A charred Soyuz descent module after landing 400 km off-course on April 19th 2008. Credit: NASA
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Russia may have to delay the launch of the next crew to the International Space Station, as the descent module of the Soyuz spacecraft experienced an air leak during testing. The next crew of three for the space station had been scheduled to launch on March 30, 2012. Russia’s news agency Itar-Tass quoted Russian space agency (Roscosmos) official Alexei Krasnov, saying the Soyuz TMA–04M experienced problems during a test in an altitude test chamber at the Energia Space Rocket Corporation. Krasnov said no final decisions have been made yet on whether a delay will be necessary, but other sources indicated it could be delayed for several weeks.
Krasnov downplayed the seriousness of the failure, indicating the problems are related to a service element, rather than the descent capsule itself.
But earlier reports sounded more dire. “This descent vehicle can no longer be used in a manned flight,” said an unnamed source in an article in RIA Novosti. “Therefore the launch of the Soyuz TMA-04M will have to be rescheduled until the second half of April or the first half of May.”
The three ISS crewmembers scheduled to launch for Expedition 31 are Russians Gennady Padakla and Sergei Rivin and NASA astronaut Joseph Acaba, who will be replacing Expedition 30 crewmates Anton Shkaplerov, Anatoli Ivanishin and Dan Burbank, who arrived at the station in November, 2011.
The three Expedition 30 crew were initially scheduled to return to Earth on March 16, but since their own launch was delayed, their Soyuz craft does have some margin before exceeding its on-orbit certified life, and depending on the outcome of the inspection of the TMA–04M, they would be able to stay a few weeks longer.
The potential delay follows a series of technical mishaps for Roscomos during the past few months. In August of 2011 a Progress re-supply ship crashed back to Earth after the second stage of the rocket failed to ignite. In November, the Phobos-Grunt mission to Mars moon Phobos also experienced rocket failure and it ultimately disintegrated during re-entry to Earth’s atmosphere. In December, a Soyuz-2 rocket carrying a communications satellite failed shortly after launch from the Plesetsk spaceport.
Orion Test Capsule at Practice for Pad Abort 1 Test. The Orion test capsule is now on a cross country tour from New Mexico to Florida with stops in Oklahoma, Texas and Alabama. Ground teams in White Sands, New Mexico, practice stacking test versions of Orion and its launch abort system. This was being done in advance of Orion’s launch abort system test. Credit: NASA or National Aeronautics and Space Administration
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Here’s your chance for a birds-eye view of an Orion capsule, up-close and personal ! Catch it if you can !
A full scale test version of one of NASA’s Orion spacecraft has embarked on a cross country tour from White Sands, New Mexico, across several states in the southern United States that ultimately lands at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida.
Starting today, Jan. 27, an Orion spacecraft is open for viewing by the public in Texas at Victory Park and the American Airlines Center in Dallas.
Orion fans in Texas
The Coopers from Southlake meet NASA astronaut Nick Patrick by the Orion crew module now on display at the American Airlines Center in Dallas, TX.
The display continues throughout this weekend after a well received visit to Oklahoma at the Science Museum Oklahoma in Oklahoma City.
Roller Derby team visits Orion test capsule now on public display in Texas
The next stop on the cross country journey is the U.S. Space and Rocket Center in Huntsville, Ala on Feb 1-2.
Orion is NASA’s next generation human spaceflight vehicle that will eventually replace the space shuttle and loft astronauts to low Earth orbit and beyond to deep space destinations such as the Moon, Asteroids and Mars. It can also dock at the International Space Station (ISS).
The Orion crew module journey is a wonderful and fun opportunity for individuals and families to see real space exploration hardware with your own eyes and learn all about the goals and plans of the US Space Program and your investment in it as a taxpayer.
Knowledgeable Orion experts will be on hand to speak with visitors in easy to understand ways. This includes astronauts, engineers, program officials and press spokespeople from NASA, Lockheed-Martin (Orion prime contractor) and other companies involved in building the Orion capsule and other components that will rocket the vehicle to orbit.
Veteran NASA Astronauts Nick Patrick and Clay Anderson will be on hand at the Dallas stop. NASA Astronauts Doug Hurley and Jim Dutton will attend the Alabama display.
Hurley was the pilot for the final shuttle mission by Space Shuttle Atlantis for the STS-135 mission to the International Space Station.
Orion fans in Oklahoma. Credit: NASA
The Orion tour also includes colorful and informative display panels and fun kids activities that I’ve personally witnessed on several occasions. In past years the Orion Launch Abort System (LAS) engaged in similar trips.
