Astronaut Mike Massimino on a spacewalk during shuttle mission STS-109 in March 2002. Credit: NASA
The first astronaut who tweeted from space is leaving NASA, the agency announced yesterday. Mike Massimino (best known to his 1.29 million followers as @astro_mike) — and also one of several astronauts to repair the Hubble Space Telescope — will now bring his skills to a full-time position with Columbia University in New York.
“Mike embraced the opportunity to engage with the public in new ways and set the stage for more space explorers to be able to share their mission experience directly with people around the globe,” stated Bob Behnken, NASA’s chief of the astronaut office at Johnson Space Center in Houston.
“We wish him well in his new role fostering the dreams and innovations of students just beginning their career paths,” he said.
Massimino found time to embrace Twitter, then a new technology to NASA, during the busy STS-125 mission that was the final repair mission for the Hubble Space Telescope in 2009. Here’s the first tweet from space:
From orbit: We see 16 sunrises and sunsets in 24 hrs, each one spectacular as the sun lights up the atmosphere in a spectrum of colors
Following his social media activities in space, which received a great deal of publicity at the time, Massimino appeared several times on the CBS comedy “The Big Bang Theory” as a fictionalized version of himself. He also was prominently featured in the IMAX film Hubble 3D in 2010, which in part featured the spacewalking missions to repair the iconic NASA telescope.
This dramatic view looks across the region of Enceladus' geyser basin and down on the ends of the Baghdad and Damascus fractures that face Saturn. The image, which looks approximately in the direction of Saturn, was taken from a more elevated viewpoint than other Cassini survey images of this area of the moon's south pole. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/SSI
Scientists analyzing the reams of data from NASA’s Cassini orbiter at Saturn have discovered 101 geysers erupting from the intriguing icy moon Enceladus and that the spewing material of liquid water likely originates from an underground sea located beneath the tiny moons ice shell, according to newly published research.
The geysers are composed of tiny icy particles, water vapor and trace amounts of simple organic molecules. They were first sighted in Cassini imagery snapped during flyby’s of the 310-mile-wide (500 kilometers wide) moon back in 2005 and immediately thrust Enceladus forward as a potential abode for alien life beyond Earth and prime scientific inquisition.
Liquid water, organic molecules and an energy source are the key requirements for life as we know it.
The eruptions emanated from a previously unknown network of four prominent “tiger stripe” fractures, named Damascus, Baghdad, Cairo and Alexandria sulci, located at the south polar region of Saturn’s sixth largest moon.
Using imagery gathered over nearly seven years of surveys by Cassini’s cameras, researchers generated a survey map of the 101 geysers erupting from the four tiger strips.
This artist’s rendering shows a cross-section of the ice shell immediately beneath one of Enceladus’ geyser-active fractures, illustrating the physical and thermal structure and the processes ongoing below and at the surface. Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Space Science Institute
The new findings and theories on the physical nature of how the geysers erupt have been published in two articles in the current online edition of the Astronomical Journal.
Scientists had initially postulated that the origin of the geysers could be frictional heating generated from back and forth rubbing of the opposing walls of the tiger stripe fractures that converted water ice into liquids and vapors. Another theory held that the opening and closing of the fractures allowed water vapor from below to reach the surface.
The geysers locations was eventually determined to coincide with small local hot spots erupting from one of the tiger stripe fractures after researchers compared low resolution thermal emission maps with the geysers’ locations and found the greatest activity at the warmest spots.
After later high-resolution data was collected in 2010 by Cassini’s heat-sensing instruments the geysers were found to coincide with small-scale hot spots, measuring only a few dozen feet (or tens of meters) across.
“Once we had these results in hand we knew right away heat was not causing the geysers, but vice versa,” said Carolyn Porco, leader of the Cassini imaging team from the Space Science Institute in Boulder, Colorado, and lead author of the first paper. “It also told us the geysers are not a near-surface phenomenon, but have much deeper roots.”
This graphic shows a 3-D model of 98 geysers whose source locations and tilts were found in a Cassini imaging survey of Enceladus’ south polar terrain by the method of triangulation. While some jets are strongly tilted, it is clear the jets on average lie in four distinct “planes” that are normal to the surface at their source location. Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Space Science Institute
“Thanks to recent analysis of Cassini gravity data, the researchers concluded the only plausible source of the material forming the geysers is the sea now known to exist beneath the ice shell. They also found that narrow pathways through the ice shell can remain open from the sea all the way to the surface, if filled with liquid water,” according to a NASA press release.
