It may seem illogical, but boiling is a very efficient way to cool engineering components and systems used in the extreme environments of space.
An experiment to gain a basic understanding of this phenomena launched to the International Space Station on space shuttle Discovery Feb. 24. The Nucleate Pool Boiling Experiment, or NPBX, is one of two experiments in the new Boiling eXperiment Facility, or BXF.
Nucleate boiling is bubble growth from a heated surface and the subsequent detachment of the bubble to a cooler surrounding liquid. As a result, these bubbles can efficiently transfer energy from the boiling surface into the surrounding fluid. This investigation provides an understanding of heat transfer and vapor removal processes that happen during nucleate boiling in microgravity. Researchers will glean information to better design and operate space systems that use boiling for efficient heat removal.
Bubbles in microgravity grow to different sizes than on Earth. This experiment will focus on the dynamics of single and multiple bubbles and the associated heat transfer.
NPBX uses a polished aluminum wafer, powered by heaters bonded to its backside, and five fabricated cavities that can be controlled individually. The experiment will study single and/or multiple bubbles generated at these cavities. It will measure the power supplied to each heater group, and cameras will record the bubble dynamics. Analysis of the heater power data and recorded images will allow investigators to determine how bubble dynamics and heat transfer differ in microgravity.
“With boiling, the size and weight of heat exchange equipment used in space systems can be significantly reduced,” said Vijay Dhir, the experiment’s principal investigator at the University of California, Los Angeles. “Boiling and multiphase heat transfer is an enabling technology for space exploration missions including storage and handling of cryogenic, or extremely low temperature liquids, life support systems, power generation and thermal management.”
“The cost of transporting equipment to space depends on the size and weight of the equipment,” added David Chao, the project scientist from NASA’s Glenn Research Center in Cleveland. “The knowledge base that will be developed through the experiment will give us the capability to achieve cooling of various components and systems used in space in an efficient manner and could lead to smaller and lighter spacecraft.”
Virgin Galactic's SpaceShipTwo during a test flight. Suborbital science experiments fly aboard this craft, as well as Blue Origin's New Shepard, and other suborbital flights, providing scientists, students, and others with valuable microgravity access. Credit: Virgin Galactic
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Think again if you believe the suborbital space market is exclusively for well-heeled tourists. The Southwest Research Institute has just inked deals with Virgin Galactic and XCOR Aerospace to fly up to 17 scientific research flights. Three scientists, including Dr. Alan Stern, former head of the Science Mission Directorate at NASA and current New Horizons Principal Investigator, will become some of the first scientists to fly on a commercial spacecraft to conduct scientific research. They will fly on board Virgin’s SpaceShipTwo and XCOR’s Lynx.
“We’re another step closer to the era of routine ‘field work’ in space research,” said Dr. Dan Durda, another SwRI scientist who is scheduled to fly. “More and more researchers will soon fly with their own experiments in space, and do it regularly enough to allow the important advances that come with iterative investigations. I’m looking forward to that future and helping it become a reality.”
“We at SwRI are very strong believers in the transformational power of commercial, next-generation suborbital vehicles to advance many kinds of research,” said Stern. “We also believe that by putting scientists in space with their experiments, researchers can achieve better results at lower costs and a higher probability of success than with many old-style automated experiments.”
Alan Stern is ready to go to space. Credit: SwRI
The spacecraft will fly on short suborbital flights to altitudes greater than 107,000 meters (350,000 feet) above the internationally recognized boundary of space.
At least two SwRI researchers will fly on SpaceShipTwo, which can carry two pilots and up to six researchers, and later, there will be a dedicated six-seat research mission SS2. SpaceShipTwo’s large cabin enables researchers to work together in an “out-of-seat” micro gravity environment.
XCOR's Lynx suborbital vehicle. Credit: XCOR
SwRI researchers will also fly at least six high altitude missions aboard XCOR Corporation’s Lynx Mark I high-altitude rocket plane, which carries a pilot and a single researcher at altitudes up to 200,000 feet. Lynx I is currently in development, with test flights expected to begin in 2012.
