Image credit: ESA
Today in Moscow, ESA Director General, Jean-Jacques Dordain and the Head of the Russian Federal Space Agency, Anatoly Perminov signed an agreement for long-term cooperation and partnership in the development, implementation and use of launchers.
This agreement, which comes within the general framework of the Agreement between ESA and the Russian Federation for Cooperation and Partnership in the Exploration and Use of Outer Space for Peaceful Purposes, will strengthen cooperation between ESA and Russia, ESA?s first partner in the long-term cooperation on access to space.
ESA-Russian partnership is based on two main pillars: the exploitation of the Russian Soyuz launcher from Europe?s Spaceport in French Guiana and cooperation, without exchange of funds, on research and development in preparation for future launchers.
The Soyuz at Europe?s Spaceport programme covers the construction of the Soyuz launch facilities in French Guiana and the adaptations that Soyuz will need to enable it to be launched from French Guiana. A number of ESA Member States have signed up for this optional ESA programme and their contributions will be supplemented by a loan to Arianespace from the European Investment Bank, guaranteed by the French Government as a temporary measure pending the creation by the European Commission of a guarantee reserve mechanism. Complementary funding from the European Union is also envisaged.
Work to prepare the Spaceport for Soyuz is already underway in French Guiana as the first launch from Europe?s Spaceport is scheduled to take place in 2007.
Today?s agreement will also allow work to begin on the second pillar: preparation activities for the development of future space transport systems. Europe and the Russian Federation will collaborate in developing the technology needed for future launchers. Russian and European engineers will work together to develop reusable liquid engines, reusable liquid stages and experimental vehicles.
ESA?s aim is to have a new generation launcher ready by 2020.
A speech by Arthur C. Clarke in the 1960s, explaining geostationary satellites gave Pearson the inspiration for the whole concept of space elevators while he was working at the NASA Ames Research Center in California during the days of the Apollo Moon landings.
“Clarke said that a good way to understand communications satellites in geostationary orbit was to imagine them at the top of a tall tower, perched 35,786 km (22,236 miles) above the Earth,” Pearson recalls, “I figured, why not build an actual tower?”
He realized that it was theoretically possible to park a counterweight, like a small asteroid, in geostationary orbit and then extend a cable down and affix it at the Earth’s equator. In theory, elevator cars could travel up the long cable, and transfer cargo out of the Earth’s gravity well and into space at a fraction of the price delivered by chemical rockets.
… in theory. The problem then, and now, is that the material required to support even just the weight of the cable in the Earth’s gravity doesn’t exist. Only in the last few years, with the advent of carbon nanotubes – with a tensile strength in the ballpark – people have finally moved past the laughing stage, and begun investigating it seriously. And while carbon nanotubes have been manufactured in small quantities in the lab, engineers are still years away from weaving them together into a long cable that could provide the necessary strength.
Pearson knew the technical challenges were formidable, so he wondered, “why not build an elevator on the Moon?”
On the Moon, the force of gravity is one sixth of what we feel here on Earth, and a space elevator cable is well within our current manufacturing technology. Stretch a cable up from the surface of the Moon, and you’d have an inexpensive method of delivering minerals and supplies into Earth orbit.
A lunar space elevator would work differently than one based on Earth. Unlike our own planet, which rotates every 24 hours, the Moon only turns on its axis once every 29 days; the same amount of time it takes to complete one orbit around the Earth. This is why we can only ever see one side of the Moon. The concept of geostationary orbit doesn’t really make sense around the Moon.
There are, however, five places in the Earth-Moon system where you could put an object of low mass – like a satellite… or a space elevator counterweight – and have them remain stable with very little energy: the Earth-Moon Lagrange points. The L1 point, a spot approximately 58,000 km above the surface of the Moon, will work perfectly.
Imaging that you’re floating in space at a point between the Earth and the Moon where the force of gravity from both is perfectly balanced. Look to your left, and the Moon is approximately 58,000 km (37,000 miles) away; look to your right and the Earth is more than 5 times that distance. Without any kind of thrusters, you’ll eventually drift out of this perfect balancing point, and then start accelerating towards either the Earth or the Moon. L1 is balanced, but unstable.
Pearson is proposing that NASA launch a spacecraft carrying a huge spool of cable to the L1 point. It would slowly back away from the L1 point as it unspooled its cable down to the surface of the Moon. Once the cable was anchored to the lunar surface, it would provide tension, and the entire cable would hang in perfect balance, like a pendulum pointed towards the ground. And like a pendulum, the elevator would always keep itself aligned perfectly towards the L1 point, as the Earth’s gravity tugged away at it. The mission could even include a small solar powered climber which could climb up from the lunar surface to the top of the cable, and deliver samples of moon rocks into a high Earth orbit. Further missions could deliver whole teams of climbers, and turn the concept into a mass production operation.
