Artist's conception of one of the Solar TErrestrial RElations Observatory (STEREO) spacecraft. Credit: NASA
No one knows exactly why a NASA solar probe stopped talking to Earth six weeks ago, but it’s possible the spacecraft is out of power and is drifting without a way of calling for help, the agency said in an update.
On Oct. 1, NASA suddenly lost contact with one of the two Solar TErrestrial RElations Observatory (STEREO) spacecraft, which are currently examining the far side of the Sun. The probes are considered crucial for solar forecasting, so the loss is a blow. While the STEREO-Behind probe has been mute since then, the agency says “not all hope is lost” for a recovery.
STEREO-Behind went silent after NASA deliberately reset the spacecraft. Along with its twin, STEREO-Ahead, in the coming years the spacecraft will need to reposition its antenna to avoid getting fried by the Sun. Also, there is a period where each spacecraft will need to work autonomously, because the Sun’s radio interference will make it difficult or impossible for communications to get through.
First complete image of the far side of the sun taken on June 1, 2011. Click image for larger version. Credit: NASA/STEREO.
To prepare the spacecraft, NASA has been testing them out ahead of these events, which are called “solar conjunction operations.” STEREO-Ahead passed the tests and entered these operations in August, where it will remain until 2016. STEREO-Behind was supposed to go into this phase on Dec. 1. Preparations started Sept. 27, when STEREO-Behind was put into the same safe mode test that was used on STEREO-Ahead.
“One part of this test was to observe the firing of the spacecraft hard command loss timer, which resets the spacecraft if no commands are received after three days,” NASA wrote in an update. “The purpose of this is to correct any problems that might be preventing the spacecraft from receiving commands from the ground. While the spacecraft is out of contact on the far side of the Sun, this reset will occur every three days.”
The timer did fire as planned on Oct. 1, and the spacecraft reset as expected. However, the radio signal coming from STEREO-Behind wasn’t as strong as expected. Then, it disappeared altogether.
An artist’s concept shows both STEREO surrounding the sun on opposite sides. Credit: NASA
While there’s not much information to work with, NASA says it does know a few things. Before the reset, information or telemetry from the spacecraft showed it was working fine. After the reset, though, they could tell the inertial measurement unit (IMU) was turned on. This is unusual, and shows that the guidance system’s star tracker hadn’t picked up its guide stars as expected.
“This is not unexpected—there have been other occasions when it took the star tracker several minutes, or even a few days, to start determining the spacecraft orientation based on star images,” NASA said.
“In fact, on Sept. 28, as part of the same test sequence, the spacecraft was reset, and it took 12 minutes for the star tracker to start providing an attitude solution. When the star tracker is ofline, the spacecraft will automatically turn on the IMU to provide rotational rate information.”
Deployment of STEREO Spacecraft Panels. Credit: 2002-Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory. Credit: Dr C.J.Eyles, University of Birmingham
NASA thinks the star tracker’s struggles would explain why the radio signal wasn’t as strong as expected, because the spacecraft’s high-gain antenna wasn’t aimed at Earth properly. But there’s more — it appears one of the IMU’s laser gyroscopes isn’t working and is giving “bad data to the attitude control system”, NASA said. So now the spacecraft was facing two failures, which is tough for it to deal with, the agency added.
Did the spacecraft recognize the problem? If it did, it would have used the last backup system — five solar aspect sensors — which should have made sure the solar panels were pointed in the right direction to provide power. If not, the spacecraft might have thought it was in a roll, turned on its thrusters, and then spun itself in such a way that it could have lost sunlight power.
NASA is trying to send out commands to address all of these failure possibilities, and it emphasizes that a recovery is still possible. The Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO), for example, also lost power in 1998 when a spin put its solar panels out of reach of the Sun. However, as its orbit changed, the Sun’s light eventually fell across the panels and power was restored. The spacecraft was recovered and still works today.
Launch teams practice countdown and fueling tests on the United Launch Alliance Delta IV Heavy rocket that will lift NASA’s Orion spacecraft on its unmanned flight test in December 2014. Credit: NASA
And Orion is so big and heavy that she’s not launching on just any old standard rocket.
To blast the uncrewed Orion to orbit on its maiden mission requires the most powerful booster on Planet Earth – namely the United Launch Alliance Delta IV Heavy rocket.
Liftoff of the state-of-the-art Orion spacecraft on the unmanned Exploration Flight Test-1 (EFT-1) mission is slated for December 4, 2014, from Space Launch Complex 37 (SLC-37) at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida.
Just days ago, the launch team successfully completed a countdown and wet dress rehearsal fueling test on the rocket itself – minus Orion – at launch complex 37.
