The two main smoke trails left by the Russian meteorite as it passed over the city of Chelyabinsk. Credit: AP Photo/Chelyabinsk.ru
It’s been about three months since that infamous meteor broke up over Chelyabinsk, Russia. In that time, there’s been a lot of conversation about how we can better protect ourselves against these space rocks with a potentially fatal (from humanity’s perspective) gravitational attraction to Earth.
This week, the European Space Agency officially inaugurated a “NEO Coordination Centre” that is intended to be asteroid warning central in the European Union. It will be the hub for early warnings on near-Earth objects (hence the ‘NEO’ in the name) under ESA’s space situational awareness program.
ESA estimates that of the 600,000 asteroids and comets that orbit the Sun, about 10,000 of them are NEOs. (They define NEOs as asteroids or comets with sizes of several feet up to several tens of miles.)
NASA, of course, is also gravely concerned about the threat NEOs present. Its administrator, Charles Bolden, talked about this at a Congressional hearing about asteroids in March.
Before delving into the threat, Bolden took a metaphorical deep breath to talk about the dozens of asteroids — a meter or larger — that slam into Earth’s atmosphere each year. Most of them burn up harmlessly, and further, 80 tons of dust-like material rain on Earth daily.
A notable meteor that did cause some damage took place about 100 years ago, in 1908, when an object broke up over an isolated area in Russia and flattened trees for miles. Bolden characterized that as a statistically one-in-a-thousand year event, but added that the “real catch” is this type of event could happen at any time.
NASA, however, is seeking out those that cause a threat. It is supposed to find 90 per cent of asteroids 140 meters or larger by 2020, and is making progress towards that goal. (By comparison, the Chelyabinsk object was estimated at 17 to 20 meters.)
Nine radar images of near-Earth asteroid 2007 PA8 obtained between by NASA’s 230-foot-wide (70-meter) Deep Space Network antenna. The part of the asteroid closest to the antenna is at top. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
So how to best monitor the threat? Bolden outlined a few ideas: crowdsourcing, coordinating with other federal agencies and making use of automatic feeds from different telescopes throughout the world (as NASA does right now.)
Bolden emphasized that none of the asteroids we have found is on a collision course with the Earth. Still, NASA and other science experts are not complacent.
In the same hearing, John Holdren — the president’s assistant on science and technology — recommended following a National Academy of Sciences report to spend upwards of $100 million a year on asteroid detection and characterization. To mitigate the threat, Holdren further recommended a visit to an asteroid by 2025, which would perhaps cost $2 billion.
A new view of the spectacular stellar nursery IC 2944 (ESO)
This Saturday will mark 15 years that the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope (VLT) first opened its eyes on the Universe, and ESO is celebrating its first-light anniversary with a beautiful and intriguing new image of the stellar nursery IC 2944, full of bright young stars and ink-black clouds of cold interstellar dust.
This is the clearest ground-based image yet of IC 2944, located 6,500 light-years away in the southern constellation Centaurus.
Emission nebulae like IC 2944 are composed mostly of hydrogen gas that glows in a distinctive shade of red, due to the intense radiation from the many brilliant newborn stars. Clearly revealed against this bright backdrop are mysterious dark clots of opaque dust, cold clouds known as Bok globules. They are named after Dutch-American astronomer Bart Bok, who first drew attention to them in the 1940s as possible sites of star formation. This particular set is nicknamed the Thackeray Globules.
Larger Bok globules in quieter locations often collapse to form new stars but the ones in this picture are under fierce bombardment from the ultraviolet radiation from nearby hot young stars. They are both being eroded away and also fragmenting, like lumps of butter dropped into a hot frying pan. It is likely that Thackeray’s Globules will be destroyed before they can collapse and form stars.
This new picture celebrates an important anniversary for the the VLT – it will be fifteen years since first light on the first of its four Unit Telescopes on May 25, 1998. Since then the four original giant telescopes have been joined by the four small Auxiliary Telescopes that form part of the VLT Interferometer (VLTI) – one of the most powerful and productive ground-based astronomical facilities in existence.