The advantage of connecting an elevator to the Moon instead of the Earth is the simple fact that the forces involved are much smaller – the Moon’s gravity is 1/6th that of Earth’s. Instead of exotic nanotubes with extreme tensile strengths, the cable could be built using high-strength commercially available materials, like Kevlar or Spectra. In fact, Pearson has zeroed in on a commercial fibre called M5, which he calculates would only weigh 6,800 kg for a full cable that would support a lifting capacity of 200 kg at the base. This is well within the capabilities of the most powerful rockets supplied by Boeing, Lockheed Martin and Arianespace. One launch is it takes to put an elevator on the Moon. And once the elevator was installed, you could start reinforcing it with additional materials, like glass and boron, which could be manufactured on the Moon
So, what would you do with a space elevator connected to the Moon? “Plenty,” says Pearson, “there are all kinds of resources on the Moon which would be much easier to gather there and bring into orbit rather than launching them from the Earth. Lunar regolith (moon dirt) could be used as shielding for space stations; metals and other minerals could be mined from the surface and used for construction in space; and if ice is discovered at the Moon’s south pole, you could supply water, oxygen and even fuel to spacecraft.”
If water ice does turn up at the Moon’s south pole, you could run a second cable there, and then connect it at the end to the first cable. This would allow a southern Moon base to deliver material into high-Earth orbit without having to travel along the ground to the base of the first elevator.
It’d be great for rocks, but not for people. Even if a climber moved up the cable at hundreds of kilometres an hour, astronauts would be traveling for weeks, and be exposed to the radiation of deep space. But when you’re talking about cargo, slow and steady wins the race.
Pearson first published his idea of a lunar elevator back in 1979 and he’s been pitching it ever since. This year, though, NASA’s not laughing, they’re listening. Pearson’s company, Star Technology and Research, was recently awarded a $75,000 grant from NASA’s Institute for Advanced Concepts (NIAC) for a six-month study to investigate the idea further. If the idea proves to be promising, Pearson could receive a larger grant to begin overcoming some of the engineering challenges, and look for partners inside and NASA and out to help in its development.
NIAC looks for ideas which are way outside NASA’s normal comfort zone of technologies – for example… an elevator on the Moon – and helps develop them to the point that many of the risks and unknowns have been ironed out.
Pearson hopes this grant will help him make the case to NASA that a lunar elevator would be an invaluable contribution to the new Moon-Mars space exploration vision, supporting future lunar bases and industries in space. And it would give engineers a way to understand the difficulties of building elevators into space without taking on the immense challenge of building it on Earth first.
A graphic of a superconducting magnetic bubble that could protect spacecraft. Credit: MIT.
It’s the year 2027 and NASA’s Vision for Space Exploration is progressing right on schedule. The first interplanetary spacecraft with humans aboard is on course for Mars. However, halfway into the trip, a gigantic solar flare erupts, spewing lethal radiation directly at the spacecraft. But, not to worry. Because of research done by former astronaut Jeffrey Hoffman and a group of MIT colleagues back in the year 2004, this vehicle has a state-of-the-art superconducting magnetic shielding system that protects the human occupants from any deadly solar emissions.
New research has recently begun to examine the use of superconducting magnet technology to protect astronauts from radiation during long-duration spaceflights, such as the interplanetary flights to Mars that are proposed in NASA’s current Vision for Space Exploration.
The principal investigator for this concept is former astronaut Dr. Jeffrey Hoffman, who is now a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).
Hoffman’s concept is one of 12 proposals that began receiving funding last month from the NASA Institute for Advanced Concepts (NIAC). Each gets $75,000 for six-months of research to make initial studies and identify challenges in developing it. Projects that make it through that phase are eligible for as much as $400,000 more over two years.
The concept of magnetic shielding is not new. As Hoffman says, “the Earth has been doing it for billions of years!”
Earth’s magnetic field deflects cosmic rays, and an added measure of protection comes from our atmosphere which absorbs any cosmic radiation that makes its way through the magnetic field. Using magnetic shielding for spacecraft was first proposed in the late 1960’s and early 70’s, but was not actively pursued when plans for long-duration spaceflight fell by the wayside.
However, the technology for creating superconducting magnets that can generate strong fields to shield spacecraft from cosmic radiation has only recently been developed. Superconducting magnet systems are desirable because they can create intense magnetic fields with little or no electrical power input, and with proper temperatures they can maintain a stable magnetic field for long periods of time.
One challenge, however, is developing a system that can create a magnetic field large enough to protect a bus-sized, habitable spacecraft. Another challenge is keeping the system at temperatures near absolute zero (0 Kelvin, -273 C, -460 F), which gives the materials superconductive properties. Recent advances in superconducting technology and materials have provided superconductive properties at higher than 120 K (-153 C, -243 F).
There are two types of radiation that need to be addressed for long-duration human spaceflight, says William S. Higgins, an engineering physicist who works on radiation safety at Fermilab, the particle accelerator near Chicago, IL. The first are solar flare protons, which would come in bursts following a solar flare event. The second are galactic cosmic rays, which, although not as lethal as solar flares, they would be a continuous background radiation to which the crew would be exposed. In an unshielded spacecraft, both types of radiation would result in significant health problems, or death, to the crew.