The high fidelity rehearsal included fully powering up the booster and loading the tanks with cryogenic fuel and oxidizer, liquid oxygen, and liquid hydrogen
The high fidelity rehearsal included fully powering up the booster and loading the tanks with cryogenic fuel and oxidizer, liquid oxygen, and liquid hydrogen.
ULA technicians and engineers practiced the countdown on Nov. 5 which included fueling the core stages of the Delta IV Heavy rocket.
“Working in control rooms at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida, countdown operators followed the same steps they will take on launch day. The simulation also allowed controllers to evaluate the fuel loading and draining systems on the complex rocket before the Orion spacecraft is placed atop the launcher,” said NASA.
The next key mission milestone is attachment of the completed Orion vehicle stack on top of the rocket. Read more about the fully assembled Orion – here.
Today’s scheduled rollout of Orion to the launch pad for hoisting atop the rocket was scrubbed due to poor weather.
The Orion spacecraft sits inside the Launch Abort System Facility at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The Ogive panels have been installed around the launch abort system. Credit: NASA/Jim Grossman
The triple barreled Delta IV Heavy booster became the world’s most powerful rocket upon the retirement of NASA’s Space Shuttle program in 2011 and is the only rocket sufficiently powerful to launch the Orion EFT-1 spacecraft.
The first stage of the mammoth Delta IV Heavy generates some 2 million pounds of liftoff thrust.
“The team has worked extremely hard to ensure this vehicle is processed with the utmost attention to detail and focus on mission success,” according to Tony Taliancich, ULA’s director of East Coast Launch Operations.
“The Delta IV Heavy is the world’s most powerful launch vehicle flying today, and we are excited to be supporting our customer for this critical flight test to collect data and reduce overall mission risks and costs for the program.”
From now until launch technicians will continue to conduct the final processing, testing, and checkout of the Delta IV Heavy booster.
These three RS-68 engines will power each of the attached Delta IV Heavy Common Booster Cores (CBCs) that will launch NASA’s maiden Orion on the EFT-1 mission in December 2014. Credit: Ken Kremer/kenkremer.com
The Delta IV Heavy first stage is comprised of a trio of three Common Booster Cores (CBCs).
Each CBC measures 134 feet in length and 17 feet in diameter. They are equipped with an RS-68 engine powered by liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen propellants producing 656,000 pounds of thrust. Together they generate 1.96 million pounds of thrust.
The first CBC booster was attached to the center booster in June. The second one was attached in early August.
Side view shows trio of Common Booster Cores (CBCs) with RS-68 engines powering the Delta IV Heavy rocket resting horizontally in ULA’s HIF processing facility at Cape Canaveral that will launch NASA’s maiden Orion on the EFT-1 mission in December 2014 from Launch Complex 37. Credit: Ken Kremer/kenkremer.com
This fall I visited the ULA’s Horizontal Integration Facility (HIF) during a media tour after the three CBCs had been joined together as well as earlier this year after the first two CBCs arrived by barge from their ULA assembly plant in Decatur, Alabama, located about 20 miles west of Huntsville. See my photos herein.
Orion in orbit in this artist’s concept. Credit: NASA
Orion is NASA’s next generation human rated vehicle that will eventually carry America’s astronauts beyond Earth on voyages venturing farther into deep space than ever before – beyond the Moon to Asteroids, Mars, and other destinations in our Solar System.
The two-orbit, four and a half hour EFT-1 flight will lift the Orion spacecraft and its attached second stage to an orbital altitude of 3,600 miles, about 15 times higher than the International Space Station (ISS) – and farther than any human spacecraft has journeyed in 40 years.
“This mission is a stepping stone on NASA’s journey to Mars,” said NASA Associate Administrator Robert Lightfoot.
The United Launch Alliance Delta-IV Heavy rocket tasked with launching NASA’s Orion EFT-1 mission being hoisted vertical atop Space Launch Complex-37B at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida on the morning of Oct. 1, 2014. Photo Credit: Alan Walters / AmericaSpace
.
“The EFT-1 mission is so important to NASA. We will test the capsule with a reentry velocity of about 85% of what’s expected by [astronauts] returning from Mars.”
“We will test the heat shield, the separation of the fairing, and exercise over 50% of the eventual software and electronic systems inside the Orion spacecraft. We will also test the recovery systems coming back into the Pacific Ocean.”
Stay tuned here for Ken’s continuing Orion and Earth and planetary science and human spaceflight news.