The types of research planned includes biomedical, microgravity and astronomical imaging experiments.
Besides Stern andDurda, Dr. Cathy Olkin is also scheduled to fly on the research flights. All three scientists selected have trained for suborbital spaceflight aboard zero-G aircraft, in NASTAR centrifuges and aboard Starfighter F-104 jet fighters in the last year.
“This is a historic moment for spaceflight,” said Commercial Spaceflight Federation Executive Director John Gedmark. “A scientific research institution is spending its own money to send its scientists to space. I expect that these scientists will be the first of many to fly to space commercially. As the scientific community realizes that they can put payloads and people into space at unprecedented low costs, the floodgates will open even wider.”
Artist concept of the Glory spacecraft in Earth orbit. Credit: NASA Goddard Space Flight Center
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NASA is launching an Earth-orbiting satellite called Glory tomorrow that will tackle a highly charged question: How much can the sun contribute to climate change?
The lull in solar activity between solar cycles 23 and 24 lasted for two years, twice as long as expected. By mid-2009, well into the second year, predictions of global cooling — another Little Ice Age — dominated global warming skeptic blogs. Now Solar Cycle 24 is safely underway, but aside from the dramatic flare and rash of sunspots that erupted last week, it’s been wimpy. Tom Woods, a solar physicist at the Boulder, Colo.-based Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics, says he expects a subdued maximum for Solar Cycle 24 (around 2013) and generally, weak solar cycles come in threes. Each known set of sluggish solar cycles in the past has coincided with bitterly cold winters in parts of the globe — especially Europe and North America.
The question is, with the level of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere from the burning of fossil fuels, would we even feel an extended solar minimum? That’s exactly what Glory will aim to find out.
Glory will launch shortly after 2 a.m. local time on Wednesday, Feb. 23 from the Vandenberg Air Force Base north of Santa Barbara, Calif. The six-foot (1.9 meter), 1,100-pound (525 kg) satellite will orbit for at least three years in Earth’s upper atmosphere, where it will monitor both the total solar energy that’s reaching Earth, and the airborne aerosols greeting the energy it when it gets here.
Aerosols include salt, mineral dust, soot, and smoke and come from a variety of sources – such as vehicle exhaust, campfires, volcanoes and even desert winds and sea spray. They can influence climate by absorbing and scattering light, and NASA scientists have said the range of uncertainty about their role in climate change is far greater than any doubt about greenhouse gases from fossil fuels. Raytheon’s Aerosol Polarimetry Sensor, an instrument mounted on the Earth-facing side of the spacecraft, will observe the movement of aerosols through the atmosphere over time, especially on a seasonal scale.
Glory’s sun-facing side will sport the Total Irradiance Monitor, which will measure the intensity of solar radiation at the top of Earth’s atmosphere, adding to a 32-year data set, to record the solar radiation reaching Earth.
Four solar irradiance instruments are currently flying, including VIRGO, launched in 1995, and SORCE, sent into orbit in 2003. Three of those, though, have long exceeded their designed mission lifetimes and are deteriorating. The European PICARD mission, launched in 2010, and NASA’s Glory mission are the new guard.
Greg Kopp, a researcher also at the Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics, is principal investigator on the Glory mission. He says the existing data has already helped researchers understand variations on the scale of the sun’s 11-year activity cycles. But in order to capture longer trends, observations must continue. And solar researchers are increasingly eager to quantify the sun’s role, given the global importance of the question.
“I’m fond of saying we should get closer to the votersphere,” says Daniel Baker, director of Boulder’s Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics. “I can think of no problem that is more significant to humanity than understanding climate change.”
Follow the mission:
On Feb. 23, NASA TV coverage of the countdown will begin at 3:30 a.m. EST (12:30 a.m. PST). Liftoff is targeted for 5:09:43 a.m. EST (2:09:43 a.m. PST). Spacecraft separation from the Taurus occurs 13 minutes after launch. The briefings and launch coverage also will be streamed online.