The easiest way to avoid radiation is to absorb it, like wearing a lead apron when you get an X-ray at the dentist. The problem is that this type of shielding can often be very heavy, and mass is at a premium with our current space vehicles since they need to be launched from the Earth’s surface. Also, according to Hoffman, if you use just a little bit of shielding, you can actually make it worse, because the cosmic rays interact with the shielding and can create secondary charged particles, increasing the overall radiation dose.
Hoffman foresees using a hybrid system that employs both a magnetic field and passive absorption. “That’s the way the Earth does it,” Hoffman explained, “and there’s no reason we shouldn’t be able to do that in space.”
One of the most important conclusions to the second phase of this research will be to determine if using superconducting magnet technology is mass effective.
“I have no doubt that if we build it big enough and strong enough, it will provide protection,” Hoffman said. “But if the mass of this conducting magnet system is greater than the mass just to use passive (absorbing) shielding, then why go to all that trouble?”
But that’s the challenge, and the reason for this study. “This is research,” Hoffman said. “I’m not partisan one way or the other; I just want to find out what’s the best way.”
Assuming Hoffman and his team can demonstrate that superconducting magnetic shielding is mass effective, the next step would be doing the actual engineering of creating a large enough (albeit lightweight) system, in addition to the fine-tuning of maintaining magnets at ultra-cold superconducting temperatures in space. The final step would be to integrate such a system into a Mars-bound spacecraft. None of these tasks are trivial.
The examinations of maintaining the magnetic field strength and the near-absolute zero temperatures of this system in space is already occurring in an experiment that is scheduled to be launched to the International Space Station for a three-year stay. The Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer (AMS) will be attached to the outside of the station and search for different types of cosmic rays. It will employ a superconducting magnet to measure each particle’s momentum and the sign of its charge. Peter Fisher, a physics professor also from MIT works on the AMS experiment, and is cooperating with Hoffman on his research of superconducting magnets. A graduate student and a research scientist are also working with Hoffman.
NIAC was created in 1998 to solicit revolutionary concepts from people and organizations outside the space agency that could advance NASA’s missions. The winning concepts are chosen because they “push the limits of known science and technology,” and “show relevance to the NASA mission,” according to NASA. These concepts are expected to take at least a decade to develop.
Hoffman flew in space five times and became the first astronaut to log more than 1,000 hours on the space shuttle. On his fourth space flight, in 1993, Hoffman participated in the first Hubble Space Telescope servicing mission, an ambitious and historic mission that corrected the spherical aberration problem in the telescope’s primary mirror. Hoffman left the astronaut program in 1997 to become NASA’s European Representative at the US Embassy in Paris, and then joined MIT in 2001.
Hoffman knows that to make a space mission possible, there’s a lot of idea development and hard engineering which precedes it.
“When it comes to doing things in space, if you’re an astronaut, you go and do it with your own hands,” Hoffman said. “But you don’t fly in space forever, and I still would like to make a contribution.”
Does he see his current research as important as fixing the Hubble Space Telescope?
“Well, not in the immediate sense,” he said. “But on the other hand, if we ever are going to have a human presence throughout the solar system we need to be able to live and work in regions where the charged particle environment is pretty severe. If we can’t find a way to protect ourselves from that, it will be a very limiting factor for the future of human exploration.”
The Cosmos 1 team announced today that the world?s first solar sail spacecraft will be set for launch on March 1, 2005 from a submerged submarine in the Barents Sea. Cosmos 1 ? a project of The Planetary Society ? is sponsored by Cosmos Studios.
?With the spacecraft now built and undergoing its final checkout, we are ready to set our launch date,? said Louis Friedman, Executive Director of The Planetary Society and Project Director of Cosmos 1. ?The precedent-setting development of the first solar sail spacecraft has had its ups and downs like a roller coaster ride, but now the real excitement begins.?
Cosmos 1?s mission goal is to perform the first controlled solar sail flight as the spacecraft is propelled by photons from sunlight. The Cosmos 1 launch period will extend from March 1 to April 7, 2005. The actual launch date will be determined by the Russian Navy, which directs the launch on the Volna rocket ? a rocket taken from the operational intercontinental ballistic missile inventory.
?This whole venture is audacious and risky,? noted Bruce Murray, who co-founded The Planetary Society with Carl Sagan and Louis Friedman. ?It is a testament to the inspiring nature of space exploration and to the desire of people everywhere to be part of the adventure of great projects.?
Sagan, Murray and Friedman founded The Planetary Society in 1980 to advance the exploration of other worlds and to seek other life. Launching a spacecraft to test an innovative and untried flight technology helps to fulfill the bold mission they envisioned for the organization. Sagan remained the President of The Planetary Society until his death in December, 1996.
Cosmos 1 will rocket into space on a submarine-launched ballistic missile, the Volna, from beneath the surface of the Barents Sea. A network of Russian, American and Czech ground stations will track and receive data from the spacecraft.
