian Ocean at the time of capture following the cargo crafts blastoff atop a two stage United Launch Alliance (ULA) Atlas V at 11:05 p.m. EDT on Tuesday, March 22, 2016 from Space Launch Complex 41 on Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, Fl.
Robotics officers on the ground in Houston working with the station crew high above then maneuvered Cygnus – holding over 3.5 tons of critical cargo supplies and science – into position for final installation and berthing to the orbiting laboratory’s Earth-facing port on the Unity module a few hours later. It was finally bolted fully into place at approximately 10:52 a.m. EDT.
Orbital ATK Cygnus CRS-6/OA-6 space freighter arrives for capture and berthing at the International Space Station on Saturday, March 26, 2016 at 6:51 a.m. EDT. Credit: NASA TV
This Cygnus is named the S.S. Rick Husband in honor of Col. Rick Husband, the late commander of Space Shuttle Columbia, which was tragically lost with its crew of seven NASA astronauts during re-entry on its final flight on Feb. 1, 2003.
The crew plans to open the hatch to the SS Rick Husband tomorrow morning on Easter Sunday, March 26.
The Orbital ATK Cygnus CRS-6 space freighter is loaded with 3513 kg (7700 pounds) of science experiments and hardware, crew supplies, spare parts, gear and station hardware for the orbital laboratory in support of over 250 research experiments being conducted on board by the Expedition 47 and 48 crews.
A computer overlay with engineering data provides video of the Canadarm2 robotic arm maneuvering to capture the Orbital ATK Cygnus OA-6 space freighter on Saturday, March 26, 2016 at 651 a.m. EDT. Credit: NASA TV
All of Cygnus maneuvers were “executed to perfection for a flawless approach and rendezvous” after the three day trip from Florida to the ISS, as the vehicle closed in to within a few meters for grappling, said NASA commentator Rob Navius.
NASA TV showed spectacular HD views of Cygnus and its UltraFlex solar arrays – deployed 2 hours after launch – from station and robotic arm cameras during the final approach operation, as flight controllers closely monitored all spacecraft systems.
“The crew is ready for Cygnus approach to the capture point,” radioed Kopra.
“Station you are go for capture,” Mission Control radioed back.
Cygnus was placed into free drift mode before capture to prevent any accidental perturbations in the final seconds.
From his robotics work station in the Cupola, Kopra then put the arm in motion by about 6:40 a.m. EDT, during the final phase of the final approach. He extended the 57 foot long (19 meter long) arm to reach out and grab the aft end of Cygnus cargo craft at its grappling pin by closing the snares on the end effector.
ESA astronaut Tim Peake served as backup for arm operations while NASA astronaut Jeff Williams monitored Cygnus systems.
The SS Rick Husband was rock steady during its capture as the station was flying over South Africa and the Indian Ocean.
“Capture confirmed,” reported Navius just moments before the video downlink was temporarily lost as the station communications moved between satellites.
“Excellent work gentleman. Much appreciated. Made that look easy,” radioed Jeremy Hansen, a Canadian Space Agency astronaut from Houston mission control.
“We’d also like to say we are really honored to bring aboard the SS Rick Husband to the International Space Station,” radioed Kopra. “He was a personal hero to many of us. This will be the first Cygnus honoree who was directly involved with the construction of this great station.”
A Cygnus cargo spacecraft named the SS Rick Husband is being prepared inside the Payload Hazardous Servicing Facility at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center for upcoming Orbital ATK CRS-6/OA-6 mission to deliver hardware and supplies to the International Space Station. The Cygnus is scheduled to lift off atop a United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket on March 22, 2016. Credit: Ken Kremer/kenkremer.com
It took about 9 minutes to complete the approach from the 30 meter distant hold point to the final capture point where the SS Rick Husband Cygnus arrived at about 6:37 am EDT. NASA TV showed the grapple fixture gradually coming into view.
Cygnus approached precisely within the center of the approach corridor, said Peake, during continuing updates as the ship moved closer to the targeted berthing port. It was perfectly aligned for its capture point.