Launch coverage of Glory countdown activities will appear on NASA’s launch blog starting at 3:30 a.m. EST (12:30 a.m. PST). Real-time updates of countdown milestones as well as streaming video clips highlighting launch preparations and liftoff will also be available.
Astronaut Jeffrey Williams doing plant cells vs. microgravity experiments aboard the ISS in December 2009. Credit: NASA
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A new opportunity for students to be part of history and fly an experiment on what could be the last space shuttle mission has been announced by the Student Spaceflight Experiments Program (SSEP) for the STS-135, the shuttle mission that might fly in June of 2011.
“We hope to get 50 communities and 100,000 students participating in the initiative which allows grade 5-14 student design of real experiments to fly aboard Atlantis, and engages entire communities,” Dr. Jeff Goldstein, the Director for the National Center for Earth and Space Science Education told Universe Today. “This is very unique opportunity for students and teachers to be part of a high visibility, keystone U.S. national STEM education program of the highest caliber.”
SSEP is a new program that launched in June 2010 by the National Center for Earth and Space Science Education in partnership with NanoRacks, LLC, a company that is working with NASA under a Space Act Agreement as part of the utilization of the International Space Station as a National Laboratory.
The company hopes to stimulate space station research by providing a very low-cost 1 kilogram platform that puts micro-gravity projects within the reach of universities and small companies, as well as elementary and secondary schools through SSEP. So, this is actually a commercial space program and not a NASA program.
This opportunity offers real research done on orbit, with students designing and proposing the experiments to fly in low Earth orbit.
Goldstein said the program is a U.S. national Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) education initiative that gives up to 3,200 students across a community—middle and high school students (grades 5-12), and/or undergraduates at 2-year community colleges (grades 13-14)—the ability to fly their own experiments in low Earth orbit, first aboard the final flights of the Space Shuttle, and then later on the International Space Station.
For the STS-134 mission, now scheduled to launch in April 2011, 16 communities were chosen to participate from 447 student team proposals. Goldstein said the 16 selected experiments are now moving through formal NASA Flight Safety review.
But the end of the shuttle mission is not the end of this program – instead it is just the beginning. “This is meant to be a gateway to Phase 2 of the program, which will allow routine access to space for students conducting experiments, said Goldstein. “SSEP was designed to engage and inspire America’s next generation of scientists and engineers through immersion in real science. We believe that ‘student as scientist’ represents the very best in science education.”
What type of experiments would be accepted? Students and teachers should discuss what biological, chemical or physical system they would like to explore with no gravity off for 10 days. Examples of experiments are seed germination cell biology, life cycles of organisms, food preservation, and crystal growth. The SSEP program will help guide the teachers through implementation of the program in their classrooms.
Each participating school district will be provided an experiment slot in an easy-to-use real microgravity research mini-laboratory flying on Space Shuttle Atlantis. The SSEP center will then guide the school districts through an experiment design competition within the grade 5-12 range, which can be conducted across a single school, or district-wide to as many as 3,200 students. Student teams then design real experiments vying for your reserved slot on this historic flight, with designs constrained by mini-laboratory operation.
Other benefits of the program include a customized Blog for students and teachers to report on their program, and a design competition for each school to have a 4-inch x 4-inch emblem that we will fly aboard the Shuttle and returned to the school.
There is uncertainty, however, whether the STS-135 mission will fly. Funding for the additional STS-135 mission was authorized by Congress on September 29, 2010, and the authorization was signed by President Obama. NASA is currently awaiting Congressional allocation of funds for STS-135. On January 20, 2011, NASA formally added STS-135 to its launch schedule. Goldstein said there is now a high probability that STS-135 will indeed fly. But when it flies is the issue.
Because of the timing of when NASA needs to have a list of material that will be used in the experiments so that they can do a flight safety review, the SSEP program needs NASA to slip the launch date from June 28, 2011 until at least August 31, 2011. They fully expect this to occur given the significant launch slips that have occurred for STS-133 and STS-134, and the conversations already taking place in NASA.