These are very exciting results in the search for life beyond Earth and clearly warrant a follow up mission.
“In casting your sights on the geysering glory of Enceladus, you are looking at frozen mist that originates deep within the solar system’s most accessible habitable zone,” writes Porco in her Captain’s Log summary of the new findings.
Surveyor’s Map of Enceladus’ Geyser Basin – On this polar stereographic map of Enceladus’ south polar terrain, all 101 geysers have been plotted whose source locations have been determined in Cassini’s imaging survey of the moon’s geyser basin. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/SSI
The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project between NASA, the European Space Agency (ESA) and the Italian Space Agency (ASI). Cassini was launched by a Titan IV rocket in 1997 and arrived at Saturn in 2004.
In 2005 Cassini deployed the Huygens probe which landed on Titan, Saturn’s largest moon sporting oceans of organic molecules and another prime location in the search for life.
The Cassini mission will conclude in 2017 with an intentional suicide dive into Saturn to prevent contamination on Titan and Enceladus – but lots more breathtaking science will be accomplished in the meantime!
Stay tuned here for Ken’s Earth & Planetary science and human spaceflight news.
Thomas Pesquet, an astronaut and member of the NEEMO 18 crew, dances in the kitchen of the Aquarius underwater lab in July 2014. Credit: Ian Benecken / YouTube
Anyone want to take bets on what this astronaut was listening to? This is a short silent video of Thomas Pesquet, a European astronaut, doing a dance in the kitchen during NEEMO 18 — the latest NASA underwater mission to test asteroid technologies.
The challenge of NASA Extreme Environment Mission Operations (and of living in space in general) is finding ways to stay entertained in isolated, confined environments. A lot of that comes down to group dynamics — having the team work well together. But there also is the need to have your own leisure time, and find the time to relax in between the packed activities.
And NEEMO 18, which began July 21, has been having extremely busy days. The nine-day mission aims to test out technologies that could be used for a human asteroid mission. The astronauts have been testing out techniques, for example, to do geological sampling with a 10-minute time delay in communications.
You can follow the NEEMO mission at their Twitter account, and catch more live views of the astronauts in these cameras. Pesquet will fly to the International Space Station in 2016.
It was a daring maneuver, but the plan to put Venus Express lower in the planet’s thick atmosphere has worked. For the past month, the European Space Agency steered the long-running spacecraft to altitudes as low as 81 miles (131 kilometers) for a couple of minutes at a time.
Now the spacecraft has been steered again to safer, higher orbits. And naturally, this was all done in the name of science. It not only showed scientists information about the atmosphere, but also gave them engineering data of how a spacecraft behaves when it touches a planetary atmosphere at high speed. That could be useful for future landing missions.
“We have collected valuable data on the Venusian atmosphere in a region difficult to characterise by other means,” stated Hakan Svedhem, Venus Express project scientist for the European Space Agency.
“The results show that the atmosphere seems to be more variable than previously thought for this altitude range, but further analysis will be needed in order to explain these variations properly.”
The dips into hell were hard on the spacecraft. At times, its temperatures rose by more than 212 degrees Fahrenheit (100 degrees Celsius). That said, initial surveys of the spacecraft show all is well, although more analysis will be needed. Also, its orbit was reduced by more than an hour because its speed was slowed down by so much.
While the spacecraft performed 15 thruster burns to raise up above the atmosphere, the reprieve will be temporary. There is little fuel left in the spacecraft, which has been been at the planet since 2006. Now its new lowest point in the orbit is 460 km (286 miles), but over the next few months it will fall again due to the force of gravity. Mission planners expect the spacecraft will survive until about December, when it falls into the atmosphere for good.
“Aerobraking can be used to reduce the speed of a spacecraft approaching a planet or moon with an atmosphere, allowing it to be captured into orbit, and to move from an elliptical orbit to a more circular one,” the agency wrote.
“Less fuel has to be carried, yielding benefits all round. The technique will be used on future missions and the Venus Express experiments will help guide their design.”