This Orion test vehicle was used by ground crews preparing for the PA-1 launch abort system flight test that took place in New Mexico in 2010.
The first orbital flight test of an unmanned Orion is scheduled for 2014 atop a Delta 4 Heavy booster..
Orion fans in Dallas, Texas - Mike, Darnell and AkeemOrion Test capsule with test facility workers at White Sands Facility, New Mexico. Credit: NASA
Look here for more information on the Orion stops in Texas and Alabama
American Airlines Center: http://www.americanairlinescenter.com/
U.S. Space and Rocket Center: http://www.ussrc.com/
NASA’s future has suddenly become a hot topic in the GOP Presidential Debates. Orion is at the center of that debate on whether Americans will ever return to the Moon.
This is your opportunity to see history in the making
The Delta Mariner covered with debris from the bridge it collided with. Credit:Maritimematters.com
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A cargo ship carrying two Atlas 5 rockets to Cape Canaveral Air Force Station for upcoming launches collided with a bridge in Kentucky early January 27, 2012 causing a portion of the bridge to collapse. There were cars on the bridge at the time of the incident but no injuries were reported. The 312-ft Delta Mariner was commissioned by United Launch Alliance to transport the equipment but hit the Eggner Ferry Bridge near Aurora, Kentucky. Two spans of the bridge were destroyed, and debris covered the ship.
The cause of the accident is being investigated by the Coast Guard, but some reports indicate higher than usual water levels may have contributed.
ULA said initial inspections have shown that the flight hardware being transported was not damaged.
“The 312-foot vessel is carrying a United Launch Alliance Atlas booster and Centaur upper stage for the Air Force’s AEHF-2 mission scheduled to launch in April and an interstage adapter for NASA’s RBSP mission [Radiation Belt Storm Probes] scheduled to launch in August,” Chris Chavez of ULA Communications told Universe Today in an email. “There is no schedule impact to either launch date expected at this point.”
“X” marks the spot for a new place for Citizen Science on the web. It’s called CosmoQuest and the collaborators of this new website invite you to come visit and do more than just click your mouse. Besides contributing to real science for NASA space missions, there are also places to learn, converse, hang out and socialize.
“We’re building a community that recreates an academic and research facility,” said Pamela Gay, from Southern Illinois University, Edwardsville, who is familiar to listeners of Astronomy Cast and 365 Days of Astronomy, and readers of her blog StarStryder. “We’ll be doing open science in an open-source way.”
Universe Today is one of the partners for CosmoQuest, along with Phil Plait from Bad Astronomy and the BAUT Forum (Bad Astronomy Universe Today forum) that Fraser Cain and Phil created for online discussion.
“Fraser and Phil successfully built a community within the BAUT Forum, and we see many of the same people there that are subscribers to our podcasts,” said Pamela. “One of the ideas behind CosmoQuest was to see if we could take this community of people that are interested in content and transform them into a community of people who are not just reading about or listening to astronomy and commenting on our feeds, but are also actively engaged in doing astronomy and science and want to learn more.”
Our readers have probably noticed –and hopefully participated in or watched — the new Weekly Space Hangouts that cover the news of the week, and the live telescope feeds that Fraser has been doing with amateur astronomers from around the world. This is all stems from CosmoQuest, and the CosmoQuest website will be the place where you can find all the feeds for the Hangouts and livestream star parties, and soon you’ll be able to sign up to get email notifications of these upcoming events. There will also be podcast feeds, a blog, an events calendar, and a forum. Later, there will be free (and premium) online classes, lectures, and other ways to participate and learn more about astronomy.
“We’ve got amateur astronomers out there who are doing amazing observations with their telescopes,” Fraser said. “We’ll be able to share tips and observing techniques, as well as exposing more people to the night sky. There will also be talks by scientists and experts in the field. In a way, this will be a way for those interested in astronomy to participate and learn without having to pay $1,000 a credit to get an advanced degree.”
But Citizen Science is the major part of CosmoQuest. “We know that the general public who are interested in science can contribute to science in meaningful ways,” said Pamela. “We’re building tools to bring researchers together with the public.”
CosmoQuest’s first project, which is currently in beta, is called Moon Mappers, which uses data from the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter.