But it is now time critical for schools to be able to participate. There is a proposal submission deadline of May 12, 2011. By the end of May, the flight experiments will be selected, so that NASA can be provided with the materials list 3 months in advance of launch.
If you run a space/astronomy related blog, and would like to get more awareness, participate in the Carnival of Space. Every week, a different webmaster or blogger hosts the carnival, showcasing articles written on the topic of space. It’s a great way to get to know the community, and to help your writing reach a wider audience. If you’d like to be a host for the carnival, please drop me an email at [email protected].
The Sun from STEREO and Robonaut 2 holds a football at the Kennedy Space Center. On Super SUNday Feb. 6, 2011, NASA will release humankinds first ever view of the entire Sun and NASA’s Robonaut 2 will make a first ever guest appearance on the NFL’s Super Bowl Pre game show for Super Bowl XLV. Left: The Sun from STEREO taken by the SECCHI Extreme Ultraviolet Imager (EUVI) at the 304 Angstrom bandpass which is sensitive to the He II singly ionized state of helium, at a characteristic temperature of about 80 thousand degrees Kelvin. Credit: NASA. Right: Robonaut 2 practicing football for the NFL Super Bowl XLV at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in front of the world famous Countdown Clock. Credit & Mosaic: Ken Kremer
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What do NASA, Robots, the Sun and the NFL have in common ?
Well … its Super SUNday … for Super Bowl XLV on Feb. 6, 2011
The unlikely pairing of Football and Science face off head to head on Super Bowl SUNday. Millions of television viewers will see NASA’s Robonaut 2, or R2, share the the limelight with the Steelers and the Packers of the NFL. The twin brother of R2 is destined for the International Space Station (ISS) and will become the first humanoid robot in space. It will work side by side as an astronaut’s assistant aboard the space station.
The fearsome looking R2 is set to make a first ever special guest appearance during the FOX Networks Super Bowl pre-game show with FOX sports analyst Howie Long. The pre-game show will air starting at 2 p.m. EST on Feb. 6.
And there’s more.
The Sun from Stereo B. Credit: NASA On Super SUNday Feb. 6, NASA will publish Humankinds first ever image of the ‘Entire Sun’ courtesy of NASA’s twin STEREO spacecraft. And given the stunningly cold and snowy weather in Dallas, the arrival of our Sun can’t come soon enough for the ice covered stadium and football fans. See photos above and below.
The two STEREO spacecraft will reach positions on opposite sides of the Sun on Sunday, Feb. 6 at about 7:30 p.m. in the evening, possibly coinciding with the Super Bowl half time show.
At opposition, the STEREO duo will observe the entire 360 degrees sphere of the Sun’s surface and atmosphere for the first time in the history of humankind.
The nearly identical twin brother of R2 is packed aboard Space Shuttle Discovery and awaiting an out of this world adventure from Launch Pad 39 A at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center (KSC) in Florida. Blast off of the first humanoid robot is currently slated for Feb. 24.
R2 is the most dextrously advanced humanoid robot in the world and the culmination of five decades of wide-ranging robotics research at NASA and General Motors (GM).
This newest generation of Robonauts are an engineering marvel and can accomplish real work with exceptionally dexterous hands and an opposable thumb. R2 will contribute to the assembly, maintenance and scientific output of the ISS
“R2 is the most sophisticated robot in the world,” says Rob Ambrose, Chief of NASA’s Johnson Space Center’s (JSC) Robotics Division.
“We hope R2 should help to motivate kids to study science and space,” Ron Diftler told me in an interview at KSC. Diftler is NASA’s R2 project manager at JSC.
Fearsome Robonaut 2 at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center prepares to meet the NFL’s best players at Super Bowl XLV on Feb 6, 2011. Credit: Ken Kremer
The amazingly dexterity of the jointed arms and hands enables R2 to use exactly the same tools as the astronauts and thereby eliminates the need for constructing specialized tools for the robots –saving valuable time, money and weight.