Artist’s conception of Venus Express doing an aerobraking maneuver in the atmosphere in 2014. Credit: ESA–C. Carreau
“Neil Armstrong – A Life of Flight” is a thoroughly enjoyable new biography about the first human to set foot on the Moon on NASA’s Apollo 11 mission written with gusto by Emmy winning NBC News space correspondent Jay Barbree.
Jay Barbee is a veteran NBC News reporter who has covered America’s manned space program from the start. And he has the distinction of being the only reporter to cover every single American manned space launch – all 166 from Alan Shepard in 1961 to STS-135 in 2011 – from his home base at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida allowing him to draw on a wealth of eyewitness experiences and inside contacts.
The book’s publication coincides with the 45th anniversary of the Flight of Apollo 11 on America’s first manned moon landing mission in July 1969 by the three man crew comprising Commander Neil Armstrong, fellow moonwalker and Lunar Module Pilot Buzz Aldrin and Command Module pilot Michael Collins.
It’s a meticulously researched book over five decades in the making and based on personal interviews, notes, meetings, remembrances, behind the scenes visits, launches and more between Neil Armstrong and his trusted friend Jay Barbree as well as hordes more officials and astronauts key to achieving NASA’s spaceflight goals.
He won that trust because the astronauts and others trusted that he would get the story right and never betray confidences, Jay told me in an interview about the book.
“This is really Neil’s book. And it’s as accurate as possible. I will never reveal something Neil told me in confidence. But there is far more in this book about Neil than he would have liked.”
Jay Barbree and Neil Armstrong enjoy dinner with America’s first in orbit, John Glenn, who is performing standup comedy out of the picture. Courtesy: Jay Barbree. See p. XIX
There is a six page list of acknowledgments and the forward is written by no less than John Glenn – the first American to orbit the Earth in 1962.
Barbree is a master story teller who amply illustrates why NASA felt Armstrong was the best candidate to be 1st Man on the Moon based on his extraordinary intellect, piloting skills, and collected coolness and clear thinking under extraordinary pressure.
Armstrong also always shied away from publicity and bringing attention to himself, Barbree told me.
“Neil did not think he was any more important than anyone else. Neil wanted to do a book about a life of flight. But he wanted everyone else included.” And that’s exactly the format for the book – including Armstrong’s colleagues in words and pictures.
On July 21, NASA officially renamed a historic human spaceflight facility at the Kennedy Space Center in honor of Mission Commander Neil Armstrong – read my story here.
At the Kennedy Space Center in Florida on July 21, 2014, NASA officials and Apollo astronauts have a group portrait taken in front of the refurbished Operations and Checkout Building, newly named for Apollo 11 astronaut Neil Armstrong, the first person to set foot on the moon. From left are NASA Administrator Charles Bolden, Apollo astronauts Mike Collins, Buzz Aldrin and Jim Lovell, and Center Director Robert Cabana. The visit of the former astronauts was part of NASA’s 45th anniversary celebration of the Apollo 11 moon landing. The building’s high bay is being used to support the agency’s new Orion spacecraft, which will lift off atop the Space Launch System rocket. Photo credit: NASA/Kevin O’Connell
Barbree details Armstrong’s lifetime of flight experiences that led to the ultimate Moon landing moment; starting with his early experiences as a Korean war combat pilot and bailing out of a crippled Panther F9F fighter plane, flying the X-15 to an altitude of 39 miles and the edge of space as a NASA test pilot, his selection as a member of the second group of astronauts on September 17, 1962, his maiden space mission on Gemini 8 which suddenly went out of control and threatened the crews lives, and finally the landing on the Sea of Tranquility with only 30 seconds of fuel remaining.
“Neil Armstrong – A Life of Flight” is a book for anyone interested in learning the nitty gritty inside details starting from the founding of America’s space effort, the trials, tribulations and triumphs of the earlier Mercury and Gemini manned programs, the terrible tragedy of the Apollo 1 fire and death of three brave Americans – Gus Grissom, Ed White and Roger Chaffee – and how all this swirl lead up to America’s determined and miraculous effort recounting how we got to the Moon. Go elsewhere for gossip.
This hefty 350 page volume is absolutely chock full of details including copious quotes on virtually every page. So much so that Barbree brings the along reader for what seems like a firsthand account. It’s as though he were a fly in the room listening in on history being made and transcribing it second by second or as an actual crew member riding along himself and reporting ultimately from aboard Apollo 11 and the Moon’s desolate surface.