The selection of images below — one per year — gives a taste of the VLT’s scientific productivity since first light in 1998:
A selection of images from 15 years of the VLT (Credits: ESO/P.D. Barthel/M. McCaughrean/M. Andersen/S. Gillessen et al./Y. Beletsky/R. Chini/T. Preibisch)
Read more on the ESO site here, and watch an ESOCast video below honoring the VLT’s fifteen-year milestone:
A rare and massive merging of two galaxies that took place when the Universe was just 3 billion years old.
Even though the spacecraft has exhausted its supply of liquid helium coolant necessary to observe the infrared energy of the distant Universe, data collected by ESA’s Herschel space observatory are still helping unravel cosmic mysteries — such as how early elliptical galaxies grew so large so quickly, filling up with stars and then, rather suddenly, shutting down star formation altogether.
Now, using information initially gathered by Herschel and then investigating closer with several other space- and ground-based observatories, researchers have found a “missing link” in the evolution of early ellipticals: an enormous star-sparking merging of two massive galaxies, caught in the act when the Universe was but 3 billion years old.
It’s been a long-standing cosmological conundrum: how did massive galaxies form in the early Universe? Observations of distant large elliptical galaxies full of old red stars (and few bright, young ones) existing when the Universe was only a few billion years old just doesn’t line up with how such galaxies were once thought to form — namely, through the gradual accumulation of many smaller dwarf galaxies.
But such a process would take time — much longer than a few billion years. So another suggestion is that massive elliptical galaxies could have been formed by the collision and merging of large galaxies, each full of gas, dust, and new stars… and that the merger would spark a frenzied formation of even more stars.
Investigation of a bright region first found by Herschel, named HXMM01, has identified such a merger of two galaxies, 11 billion light-years distant.
The enormous galaxies are linked by a bridge of gas and each has a stellar mass of about 100 billion Suns — and they are spawning new stars at the incredible rate of about 2,000 a year.
“We’re looking at a younger phase in the life of these galaxies — an adolescent burst of activity that won’t last very long,” said Hai Fu of the University of California at Irvine, lead author of a new study describing the results.
ESA’s Herschel telescope used liquid helium to keep cool while it observed heat from the early UniverseHidden behind vast clouds of cosmic dust, it took the heat-seeking eyes of Herschel to even spot HXMM01.
“These merging galaxies are bursting with new stars and completely hidden by dust,” said co-author Asantha Cooray, also of the University of California at Irvine. “Without Herschel’s far-infrared detectors, we wouldn’t have been able to see through the dust to the action taking place behind.”
Herschel first spotted the colliding duo in images taken with longer-wavelength infrared light, as shown in the image above on the left side. Follow-up observations from many other telescopes helped determine the extreme degree of star-formation taking place in the merger, as well as its incredible mass.
The image at right shows a close-up view, with the merging galaxies circled. The red data are from the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory’s Submillimeter Array atop Mauna Kea, Hawaii, and show dust-enshrouded regions of star formation. The green data, taken by the National Radio Astronomy Observatory’s Very Large Array, near Socorro, N.M., show carbon monoxide gas in the galaxies. In addition, the blue shows starlight.
Although the galaxies in HXMM01 are producing thousands more new stars each year than our own Milky Way does, such a high star-formation rate is not sustainable. The gas reservoir contained in the system will be quickly exhausted, quenching further star formation and leading to an aging population of low-mass, cool, red stars — effectively “switching off” star formation, like what’s been witnessed in other early ellipticals.
Dr. Fu and his team estimate that it will take about 200 million years to convert all the gas into stars, with the merging process completed within a billion years. The final product will be a massive red and dead elliptical galaxy of about 400 billion solar masses.
The study is published in the May 22 online issue of Nature.
Read more on the ESA Herschel news release here, as well as on the NASA site here. Also, check out an animation of the galactic merger below:
Main image credit: ESA/NASA/JPL-Caltech/UC Irvine/STScI/Keck/NRAO/SAO
Europa Report was a 2013 film that focused on a human mission to the Jovian moon. Poster by Start Motion Pictures.
The producers of a new movie called “Europa Report” have released a new trailer about their film, which features a near-future mission to Jupiter’s moon, Europa, in search of extraterrestrial life. From the trailer, the film looks to be of extremely high quality, and it stars Sharlto Copley (District 9), with music score from composer Bear McCreary (Battlestar Galactica, Eureka).