NASA’s completed Orion EFT 1 crew module loaded on wheeled transporter during move to the Payload Hazardous Servicing Facility (PHFS) on Sept. 11, 2014, at the Kennedy Space Center, FL. Credit: Ken Kremer – kenkremer.com
Two objects with comet-like orbits flew through the solar system in 2013 and 2014, but with little to no activity on their surfaces. At left is C/2013 P2 Pan-STARRS and at right, C/2014 S3 Pan-STARRS. Credit: University of Hawaii Institute for Astronomy
What’s a comet that doesn’t look like a comet? The question sounds contradictory, but astronomers believe these objects exist. As comets pass through the solar system, they bleed ice and dust as the Sun’s effects wash over their small bodies. Over time, some of the objects can keep going like ghost ships — just without the ices that used to produce a show.
There already is a class of objects called damocloids that are believed to be extinct comets, but scientists believe they have found something new with two mysterious visitors — what they call “naked” comets — from the outer Solar System.
The two objects originate from an area that astronomers term the Oort Cloud, a hypothetical collection of icy bodies that orbit as far away as 100,000 times the Earth-Sun distance (astronomical unit). Gravitational influences then kick the objects in towards the Sun and they commence orbits that can last millions of years.
When Jan Oort first proposed this concept in the 1950s, he said that some of the objects there could have only a tiny layer of ice that would immediately evaporate during the first pass in near the Sun. That’s what astronomers think they are seeing in objects C/2013 P2 Pan-STARRS and C/2014 S3 Pan-STARRS.
The familiar solar system with its 8 planets occupies a tiny space inside a large spherical shell containing trillions of comets – the Oort Cloud. Credit: Wikimedia Commons
“Objects on long-period orbits like this usually exhibit cometary tails, for example Comet ISON and Comet Hale Bopp, so we immediately knew this object was unusual,” stated Karen Meech, an astronomer at the University of Hawaii at Manoa who led the research. “I wondered if this could be the first evidence of movement of solar system building blocks from the inner solar system to the Oort Cloud.”
The automated Pan STARRS1 survey telescope found C/2013 P2 in August 2013, with astronomers remarking its orbit resembled that of a comet. But, C/2013 P2’s surface was quiet. A second look the next month with the 8-meter Gemini North telescope in Hawaii revealed a little bit of light and a dusty tail. The object stayed at about the same brightness, even when it got to its closest approach to the Sun (2.8 AU) in February 2014.
After the comet swung around the Sun and telescopes could look at it again, examinations with the Gemini North telescope found something weird: the object’s spectrum looked red. This makes it look more like a Kuiper Belt object — something that roams in shallower waters in the Solar System, beyond Neptune’s orbit — than a typical comet or asteroid.
While results were still being analyzed, in September a NASA survey found an object with curiously similar properties: C/2014 S3. When it was found, the object had already passed its closest approach to the Sun in August. But from analyzing the orbit, the scientists saw it had come to only within 2 AU. Also, the first observations showed barely a tail at all.
Distribution of Kuiper belt objects (green), along with various other outer Solar System bodies, based on data from the Minor Planet Center. [Credit: Minor Planet Center; Murray and Dermott]A closer examination with the Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope revealed a mystery: the spectrum was more blue than red, hinting at materials similar to what you would find in the inner Solar System. The team says this could be a new class of objects altogether.
“I’ll be thrilled if this object turns out to have a surface composition similar to asteroids in the inner part of the asteroid belt. If this is the case, it will be remarkable for a body found so far out in the Solar System,” stated Meech.
“There are several models that try to explain how the planets grew in the early Solar System, and some of these predict that material formed close to the sun could have been thrown outward into the outer Solar System and Oort Cloud, where it remains today. Maybe we are finally seeing that evidence.”
Results were presented today (Nov. 10) at the Division of Planetary Sciences meeting of the American Astronomical Society in Tucson, Arizona. A press release did not say if the research is peer-reviewed, or state publication plans.
This "dark side" image of Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko shows light backscattered from dust particles in the coma surrounding the comet, which helps scientists search for surface features. The picture was taken by the Rosetta spacecraft Sept. 29 from about 19 kilometers (12 miles). Credit: ESA/Rosetta/MPS for OSIRIS Team MPS/UPD/LAM/IAA/SSO/INTA/UPM/DASP/IDA
How do you see a side of a comet that is usually shrouded in darkness? For the plucky scientists using the Rosetta spacecraft, the answer comes down to using dust to their advantage. They’re trying to catch a glimpse of the shadowed southern side using light scattering from dust particles in anticipation of watching the comet’s activity heat up next year.
Using Rosetta’s OSIRIS (Optical, Spectroscopic, and Infrared Remote Imaging System) instrument, scientists are diligently mapping Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko’s surface features as it draws closer to the Sun. Funny enough, the shadowed side will be in full sunlight by the time the comet gets to its closest approach. This gives scientists more incentive to see what it looks like now.