On the Lunar Surface – Apollo 11 astronauts trained on Earth to take individual photographs in succession in order to create a series of frames that could be assembled into panoramic images. This frame from fellow astronaut Buzz Aldrin’s panorama of the Apollo 11 landing site is the only good picture of mission commander Neil Armstrong on the lunar surface. Credit: NASA
Barbree does this by putting into context the full meaning and breadth of what’s happening on a moment by moment basis. Giving you the reader a complete understanding of what, why and how these history making events transpired as they did.
I found his background information endlessly illuminating and informative ! – precisely because it’s not merely a transcription of dialogue.
Concerning the mild controversy regarding Armstrong’s actual first words spoken from the lunar surface, here’s excerpts from how Jay tells the story on p. 263:
“He had thought about one statement he judged had meaning and fit the historic occasion …. Neil had not made up his mind … he was undecided until he was faced with the moment.
Armstrong then lifted his left boot .. and set it down in moon dust.
“That’s one small step for man,” Neil said with a momentary pause. “One giant leap for mankind.”
What most didn’t know was that Neil had meant to say, “That’s one small step for a man,” and that set off an argument for years to come. Had a beep in transmission wiped it from our ears or had Neil nervously skipped the word?
Knowing Neil’s struggles with public speaking, I believe the latter, and with all the excitement … I’ve never been convinced Neil knew himself for sure,” Barbree wrote.
Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin plant the US flag on the Lunar Surface during 1st human moonwalk in history 45 years ago on July 20, 1969 during Apollo 1l mission. Credit: NASA
Towards the books conclusion, he writes of Armstrong; “No greater man walked among us. No better man left us informed answers. Neil taught us how to take care of our Earth-Moon system.”
I also enjoyed towards the end of the book where Jay includes Neil’s disappointment that we haven’t ventured beyond Earth orbit in over 4 decades and includes Neil’s personal testimony to Congress so we learn the detail of Armstrong thoughts – in his own words.
“I am persuaded that a return to the moon would be the most productive path to expanding the human presence in the solar system.”
Jay also pinpoints why we haven’t returned to the Moon; “lack of vision for the future” by Congress and Presidents “have kept astronauts locked in Earth orbit.”
It’s been my privilege to get to know Jay during my own space reporting from the press site at the Kennedy Space Center and interview him about his magnificent new book.
Read Jay Barbree’s new 8 part series of 45th anniversary Apollo 11 stories at NBC News here:
Armstrong passed away unexpectedly at age 82 on August 25, 2012 due to complications from heart bypass surgery. Read my prior tribute articles: here and here
Despite Armstrong’s premature passing, Barbree told me he had completed all the interviews.
“There isn’t anything that comes to mind about Neil Armstrong that I didn’t get to ask him,” Barbree told me.
Read my story about the deep sea recovery of the Apollo 11 first stage F-1 engines in 2013 – here.
Jay Barbree is on a book signing tour and you might be lucky to catch him at an event like a colleague of mine did at the Smithsonian National Air & Space Museum recently. See photo below.
Stay tuned here for Ken’s Earth & Planetary science and human spaceflight news.
Artist's conception of NASA's MESSENGER spacecraft above Mercury. Credit: JHUAPL
Look out below! NASA’s MESSENGER spacecraft is at its lowest altitude of any spacecraft above Mercury, and over the next couple of months it’s going to get even lower above the planet.
The spacecraft — whose name stands for MErcury Surface, Space ENvironment, GEochemistry, and Ranging — is doing a close shave above the sun’s closest planet to look at the polar ice and its gravity and magnetic fields.
“This dip in altitude is allowing us to see Mercury up close and personal for the first time,” stated Ralph McNutt, the project scientist for MESSENGER at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory (APL).
MESSENGER is the first-ever mission to orbit Mercury. It arrived at the planet in March 2011 and has now spent three Earth years or 14 Mercury years examining the cratered planet and its environment. The campaign has revealed many secrets about Mercury, ranging from the discovery of ice deposits to changes in its tenuous atmosphere due to the Sun.
The spacecraft made its lowest approach above the planet on July 25, at 62 miles (100 kilometers) and will keep moving lower due to “progressive changes” in its orbit, APL stated. By Aug. 19, the minimum altitude will be 50 km (31 miles), and then the closet approach will be on Sept. 12 at 25 km (16 miles).