And while this is a sci-fi flick, the makers of “Europa Report” say they have steeped it in real science. JPL scientists acted as advisers on the film, and it’s been called “One of the most thrilling and realistic depictions of deep-space exploration since ‘Moon’ and ‘2001: A Space Odyssey’” by Space.com
Enjoy the trailer below.
The film will be released on for download on June 27th and theatrically on August 2nd through Magnolia Pictures. The premiere showing of the film will be in the Hayden Planetarium at the American Museum of Natural History on August 1st.
In this image, the Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) captured an X1.2 class solar flare, peaking on May 15, 2013. Credit: NASA/SDO
What’s more fun than something that misbehaves? When it comes to solar dynamics, we know a lot, but there are many things we don’t yet understand. For example, when a particle filled solar flare lashes out from the Sun, its magnetic field lines can do some pretty unexpected things – like split apart and then rapidly reconnect. According to the flux-freezing theorem, these magnetic lines should simply “flow away in lock-step” with the particles. They should stay intact, but they don’t. It’s not just a simple rule they break… it’s a law of physics.
What can explain it? In a paper published in the May 23 issue of “Nature”, an interdisciplinary research team led by a Johns Hopkins mathematical physicist may just have found a plausible explanation. According to the group, the underlying factor is turbulence – the “same sort of violent disorder that can jostle a passenger jet when it occurs in the atmosphere” – or the one your brother leaves behind after he’s eaten baked beans. By employing a well-organized and logically constructed computer modeling technique, the researchers were able to simulate what happens when magnetic field lines meet up with turbulence in a solar flare. Armed with this information, they were then able to state their case.
“The flux-freezing theorem often explains things beautifully,” said Gregory Eyink, a Department of Applied Mathematics and Statistics professor who was lead author of the “Nature” study. “But in other instances, it fails miserably. We wanted to figure out why this failure occurs.”
Just what is the flux-freezing theorem? Maybe you’ve heard of Hannes Alfvén. He was a Swedish electrical engineer, plasma physicist and winner of the 1970 Nobel Prize in Physics for his work on magnetohydrodynamics (MHD). He’s the man responsible for explaining what we now know as Alfvén waves – a low-frequency travelling oscillation of the ions and the magnetic field in plasma. Well, some 70 years ago, he came up with the thought that magnetic lines of force sail along a locomotive fluid similar to snippets of thread flowing along a stream. It should be impossible for them to break and then join again. However, solar physicists have discovered this just isn’t the case when it comes to activity within a particularly violent solar flare. In their observations, they have determined that the magnetic field lines within these flares can stretch to the breaking point and then reconnect in a surprisingly quick amount of time – as little as 15 minutes. When this happens, it expels a copious amount of energy which, in turn, powers the flare.
“But the flux-freezing principle of modern plasma physics implies that this process in the solar corona should take a million years!” Eyink animatedly states. “A big problem in astrophysics is that no one could explain why flux-freezing works in some cases but not others.”
Of course, there has always been speculation that turbulence may have been the root source of the enigmatic behavior. Time for investigation? You bet. Eyink then joined forces – and minds – with other experts in astrophysics, mechanical engineering, data management and computer science, based at Johns Hopkins and other institutions. “By necessity, this was a highly collaborative effort,” Eyink said. “Everyone was contributing their expertise. No one person could have accomplished this.”
Gregory Eyink, professor of applied mathematics and statistics at Johns Hopkins. Photo by Nat Creamer.The next step was to create a computer simulation – a simulation which could duplicate the plasma state of solar flare activity and all the nuances the charged particles undergo during different conditions. “Our answer was very surprising,” stated Eyink. “Magnetic flux-freezing no longer holds true when the plasma becomes turbulent. Most physicists expected that flux-freezing would play an even larger role as the plasma became more highly conducting and more turbulent, but, as a matter of fact, it breaks down completely. In an even greater surprise, we found that the motion of the magnetic field lines becomes completely random. I do not mean ‘chaotic,’ but instead as unpredictable as quantum mechanics. Rather than flowing in an orderly, deterministic fashion, the magnetic field lines instead spread out like a roiling plume of smoke.”
Of course, other solar experts feel there may be alternative answers for this rule-breaking activity within solar flares, but as Eyink says, “I think we made a pretty compelling case that turbulence alone can account for field-line breaking.”