The comet side is in shadow because its is not perpendicular to its orbital plane, the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research stated. This means that areas of the comet can stay in shadow for months at a time. But using OSIRIS’ powerful receptors, scientists can get a few hints about what those surface features are, using dust scattering.
Playing with saturation levels in these images, scientists using the Rosetta’s spacecraft imaging system are able to get more information about surface features in the image at right. Credit: ESA/Rosetta/MPS for OSIRIS Team MPS/UPD/LAM/IAA/SSO/INTA/UPM/DASP/IDA
“For a normal camera, this tiny bit of scattered light would not help very much”, stated OSIRIS team member Maurizio Pajola from the University of Padua in Italy. A normal camera has eight bits per pixel of information (256 shades of gray), while OSIRIS’ 16 bits allow it to distinguish between 65,000 shades. “In this way, OSIRIS can see black surfaces darker than coal together with white spots as bright as snow in the same image,” he added.
The scientists were not specific in a press release about what they are seeing so far, but they said that in May 2015 they expect to get a lot more data very quickly — once the area goes into full sunlight.
Rosetta, a mission of the European Space Agency, has been orbiting the comet since August. Next Wednesday it will release a lander, Philae, that will attempt to make the first soft landing on a comet’s surface.
A view from the Curiosity rover on Sol 794 (Oct. 31, 2014) from its outpost at the base of Mount Sharp (Aeolis Mons). Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
NASA’s Curiosity rover has struck hematite — an iron-oxide mineral often associated with water-soaked environments — in its first drill hole inside the huge Mount Sharp (Aeolis Mons) on Mars. While in this case oxidization is more important to its formation, the sample’s oxidization shows that the area had enough chemical energy to support microbes, NASA said.
Hematite is not a new discovery for Curiosity or Mars rovers generally, but what excites scientists is this confirms observations from the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter that spotted hematite from orbit in the Pahrump Hills, the area that Curiosity is currently roving.
“This connects us with the mineral identifications from orbit, which can now help guide our investigations as we climb the slope and test hypotheses derived from the orbital mapping,” stated John Grotzinger, Curiosity project scientist at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena.
This is the latest in a series of finds for the rover related to habitability. In December 2013, scientists announced it found a zone (dubbed Yellowknife Bay) that was likely an ancient lakebed. But Yellowknife’s mineralogy eluded detection from orbit, likely due to dust covering the rocks.
Photo mosaic shows NASA’s Curiosity Mars rover in action reaching out to investigate rocks at a location called Yellowknife Bay on Sol 132, Dec 19, 2012, in search of first drilling target. The view is reminiscent of a dried up shoreline. Curiosity’s navigation camera captured the scene surrounding the rover with the arm deployed and the APXS and MAHLI science instruments on tool turret collecting microscopic imaging and X-ray spectroscopic data. The mosaic is colorized. See the full 360 degree panoramic and black & white versions below. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Ken Kremer/Marco Di Lorenzo
Hematite is perhaps most closely associated with spherical rocks called “blueberries” that the Opportunity rover discovered on Mars in 2004. While Opportunity’s discovery showed clear evidence of water, the new Curiosity find is more closely associated with oxidization, NASA said.
The new find, contained in a pinch of dust analyzed in Curiosity’s internal Chemistry and Mineralogy (CheMin) instrument, yielded 8% and 4% magnetite. The latter mineral is one way that hematite can be created, should magnetite be placed in “oxidizing conditions”, NASA stated. Previous samples en route to Mount Sharp had concentrations only as high as 1% hematite, but more magnetite. This shows more oxidization took place in this new sample, NASA stated.
Curiosity will likely stick around Pahrump Hills for at least weeks, perhaps months, until it climbs further up the mountain. Among Mount Sharp’s many layers is one that contains so much hematite (as predicted from orbit) that NASA calls it “Hematite Ridge.”
An astronaut retrieves a sample from an asteroid in this artist's conception. Credit: NASA
We’re still a few years away from the cute robots in Moon or Interstellar that help their human explorers. But if we want to build a base off of Earth, robotic intelligence will be essential to lower the cost and pave the way for astronauts, argues Philip Metzger, a former senior research physicist at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center.
In the last of a three-part series on getting a base ready on the moon or an asteroid, Metzger talks about the steps to get robots ready for the work and what barriers are standing in the way of accomplishing this.
UT: A table in your 2012 paper talks about the steps of lunar industry, starting with tele-operation and an “insect-like” robotic intelligence and then progressing through a few steps to “closely supervised autonomy” (mouse-like) and eventually “nearly full autonomy” (monkey-like) and “autonomous robotics” (human-like). What sorts of developments and how much time/resources would it take to progress through these steps?