International cooperation is just one of the novel aspects of this privately funded mission. It is the first space mission conducted by a popular space interest organization, the first sponsored by a media company, and the first to test flight using only sunlight pressure. Sailing by light pressure is the only technology known that might carry out practical interstellar flight.
?Starting the countdown clock for the launch of Cosmos 1 on Carl?s birthday could not be more appropriate? said Ann Druyan, Cosmos 1 Program Director and Carl Sagan?s professional collaborator and widow. ?We have converted the delivery system for a weapon of mass destruction into a means for pioneering a way to set sail for the stars,? she added. ?That?s Carl Sagan 101, a perfect embodiment of his life and vision.?
Druyan?s science-based media company, Cosmos Studios, has provided most of the funding for this project.
Several solar sail spacecraft have been proposed over the last few years, but none except Cosmos 1 has been built. NASA, and the European, Japanese and Russian space agencies all have solar sail research and development programs. Deployment tests have been conducted by the space agencies and more are being planned.
The Planetary Society, without government funds, but with support of Cosmos Studios and Society members, put together an international team of space professionals to attempt this first actual solar sail flight. The Space Research Institute (IKI) in Moscow oversaw the creation of the flight electronics and mission control software while NPO Lavochkin, one of Russia?s largest aerospace companies, built the spacecraft. American consultants have provided additional components, including an on-board camera built by Malin Space Science Systems.
Solar sailing is done not with wind, but with reflected light pressure – its push on giant sails can continuously change orbital energy and spacecraft velocity. Once injected into Earth?s orbit, the sail will be deployed by inflatable tubes, which pull out the sail material and make the structure rigid. The 600-square-meter sail of Cosmos 1 will have eight blades, configured like a giant windmill. The blades can be turned like helicopter blades to reflect sunlight in different directions, and the sail can ?tack? as orbital velocity is increased. Each blade measures 15 meters in length and is made from 5-micron-thin aluminized, reinforced mylar ? about 1/4 the thickness of a trash bag.
Once Cosmos 1 is deployed in orbit, the solar sail will be visible to the naked eye throughout much of the world, its silvery sails shining as a bright pinpoint of light traveling across the night sky.
You can visit the following sites for comprehensive background materials on Cosmos 1, including the progress of the countdown to launch: http://planetary.org/solarsail and http://solarsail.org.
Manned missions beyond the Moon are no longer wild dreams. For example, the objective of ESA’s Aurora programme, after exploring Mars with robotic missions, is to send astronauts to the red planet.
Engineers are already considering the space systems that will be required, from the spacecraft and propulsion systems to the life support systems, for journeys that will last 6-9 months.
With automatic systems in control, astronauts would face the challenge of living in a confined space with not much to do for an extremely long period. “Might as well sleep it off!”
Studies initiated by ESA’s Advanced Concepts Team have gone one step further. Wouldn’t it be nice if astronauts could hibernate!
Euronews has met two biologists who are conducting, as ESA consultants, investigations into the physiological mechanisms that mammals use to hibernate.
There are marked differences between species. A dormouse goes into a deep sleep with its body temperature dropping close to zero and its metabolism dramatically suppressed. During its ‘winter sleep’, a brown bears hibernates at near normal body temperature. Its heart rate drops by a quarter and it will spend 3-7 months in a state of torpor, neither eating, drinking, defecating or urinating.
For the past two years, Prof. Marco Biggiogera, at the Animal Biology Department at the University of Pavia in Italy has been studying how an opiate derivative inhibits the activity of living cells.
“The molecule DADLE is similar to others we have in the human brain and resembles one of the hibernation triggering proteins in hibernators. It can reduce the energy required by cells, whether isolated in cultures, or present in other animals or organisms,” explains Prof. Biggiogera.
“We would very much like to understand its basic mechanisms, and with this knowledge attempt to recreate a state of hypo-metabolism in an animal, and perhaps even one day in a human, although this is really far away.”
Also involved in this study is the University of Verona. There the DADLE molecule is injected in a rodent, specially equipped with sensors to measure its body temperature, heart rate and other vital activities. After comparing the animal’s behaviour with that of a normal rat, the test subject’s main organs are scanned to observe any changes.
“Our preliminary results show that four hours after a DADLE injection, the body temperature drops notably and the rat is considerably less active,” says Prof. Carlo Zancanaro.
“Eventually we could adapt these hibernation triggering processes, using chemicals or by other means, to animals such as rats who do not normally hibernate. But concerning humans, we are still at an extremely early stage.”
The research could also lead to far-reaching applications in the medical field such as prolonging the useful life of a transplant organ or even heart-transplant operations while patients are in a state of hypo-metabolism.
Reducing the physical and psychological requirements of an astronaut crew to a minimum without jeopardising its safety would greatly simplify many aspects of a long-duration space mission.
For instance, less food and water would be required, as would the amount of pressurised space and other environmental features the astronauts would require to maintain their psychological health. This would allow large reductions in spacecraft mass, relaxing the requirements on the propulsion subsystem.