What is most exciting is the collaborative effort of the team members from such widely varied disciplines. It was a group effort which aided Eyink to come up with this new theory on the solar flare riddle. “We used ground-breaking new database methods, like those employed in the Sloan Digital Sky Survey, combined with high-performance computing techniques and original mathematical developments,” he said. “The work required a perfect marriage of physics, mathematics and computer science to develop a fundamentally new approach to performing research with very large datasets.”
In conclusion, Eyink noted this type of research work may very well give us a better understanding of solar flares and coronal mass ejections. As we know, this type of dangerous “space weather” can be harmful to astronauts, disrupt communications satellites, and even be responsible for the shut-down of electrical power grids on Earth. And you know what that means… no satellite TV and no power to watch it by. But, that’s O.K.
“I don’t stay out late. Don’t care to go. I’m home about eight… Just me and my radio. Ain’t misbehavin’.. Savin’ my love for you.”
A dense network of small rivers or swampy areas appears to connect some of the seas on Saturn's moon Titan, as seen in this comparison of data of the same area from two instruments on NASA's Cassini spacecraft. Images from the radar instrument are on the left and images from the visual and infrared mapping spectrometer (VIMS) are on the right. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/University of Arizona
Are there waves on Titan’s lakes and seas? Cassini scientists say that the best chance of answering this question is with the May 23 flyby of Titan, when the Cassini spacecraft will be just 970 km (603 miles) over Titan’s biggest ‘lake,’ the northern sea named Ligeia Mare.
Lakes, seas, and rivers were discovered on Titan by Cassini in 2005, and since then, scientists and space enthusiasts have been intrigued about the possibility of what could be found in these bodies of hydrocarbon liquid. Future potential missions such as paddleboats have even been proposed.
Lakes, seas and rivers of liquid hydrocarbons cover much of the Titan’s northern hemisphere. Additionally, these hydrocarbons may rain down on the surface. The questions is, are these frigid liquid bodies capable of producing wave action, or would they be a rigid type of frigid? With surface temperature at -178 degrees Celsius (-289 degrees Fahrenheit), Titan’s environment is too cold for life as we may know it, but its environment, rich in the building blocks of life, is of great interest to astrobiologists.
Additionally, new models of Titan’s atmosphere prediction that as the seasons change in Titan’s northern hemisphere, waves could ripple across the moon’s hydrocarbon seas, and possibly even hurricanes could begin to swirl over these areas, too. The model predicting waves tries to explain data from the moon obtained so far by Cassini.
“If you think being a weather forecaster on Earth is difficult, it can be even more challenging at Titan,” said Scott Edgington, Cassini’s deputy project scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif. “We know there are weather processes similar to Earth’s at work on this strange world, but differences arise due to the presence of unfamiliar liquids like methane. We can’t wait for Cassini to tell us whether our forecasts are right as it continues its tour through Titan spring into the start of northern summer.”
For the flyby on May 23, the altimetry data that will be collected by the radar instrument could show whether the surface of that sea is thick like molasses or as thin as liquid water on Earth.
In addition, radar will look for changes in small northern lakes last observed in previous flybys, the T-16 and T-19 flybys.
This flyby is a carefully planned sibling of the following flyby; the combination of the data from T-91 and T-92 will provide stereo views of the same geography, which will tell us about the depth of the lake walls.
Three bright planets gather in the northwestern sky this week. This map shows the sky 30 minutes after sunset from the middle latitudes. Stellarium
Planning a barbecue this weekend? You may want to top it off with a look at three bright planets shuttling about the western sky at dusk. Jupiter, Venus and Mercury gather for nearly a week of delightful alignments including three separate conjunctions staring right now. Mercury and Venus pair up on Friday; Mercury and Jupiter on Sunday and Venus and Jupiter on Monday. All three form a series of ever-changing triangular arrangements as the nights go by.
Three bright planets will highlight the northwestern sky this week and early next. Mercury is shown in pink and Jupiter in yellow. Time is 30 minutes after sunset facing northwest. They’ll be closest together – less than 3 degrees apart – on the night of the 26th. Stellarium
Brightest of the bunch is Venus followed by Jupiter and then Mercury. The key to seeing them all is a clear sky and unobstructed view of the west-northwest horizon. Best time for viewing is a half hour to 45 minutes after sunset. Although the diagrams make the planets look like largish disks, difference in size is a device to show their brightness. Bigger means brighter.
