Posted on by Fraser Cain

Book Review: The Life and Death of Planet Earth


I never thought a book about astrobiology could be depressing, but when I put down The Life and Death of Planet Earth by Peter D. Ward and Donald Brownlee, I couldn’t help but feel kind of glum.

Over the course of nearly 300 pages, Ward and Brownlee take a look at our planet and its inhabitants. They chart the Earth’s formation, the catastrophic events that shaped its history, and the rise of life, and finally the evolution of higher life forms. This is familiar territory that they covered in more depth in their previous book, Rare Earth. If you stopped reading here, it would be a happy book.

But there’s lots more to read. They then go on to predict what the future holds for our planet. Whether it will end in fire or ice? Apparently both… and worse. In case you didn’t know, we’re probably enjoying a warm siesta between severe ice ages. And while there are cold times ahead they will eventually end. Our Sun is steadily increasing in temperature – and as the temperatures rise, the biologic diversity on Earth will shrink (it’s possible that we’ve already gone past the height of life’s diversity and we’re already on the slide down). Eventually higher life forms won’t be able to survive, then the plants will go, and finally, hardy heat-loving bacteria living in the highest mountains at the Poles will be driven to extinction and the Earth will be a lifeless, dead world. Then the Sun will enter the final stages of its life, balloon out past the orbit of the Earth, and consume our planet in a fiery afterthought.

Like I said, depressing. But don’t worry, we’ve got a few hundred million years left to enjoy our planet before we’re driven off it as a species.

Ward and Brownlee tell an engaging story, and I was pretty hooked from beginning to end. There’s lots of scientific terminology, but it’s always well explained – easy reading for almost anyone. At each point they stop to describe our future world, they step away from the science and just tell you what you’d see if you looked around. It was very easy to imagine what it must be like to stand on a sun-parched landscape and see our descendants struggling to survive.

The Life and Death of Planet Earth isn’t without hope, though. There are plans afoot to change the Earth’s orbit by engineering near misses by asteroids – hopefully this could set our planet on an outward spiral that always keeps us in the right distance to enjoy a temperate environment. They encourage ongoing research into space exploration as a way to avoid our ultimate fate.

I’m hoping Ward and Brownlee will continue on this path for another book, and maybe paint a portrait of how the Universe will end. After all the galaxies have drifted apart; after all the stars have decayed and turned into white dwarfs or black holes; after black holes have consumed all the matter there is; and after the black holes themselves have evaporated, leaving us with a Universe of elementary particles accelerating away from each other into the darkness.

Have a nice day. 🙂

Posted on by Fraser Cain

Cargo Ship Docks with Space Station

Image credit: NASA

A Russian-built Progress cargo ship docked with the International Space Station on Tuesday, bringing food and supplies to the three-astronaut crew. Since the space shuttles have been grounded after the disaster, the astronauts will depend on these ships in the coming months. A manned flight is scheduled for April or May to relieve them.

A Russian Progress 10 resupply craft successfully docked to the International Space Station today, two days after it was launched from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan.

The cargo ship linked up to the aft port of the Zvezda Service Module at 8:49 a.m. CST (1449 GMT) following a flawless automated approach to the complex. The Progress is carrying a ton of food, fuel and supplies for the Expedition 6 crew on board the ISS. At the time of docking, the ISS was flying 240 statute miles over central Asia.

Expedition 6 Commander Ken Bowersox, Flight Engineer Nikolai Budarin and NASA ISS Science Officer Don Pettit monitored the docking of the Progress from inside the station in their 73rd day in space, their 71st day on board the orbital outpost.

The station crewmembers planned to open the hatch between Zvezda and the Progress around 1:00 p.m. CST (1900 GMT) following leak checks between the two craft, but its supplies will not be unloaded until Wednesday morning. The successful arrival of the Progress assures that the three station residents will have plenty of supplies to continue their mission until late June or early July, if required.

Among the supplies in the new Progress are replacement parts for the Microgravity Science Glovebox in the Destiny laboratory, which experienced a power failure back in November and has been dormant during Expedition 6. Pettit plans to install the new parts and test the Glovebox Wednesday. If it works, the Glovebox will be used to support all of the experiments planned for this Expedition before the crew returns to Earth in March.

Bowersox, Budarin and Pettit will pay a private tribute on orbit today to Columbia?s astronauts. Station flight controllers will radio to the crew an audio feed from the memorial ceremony at the Johnson Space Center in Houston, TX, which is being attended by President Bush and Mrs. Bush, and NASA Administrator Sean O?Keefe.