Cygnus grapple fixture is located at the bottom end of the vehicles service module, beside the thruster.
Kopra and Peake are spending their 103rd day on the station today. While Williams arrived just 8 days ago.
All burns to get to the initial rendezvous point in the keep out sphere 250 meters away were “right on the money. Every burn has been on course and on target, said NASA JSC commentator Navius in Houston, as Cygnus soared some 400 km over the Pacific.
“Everything has gone off without a hitch. A rock solid approach.”
Flight controllers in Houston and Orbital ATK’s Dulles control headquarters then gave the go ahead to resume moving and approach closer to the 30 meter hold point.
The actual berthing operation took place about an hour later than expected to double check that everything was precisely aligned and communications were fully established.
Controllers used the arm to move Cygnus in for capture. They commanded four gangs of four bolts to latch Cygnus to the common berthing mechanism (CBM) on the internally positioned Unity modules nadir or Earth-facing port.
The first and second stage captures were successfully completed by 10:52 a.m. EDT this morning, marking the official hard mating of Cygnus and the station.
When the ISS Expedition 47 crew members open the hatch, they will be greeted with a sign noting the spacecraft was named SS Rick Husband in honor of the STS-107 mission commander.
Orbital ATK #Cygnus mated to Unity module at 10:52 a.m. EDT (2:52 p.m. UTC). Graphic shows location of five spacecraft at station now. Credit: NASA
The SS Rick Husband Cygnus is actually at the vanguard of a “constellation” of three resupply ships arriving at the station over a three week period of three weekends.
Next comes the Russian Progress 63 which will dock at Russia’s Zvezda module next weekend after launching this Thursday from site 31 at Kaszakhstan carrying another three tons of supplies.
Following Progress is the SpaceX Return To Flight (RTF) mission dubbed SpaceX CRS-8.
It is slated to launch on April 8 and arrive at the ISS on April 10 for berthing to the Earth-facing port of the Harmony module – at the end of the station where NASA space shuttles formerly docked. It carries another 3.5 tons of supplies.
So altogether the trio of international cargo ships will supply over 12 tons of station supplies in rapid succession over the next 3 weeks.
This choreography will set up America’s Cygnus and Dragon resupply craft to simultaneously be present and reside attached at adjacent ports on the ISS for the first time in history.
A United Launch Alliance (ULA) Atlas V launch vehicle lifts off from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station carrying a Cygnus resupply spacecraft on the Orbital ATK CRS-6 mission to the International Space Station. Liftoff was at 11:05 p.m. EDT on March 22, 2016. The spacecraft will deliver 7,500 pounds of supplies, science payloads and experiments. Credit: Ken Kremer/kenkremer.com
Plans currently call for Cygnus to stay at station for approximately two months until May 20th, when it will be unbolted and unberthed for eventual deorbiting and reentry.
But first it will stay on orbit for about another eight days, said Orbital ATK’s Cygnus program manager Frank DeMauro in an interview with Universe Today.
After unberthing, Cygnus will be used to conduct several experiments including the Saffire-1 experiment, it will deploy nanosats from an externally mounted carrier, and the REBR experiment will monitor the burn-up of Cygnus during the fiery reentry into the Earth’s atmosphere, said DeMauro.
Orbital ATK’s attention then shifts to the next Cygnus launch on the Return to Flight, or RTF, mission of the firms Antares rocket from NASA Wallops on the eastern shore of Virginia.
OA-6 is only the second Cygnus to be launched atop a ULA Atlas V rocket, following the OA-4 mission last December.
The CRS-6/OA-6 flight is also the second flight of the enhanced Cygnus variant, that is over 1 meter longer and sports 50% more volume capability.
Thus it is capable of carrying a much heavier payload of some 3500 kg (7700 lbs) vs. a maximum of 2300 kg (5070 lbs) for the standard version.
Watch for Ken’s onsite launch reports direct from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida and continuing mission reports.