Mercury gradually climbs higher in the coming days, Venus will remain in nearly the same spot and Jupiter slowly drops off toward the horizon. Seeing three planets bunch up isn’t rare, but it is unusual – all the more reason to go for a look if your skies are clear. Alignments like this occur because all 8 planets lie in essentially the same flat plane. As we look across the solar system, sometimes near planets and far planets lie along the same line of sight and appear side-by-side in the sky. They may look close to each other but of course they’re millions of miles apart.
Positions of the planets on May 27. The arrow shows the point of view from Earth. Notice that the line of sight through all three takes our gaze near the sun. That’s why they’re only visible shortly after sunset in a bright sky. Click image to see a cool, interactive planet display. Credit: dd.dynamicdiagrams.com
This week Venus is 154 million miles (248 million km) from Earth, Mercury 113 million (182 million km) and Jupiter a distant 562 million (904 million km). The planet position diagram above will give you a sense of their current arrangement in space.
Whenever you go planet-seeking in bright twilight, I always recommend bringing along a pair of binoculars. They penetrate haze and make finding these bright little dots much easier. Enjoy the show!
The RepRap self-replicating printer 'Mendel". (Credit: CharlesC under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license).
The International Space Station may soon have its very own Star Trek food replicator.
Earlier this week, NASA awarded a $125,000 six month grant to the Systems & Materials Research Cooperation to design a 3D printer capable of printing a pizza from 30-year shelf stable foodstuffs.
Founded by Anjan Contractor, SMRC built a basic food printer from a chocolate printer to win NASA’s Small Business Innovation Research Program in a trial video. The design is based on an open-source RepRap 3D printer.
Contractor and SMRC will begin construction on the pizza-printing prototype in two weeks. Pizza has been one item missing from astronauts menu for years. The 3D printer would “build-up” a pizza serving by first layering out the dough onto a heated plate then adding tomato sauce and toppings.
But this isn’t your mother’s pizza, as the proteins would be provided by cartridge injectors filled with organic base powders derived from algae, insects and grass.
Yummy stuff, to be sure!
Of course, one can see an immediate application of 3D food printing technology for long duration space missions. Contractor and SMRC envisions 3D food printing as the wave of the future, with the capacity to solve world hunger for a burgeoning human population.
Could a 3D food printer be coming to a kitchen near you?
Curiously, printing confectioneries and pet food pellets would be the simplest application of said technology. Printing a soufflé and crowned rack of lamb will be tougher. 3D printing technology has made great strides as of late, and RepRap has made a printer which is capable of printing itself. Those who fear the rise of Von Neumann’s self-replicating robots should take note…
Should we welcome or fear our self-replicating, pizza-bearing overlords?
The International Space Station is due for the delivery of its first 3D printer in 2014. This will give astros the capability to fabricate simple parts and tools onsite without requiring machining. Of course, the first question on our minds is: How will a 3D printer function in zero-g? Will one have tomato paste an insect parts flying about? Recent flights aboard a Boeing 727 by Made in Space Inc have been testing 3D printers in micro-gravity environments.
Made in Space demonstrates 3D Printing technology headed to the ISS next year. (Credit: Made in Space Inc./NASA).
Further afield, 3D replicators may arrive on the Moon or Mars ahead of humans, building a prefab colony with raw materials available for colonists to follow.
Artist’s conception of a lunar base constructed with 3D printing technology. (Credit: NASA Lunar Science Institute).
Will 3D food replicators pioneered by SMRC be a permanent fixture on crewed long duration space missions? Plans such as Dennis Tito’s Mars 2018 flyby and the one way Mars One proposal will definitely have to address the dietary dilemmas of hungry astronauts. Biosphere 2 demonstrated that animal husbandry will be impractical on long term missions. Future Martian colonists will definitely eat much farther down the food chain to survive. SpaceX head Elon Musk has recently said in a Twitter response to PETA that he won’t be the “Kale Eating Overlord of Mars,” and perhaps “micro-ranching” of insects will be the only viable alternative to filet mignon on the Red Planet. Hey, it beats Soylent Green… and the good news is, you can still brew beer from algae!
Diagram of a proposed 3D food printer based on ReRap. (Credit: SMRC).