Original Source: NASA News Release

Posted on by Fraser Cain

Inquiry Uncovers More Clues to Shuttle Disaster

NASA engineers have uncovered more clues about the destruction of the space shuttle Columbia. According to sensors, the shuttle was being pulled to the left by increased drag on its wing. Small jets that maintain the shuttle’s direction were attempting to compensate, but weren’t able to overcome the forces turning it to the side. Engineers are also investigating how a dislodged chunk of insulating foam could have damaged the shuttle’s heat tiles, but it seems increasingly unlikely that it could have struck with enough force to cause any harm.

Posted on by Fraser Cain

Bush Attends Columbia Memorial

Thousands of workers, friends and family held a memorial today in Houston say farewell to the seven astronauts who died Saturday morning when the space shuttle Columbia broke up above Texas. Amid memorial speechs, Bush vowed that “America’s space program will go on,” confirming the agency’s resolve to continue space exploration. The memorial ended with the ringing of a Navy bell, once for each astronaut, and then a “missing man” formation of fighter jets.

Posted on by Fraser Cain

Space Shuttle Columbia Destroyed, Crew Feared Lost

NASA controllers lost contact with the space shuttle Columbia around 1400 GMT (9:00am EST) somewhere over the Dallas/Fort Worth area of Texas – only 15 minutes before it was scheduled to land in Florida. The seven astronaut crew are feared lost as large chunks of debris have been seen raining over the area. NASA controllers had no warning that there was a problem, and are currently working to uncover what happened. So far, there is no suspicion of terrorism.

NASA is planning press conferences on Saturday to release more details.

Posted on by Fraser Cain

Pegasus Rocket Launches NASA SORCE Satellite

Image credit: NASA

A Pegasus XL rocket successfully launched NASA’s SORCE satellite on Saturday afternoon. The Pegasus was released from its Stargazer L-1011 carrier aircraft at an altitude of nearly 12,000 metres, and it then ignited and flew the satellite into orbit. SORCE contains five instruments designed to observe the Sun.

NASA’s Solar Radiation and Climate Experiment (SORCE) successfully launched Saturday aboard a Pegasus XL rocket.

“Saturday’s successful launch adds to our constellation of Earth-viewing satellites that help us to understand and protect our home planet,” said Dr. Ghassem Asrar, NASA’s Associate Administrator for Earth Sciences, Washington.

“We are all tremendously excited about whatby what we will learn about the solar climate connection from SORCE,” said Bill Ochs, SORCE Project Manager at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. “We’re very proud of the mission team led by the University of Colorado and supported by Orbital Sciences Corporation. This mission is a great example of how NASA, universities, and industry can partner to create successful missions.”

Over the next few days, the mission team will ensure the spacecraft is functioning properly. The SORCE science instruments will then be turned on and their health verified. Approximately 21 days after launch, the instruments will start science data collection, and calibration will begin. Once in its final orbital position, SORCE will be approximately 397 miles (640 kilometers) above the Earth it will study the sun’s influence on the Earth. It will measure how the sun affects the ozone layer, atmospheric circulation, clouds and oceans.

This mission is a joint partnership between NASA and the University of Colorado’s Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics in Boulder, Colorado. The mission is a principal investigator led mission with NASA providing management and scientific oversight and engineering support. Scientists and engineers at the University of Colorado designed, built, calibrated, and tested the four science instruments on the spacecraft.

The University subcontracted with Orbital Sciences Corporation for the spacecraft and observatory integration and testing. The Mission Operations Center and the Science Operations Center are both operated at the University. The University will operate the spacecraft over its five-year mission life and is responsible for the acquisition, management, processing, and distribution of the science data.

Original Source: NASA News Release

Posted on by Fraser Cain

New Mission to Study the Earth’s Clouds

Image credit: NASA

CloudSat, a new satellite mission planned to launch in 2004, will use an advanced radar to study the properties of clouds. It will measure every aspect of the Earth’s clouds, including thickness, height, water and ice content. Using its cloud-penetrating radar, it should be able to increase the accuracy of severe storm, hurricane and flood warnings. It will also fly in orbital formation with several other weather satellites to help form a more complete picture of the Earth’s weather.

“I’ve looked at clouds from both sides now, from up and down and still somehow
It’s clouds’ illusions I recall. I really don’t know clouds at all…”

So laments Joni Mitchell’s classic song “Both Sides Now,” appropriate words as NASA prepares for a mission that should remove much of the mystery from those “rows and flows of angel hair” that so affect Earth’s weather and climate, yet are so misunderstood.