Additionally, the astonaut’s ability to hibernate would have a significant benefit in abort and emergency scenarios. Of course, a suitable and lightweight ‘hibernaculum’ to shelter astronauts during their ‘long sleep’ would have to be designed.
Hibernation for humans is an ethically controversial concept, and critics may consider it as a mad scientist’s dream. Prof. Biggiogera replied with a smile: “Without such dreamers, humanity would still be in the Middle Ages.”
A new means of propelling spacecraft being developed at the University of Washington could dramatically cut the time needed for astronauts to travel to and from Mars and could make humans a permanent fixture in space.
In fact, with magnetized-beam plasma propulsion, or mag-beam, quick trips to distant parts of the solar system could become routine, said Robert Winglee, a UW Earth and space sciences professor who is leading the project.
Currently, using conventional technology and adjusting for the orbits of both the Earth and Mars around the sun, it would take astronauts about 2.5 years to travel to Mars, conduct their scientific mission and return.
“We’re trying to get to Mars and back in 90 days,” Winglee said. “Our philosophy is that, if it’s going to take two-and-a-half years, the chances of a successful mission are pretty low.”
Mag-beam is one of 12 proposals that this month began receiving support from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s Institute for Advanced Concepts. Each gets $75,000 for a six-month study to validate the concept and identify challenges in developing it. Projects that make it through that phase are eligible for as much as $400,000 more over two years.
Under the mag-beam concept, a space-based station would generate a stream of magnetized ions that would interact with a magnetic sail on a spacecraft and propel it through the solar system at high speeds that increase with the size of the plasma beam. Winglee estimates that a control nozzle 32 meters wide would generate a plasma beam capable of propelling a spacecraft at 11.7 kilometers per second. That translates to more than 26,000 miles an hour or more than 625,000 miles a day.
Mars is an average of 48 million miles from Earth, though the distance can vary greatly depending on where the two planets are in their orbits around the sun. At that distance, a spacecraft traveling 625,000 miles a day would take more than 76 days to get to the red planet. But Winglee is working on ways to devise even greater speeds so the round trip could be accomplished in three months.
But to make such high speeds practical, another plasma unit must be stationed on a platform at the other end of the trip to apply brakes to the spacecraft.
“Rather than a spacecraft having to carry these big powerful propulsion units, you can have much smaller payloads,” he said.
Winglee envisions units being placed around the solar system by missions already planned by NASA. One could be used as an integral part of a research mission to Jupiter, for instance, and then left in orbit there when the mission is completed. Units placed farther out in the solar system would use nuclear power to create the ionized plasma; those closer to the sun would be able to use electricity generated by solar panels.
The mag-beam concept grew out of an earlier effort Winglee led to develop a system called mini-magnetospheric plasma propulsion. In that system, a plasma bubble would be created around a spacecraft and sail on the solar wind. The mag-beam concept removes reliance on the solar wind, replacing it with a plasma beam that can be controlled for strength and direction.
A mag-beam test mission could be possible within five years if financial support remains consistent, he said. The project will be among the topics during the sixth annual NASA Advanced Concepts Institute meeting Tuesday and Wednesday at the Grand Hyatt Hotel in Seattle. The meeting is free and open to the public.
Winglee acknowledges that it would take an initial investment of billions of dollars to place stations around the solar system. But once they are in place, their power sources should allow them to generate plasma indefinitely. The system ultimately would reduce spacecraft costs, since individual craft would no longer have to carry their own propulsion systems. They would get up to speed quickly with a strong push from a plasma station, then coast at high speed until they reach their destination, where they would be slowed by another plasma station.
“This would facilitate a permanent human presence in space,” Winglee said. “That’s what we are trying to get to.”
Original Source: University of Washington News Release
The X PRIZE Foundation announced key next steps today by two of its top competitors for the ANSARI X PRIZE. The American Mojave Aerospace Ventures, LLC Team (a partnership between Paul G. Allen and Burt Rutan and his team at Scaled Composites) announced today that it has given its official 60-day notice and has scheduled its first competition flight on September 29th, 2004, at the Mojave Airport Civilian Aerospace Test Center in Mojave, California. To win the $10 million, SpaceShipOne will need to make a second flight within two weeks, by October 13th, 2004.
In addition, the Canadian da Vinci Project Team, based in Toronto, Canada, announced its plans to roll-out its completed Wild Fire spacecraft for public viewing and photo opportunities on Thursday, Aug 5th, 2004, at its Downsview Airport hanger in Toronto. The da Vinci Project Team, widely heralded as a contender for the $10 million, will pursue its own ANSARI X PRIZE space flight attempts this Fall.
Also introduced to supporters and press was Amir Ansari, representing the Ansari family, the benefactors who titled the ANSARI X PRIZE, and Astronaut Rick Searfoss, the Chief Judge of the competition. The announcements took place at the Santa Monica Municipal Airport in Santa Monica, California, at 10:30 am PST.