The robot is loaded with advanced technology including an optimized overlapping dual arm dexterous workspace, series elastic joint technology, extended finger and thumb travel, miniaturized 6-axis load cells, redundant force sensing, ultra-high speed joint controllers, extreme neck travel, and high resolution camera and IR systems.
R2 weighs some 300 pounds and was manufactured from nickel-plated carbon fiber and aluminum. It is equipped with two human like arms and two hands as well as four visible light cameras that provide stereo vision with twice the resolution of high definition TV.
“With R2 we will demonstrate ground breaking and innovative robotics technology which is beyond anything else out there and that will also have real world applications as GM works to build better, smarter and safer cars,” according to Susan Smyth, GM Director of Research and Development.
“Crash avoidance technology with advanced sensors is a prime example of robonaut technology that will be integrated into GM vehicles and manufacturing processes.”
A team of engineers and scientists from NASA and GM pooled resources in a joint endeavor to create Robonaut 2, the most dexterously advanced robot in history. The NASA/GM team is pictured here at the Kennedy Space Center. R2 will fly aboard Space Shuttle Discovery with the STS-133 crew of humans and become the first humanoid robot in space.
R2 will become an official ISS crew member. Credit: Ken Kremer
Robonaut 2 flight unit poses with the NASA/GM development team inside the Space Station Processing Facility at KSC in this 360 degree panorama from nasatech.net
I was fortunate to meet R2 and the Robonaut team at KSC. R2 is incredibly life like and imposing and I’ll never forget the chance to shake hands. Although its motions, sounds, illuminated hands and muscular chest gives the unmistakable impression of standing next to a lively and powerful 300 pound gorilla, it firmly but gently grasped my hand in friendship – unlike a Terminator.
So its going to make for a mighty match up some day between the fearsome looking R2 and the NFL players.
Well apparently, R2 and Howie will be making some predictions on which player will win the MVP award and a GM Chevrolet. Stay tuned.
So come back on SUNday Feb. 6 for NASA’s release of the first ever images of our entire Sun from the STEREO twins.
Clash of the Titans - R2 and NASA robotics engineer at football practice at KSC. Credit: Ken KremerSpace Shuttle Discovery awaits launch from Pad 39 A at the Kennedy Space Center, Florida. Robonaut 2 is loaded inside the Leonardo storage module which will be permanently attached to the ISS by the STS-133 crew. Credit: Ken KremerOn Super Bowl SUNday - Feb 6, 2011 - the two NASA STEREO spacecraft
will see the entire Sun for the first time! Credit: NASA.
Gravity Probe B - testing the null hypothesis that the spin axis of a gyroscope should stay aligned with a distant reference point when it's in a free fall orbit. But Einstein says no.
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There’s a line out of an early episode of The Big Bang Theory series, where Gravity Probe B is described as having seen ‘glimpses’ of Einstein’s predicted frame-dragging effect. In reality, it is not entirely clear that the experiment was able to definitively distinguish a frame-dragging effect from a background noise created by some exceedingly minor aberrations in its detection system.
Whether or not this counts as a glimpse – frame-dragging (the alleged last untested prediction of general relativity) and Gravity Probe B have become linked in the public consciousness. So here’s a quick primer on what Gravity Probe B may or may not have glimpsed.
The Gravity Probe B satellite was launched in 2004 and set into a 650 kilometer altitude polar orbit around the Earth with four spherical gyroscopes spinning within it. The experimental design proposed that in the absence of space-time curvature or frame-dragging, these gyroscopes moving in a free fall orbit should spin with their axis of rotation unerringly aligned with a distant reference point (in this case, the star IM Pegasi).
To avoid any electromagnetic interference from the Earth’s magnetic field, the gyroscopes were housed within a lead-lined thermos flask – the shell of which was filled with liquid helium. This shielded the instruments from external magnetic interference and the cold enabled superconductance within the detectors designed to monitor the gyroscopes’ spin.