After that, the team will temporarily raise the spacecraft’s orbit again before it makes a planned impact on the planet’s surface in March 2015. The NASA mission is operated and managed by Johns Hopkins University.
The sunshield test unit on NASA's James Webb Space Telescope is unfurled for the first time. Credit: NASA
GODDARD SPACE FLIGHT CENTER, MD – The huge Sunshield test unit for NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) has been successfully unfurled for the first time in a key milestone ahead of the launch scheduled for October 2018.
Engineers stacked and expanded the tennis-court sized Sunshield test unit last week inside the cleanroom at a Northrop Grumman facility in Redondo Beach, California.
NASA reports that the operation proceeded perfectly the first time during the test of the full-sized unit.
The Sunshield and every other JWST component must unfold perfectly and to precise tolerances in space because it has not been designed for servicing or repairs by astronaut crews voyaging beyond low-Earth orbit into deep space, William Ochs, Associate Director for JWST at NASA Goddard told me in an exclusive interview.
Artist’s concept of the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) with Sunshield at bottom. Credit: NASA/ESA
The five layered Sunshield is the largest component of the observatory and acts like a parasol.
Its purpose is to protect Webb from the suns heat and passively cool the telescope and its quartet of sensitive science instruments via permanent shade to approximately 45 kelvins, -380 degrees F, -233 C.
The kite-shaped Sunshield provides an effective sun protection factor or SPF of 1,000,000. By comparison suntan lotion for humans has an SPF of 8 to 40.
Two sides of the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST). Credit: NASA
The extreme cold is required for the telescope to function in the infrared (IR) wavelengths and enable it to look back in time further than ever before to detect distant objects.
The shield separates the observatory into a warm sun-facing side and a cold anti-sun side.
Its five thin membrane layers also provides a stable thermal environment to keep the telescopes 18 primary mirror segments properly aligned for Webb’s science investigations.
JWST is the successor to the 24 year old Hubble Space Telescope and will become the most powerful telescope ever sent to space.
The Webb Telescope is a joint international collaborative project between NASA, the European Space Agency (ESA) and the Canadian Space Agency (CSA).
NASA has overall responsibility and Northrop Grumman is the prime contractor for JWST.
Webb will launch folded up inside the payload fairing of an ESA Ariane V ECA rocket from the Guiana Space Center in Kourou, French Guiana.
In launch configuration, the Sunshield will surround the main mirrors and instruments like an umbrella.
During the post launch journey to the L2 observing orbit at the second Sun-Earth Lagrange point nearly a million miles (1.5 million Km) from Earth, the telescopes mirrors and sunshield will begin a rather complex six month long unfolding and calibration process.
The science instruments have been mounted inside the ISIM science module and are currently undergoing critical vacuum chamber testing at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center which provides overall management and systems engineering.
Gold coated flight spare of a JWST primary mirror segment made of beryllium and used for test operations inside the NASA Goddard clean room. Credit: Ken Kremer- kenkremer.com
The mirror segments have arrived at NASA Goddard where I’ve had the opportunity to observe and report on work in progress.
Stay tuned here for Ken’s continuing JWST, MMS, ISS, Curiosity, Opportunity, SpaceX, Orbital Sciences, Boeing, Orion, MAVEN, MOM, Mars and more Earth and Planetary science and human spaceflight news.
United States members of the second HI-SEAS (Hawaii Space Exploration Analog and Simulation) crew celebrate Independence Day during their simulated 120-day Mars mission. Credit: Casey Stedman/Instagram
If you spent 120 days cooped up in a small habitat with six people, what’s the first thing you’d want to do upon emerging? Celebration would likely be one of them, and you can watch the festivities as the HI-SEAS crew leaves their Mars simulation later today.
The broadcast takes place between 2 p.m. EDT and 4 p.m. EDT (6 p.m. and 8 p.m. UTC) and you can watch everything above. As with all live events, the schedule can always change at the last minute.
HI-SEAS (an acronym for Hawaii Space Exploration Analog and Simulation) is one of a number of simulated space missions that have taken place on Earth. The Mars Society regularly runs missions at its Mars Desert Research Station and Flashline Arctic Mars Station. There also was an effort called Mars 500, which saw a crew spend more than 500 days in a habitat to simulate the length of a Mars mission.