“Eight years ago, under the Arch in St. Louis, we kicked off the X PRIZE competition. Today I’m pleased to announce that the first team is ready to make an attempt to claim the $10 million, with other teams close behind, said Dr. Peter H. Diamandis, Chairman and Founder of the X PRIZE Foundation. “The American Mojave Aerospace Ventures Team and the Canadian da Vinci Project Team are just two of the 26 competing groups who will someday make it possible for spaceflights to be conducted from commercial spaceports across the globe. When the ANSARI X PRIZE competition is won, it will herald the start of a new renaissance of spaceflight in which the general public will have their chance to fly next.”
If successful, Mojave Aerospace Ventures will make history by launching a privately financed, manned spaceship to 100 km altitude, twice within two weeks, each carrying a pilot and the weight and volume equivalent of two additional passengers. On June 21st, Mike Melvill, a pilot for Mojave Aerospace Ventures, became the first commercial pilot to enter suborbital space, earning astronaut wings and a spot in the Guinness Book of World Records. Similar to the June flight, the competition launches will take place at the Mojave Airport Civilian Aerospace Test Center in Mojave, California. The public is invited and encouraged to attend the historic events. Parking passes for public attendance can be purchased on the X PRIZE website (www.xprize.org).
“The idea of competitions have always had a rich heritage in our society,” said Paul G. Allen, sole investor of SpaceShipOne and partner in Mojave Aerospace Ventures, LLC. “This competition has proven that there are many different ways to attack the challenges set out by the ANSARI X PRIZE. From the start we have approached SpaceShipOne with a ‘can-do, home-brew’ attitude. We are grateful that our previous flights have brought even more attention to the ANSARI X PRIZE and given more momentum to the groundswell of excitement that is continuing to build for the long-term potential of affordable space exploration.”
“I want to thank the X PRIZE Foundation for providing the inspiration in 1996, to get us little guys thinking about private development of manned space flight. Last month our team demonstrated that private companies can indeed conduct space flights without government help.” stated Burt Rutan, Team Leader of the Mojave Aerospace Ventures Team and designer of both the White Knight and SpaceShipOne. “We are hopeful to complete both qualifying flights and to win the ANSARI X PRIZE.”
Wild Fire, the Canadian da Vinci Project Team spacecraft, is also launched at high-altitude into suborbital space at 80,000 feet from an unmanned, reusable helium balloon. The Canadian da Vinci Project Team, considered one of the top ANSARI X PRIZE competitors, will reveal its Wild Fire space vehicle to the public for the first time on August 5th, 2004, at its Downsview Airport Hanger in Toronto.
“The da Vinci Project Team has made huge strides in the past year and we’re excited to finally share Wild Fire with the public,” noted Brian Feeney, da Vinci Project Team Leader. “We’re in the commercial tourist race for the long haul and while working with an all-volunteer team, we’ve been able to accomplish major aviation and space milestones in pursuit of the ANSARI X PRIZE.”
In addition, Colonel Rick Searfoss, pilot and commander of three Space Shuttle missions, was introduced as the Chief Judge of the ANSARI X PRIZE. “We have met with the Mojave Aerospace Ventures Team and we are prepared to ensure that the flights are well monitored and that all rules are followed carefully,” said Col. Searfoss. “As an experienced astronaut, I can tell you that I’m personally excited to see the beginning of a new generation of spaceflight.”
About the ANSARI X PRIZE Competition
Currently, 26 teams from around the globe are competing for the $10 million ANSARI X PRIZE. In order to win the competition, teams must build a safe and reusable space vehicle able to carry one pilot and the weight equivalent of two passengers, 100km (62 miles) into suborbital space. The vehicle must be privately financed and safely flown twice within a two-week period. The first registered ANSARI X PRIZE team to complete this feat will win the $10 million prize and a spectacular 5-foot trophy.
About the X PRIZE Foundation (www.xprize.org)
The X PRIZE Foundation is a not-for-profit educational organization with headquarters in St. Louis, Missouri. The Foundation’s ANSARI X PRIZE Competition is supported by its Title Sponsor, the Ansari family, and Presenting Sponsor, Champ Car World Series. The Foundation is also supported by private donations from the St. Louis Community through an organization called the New Spirit of St. Louis Organization. The Foundation’s mission is to educate the public about space travel, create educational programming for students and space enthusiasts, and provide incentives in the private sector to make space travel frequent and affordable for the general public. Several additional sponsorships for the ANSARI X PRIZE competition remain available to corporations or individuals who wish to support the contest and associate themselves with courage, determination, achievement, space, speed, high performance and technology.
To find out how individuals or corporations can join the efforts of the X PRIZE, or involve neighborhood schools or community centers with X PRIZE educational programs, visit www.xprize.org or contact the office at 636-519-9449
Space is one of the most extreme environments imaginable. Above the insulating atmosphere of the Earth, spacecraft are subjected to extremes of temperature, both hot and cold, and a significantly increased threat of radiation damage.
The first extreme condition a spacecraft has to deal with is that of launch. The rocket that places the spacecraft into orbit will also shake it violently and batter it with extremely loud sound waves.