Most of the advances in robotic artificial intelligence are being made in software, but they also require advances in computing power. We mentioned in the paper that really only “mouse-like” robotics is needed for it to become successful in a near-Earth environment. We will need robots that can pick up a nut and screw it on a bolt without every motion being commanded from Earth. I believe we are on a trajectory to achieve these levels of autonomy already for robotics here on Earth. I am more concerned about developing robots that can be made easily in space without an extensive supply chain. For example, we need to invent a simple way to manufacture functional motors for the robots, minimizing the assembly tasks for robots making the same motors that are in themselves.
It is very difficult to estimate how long this will take. Here are some guiding ideas. First, robotics and manufacturing technologies are already on an explosive growth curve for terrestrial application, so we can ride on the coattails of that growth as we re-purpose the technologies for space. Second, we are not talking about inventing new capabilities. Everything we are talking about doing in space is already being done on Earth. All we need to do is discover what sets of equipment will function together as partial supply chains using space resources. We need to develop a sequence of partial supply chains, each more sophisticated than the last, each one capable of making a significant portion of the mass of the next. It will require innovation, but it is lower-risk innovation because we already have Earth’s more sophisticated industry to copy.
R2 and D2? NASA and General Motors have come together to develop the next generation dexterous humanoid robot. The robots – called Robonaut2 – were designed to use the same tools as humans, which allows them to work safely side-by-side humans on Earth and in space. Credit: NASA
Third, we tend to estimate things will happen faster than they do in the near term, but slower than they do in the long term. Consider how much technology has changed in the past 200 years, and you will agree that it won’t take another 200 years to get this done. I think it will be much less than 100 years. I am betting it will be done within 50 years, and if we try hard we could do it in 20. In fact, if we really wanted to, and if we put up the money, I think we could do it in 10. But I’m telling people 20 to 50 years. Don’t worry if you think that’s too slow, because the fun of doing it can start immediately, and we will be doing really cool things in space long before the supply chain is complete.
UT: Is it really cheaper and scientifically viable to have a robotic fleet of spacecraft than humans, given development costs and the difficulties of making the robots as efficient to do work as humans?
Biological life needs a place like planet Earth. Humans need more than that; we also need a food chain, and in the final analysis we need an entire ecology of networked organisms interdependent on each other. And if we want to be more than hunters and gatherers, then civilization requires even more than that. We require the industrial supply chain: all the tools and machines and energy sources that we have developed over the past 10,000 years.
When we leave Earth, we need to take not just a canister of air to breath to replicate the physical conditions of our planet. We need the benefit of the entire ecosystem and the entire industrial base to support us. So far we have stayed close to Earth so we have never really “cut the surly bonds of Earth.” We take a consumable supply of food and spare parts from Earth with us, and we send up rockets to the space station when we need more. Even schemes to colonize Mars are depending on regular shipments of things from Earth. These are the things that make it expensive to put humans in space.
Robots, on the other hand, can be adapted to living in the space environment with nothing more from Earth. They can become the ecosphere and the supply chain in space that we humans require. Under our guidance, they can transform any environment analogously to how life has transformed the Earth. They can make air, purify water, and build the habitats and landing pads. Then, when we arrive, it will be vastly less expensive, and it will be safer, too. And this will free us up to spend our time in space doing the things that make us uniquely human. In the long term, robots will make space vastly cheaper for humans.
Canada’s Dextre robot (highlight) and NASA’s Robotic Refueling Experiment jointly performed groundbreaking robotics research aboard the ISS in March 2012. Dextre used its hands to grasp specialized work tools on the RRM for experiments to repair and refuel orbiting satellites. Credit: NASA
But yes, in the near-term there are things we can do more affordably in space by skipping development of robotic industry. We can shoot off sortie missions to various places, and when we are done we can zip back home before everyone dies. But that doesn’t fulfill our great potential as a species. It doesn’t take civilization to the next level. It doesn’t enable scientific research with a billion times the budget we have today. It doesn’t save our planet from overuse and industrial pollution. It doesn’t bring all humanity up to the standard of living many of us are enjoying in the west. It doesn’t make our existence safe in the galaxy. It doesn’t terraform new worlds. It doesn’t take us to other stars. All these things will be possible for almost no additional investment once we pay the tiny cost of bootstrapping industry in our solar system. It’s worth the cost.
I know of several other groups also developing 3D printers that could work on the Moon or Mars to print things directly out of regolith. The KSC Swamp Works is pursuing one technological approach and has built a prototype, and Professor Behrokh Khoshnevis at the University of Southern California is pursing another approach and has printed many things already. My friend Jason Dunn who founded Made In Space, which put the 3D printer into the ISS, has another concept they are pursuing. My friends at NASA have told me that this is healthy, having a portfolio of technologies to pursue rather than just one.