Would YOU take a one way journey to Mars? Would you eat a bug to do it? It’ll be interesting to watch these 3D printers in action as they take to space and print America’s favorite delivery fast food. But it’s yet to be seen if home replicators will put Dominos Pizza out of business anytime soon. Perhaps they’ll only be viable if they can print a pizza in less than “30 minutes!”
The Dream Chaser space plane atop a United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket. Image Credit: SNC
It was surely one of those moments where NASA could hardly wait to tear off the shrink wrap. Sierra Nevada Corp.’s privately constructed Dream Chaser spacecraft engineering test article arrived at the Dryden Flight Research Center last week — wrapped in plastic for shipping protection — ahead of some flight and runway tests in the next few months.
“Tests at Dryden will include tow, captive-carry and free-flight tests of the Dream Chaser. A truck will tow the craft down a runway to validate performance of the nose strut, brakes and tires,” NASA stated.
“The captive-carry flights will further examine the loads it will encounter during flight as it is carried by an Erickson Skycrane helicopter. The free flight later this year will test Dream Chaser’s aerodynamics through landing.”
The ultimate goal is to get the United States bringing its own astronauts into space again.
A Sierra Nevada employee removes plastic wrapping from Dream Chaser after it arrives at NASA’s Dryden Flight Research Center in southern California. Credit: NASA
Sierra Nevada, Space Exploration Technologies (SpaceX) and the Boeing Co. are all receiving NASA funding under its Commercial Crew Integrated Capability (CCiCap) initiative that is intended to restart flights from American soil into low-Earth orbit.
For Sierra Nevada, the company aims to launch its mini shuttle aboard an Atlas V rocket and then, like the shuttle, come back to Earth on a runway. SpaceX and Boeing are taking a different path — making spacecraft capable of launching on the Falcon 9 and Atlas V rockets (respectively) and then coming home under a parachute.
There’s still some questions about when the program will start, though. In media reports, NASA administrator Charles Bolden has said funding threats for NASA’s 2014 request are imperiling the current commercial crew target of 2017.
NASA astronaut Jack Fischer and three others recently took part in approach and landing simulations of the Dream Chaser at Langley Research Center in Hampton. Check out the video below.
Sol-X CEO Blaze Sanders wearing a Final Frontier Design space suit. Credit: Solar System Express.
Editor’s note: This guest post was written by Ron Atkins, a life-long supporter of human space exploration and an ardent advocate of “NewSpace” and Commercial Spaceflight. He curates and maintains “The NewSpace Daily” on Scoop.it
Tony Stark has been to a lot of cool places in that Iron Man get-up of his. But low Earth orbit might still be a bit beyond his operational flight envelope. Not so for the developers of the revolutionary RL Mark VI Space Diving suit. A hi-tech ensemble consisting of augmented reality goggles, power gloves, control moment gyros, and a low-cost commercial space suit, the RL Mark VI will allow future thrill seekers and space tourists an experience that up until now could only be imagined in the boldest science fiction.
A joint collaboration between Solar System Express and Juxtopia LLC., two minority-owned hi-tech startups both based in Baltimore, Maryland, the RL MARK VI Space Diving configuration will allow the well-equipped space tourist of the near future the opportunity to actually return to Earth without his spaceship.
Space diving is the next big step beyond sky diving, and it is envisioned as a concept that would allow spaceflight participants a means of escape from a possibly disastrous on-orbit emergency, or perhaps just a new recreational activity for those no longer satisfied with merely jumping out of aircraft. The RL MARK VI would allow high-altitude jumps from near-space, suborbital space, and eventually low Earth orbit itself.
The first few flight tests of the MARK VI hardware will follow a profile very reminiscent to that of the recent record-breaking Red Bull Stratos dive of Felix Baumgartner, where the daring aerialist completed his plunge through the stratosphere with a soft parachute touchdown back on terra firma. But the ultimate goal of this futuristic project is far more radical than that. Eventually, through the use of modern “wing suit” skydiving technology and assisted by miniature aerospike engines attached to specially designed footwear, the space diver will end his spectacular glide through the heavens with a propulsive, power-assisted landing on two feet. No parachute. At all. Just like Tony Stark does it in the movies.