Either of these phenomena can shatter delicate pieces of equipment and so engineers always build a thermal and structural model of the spacecraft and test it. They simulate the conditions of launch using the vibration table and acoustic chamber at ESA’s European Space Technology Centre (ESTEC) in The Netherlands.
Temperatures in space can range from the extremely cold, hundreds of degrees below freezing, to many hundreds of degrees above ? especially if a spacecraft ventures close to the Sun.
Although there is no air in space, energy is carried by radiation, usually coming from the Sun, that causes heating when it is absorbed by spacecraft, planets or other celestial bodies.
Depending on where in space they intend a vehicle to operate, engineers build in either cooling systems or insulators.
However, in the case of ESA’s comet-chaser Rosetta, the spacecraft must first venture into the heat of the inner Solar System, before heading away into the freezing outer Solar System.
Engineers designed a system of ‘louvres’ that fit over the spacecraft’s radiator panels. When Rosetta is in the inner Solar System, the louvres swing open, allowing the radiators to expel excess heat into space.
Later, in the outer Solar System, the louvres shut, helping to retain heat inside. Ensuring that integrated circuits and computers can work in the radiation environment of space requires the shielding of sensitive electronic equipment.
Radiation in space can be split into ‘trapped’ and ‘transient’ types. The trapped particles are the subatomic particles, mainly protons and electrons, trapped by Earth’s magnetic field which creates the so-called Van Allen radiation belts around our planet.
The Cluster quartet of spacecraft are designed to work in and investigate this region of space.
The transient radiation is mainly composed of protons and cosmic rays that constantly stream through space and are enhanced during the magnetic storms on the Sun known as ‘solar flares’.
When this radiation collides with electronic circuits, they can change the contents of memory cells, cause spurious currents to flow around the craft or even burn out computer chips.
Building integrated circuits that resist the effects of radiation is known as ‘space hardening’. Usually this involves redesigning the chips so that they are shielded in some way from the harmful radiation. Another approach is to detect the errors produced by space radiation and correct them.
Meteor showers can also damage spacecraft. The little dust particles that cause us to see ‘shooting stars’ travel through space at several kilometres per second and can have the effect of ‘sand blasting’ large arrays of vital solar panels.
During a storm of the Leonids, for example, scientists made the Hubble Space Telescope turn so that its solar panels presented the smallest surface area to the incoming meteors.
Landing mobile bases on the moon is an idea whose time has come, according to a NASA researcher.
Lunar bases that can travel on wheels, or even legs, will increase landing zone safety, provide equipment redundancy and improve the odds of making key discoveries by enabling crews to visit many lunar sites, according to Marc Cohen, a researcher at NASA’s Ames Research Center, in California’s Silicon Valley. Cohen recently presented his concept in a research paper at the 2004 American Institute of Physics Forum in Albuquerque, N.M.
“If you set up a base at a fixed location on the moon, you are very limited in the sites of scientific interest that you can reach,” Cohen said. “What it comes down to is if you’re landing a habitat on legs and wheels, it doesn’t take a lot more investment to make it highly mobile, provided you have enough energy resources that would enable it to travel great distance across the moon with or without the crew onboard,” Cohen explained.
Linked mobile moon habitats might travel like treaded trains without tracks, or they could cross the moonscape in a line like Conestoga wagons crossing the American West. Walking or rolling habitats could dock to one another, or circle close together, when they reach a rest or research site, according to designs suggested by engineers over that last three decades, Cohen noted.
In contrast, a common scenario for exploration of the moon is that one or more astronauts would travel to a remote site in a pressurized or unpressurized ‘rover.’ An unpressurized rover trip would only last hours because the astronauts would be in spacesuits for the entire trek. A pressurized rover could sustain astronauts for a much longer trip, lasting days or weeks.
“If you are trying to conduct research with pressurized lunar vehicles, you run into many safety issues,” Cohen said. To avoid life-threatening or other compromising situations that might occur with only one rover traveling to a remote place, a second rover might travel with the first.
“But what if the second rover runs into a problem, too – the same or a different problem? Well, that means a third rover,” Cohen said. “So, why not make the entire base mobile, so that all the resources, reliability and redundancy of the lunar mission move with the excursion crew?” Cohen reasoned.
“In addition, there’s risk if you land lots of immobile modules in one spot — there is a danger you’ll have a very long commute to a place of scientific interest, or can’t get there. Then you’ve wasted billions of dollars. Mobile habitats greatly reduce the risk of finding yourself on the wrong place on the moon,” Cohen added.
Another advantage of mobile moon habitats is that they will be able to move out of the lunar landing zone, which could be hazardous. “The landing zone poses the problem that once a habitat lands on the moon, it is not prudent to land another vehicle within several kilometers because of safety concerns from ejecta in a normal landing, and in case of an explosive failure on impact,” Cohen said.
Cohen suggests that mobile habitats must have robust radiation shielding for them to be practical. “Radiation protection remains a challenge and a potential showstopper, as it does for all lunar base and rover concepts,” Cohen said. However, there are potential shielding concepts that may well be reasonable, according to Cohen.