To be ready for missions in space you have to do more than test things in a lab. You need to do testing in reduced gravity aircraft to see if the materials like regolith will flow properly, in vacuum chambers to make sure nothing overheats or jams, and in rugged field locations like a desert or on a volcano to check for dust problems or other unexpected effects. After that, you are ready to start designing the actual version that is going into space, to do the final qualification testing where you shake it and bake it half to death, to assemble and test the flight version, and to launch it.
Deputy Program Manager Matthew Napoli examines a 3D printed piece at Marshall Space Flight Center. Image courtesy Made In Space.
So there are years of work ahead before all that is done. NASA’s direction is to put humans on Mars by the mid-2030’s, so we also have time and there is no rush. If we start to bootstrap space industry in the near-Earth region of space in parallel with getting ready for a Mars campaign then we will probably start testing regolith printers at field sites and making them interoperable with other equipment sooner than NASA presently needs them.
UT: What are the main barriers to robotic exploration on the Moon and beyond?
Budget is the only barrier. But taking a step back we might say a lack of vision is the only barrier because if enough of us understand what is now possible in space and how revolutionary it will be for humanity then there will be no lack of budget.
UT: Is there anything else you would like to add that I haven’t brought up yet?
We live in a very exciting time when these possibilities are being opened to us. It is exciting to think about the world our grandchildren will see, and it is exciting to think of what we can do to bring it about.
Whenever I speak on this topic, afterward the young people in the audience come up and start asking what they can do to get involved in space industry. They tell me that this is how they want to spend their lives. It gets that response because it is so compelling, so logical, and so right.
How much would it cost to establish a space base close to Earth, say on the Moon or an asteroid? To find out, Universe Today spoke with Philip Metzger, a former senior research physicist at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center, who has explored this subject extensively on his website and in published papers.
UT: Your 2012 paper specifically talks about how much development is needed on the Moon to make the industry “self-sustaining and expanding”, but left out the cost of getting the technology ready and of their ongoing operation. Why did you leave this assessment until later? How can we get a complete picture of the costs?
PM: As we stated at the start of the paper, our analysis was very crude and was intended only to garner interest in the topic so that others might join us in doing a more complete, more realistic analysis. The interest has grown faster than I expected, so maybe we will start to see these analyses happening now including cost estimates. Previous analyses talked about building entire factories and sending them into space. The main contribution of our initial paper was to point out that there is this bootstrapping strategy that has not been discussed previously, and we argued that it makes more sense. It will result in a much smaller mass of hardware launched into space, and it will allow us to get started right away so that we can figure out how to make the equipment work as we go along.
Moonbase rover concept – could be used for long-term missions (NASA)
Trying to design up front everything in a supply chain for space is impossible. Even if we got the budget for it and gave it a try, we would discover that it wouldn’t work when we sent it into the extraterrestrial environments. There are too many things that could go wrong. Evolving it in stages will allow us to work out the bugs as we develop it in stages. So the paper was arguing for the community to take a look into this new strategy for space industry.
Now, having said that, I can still give you a very crude cost estimate if you want one. Our model shows a total of about 41 tons of hardware being launched to the Moon, but that results in 100,000 tons of hardware when we include what was made there along the way. If 41 tons turns out to be correct, then let’s take 41% of the cost of the International Space Station as a crude estimate, because that has a mass of 100 tons and we can roughly estimate that a ton of space hardware costs about the same in every program. Then let’s multiply by four because it takes four tons of mass launched to low Earth orbit to land one ton on the Moon.
That may be an over-estimate, because the biggest cost of the International Space Station was the labor to design, build, assemble, and test before launch, including the cost of operating the space shuttle fleet. But the hardware for space industry includes many copies of the same parts so design costs should be lower, and since human lives will not be at stake they don’t need to be as reliable. As discussed in the paper, the launch costs will also be much reduced with the new launch systems coming on line.
The International Space Station in March 2009 as seen from the departing STS-119 space shuttle Discovery crew. Credit: NASA/ESA
Furthermore, the cost can be divided by 3.5 according to the crude modeling, because 41 tons is needed only if the industry is making copies of itself as fast as it can. If we slow it down to making just one copy of the industry along the way as it is evolving, then only 12 tons of hardware needs to be sent to the Moon. Now that gives us an estimate of the total cost over the entire bootstrapping period, so if we take 20 or 30 or 40 years to accomplish it, then divide by that amount to get the annual cost. You end up with a number that is a minority fraction of NASA’s annual budget, and a miniscule fraction of the total U.S. federal budget, and even tinier fraction of the US gross domestic product, and an utterly insignificant cost per human being in the developed nations of the Earth.