Screenshot from the Moon Mappers tutorial
“Right now in beta, we have full functionality of two interface tasks,” said Stuart Robbins from the University of Colorado Boulder, a co-lead for the Moon Mappers science team. “There are ‘Simply Craters’ and ‘Man vs. Machine.’ In the former, users are asked to draw a circle to trace out a crater. They click in the center of the crater, drag outwards, and release. They can also flag features that they think are interesting to point out to the science team. Man vs. Machine is the same thing, except I’ve run an automated crater detection algorithm to find craters in the image already. We ask users to correct ones it got wrong, remove ones it marked as craters that aren’t, and add craters it missed. We’re trying to study a few things with that interface, including whether it saves time and how we can improve our algorithms.”
The goal of Moon Mappers is to find the most effective and accurate way to map the Moon.
“Do we have people do it all by themselves? Do we have people modify the outputs of crater-finding algorithms (which we know are only accurate to 80% or better)? Under what lighting conditions are both humans and software most accurate in what they do?” Pamela said. “We’re looking at how we can most effectively map the Moon as quickly as possible through a combination of humans and computers using NASA imagery from LRO.”
In beta, they want to find any problems with the interface.
“What we really need are people who don’t know the project to come in and actually use it and point out what we may have missed in terms of functionality, bugs, or other things,” said Stuart. “For example, when we first went live on January 9, there was a user in the Forum discussion, Justin (“Briliu”) who made several interface change suggestions. We’ve made them all.”
They also want to make sure that the tutorials to train the Citizen Scientists works well, which will help in creating future programs, which will include data from the Dawn mission, MESSENGER, and the Hubble Space Telescope.
Pamela and Stuart both have ample experience in leading Citizen Science projects, as Pamela has been with the Zooniverse project for several years, specifically Moon Zoo, as has Stuart.
“One of the advantages of Moon Mappers is that because we are a much smaller and more open community we are willing to say yes to almost anything that we have the ability to construct,” said Pamela. “One of our biggest differences from Zooniverse is our intent to go open source with all of our code. This means that in those instances when we can’t help someone, we can say. ‘here is our code, we’ll help you get started.'”
CosmoQuest has already posted the code for their Google Hangout On Air + Twitter social media mashup.
Pamela added that CosmoQuest will differentiate itself by stressing community-building and learning.
Example of a lunar flash, photographed in 1953. Credit: Leon Stuart/Columbia University Department of Astronomy
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For hundreds of years, people have seen tiny flashes of light on the surface of the Moon. Very brief, but bright enough to be seen from Earth, these odd flashes still hadn’t been adequately explained up until now. Also known as Transient Lunar Phenomena (TLPs), they’ve been observed on many occasions, but rarely photographed. On Earth, meteorites burning up in the atmosphere can produce similar flashes, but the Moon has no atmosphere for anything to burn up in, so what could be causing them? As it turns out, according to a new study, the answer is still meteorites, but for a slightly different reason.
The lights don’t result from burning up as on Earth, but rather are hot blobs of material produced by the impact itself. The impacts were calculated to be powerful enough to melt the meteorites, producing super hot liquid droplets, called melt droplets, that produced light as they formed and then began to cool afterwards. The meteorites themselves can be tiny, but still cause an impact that could be seen from Earth.
Sylvain Bouley, a planetary scientist at the Paris Observatory and co-author of the study, explains: “You have just a small piece of cometary material or asteroid, about 10 centimeters, that can do a very bright flash visible from the Earth.”
Fellow planetary scientist Carolyn Ernst of Johns Hopkins University’s Applied Physics Laboratory, adds: “Something is melting, and because it’s so hot, it radiates in the visible wavelength until it cools down.”
The study included observations from 1999 – 2007, for which the brightness of the flashes and sizes and speeds of the meteorites were calculated.
The impacts have also been replicated at the Meteoroid Environment Office at the Marshall Space Flight Center, where tiny aluminum spheres were shot into simulated lunar dirt. The results were similar, helping to confirm the other team’s findings.
Other previous possible explanations included reflections on the Moon by tumbling satellites or even volcanic activity. There may still be debate though, as an earlier report in 2007 had attributed the flashes to outgassing on the Moon’s surface.
The paper will be published in the March 2012 issue of Icarus.
Animation of asteroid 2012 BX34's flyby of Earth on January 27, 2012, at 11:04 UTC, using the GRAS telescope in New Mexico, USA. E. Credit: Guido, G. Sostero & N. Howes
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Small asteroid 2012 BX34 skimmed past Earth today, January 27, 2012, with closest approach at about 15:25 UT, and it passed only about 59,044 km (36,750 miles) or about ~0.2 lunar distance (or 0.0004 AU) above the Earth’s surface. It was discovered just a few days ago by the Catalina Sky Survey in Arizona.