The Office of Exploration Systems, NASA Headquarters, Washington, funds this research. Publication size images are available on the World Wide Web at:
Image credit: Scaled
A privately-developed rocket plane will launch into history on June 21 on a mission to become the world?s first commercial manned space vehicle. Investor and philanthropist Paul G. Allen and aviation legend Burt Rutan have teamed to create the program, which will attempt the first non-governmental flight to leave the earth?s atmosphere.
SpaceShipOne will rocket to 100 kilometers (62 miles) into sub-orbital space above the Mojave Civilian Aerospace Test Center, a commercial airport in the California desert. If successful, it will demonstrate that the space frontier is finally open to private enterprise. This event could be the breakthrough that will enable space access for future generations.
Allen, founder and chairman of Vulcan Inc, is financing the project. Along with Allen, Vulcan?s technology research and development team — which takes the lead in developing high impact science and technology projects for Allen — has been active in the project?s development and management.
“This flight is one of the most exciting and challenging activities taking place in the fields of aviation and aerospace today,” said Paul G. Allen, sole sponsor in the SpaceShipOne program. “Every time SpaceShipOne flies we demonstrate that relatively modest amounts of private funding can significantly increase the boundaries of commercial space technology. Burt Rutan and his team at Scaled Composites have accomplished amazing things by conducting the first mission of this kind without any government backing.”
Today?s announcement came after SpaceShipOne completed a May 13th, 2004 test flight in which pilot Mike Melvill reached a height of 211,400 feet (approximately 40 miles), the highest altitude ever reached by a non-government aerospace program.
Sub-orbital space flight refers to a mission that flies out of the atmosphere but does not reach the speeds needed to sustain continuous orbiting of the earth. The view from a sub-orbital flight is similar to being in orbit, but the cost and risks are far less.
The pilot (to be announced at a later date) of the up-coming June sub-orbital space flight will become the first person to earn astronaut wings in a non-government sponsored vehicle, and the first private civilian to fly a spaceship out of the atmosphere.
?Since Yuri Gagarin and Al Shepard?s epic flights in 1961, all space missions have been flown only under large, expensive Government efforts. By contrast, our program involves a few, dedicated individuals who are focused entirely on making spaceflight affordable,? said Burt Rutan. ?Without the entrepreneur approach, space access would continue to be out of reach for ordinary citizens. The SpaceShipOne flights will change all that and encourage others to usher in a new, low-cost era in space travel.?
SpaceShipOne was designed by Rutan and his research team at the California-based aerospace company, Scaled Composites. Rutan made aviation news in 1986 by developing the Voyager, the only aircraft to fly non-stop around the world without refueling.
?To succeed takes more than the work of designers and builders?, Rutan said, ?The vision, the will, the commitment and the courage to direct the program is the most difficult hurdle. We are very fortunate to have the financial support and the confidence of a visionary like Paul Allen to make this effort possible.?
To reach space, a carrier aircraft, the White Knight, lifts SpaceShipOne from the runway. An hour later, after climbing to approximately 50,000 feet altitude just east of Mojave, the White Knight releases the spaceship into a glide. The spaceship pilot then fires his rocket motor for about 80 seconds, reaching Mach 3 in a vertical climb. During the pull-up and climb, the pilot encounters G-forces three to four times the gravity of the earth.
SpaceShipOne then coasts up to its goal height of 100 km (62 miles) before falling back to earth. The pilot experiences a weightless environment for more than three minutes and, like orbital space travelers, sees the black sky and the thin blue atmospheric line on the horizon. The pilot (actually a new astronaut!) then configures the craft?s wing and tail into a high-drag configuration. This provides a ?care-free? atmospheric entry by slowing the spaceship in the upper atmosphere and automatically aligning it along the flight path. Upon re-entry, the pilot reconfigures the ship back to a normal glider, and then spends 15 to 20 minutes gliding back to earth, touching down like an airplane on the same runway from which he took off. The June flight will be flown solo, but SpaceShipOne is equipped with three seats and is designed for missions that include pilot and two passengers.
Unlike any previous manned space mission, the June flight will allow the public to view, up close, the takeoff and landing as well as the overhead rocket boost to space. This will be an historic and unique spectator opportunity. Information for the general public on attending the event is available at www.scaled.com.
Based on the success of the June space flight attempt, SpaceShipOne will later compete for the Ansari X Prize, an international competition to create a reusable aircraft that can launch three passengers into sub-orbital space, return them safely home, then repeat the launch within two weeks with the same vehicle.
The Discovery Channel and Vulcan Productions are producing RUTAN?S RACE FOR SPACE (wt), a world premiere television special that documents the entire process of the historic effort to create the first privately-funded spacecraft. From design to flight testing to the moments of the actual launch and return, the special takes viewers behind-the-scenes for the complete, inside story of this historic aerospace milestone. RUTAN?S RACE FOR SPACE will be broadcast later this year.