CloudSat, the most advanced radar designed to measure the properties of clouds, will provide the first global measurements of cloud thickness, height, water and ice content, and a wide range of precipitation data linked to cloud development. The Earth System Science Pathfinder Mission is expected to improve weather forecasting and advance our understanding of key climate processes during its two-year design lifetime. CloudSat is planned for launch in 2004 aboard a Boeing Delta rocket from Vandenberg Air Force Base, Calif. NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., manages the mission for NASA’s Earth Explorers Program Office at the Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md.

“Despite the fundamental role of clouds in climate and weather, there is much we do not know about them,” said CloudSat Principal Investigator Dr. Graeme Stephens of Colorado State University’s Department of Atmospheric Science, Fort Collins, Colo. “The lack of understanding of cloud feedback is widely acknowledged in the scientific community to be a major obstacle confronting credible prediction of climate change. CloudSat aims to provide observations necessary to greatly advance understanding of climate issues.”

Stephens and Co-Principal Investigator Dr. Deborah Vane of JPL discuss the necessity of CloudSat’s measurements in the current Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society. “The vertical profiles of global cloud properties provided by CloudSat will fill a critical gap in the understanding of how clouds affect climate, uncovering new knowledge about clouds and precipitation, and the connection of clouds to the large-scale motions of Earth’s atmosphere,” Vane said.

CloudSat will help researchers in numerous disciplines. It will provide better understanding of climate processes by supporting new, detailed investigations of how clouds determine Earth’s energy balance and how Earth responds to the incoming solar energy that fuels the climate system. It will improve weather prediction models by measuring cloud properties from the top of the atmosphere to Earth’s surface, filling in a gap in existing and planned space observational systems. CloudSat’s radar can penetrate thick cloud systems, providing information to increase the accuracy of severe storm, hurricane and flood warnings. CloudSat will improve water resource management by linking climate conditions such as El Nino to hydrological processes that affect drought, severe weather and water supply availability. The mission will also develop advanced technologies, including high-power radar sources, methods of radar signal transmission within spacecraft, and integrated geophysical retrieval algorithms.

CloudSat will fly in orbital formation with NASA’s Aqua and Aura satellites, the French Space Agency’s Parasol satellite, and the NASA-French Space Agency Calipso satellite. Its radar measurements will overlap those of the other satellites. It will be the first time five research satellites fly together. The precision of the radar overlap creates a unique multi-satellite observing system, providing unsurpassed information about the role of clouds in weather and climate.

Colorado State’s Stephens conceived CloudSat. JPL, with the Canadian Space Agency, developed the mission’s first-ever space borne millimeter wavelength profiling radar, which measures the altitude and physical properties of clouds. Ball Aerospace, Boulder, Colo., is building the spacecraft. The U.S. Air Force will operate CloudSat on-orbit and deliver raw data to the Cooperative Institute for Research in the Atmosphere at Colorado State, which will process the data for the scientific community, civilian and military weather forecast agencies. The U.S. Department of Energy and an international team of scientists will provide independent verification of the radar performance through its Atmospheric Radiation Measurement Program.

NASA’s Earth Science Enterprise is dedicated to understanding the Earth as an integrated system and applying Earth system science to improve prediction of climate, weather, and natural hazards using the vantage point of space. This mandate is part of NASA’s overall mission to understand and protect our home planet. The California Institute of Technology in Pasadena manages JPL for NASA.

Original Source: NASA/JPL News Release

Posted on by Fraser Cain

China Decides on October for Human Spaceflight

Officials from the Chinese Space Agency announced on Friday that they tentatively plan to launch humans into space in October of 2003. China has already launched four prototype Shenzhou spacecraft, with the most recent being a virtual replica of a manned space capsule. According to reports, 14 experienced fighter pilots have been training to become taikonauts for years.

Posted on by Fraser Cain

Shuttle Mission Host to Many Scientific Experiments

Image credit: NASA

The crew of the space shuttle Columbia have been busy over the last few days as they’ve been completing a series of scientific experiments. Once series of experiments, held in a specially built module, is designed to help scientists understand soot formation, oxidation and radiative properties of flames. There were also a group of biomedical experiments to test the human body’s response to weightlessness.

Columbia’s astronauts studied combustion properties and the response of their own bodies in weightlessness and the behavior of soot in space one-quarter of the way through their marathon scientific research mission.