The goal of simulations such as these is to test out processes that could be used in space, and also to see how humans behave. There is considerable debate about how accurate these simulations are in comparison to spaceflight. There are obvious physical differences such as gravity, and some argue that the psychological aspects are different as well — in many cases, crews can easily open a door to escape others on Earth, while in space it’s not that simple.
As is the usual for space missions, though, HI-SEAS has strived to keep the public apprised of their activities through pictures and through videos. Coming up sometime afterwards will be the results of the scientific experiments.
Full disclosure: I am a classmate of HI-SEAS crew member Tiffany Swarmer’s in the Space Studies department at the University of North Dakota. She and the department have not asked me to write this article, nor were they aware of its publication before it went online.
Members of the 2nd Hawaii Space Exploration Analog and Simulation (HI-SEAS) crew get dressed up for May 4, sometimes called “Star Wars day” because the date plays on a famous expression from the movie: “May the force be with you.” Credit: Ross Lockwood/Instagram
Expedition 40 astronaut Alexander Gerst took this photo of the Israel and Gaza regions in July 2014 while explosions took place below (which are not visible in the photo). Credit: Alexander Gerst/Twitter
From his perch aboard the International Space Station, Alexander Gerst took this photo this week and said he could spot explosions and rockets in the blackness below. The location made him realize things were grim: it was over the Gaza and Israel region.
After the photo went viral on Twitter (it’s been shared nearly 40,000 times to date), Gerst wrote a blog post reflecting on what he saw. He acknowledged the violence wasn’t visible in the photo, but said he could still see it.
“What came to my mind at the time of this photo was, if we ever will be visited by another species from somewhere in the universe, how would we explain to them what they might see as the very first thing when they look at our planet?” wrote Alexander Gerst in a post on the European Space Agency’s website.
“How would we explain to them the way we humans treat not only each other but also our fragile blue planet, the only home we have? I do not have an answer for that.”
Gerst described the scene as “streaks of light going forth and back over a dark Earth, occasionally lit up by orange fireballs.”
Artist's conception of commercial satellites orbiting Mars and beaming information back to Earth. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
Remember during the government shutdown when it looked as though a NASA Mars mission would be delayed? Launch preparations continued because delaying the Mars Atmosphere and Volatile EvolutioN (MAVEN) spacecraft — which could have pushed its window back by years — would cause “imminent risk to life or property”, administrator Charles Bolden told Universe Today in November.
Both NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter and Mars Odyssey currently provide a vital data link to send huge streams of information from the rovers on the surface, Opportunity and Curiosity. (And the Mars 2020 rover is coming up in a few years, too.) While both orbiters are working well, they are both well over their design lifetimes. MAVEN is now on its way to Mars and should get there in September.
MAVEN’s mission, however, is only designed to last for a year. While it could last longer, NASA is already thinking ahead for satellite backups — especially for the 2020s. And that could include commercial participation, according to a new request for information the agency put out this week.
“NASA has no scheduled Mars science orbiters after MAVEN arrives on the Red Planet in the fall,” the agency warned in a press release. “This creates the need to identify cost-effective options to ensure continuity of reliable, high-performance telecommunications relay services for the future.”
NASA’s Mars bound MAVEN spacecraft launches atop Atlas V booster at 1:28 p.m. EST from Space Launch Complex 41 at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station on Nov. 18, 2013. Image taken from the roof of the Vehicle Assembly Building (VAB) at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center. Credit: Ken Kremer/kenkremer.com
The solicitation (which you can see here) proposes to have NASA purchase telecommunications services from some “commercial service provider” that would be responsible for operating and owning the satellites. This isn’t necessarily open only to industry, either. NASA says that organizations could include commercial providers, its own centers, universities, non-profits, federally funded research and development centers and even U.S. government and international organizations.
“We are looking to broaden participation in the exploration of Mars to include new models for government and commercial partnerships,” stated John Grunsfeld, associate administrator of NASA’s science mission directorate. “Depending on the outcome, the new model could be a vital component in future science missions and the path for humans to Mars.”
And it’s possible these orbiters could explore new technologies for Mars — specifically, laser/optical communications, which were used to great success on the Lunar Atmosphere and Dust Environment Explorer (LADEE) mission. And other laser missions are coming up. This could make it easier to send back movies from Mars as well as still pictures.