Slowly leaking helium from the flask was also used as a propellant. To ensure the gyroscopes remained in free fall in the event that the satellite encountered any atmospheric drag – the satellite could make minute trajectory adjustments, essentially flying itself around the gyroscopes to ensure they never came in to contact with the sides of their containers.
Now, although the gyroscopes were in free fall – it was a free fall going around and around a space-time warping planet. A gyroscope moving at a constant velocity in fairly empty space is also in a ‘weightless’ free fall – and such a gyroscope could be expected to spin indefinitely about its axis, without that axis ever shifting. Similarly, under Newton’s interpretation of gravity – being a force acting at a distance between massive objects – there is no reason why the spin axis of a gyroscope in a free fall orbit should shift either.
But for a gyroscope moving in Einstein’s interpretation of a steeply curved space-time surrounding a planet, its spin axis should ‘lean over’ into the slope of space-time. So over one full orbit of the Earth, the spin axis will end up pointing in a slightly different direction than the direction it started from – see the animation at the end of this clip. This is called the geodetic effect – and Gravity Probe B did effectively demonstrate this effect’s existence to within only a 0.5% likelihood that the data was showing a null effect.
But, not only is Earth a massive space-time curving object, it also rotates. This rotation should, theoretically, create a drag on the space-time that the Earth is embedded within. So, this frame-dragging should tug something that’s in orbit forward in the direction of the Earth’s rotation.
Where the geodetic effect shifts a polar-orbiting gyroscope’s spin axis in a latitudinal direction – frame-dragging (also known as the Lense-Thirring effect), should shift it in a longitudinal direction.
The expected outcome. Orbiting through warped space-time shifts the spin axis of an gyroscope. But the anticipated frame-dragging shift has proved difficult to detect.
And here is where Gravity Probe B didn’t quite deliver. The geodetic effect was found to shift the gyroscopes spin axis by 6,606 milliarcseconds per year, while the frame-dragging effect was expected to shift it by 41 milliarcseconds per year. This much smaller effect has been difficult to distinguish from a background noise arising from minute imperfections existing within the gyroscopes themselves. Two key problems were apparently a changing polhode path and larger than expected manifestation of a Newtonian gyro torque – or let’s just say that despite best efforts, the gyroscopes still wobbled a bit.
There is ongoing work to laboriously extract the expected data of interest from the noisy data record, via a number of assumptions which might yet be subject to further debate. A 2009 report boldly claimed that the frame-dragging effect is now plainly visible in the processed data – although the likelihood that the data represents a null effect is elsewhere reported at 15%. So maybe glimpsed is a better description for now.
Incidentally, Gravity Probe A was launched back in 1976 – and in a two hour orbit effectively confirmed Einstein’s redshift prediction to within 1.4 parts in 10,000. Or let’s just say that it showed that a clock at 10,000 km altitude was found to run significantly faster than a clock on the ground.
Scientists using NASA’s Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope have detected beams of antimatter produced above thunderstorms on Earth, a phenomenon never seen before.
Scientists think the antimatter particles were formed in a terrestrial gamma-ray flash (TGF), a brief burst produced inside thunderstorms and shown to be associated with lightning. It is estimated that about 500 TGFs occur daily worldwide, but most go undetected.
“These signals are the first direct evidence that thunderstorms make antimatter particle beams,” said Michael Briggs, a member of Fermi’s Gamma-ray Burst Monitor (GBM) team at the University of Alabama in Huntsville (UAH). He presented the findings Monday, during a news briefing at the American Astronomical Society meeting in Seattle. Continue reading “Fermi Telescope Catches Thunderstorms Hurling Antimatter into Space”
If you’re finding the time to watch a few movies during the holidays, you might want to make your choices based on this “report card” put together by the website io9 a while back. They rated 18 movies based on how many laws of physics they mangled. Star Trek is not included just because there is too much of it (bad science and movies!) to fit all in one graphic.