In addition to Hollywood, the RL Mark VI also draws upon history for its inspiration. Major Robert Lawrence, United States Air Force, was America’s first African-American astronaut. Major Lawrence was killed on December 8, 1967 in a test flight at Edwards Air Force Base in California before his dream of flying in space ever came to pass. In his honor the principal design team at Solar System Express chose to use his initials for the product code name of this revolutionary new concept.
On October 2, 2012, the birthday of Robert Lawrence, Blaze Sanders, Chief Technology Officer of Solar System Express, ratified a licensing agreement with Dr. Jayfus Doswell, president and CEO of Juxtopia, for the use of Juxtopia’s Augmented Reality (AR) head mounted display technology.
Similar in functionality to Google Glass, Juxtopia’s AR Goggles are primarily intended to provide the space diver with a continuous stream of vital information that will keep him on course and within safe life-support parameters throughout the duration of his jump. These visually displayed real-time dynamic analytics will tell the jumper his heart rate, respiration, internal space suit temperature, and his external temperature as well. They will provide data on GPS location, elevation, and rates of acceleration and deceleration. An FAA radar display of the local airspace will always indicate his current relative position.
Example of the graphical symbology that will be displayed by the Juxtopia AR Goggles during a typical RL MARK IV space dive. Credit: Blaze Sanders, solarsystemexpress.com
Unlike Google Glass there will be no video mode for these goggles. Instead they will work on the principal of “Optical See-Through,” much like the Heads Up Display on a modern fighter jet, that overlays numerical information and other visual symbology over the pilot’s view of the outside world. In the words of Dr. Doswell, “Video mode works fine for Hollywood, but in real life if you lose video during the jump then you’re flying blind and unlike in the movies there is no quick reboot option.”
The goggles will respond to voice commands specifically addressed to the name that the diver has designated for the RL MARK VI‘s system computer. Special software algorithms will filter the diver’s voice and eliminate all “false positives” such as wind, air, engine sounds and any other noise that is not human speech. The final result of this filtered audio signal is referred to as “pure speech.” Such audio commands will be used to turn the RL MARK VI’s systems on and off, to eject various hardware components from the diver’s body at different altitudes, to control suit cams and various lighting options, and to control voice communications to a ground control station.
In addition to voice commands, according to Dr. Doswell, “other human-computer interface modalities are being investigated for control of the MARK VI during its high speed decent as well.” Interfaces such as the electrical activity in your muscles harnessed by gesture control systems from MYO, and a distance only radio frequency sensor developed by Dr. Kuhlman at the University of Maryland, College Park, MD.
Modern fighter aircraft also employ specific audio outputs in cases of emergency or imminent danger. The MARK VI will be no different. Juxtopia is developing a culturally-specific system of programmable user preferences that will allow the diver to select his own audio alarms for any possible in-flight emergency and any other critical decision points such as altitude level or diminishing fuel state. This approach will help to enhance the international marketability of the MARK VI as well as ensure safety throughout the space dive for potential users from a variety of different cultures.
This video provides a taste of what space diving will be like:
Falling through the vacuum of space will be quite different than a dive that begins in the relative thickness of Earth’s lower atmosphere. There will be no aerodynamic forces acting upon the diver’s body that will allow him to stabilize his jump. This problem will be solved by a pair of gyroscopic boots and the fingertip controls built into the gloves of the diver’s spacesuit. Commands so issued to the control momentum gyroscopes built into his footwear will establish proper attitude and help to steady his fall through the airless void.
As a safety precaution a flat spin compensator will automatically actuate after more than five seconds if the diver is unable to maintain adequate manual control. As the diver descends through the upper atmosphere, eventually the air will thicken to the point where aerodynamic forces will allow him to control the attitude of his body. Olav Zipser, word-renowned skydiver and lead jumper on the FreeFly Astronaut Project, has praised the new suit. “Your product would be a great way to stabilize my decent during the first 30 seconds of free fall, when there is virtually zero atmosphere,” he said.
CAD representation of the RL MARK VI’s gyroscopic boot prototype. Credit: Blaze Sanders, solarsystemexpress.com
The final function of the diver’s gyroscopic boots will kick in as he nears the surface of the Earth, and he fires off his miniature aerospike thrusters to smoothly lower himself to the ground for a two-point upright landing.