Above is an animation created by image from Ernesto Guido, Giovanni Sostero & Nick Howes from the Remanzacco Observatory in Italy. However, they took this series of images remotely from the iTelescope (formerly called GRAS), near Mayhill, New Mexico, using a 0.10-m f/5 reflector + CCD.
“According to its absolute magnitude (H=27.6) this asteroid has an estimated diameter of roughly 8-18 meters, so it is very small,” the team said on their website. “At the moment of our images from New Mexico on January 27, 11:04UT, 2012 BX34 was moving at about ~318.86 “/min and its magnitude was ~15. At the moment of its close approach around 15UT of today, 2012 BX34 will be bright as magnitude ~13.8 and moving at ~1810 “/min.”
Below is a single 120-seconds exposure showing the object as a ~11-arcminutes trail (due to its fast speed). Also below is a video from Peter Lake using his telescope in New Mexico remotely from Melbourne Australia, who took a series of 11 images just 6 hours before its closest approach.
Single image of 2012 BX34's flyby of Earth on January 27, 2012, at 11:04 UTC, using the iTelescope telescope in New Mexico, USA. E. Credit: Guido, G. Sostero & N. Howes.
See this link to see an image taken by legendary comet and asteroid hunter Rob McNaught, using a telescope in Sliding Spring, Australia. McNaught’s data was used by the Goldstone Deep Space Communications Complex to obtain radar imagery to determine BX34’s shape, size and orbital parameters. At this point, there are various estimates of the asteroid’s size, which will be refined from all the data gathered by the various telescopes. But astronomers from JPL’s Asteroid Watch said the space rock was small enough that it wouldn’t have survived a trip through Earth’s atmosphere if it had been on a collision course with our planet.
The team from the Remanzacco Observatory have a great table on their website, the the top 20 closest approaches by NEOs (Near-Earth Objects) sorted by nominal distance. The table was computed on the NASA/Neo-JPL website.
Thanks to all the astronomers for sharing their images with Universe Today. We’ll add more as they become available.
Newt Gingrich certainly has his own political motives for suddenly deciding that now is the time to see that the decades-long dream of a lunar base finally makes it to fruition. But in addressing the issue of the U.S.’ future role in space, he arguably gave the most informed answer of anyone on stage at Thursday night’s Republican presidential debate in Jacksonville, Florida.
Mitt Romney’s measured response of first consulting with an interdisciplinary group of academics, captains of industry and the military, seemed to leave out NASA itself. But he was right in acknowledging that whatever the country’s next move in manned spaceflight might be, it should be tempered with some realistic rate of commercial and industrial return on America’s investment.
Gingrich seems better versed in the hardware and specifics of what’s needed for a manned return to the moon. But Romney’s admonition to Gingrich about making politically-expedient campaign promises simply to placate Florida’s Spacecoast also rings true.
While it’s heartening that America’s future role in space is being discussed in such high profile public forums, the last thing the U.S. needs is for a presidential candidate to wantonly raise the issue of finally realizing the dream of a manned lunar base in a cynical attempt to lure Florida voters in the space industry.
But given the current level of private space entrepreneurship, Romney’s own admonition that a lunar base would likely cost hundreds of billions of dollars seems a bit out of touch.
While it’s true that the international space station turned into a $100 billion financial behemoth, Gingrich’s ideas about adapting existing Atlas V launcher technology for a return manned trip to the moon sounds interesting, if not altogether feasible.
And he struck the right note when he acknowledged the need for entrepreneurial involvement from the get-go. A public-private partnership, with emphasis on commercial technology spin-offs, might be the needed tonic to restart a serious lunar effort.
A few $50 million prizes for Moon-minded, space entrepreneurs would go a long way in jumpstarting innovation while bringing down costs. Depiction of possible Lunar Base. Credit: NASA
This whole manned lunar colony issue is likely to be largely forgotten after next Tuesday’s Florida primary, but some version of it will come up again at this summer’s political conventions and again in the general election debates next Fall.
Let’s just hope that when it does, it prompts a national discussion on NASA’s role in the 21st century; and how in these financially-strapped times, the U.S. can mount a manned mission back to the Moon, to an asteroid or even on to Mars in a realistic way.
There also needs to be a serious rethink of how NASA selects and then funds its missions. As any science journalist can attest, too often whole NASA missions are scrapped only months before launch; or launches are rescheduled so many times that the space agency begins to lose credibility with its own proponents. Just who’s to ultimately blame for the current state of affairs is hard to pinpoint. But serious astronomers and space researchers can hardly be thrilled about how such projects are currently funded and implemented.