Even if we are off by a factor of 10 or more, it is something we can afford to start doing today. And this doesn’t account for the economic payback we will be getting while starting space industry. There will be intermediate ways to get a payback, such as refueling communications satellites and enabling new scientific activities. The entire cost needn’t be carried by taxpayers, either. It can be funded in part by commercial interests, and in part by students and others taking part in robotics contests. Perhaps we can arrange shares of ownership in space industry for people who volunteer time developing technologies and doing other tasks like teleoperating robots on the Moon. Call that “telepioneering.”
Perhaps most importantly, the technologies we will be developing – advanced robotics and manufacturing – are the same things we want to be developing here on Earth for the sake of our economy, anyway. So it is a no-brainer to do this! There are also intangible benefits: giving students enthusiasm to excel in their education, focusing the efforts of the maker community to contribute tangibly to our technological and economic growth, and renewing the zeitgeist of our culture. Civilizations fall when they become old and tired, when their enthusiasm is spent and they stop believing in the inherent value of what they do. Do we want a positive, enthusiastic world working together for the greater good? Here it is.
The Japanese Kibo robotic arm on the International Space Station deploys CubeSats during February 2014. The arm was holding a Small Satellite Orbital Deployer to send out the small satellites during Expedition 38. Credit: NASA
UT: We now have smaller computers and the ability to launch CubeSats or smaller accompanying satellites on rocket launches, something that wasn’t available a few decades ago. Does this reduce the costs of sending materials to the Moon for the purposes of what we want to do there?
Most of the papers about starting the space industry are from the 1980’s and 1990’s because that is when most of the investigations were performed, and there hasn’t been funding to continue their work in recent decades. Indeed, changes in technology since then have been game-changing! Back then some studies were saying that a colony would need to support 10,000 humans in space to do manufacturing tasks before it could make a profit and become economically self-sustaining. Now because of the growth of robotics we think we can do it with zero humans, which drastically cuts the cost.
The most complete study of space industry was the 1980 Summer Study at the Ames Research Center. They were the first to discuss the vision of having space industry fully robotic. They estimated mining robots would need to be made with several tons of mass. More recently, we have actually built lunar mining robots at the Swamp Works at the Kennedy Space Center and they are about one tenth of a ton, each. So we have demonstrated a mass reduction of more than 10 times.
But this added sophistication will be harder to manufacture on the Moon. Early generations will not be able to make the lightweight metal alloys or the electronics packages. That will require a more complex supply chain. The early generations of space industry should not aim to make things better; they should aim to make things easier to make. “Appropriate Technology” will be the goal. As the supply chain evolves, eventually it will reach toward the sophistication of Earth. Still, as long as the supply chain is incomplete and we are sending things from Earth, we will be sending the lightest and most sophisticated things we can to be combined with the crude things made in space, and so the advances we’ve made since the 1980’s will indeed reduce the bootstrapping cost.
Philae's landing site, dubbed Agilkia, as seen by the Rosetta spacecraft on Oct. 30, 2014. The spacecraft was 26.8 km (16.7 miles) from the comet's center when the picture was taken. Credit: ESA/Rosetta/NAVCAM – CC BY-SA IGO 3.0
After sifting through 8,000 entries in multiple languages — even in Esperanto! — the contest to name Philae’s landing site on Comet 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko has resulted in an Egyptian-themed name.
The European Space Agency lander will touch down on the comet on a site dubbed “Agilkia”, which is named after an Egyptian island that hosts the Temple of Isis and other buildings that previously were on the island Philae. The buildings were moved due to the Aswan dams flooding Philae in the past century.
Agilkia, which was voted for by more than 150 people, fits in perfectly with ESA’s decision to informally name features on the comet after Egyptian names. Mission planners for the Rosetta orbiter and its lander, Philae, previously dubbed the site “J” before the landing contest was announced.
NAVCAM image of the comet on 21 September, which includes a view of primary landing site J. Click for more details and link to context image. (Credits: ESA/Rosetta/NAVCAM)
“The decision was very tough,” stated steering committee chair Felix Huber, who is with the DLR German Aerospace Center. “We received so many good suggestions on how to name Site J, and we were delighted with such an enthusiastic response from all over the world. We wish to thank all participants for sharing their great ideas with us.”
Alexandre Brouste from France was voted the overall winner and will be invited to follow the Nov. 12 landing live at ESA’s Space Operations Control Centre in Darmstadt, Germany. The landing is expected to take place around 12 p.m. Eastern (4 p.m. UTC), and you can follow the livestream here.