Two different landing scenarios are presently under consideration: “a feet-down” landing where the aerospikes fire into action from an altitude of hundred feet, gently lowering the diver down to earth; and the much more daring and challenging “wing suit flare up” where the diver swoops within ten feet of pay dirt before pulling up sharply and then lighting off his thrusters to initiate his controlled descent to the ground.
Solar System Express intends to first test this propulsive landing capability somewhere around 2016, with a production model of the RL MARK VI coming to market about a year later. Until then any live tests of the system will conclude with traditional parachute jumps. Data collected during these jumps, along with rigorous control system testing and computer simulated recreations of each space dive, will enable Blaze Sanders and his team to refine the parameters and the protocols required for a text book propulsive landing.
CAD representation of the RL MARK VI’s high-intensity LED chest piece prototype. Credit: Blaze Sanders, solarsystemexpress.com
Mounted on the front of the jumper’s space suit will be a “high intensity LED chest piece” powered by energy-storing super capacitors and equipped with miniature stereo cameras which will collect much of the data necessary for recreating the jump in a 3D computer simulation. When finally transferred to video all of this collected 3D data should easily yield the kind of YouTube upload that one can point to with pride for years to come.
The Gravity Development Board, a proprietary piece of hardware designed by Solar System Express, will serve as the main interface between the MARK VI’s three major components as well as the device which controls all critical systems.
According to Mr. Sanders, “The GDB will be the first space-rated open hardware electronic prototyping board, enabling any type of person to create space qualified hardware. The GDB will replace the Arduino Uno® as the preferred high-level prototyping environment, by being up to forty times faster, seventy percent smaller, having integrated high power drivers (capable of handling one hundred times the current), with more flexible Input/Output configurations, and yet be still much easier to program via 12 Blocks™, the powerful, intuitive visual language used for robotic programming. Engineers, artists, and designers are thus enabled to create any project they can imagine. Our quick release breakout board, the ‘Ejection Seat™,’ allows for easy prototyping, yet keeps the GDB form factor small and robust enough to use in New Space start-up product releases.”
Final Frontier Design, of Brooklyn, New York, is working with Solar System Express on a customized version of their low-cost Intra-Vehicular Activity IVA 3G spacesuit, first introduced to the public last year and successfully crowd funded through an online kickstarter campaign. The entire RL MARK VI ensemble, along with the 3G spacesuit and a protective thermal outer covering, will be put through a rigorous testing regime beginning in June of 2014. Ground based testing will commence with a series of thermal and vacuum chamber tests, and vertical wind tunnel tests to be conducted at the Goddard Spaceflight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland.
The protective thermal covering will be fashioned from lightweight layers of aerogel and NASA Space Shuttle-like flexible insulation blankets formed into a garment that will serve as the spacesuit’s outermost layer. This is the material that will protect the space diver from the heat of reentry as he plunges through the earth’s upper atmosphere. Solar System Express has already started conversations with several wing suit manufacturers interested in employing this revolutionary thermal technology into their product line.
The first tests at altitude should begin around July of 2016. They will commence with two-kilometer parachute jumps from a helium balloon-tethered tower that will comprise the major test platform of The LiftPort Group’s Lunar Space Elevator Project. Eventually near-space jumps from as high as 40 kilometers will be conducted by Olav Zipser and his FreeFly Astronaut Project using a specially modified rocket designed and manufactured by InterOrbital Systems of Mojave, California.
No firm dates have been set for suborbital and orbital testing but initial plans call for the use of a human medical robot prototype supplied by Juxtopia to be used as the test subject for these first jumps before real live space divers eventually become involved.
Blaze Sanders estimates the total development costs to bring the RL MARK VI to market at around $2.2 million. He has already invested about $100,000 of his own time and money into the project. In the next three years he expects to generate another $1.1 million dollars in revenue through sales of his company’s Gravity Development Board. He expects to generate additional revenue from a wide variety of sources including ongoing consulting fees, government grants and loans, angel investment, kickstarter campaigns, and technical consulting fees from motion picture productions already interested in the use of his technology, as well as a video game simulation also based on his revolutionary hardware.
Should he ultimately succeed then, who knows, one day he may end up just as rich and successful as Tony Stark himself. He’s already got the suit. And he’s prepared to take it to dazzling new heights.