Stay tuned here for Ken’s continuing Earth and planetary science and human spaceflight news.
Video caption: Mobius video camera placed at Florida launch pad captures blastoff up close of Orbital ATK OA-6 (CRS-6) mission riding to orbit atop a United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket on March 22, 2016 at 11:05 p.m. EDT from Space Launch Complex-41 on Cape Canaveral Air Force Station. Credit: Ken Kremer/kenkremer.com
Long exposure streak shot of blastoff of United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket carrying Orbital ATK's Cygnus spacecraft at 11:05 p.m. EDT on March 22, 2016, with foreground view of world famous Vehicle Assembly Building (VAB) at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. Atlas V lifted off from nearby Space Launch Complex 41 on Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida. Credit: Alex Polimeni/Spaceflight Now
Long exposure streak shot of blastoff of United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket carrying Orbital ATK’s Cygnus spacecraft at 11:05 p.m. EDT on March 22, 2016, with foreground view of world famous Vehicle Assembly Building (VAB) at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. Atlas V lifted off from nearby Space Launch Complex 41 on Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida. Credit: Alex Polimeni/Spaceflight Now
KENNEDY SPACE CENTER, FL – Tuesday evening, March 22, turned into ‘streaks galore’ on Florida’s space coast, as the nighttime launch of an Orbital ATK Cygnus cargo freighter atop an Atlas V rocket was captured in unforgettable fashion by talented space photographers as it chases down the International Space Station (ISS), loaded with hundreds of science experiments.
Check out this expanding gallery of breathtaking photos and videos collected from many of my photojournalist friends and colleagues – who collectively count as the best space photographers worldwide!
We all descended on the sunshine state to record the Tuesday’s blastoff of the United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket carrying Orbital ATK’s Cygnus CRS-6 (OA-6) spacecraft from an array of locations ringing Cape Canaveral’s seaside launch pad as well as remote cameras we all set as media directly at the launch pad.
The two stage ULA Atlas V lifted off right on time at 11:05 p.m. EDT from Space Launch Complex 41 on Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, Fl, into a picturesque moonlit sky on a resupply mission to the ISS.
ULA Atlas V rockets to orbits with Orbital ATK Cygnus OA-6 in this long exposure streak shot taken from the roof of the world famous Vehicle Assembly Building (VAB) at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. Liftoff from nearby Space Launch Complex 41 on Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida occurred at 11:05 p.m. EDT on March 22, 2016. Credit: Julian Leek
One could not have asked for better weather. Conditions were near perfect at launch time with virtually no winds and clouds.
Cygnus rode to orbit on a fountain of fire. And right now she is in hot pursuit of the million pound orbiting outpost crewed by an international team of six astronauts and cosmonauts.
The streak shots vividly show how the rocket magnificently illuminated the scattered thin clouds hovering over the seaside launch pad as it ascended and arced over eastwards towards Africa.
Streak shot shows United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket carrying Orbital ATK’s Cygnus spacecraft soaring over Space Launch Complex- 37 housing upcoming Delta IV Heavy rocket after lift off from nearby Space Launch Complex 41 on Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida at 11:05 p.m. EDT on March 22, 2016. The Cygnus is on a resupply mission to the International Space Station and scheduled to arrive at the orbiting laboratory Saturday, March 26. Credit: United Launch Alliance
The Orbital ATK Cygnus CRS-6 (OA-6) mission launched aboard an Atlas V Evolved Expendable Launch Vehicle (EELV) in the 401 configuration vehicle. This includes a 4-meter-diameter payload fairing in its longest, extra extended configuration to accommodate the Cygnus.
The first stage of the Atlas V booster is powered by the RD AMROSS RD-180 engine. The Centaur upper stage was powered by the Aerojet Rocketdyne RL10C-1 engine.
It was the ULA’s 62nd straight success with the Atlas V as well as the firms third launch in 2016 and the 106th launch since the company formed in 2006.