Unfortunately, the general public is largely out of the loop when it comes to understanding the vagaries of NASA funding. The public’s limited exposure to national space policy nowadays mostly comes in the form of politicians on the campaign stump. There, political candidates use the same hackneyed catchphrases about exploring our “final frontier” just a little too often to evoke any real goosebumps.
But if the U.S. is to maintain its national identity as the world’s premier technological power, it needs to make sure that space is part of that equation. The byproducts of its dot.com generation and social media gurus are a marvel. But a Twitter from a South Pole lunar base would inspire the world.
Viewing the South Pole of Vesta and Rhea Silvia Impact Basin. This image obtained by Dawn’s framing camera shows the south pole of the giant asteroid Vesta and the circular Rheasilvia impact basin which scientists believe originated by a collision with another asteroid early in the asteroid's history. The image was recorded from a distance of about 1,700 miles (2,700 kilometers). The image resolution is about 260 meters per pixel. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/UCLA/MPS/DLR/IDA
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The mysterious asteroid Vesta may well have more surprises in store. Despite past observations that Vesta would be nearly bone dry, newly published research indicates that about half of the giant asteroid is sufficiently cold and dark enough that water ice could theoretically exist below the battered surface.
Scientists working at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., and the University of Maryland have derived the first models of Vesta’s average global temperatures and illumination by the Sun based on data obtained from the Hubble Space Telescope.
“Near the north and south poles, the conditions appear to be favorable for water ice to exist beneath the surface,” says Timothy Stubbs of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., and the University of Maryland, Baltimore County. The research by Timothy Stubbs and Yongli Wang, of the Goddard Planetary Heliophysics Institute at the University of Maryland, was published in the January 2012 issue of the journal Icarus.
If any water lurks beneath Vesta, it would most likely exist at least 10 feet (3 meters) below the North and South poles because the models predict that the poles are the coldest regions on the giant asteroid and the equatorial regions are too warm. Global Map of Average Surface Temperature of Vesta
This global map of average surface temperature shows the warmer equatorial zone of the giant asteroid Vesta is likely too warm to sustain water ice below the surface. But roughly half of Vesta is so cold and receives so little sunlight on average that water ice could have survived there for billions of years. The dividing lines (solid gray) are found at about 27 degrees north latitude and 27 degrees south latitude. This map, with temperatures given in kelvins, comes from the first published models of the average global temperature and illumination conditions on Vesta. Credit: NASA/GSFC/UMBC
If proven, the existence of water ice at Vesta would have vast implications for the formation and evolution of the tiny body and upend current theories.
The surface of Vesta is not cold enough for ice to survive all the time because unlike the Moon, it probably does not have any significant permanently shadowed craters where water ice could stay frozen on the surface indefinitely.
Even the huge 300 mile diameter (480-kilometer) crater at the South Pole is not a good candidate for water ice because Vesta is tilted 27 degrees on its axis, a bit more than Earth’s tilt of 23 degrees.
By contrast, the Moon is only tilted 1.5 degrees and possesses many permanently shadowed craters. NASA’s LCROSS impact mission proved that water ice exists inside permanently shadowed lunar craters.
New modeling shows that, under present conditions, Vesta's polar regions are cold enough (less than about 145 kelvins) to sustain water ice for billions of years, as this map of average surface temperature around the asteroid's south pole indicates.
The models predict that the average annual temperature around Vesta’s poles is below minus 200 degrees Fahrenheit (145 kelvins). Water ice is not stable above that temperature in the top 10 feet of Vestan soil, or regolith.
At the equator and in a band stretching to about 27 degrees north and south in latitude, the average annual temperature is about minus 190 degrees Fahrenheit (145 kelvins), which is too high for the ice to survive.
“On average, it’s colder at Vesta’s poles than near its equator, so in that sense, they are good places to sustain water ice,” says Stubbs in a NASA statement. “But they also see sunlight for long periods of time during the summer seasons, which isn’t so good for sustaining ice. So if water ice exists in those regions, it may be buried beneath a relatively deep layer of dry regolith.”
Vesta is the second most massive asteroid in the main Asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter.
NASA’s Dawn Asteroid Orbiter is the very first mission to Vesta and achieved orbit in July 2011 for a 1 year long mission.
Dawn is currently circling Vesta at its lowest planned orbit. The three science instruments are snapping pictures and the spectrometers are collecting data on the elemental and mineralogical composition of Vesta.