Red Team members Commander Rick Husband, Mission Specialists Kalpana Chawla and Laurel Clark and Israeli Payload Specialist Ilan Ramon completed the first data collection sessions with the Combustion Module in the Spacehab research module housed in Columbia’s cargo bay. One of three experiments housed in the Combustion Module — the study of Laminar Soot Processes (LSP) — is designed to gain a better understanding of soot formation, oxidation and radiative properties within flames.

Additional data was gleaned from the Mechanics of Granular Materials experiment (MGM) in the Spacehab module, which is providing information on the behavior of saturated sand when exposed to confining pressures in microgravity. The experiment could provide engineers with valuable data for strengthening buildings against earthquakes.

Work was also accomplished with a series of biomedical experiments studying the human body’s response to weightlessness — particularly dealing with protein manufacturing in the absence of a gravity environment, bone and calcium production, the formation of chemicals associated with renal stones and how saliva and urine change in space relative to any exposure to viruses.

Experiments continued with the MEIDEX cameras in the cargo bay observing dust storms in the Mediterranean region and with the SOLSE experiment, geared to studying the amount of ozone in the Earth’s atmosphere by using a special imaging spectrometer in the payload bay to look across the limb of the Earth during specifically scheduled orbits.

Columbia’s Blue Team science cadre — Pilot Willie McCool and Mission Specialists Dave Brown and Mike Anderson — planned to continue the more than 80 experiments on board Columbia following their wakeup call this afternoon. The Red team will begin its eight-hour sleep period just before 9 p.m. Central time.

Earlier today, TV cameras in the Spacehab research module captured Ramon conducting work with the Combustion Module. He reported that the materials science facility was operating perfectly as are all of the other experiment facilities aboard Columbia.

Aboard the International Space Station, Commander Ken Bowersox, Flight Engineer Nikolai Budarin and ISS Science Officer Don Pettit completed their second month in space by enjoying an off-duty day. The crew will return to a full complement of scientific research activities, exercise and routine ISS maintenance work on Monday. The ISS crew is working a schedule, which calls for them to be awakened every morning at 12:00 a.m. Central time and for their 8 ? hour sleep period to begin at 3:30 p.m. CST.

The ISS crew was informed that replacement parts for the Microgravity Science Glovebox will be ready for launch on the next Progress resupply vehicle to the ISS on February 2. With docking of that cargo ship to the ISS planned for Feb. 4, virtually all of the science planned for the facility during Expedition 6 will be accomplished as initially planned.

Original Source: NASA News Release

Posted on by Fraser Cain

I Want My NASA TV!

If you’re a Canadian? read this! If you’re not a Canadian, well, still read it… you can help us out. 🙂

I was visiting my Father about 5 years ago, and we were sitting in the kitchen when he said, “hey, it’s time to watch the floaters.” Wha? He turned on the kitchen television, and there was a live broadcast of some astronauts spacewalking outside the shuttle. I couldn’t believe my eyes.

Apparently, my clever Dad had jury-rigged an old satellite dish so that it would receive a television feed from NASA. NASA has a television channel, and it’s all about their space exploration. It could be the greatest thing ever. Okay, it gets a little boring between space launches, but overall, it’s a tremendous channel to have access to.

My Father, on remote Hornby Island, gets NASA television loud and clear. But there’s no way I can get it here in Vancouver. I called my cable company… nope. Then I got a digital satellite dish… nope, sorry.

The only place I can watch NASA TV is on my computer. Ever watched television on your computer? It’s small, blurry, choppy and cuts off all the time. Anyway, I stare enough at computer monitors.

I want my NASA TV.

Well much to my surprise, the Canadian Canadian Radio and Television Commission was actually in discussions to get the cable companies to offer it, but it all fell apart. We get Jerry Springer, but we can’t watch NASA TV. Fortunately, we do get the Daily Show with Jon Stewart, which is about the only thing that gets me to turn my television on these days.

Now there’s hope. The Friends of NASA TV in Canada. It’s a petition to try to convince the CRTC and cable companies to get us the space news we so richly deserve.

If you’re a Canadian, visit their website and sign the petition. Not only that, I want you find as many other Canadians who will do what you say, and get them to sign this. Do it!

If you’re not a Canadian, but you know a Canadian, I want you to send them an email begging them to sign this petition. You got it? Good.

I want my NASA TV.

Fraser Cain, Publisher
Universe Today