Gorgeous launch of ULA Atlas V with Cygnus OA-6 mission in this streak shot taken over Cocoa Beach on March 22, 2016! Weather couldn’t have cooperated better! Credit: Talia Landman/AmericaSpace
The Cygnus CRS-6 (OA-6) mission is being launched under terms of the firm’s Commercial Resupply Services (CRS) contract with NASA. It also counts as Orbital ATK’s fifth cargo delivery mission to the space station.
Watch these launch videos from remote video cameras set right at the launch pad showing the full fury of liftoff sounding off with the deafening thunder of some one million pounds of liftoff thrust.
Video caption: Flame trench view of the Orbital/ATK OA-6 resupply module launch to the ISS on a ULA Atlas 5 rocket from Pad 41 of the CCAFS on March 22, 2016. Credit: Jeff Seibert/AmericaSpace
Video caption: Mobius video camera placed at Florida launch pad captures blastoff up close of Orbital ATK OA-6 (CRS-6) mission riding to orbit atop a United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket on March 22, 2016 at 11:05 p.m. EDT from Space Launch Complex-41 on Cape Canaveral Air Force Station. Credit: Ken Kremer/kenkremer.com
OA-6 is loaded with 3513 kg (7700 pounds) of science experiments and hardware, crew supplies, spare parts, gear and station hardware to the orbital laboratory in support over 250 research experiments being conducted on board by the Expedition 47 and 48 crews.
Among the research highlights are experiments like Strata-1 which will evaluate how soil on airless bodies like asteroids moves about in microgravity, Gecko Gripper to test adhesives similar those found on geckos’ feet, Meteor will evaluate the chemical composition of meteors entering the Earth’s atmosphere, Saffire will purposely set a large fire inside Cygnus after it unberths from the ISS to examine how fires spread in space, and a nanosat deployer mounted externally will deploy over two dozen nanosats also after unberthing.
A new 3D printer featuring significantly upgraded capabilities is also on board.
Atlas V Cygnus OA-6 streak shot on March 22, 2016. 246 second exposure from Satellite Beach. Credit: John Kraus
The spacecraft will arrive at the station on Saturday, March 26, at which time Expedition 47 Commander Tim Kopra of NASA and Flight Engineer Tim Peake of ESA (European Space Agency) will grapple Cygnus, using the space station’s robotic arm, at approximately 6:40 a.m.
NASA TV coverage of rendezvous and grapple will begin at 5:30 a.m.
The Cygnus has been named the S.S. Rick Husband in honor of Col. Rick Husband, the late commander of Space Shuttle Columbia, which was tragically lost with its crew of seven NASA astronauts during re-entry on its final flight on Feb. 1, 2003.
Watch for Ken’s onsite launch reports direct from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida.
Stay tuned here for Ken’s continuing Earth and planetary science and human spaceflight news.
This ‘Frankenstein’ liftoff image is the result of a 160+ image time lapse sequence compiled from Atlas V rocket launch carrying the OA-6 ISS resupply #Cygnus capsule, showing streak shot and star trails as captured at the NASA causeway at KSC/CCAFS. Launched by United Launch Alliance for Orbital ATK on March 22, 2016 at 11:05 p.m. EDT. Credit: Michael SeeleyULA Atlas V carrying Orbital ATK Cygnus CRS-6/OA-6 streaks skyward on March 22, 2016. Credit: Ben Smegelsky ULA Atlas V/Cygnus OA-6 intermittent streak shot following launch on March 22, 2016 is taken from roof of Vehicle Assembly Building (VAB) at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. Credit: Ken Kremer/kenkremer.com Photographers on the VAB roof at KSC, preparing for Atlas V/Cygnus launch on March 22, 2016. Credit: Jared HaworthA Cygnus cargo spacecraft named the SS Rick Husband is being prepared inside the Payload Hazardous Servicing Facility at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center for upcoming Orbital ATK CRS-6/OA-6 mission to deliver hardware and supplies to the International Space Station. Cygnus is scheduled to lift off atop a United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket on March 22, 2016. Credit: Ken Kremer/kenkremer.com