Artist concept of an InterOrbital Tubesat in space. Credit: InterOrbital.
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For a space geek, the ultimate do-it-yourself project would be building a satellite in your basement. Astronomer and writer Sandy Antunes is doing just that, but there’s an artsy side to this project, as well. His satellite, called Project Calliope, will collect data from the ionosphere and send it back to Earth in sound-based MIDI files, allowing music to be created from space. “It’ll be an ionospheric detector transmitting sonifiable data back to Earth,” said Antunes. “Conceptually, it’s a musical instrument in space, played by space rather than just after-the-fact sonified.”
Antunes decided to embark on this project after the commercial space company InterOrbital began offering small DIY, soda-can-sized picosatellites for the reasonable price of $8,000 – which includes the launch.
One of the major reasons for doing the project is to prove that anyone can build a satellite in their basement – although Antunes admits it is also a fairly cheap midlife crisis expenditure, especially when his boss at the Science 2.0 blog, Hank Campbell, decided to pitch in half of the price.
The skeleton of the Antunes' satellite, assembled. Cat is for scale. Credit: Sandy Antunes.
“When people ask, ‘where did you get your idea?’ that misses the mark,” Antunes told Universe Today. “The question should be, ‘What idea do you have?’ We’re at the point now where a single hobbyist can send something into orbit to do something useful. I think this is a new space age way of thinking. I’d like to see if this inspires people to do something cooler than me. To me that is what science is all about.”
Antunes is documenting his experiences on his blog, The Sky By Day. “I’m making mistakes so that other people won’t have to make them,” he said. “Hopefully I can make the path will be easier for others.”
Plus, Antunes hopes to answer the big question of what space sounds like. The sun interacts with the Earth’s magnetic field in the ionosphere, creating all sorts of activity; there are also changes in temperature and light.
“People don’t know what space sounds like,” he said. “You walk to ocean and close your eyes and you can hear the roar of the waves, the rushing of water, the moments of quiet; and you can get a good idea of what activity is going on. But we don’t know have an idea of the activity of space, or the ionosphere, where this satellite is going. Sonifying the ionosphere will give people an idea of the ebb and flow of it – how there are constant events going on, sometimes catastrophic-type events but there is also a quiescent stage.”
When the data comes back to Earth, Antunes will give musicians free rein. “Musicians can take it and rework it, much like how musicians have ambient noise, nature sounds, or whale songs in a piece,” Antunes said, “but in this case they can take sounds from the ionosphere. We are making it royalty free so anyone can use it.”
The packaged components for InterOrbital's $8,000 DIY satellite. Credit: Sandy Antunes.
Antunes said working with the pre-packaged TubeSat Personal Satellite Kit is different than what he initially imagined. The Hubble Space Telescope, it is not.
“It has a power system that’s basically two lithium AA batteries hooked together, a little stick of gum computer chip, and some very fragile solar cells,” Antunes said. “I thought it would be hard science and tricky engineering and unsolved problems, but everything I’m getting is off the shelf. The sensors are plug-ins, so the primary work is integrating things. So there are very different problems from what I thought, but this tells me that you don’t have to have a PhD to put up a satellite.”
The current liftoff date for the first InterOrbital Tubesat launch is March or April of 2011. The company has built the rocket engines and they are now doing testing and test firings.
Antunes knows that testing a rocket has a lot of ambiguity, and he anticipates some delays, as even when he has been part of a NASA project, he has never had a launch go on time. This being the first launch of InterOrbital’s commercial satellite venture, if it blows up, Antunes will get a chance to refly his satellite.
Project Calliope will go into a short-term polar orbit, and last about 6-12 weeks, so it is a short term experience, Antunes said.
But he will be tweaking his satellite right up until delivery.
“I wanted to do something that NASA cannot, and that a University wouldn’t, combining art and science,” Antunes said. “I like the idea of flying something in space whose purpose is to make music until it dies– music from science.”