The onboard GRaND spectrometer in particular could shed light on the question of whether water ice exists at Vesta.
So far no water has been detected, but the best data is yet to come.
In July 2012, Dawn fires up its ion thrusters and spirals out of orbit to begin the journey to Ceres, the largest asteroid of them all.
Ceres is believed to harbor huge caches of water, either as ice or in the form of oceans and is a potential habitat for life.
Today is NASA’s Day of Remembrance, a occasion to recall the seventeen astronauts who have died in pursuit of space exploration. The anniversaries of each accident — Apollo 1, Challenger, and Columbia — fall eerily close together, and give us recourse to stop and think about the cost of traveling beyond our planet.
The Apollo 1 crew. From the left: Ed White, Gus Grissom, and Roger Chaffee. Credit: NASA
On January 27, 1967, the Apollo 1 crew was killed when a fire broke out in the command module during a routine prelaunch test. Engineers outside the spacecraft were unable to open the hatch and the crew died of asphyxiation.
Commander Gus Grissom was one of NASA’s first astronauts, a veteran of the Mercury and Gemini programs. Senior pilot Ed White was a Gemini veteran already in the history books as the first American to complete extra-vehicular activity, more commonly known as a spacewalk. The mission’s pilot was Roger Chaffee, a rookie whose first flight would be Apollo 1.
The Challenger crew. From the left: Ellison Onizuka, Michael Smith, Christa McAuliffe, Dick Scobee, Gregory Jarvis, Judith Resnick, and Ronald McNair. Credit: NASA
On January 28, 1986, the NASA’s Shuttle program experienced its first major setback. Just 73 seconds after the launch of STS-51, one of the external booster rockets failed. A faulty o-ring didn’t make a tight seal over one of the joints and a jet of hot flame escaped. This breached the external fuel tank, allowing the liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen it contained to come into contact. The fuel ignited and the tank exploded. The force ripped the Challenger orbiter apart, killing the crew of seven.
Commander Dick Scobee, Mission Specialists Ronald McNair, Ellison Onizuka, and Judith Resnick, as well as Pilot Michael Smith were veteran astronauts. Payload specialist Gregory Jarvis was making his first flight into space, as was Christa McAuliffe. McAuliffe, the most recognizable member of the crew, was part of NASA’s Teacher in Space program. Her participation on the flight symbolized the accessibility of space and was an inspiration to children. Millions of students across the nation had followed her story and saw the disaster unfold on live television.
On February 1, 2003, the orbiter Columbia disintegrated during reentry; NASA lost contact with the crew just 16 minutes before its planned landing. A piece of foam had fallen from one of the external solid rocket boosters during launch, tearing a hole in the orbiter’s wing. With its structural integrity compromised, the forces of reentry became too great, and the spacecraft fell apart. None of the crew survived.
The Columbia crew. From the left: Mission Specialist David Brown, Commander Rick Husband, Mission Specialists Laurel Clark, Kalpana Chawla and Michael Anderson, Pilot William McCool and Payload Specialist Ilan Ramon. Credit: NASA.
Commander Rick husband was a veteran astronaut, as were Mission Specialists Kalpana “K.C.” Chawla and Michael Anderson. The rest of the crew made their first spaceflight on the STS-107 mission: Pilot Willie McCool, Payload Specialist Ilan Ramon and Mission Specialists Laurel Salton Clark and David Brown.
The very thin silver lining, and what we should bear in mind as we mourn fallen astronauts, is that NASA has learned from these experiences. The sacrifices these men and women have made has made spaceflight safer. Risk is a inescapable part of human space exploration, but that doesn’t make it not worthwhile.
Grissom poses with his Mercury Capsule Liberty Bell 7. Credit: NASA.
Gus Grissom serendipitously wrote his memoirs during the Gemini program, and address the risk inherent in spaceflight in his closing paragraph. I can think of no better words, and so I’ll let Grissom set the tone we ought to take when remembering those lost in pursuit of space exploration: “There will be risks, as there are in any experimental program, and sooner or later, inevitably, we’re going to run head-on into the law of averages and lose somebody. I hope this never happens… but if it does, I hope the American people won’t feel it’s too high a price to pay for our space program.”
Another edition of our weekly space hangout. This week we talked about a week of space remembrance, solar storms, Newt’s plans for a 2020 lunar base, arsenic and old news, black holes and their galaxies and the death of Phobos-Grunt.
Want to catch these episodes live? Visit the Cosmoquest Hangouts page and you’ll see them when they happen.