Vivid Vesta Vista in Vibrant 3 D from NASA’s Dawn Asteroid Orbiter. Vesta is the second most massive asteroid and is 330 miles (530 km) in diameter. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/UCLA/MPS/DLR/IDA
When NASA’s Dawn spacecraft arrived at Vesta in July 2011, two features immediately jumped out at planetary scientists who had been so eagerly anticipating a good look at the giant asteroid. One was a series of long troughs encircling Vesta’s equator, and the other was the enormous crater at its southern pole. Named Rheasilvia, the centrally-peaked basin spans 500 kilometers in width and it was hypothesized that the impact event that created it was also responsible for the deep Grand Canyon-sized grooves gouging Vesta’s middle.
Now, research led by a Brown University professor and a former graduate student reveal how it all probably happened.
“Vesta got hammered,” said Peter Schultz, professor of earth, environmental, and planetary sciences at Brown and the study’s senior author. “The whole interior was reverberating, and what we see on the surface is the manifestation of what happened in the interior.”
Using a 4-meter-long air-powered cannon at NASA’s Ames Vertical Gun Range, Peter Schultz and Brown graduate Angela Stickle – now a researcher at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory – recreated cosmic impact events with small pellets fired at softball-sized acrylic spheres at the type of velocities you’d find in space.
The impacts were captured on super-high-speed camera. What Stickle and Schultz saw were stress fractures occurring not only at the points of impact on the acrylic spheres but also at the point directly opposite them, and then rapidly propagating toward the midlines of the spheres… their “equators,” if you will.
Scaled up to Vesta size and composition, these levels of forces would have created precisely the types of deep troughs seen today running askew around Vesta’s midsection.
Watch a million-fps video of a test impact below:
So why is Vesta’s trough belt slanted? According to the researchers’ abstract, “experimental and numerical results reveal that the offset angle is a natural consequence of oblique impacts into a spherical target.” That is, the impactor that struck Vesta’s south pole likely came in at an angle, which made for uneven propagation of stress fracturing outward across the protoplanet (and smashed its south pole so much that scientists had initially said it was “missing!”)
Close-ups of Vesta’s equatorial troughs obtained by Dawn’s framing camera in August and September 2011. (NASA/ JPL-Caltech/ UCLA/ MPS/ DLR/ IDA)
That angle of incidence — estimated to be less than 40 degrees — not only left Vesta with a slanted belt of grooves, but also probably kept it from getting blasted apart altogether.
“Vesta was lucky,” said Schultz. “If this collision had been straight on, there would have been one less large asteroid and only a family of fragments left behind.”
Watch a video tour of Vesta made from data acquired by Dawn in 2011 and 2012 below:
The team’s findings will be published in the February 2015 issue of the journal Icarus and are currently available online here (paywall, sorry). Also you can see many more images of Vesta from the Dawn mission here and find out the latest news from the ongoing mission to Ceres on the Dawn Journal.
In this near-infrared mosaic, the sun shines off of the seas on Saturn's moon, Titan. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/University of Arizona/University of Idaho
See that yellow smudge in the image above? That’s what the Sun looks like reflecting off the seas of Titan, that moon of Saturn that excites astrobiologists because its chemistry resembles what early Earth could have looked like. This image represents the first time this “sunglint” and Titan’s northern polar seas have been captured in one mosaic, NASA said.
What’s more, if you look closely at the sea surrounding the sunlight, you can see what scientists dub a “bathtub ring.” Besides looking pretty, this image from the Cassini spacecraft shows the huge sea (called Kraken Mare) was actually larger at some point in Titan’s past.
“The southern portion of Kraken Mare … displays a ‘bathtub ring’ — a bright margin of evaporate deposits — which indicates that the sea was larger at some point in the past and has become smaller due to evaporation,” NASA stated. “The deposits are material left behind after the methane and ethane liquid evaporates, somewhat akin to the saline crust on a salt flat.”
In this near-infrared global mosaic of Titan, sunglint and the moon’s polar seas are visible above the shadow. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/University of Arizona/University of Idaho
The sunlight was so bright that it saturated the detector on Cassini that viewed it, called the Visual and Infrared Mapping Spectrometer (VIMS) instrument. The sun was about 40 degrees above the horizon of Kraken Mare then, which is the highest ever observed on Titan.
The T-106 flyby Oct. 23 was the second-to-last closeup view Cassini will have of Titan this year. The spacecraft has been circling Saturn’s system for more than 10 years, and is now watching Titan (and Saturn’s) northern hemisphere enter summer.
Titan is covered in a thick, orangey atmosphere that hid its surface from scientists the first time a spacecraft zoomed by it in the 1980s. Subsequent exploration (most especially by Cassini and a short-lived lander called Huygens) have revealed dunes on and near the equator and at higher altitudes, lakes of methane and ethane.
![Distribution of Kuiper belt objects (green), along with various other outer Solar System bodies, based on data from the Minor Planet Center. [Credit: Minor Planet Center; Murray and Dermott]](https://www.universetoday.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/Kuiper_belt.png)
