ad astra!

The end of the Shuttle program does not mean the end of space exploration for the United States. NASA is continuing to go places where humans can’t yet travel by sending robotic missions.

I’m very pro-robotic missions as they’re much cheaper, practical, and easier than human-crewed spaceflight and allow us to go places where it’s extraordinarily hazardous to send humans. While it’s pretty to think of human explorers walking on Mars or seeing Jupiter rise from the landscape of Ganymede I think our notions of exploration are still too fantastical for our technology. Space exploration by humans is a daunting task. From a practical standpoint is ridiculous to even consider leaving the planet—everything we need we must take with us: food, air, water, shelter—so it’s best to let our machines (that have far fewer needs than our fragile bodies) make the trip. On the other hand, of course, all human voyages since the birth of our species have been impractical, from our first travels out of Africa, pre-columbian migration to the Americas, the exploration of Antarctica and the moon shot all required extraordinary courage, skill, and perseverance.

There are several challenges when it comes to getting to Mars and while I don’t think they’re insurmountable they do make a touchdown on the surface out of our reach for right now. A voyage to the outer planets would be even more challenging in terms of time and complexity. I do believe we’ll make it one day, if not in my lifetime. We also have a great many problems here on Earth that need addressing, as well, and robotic missions spare us the resources (would that we used them) to work out the problems humans having living and working on Earth, let alone in outer space.

But I digress. Until we’ve overcome the difficulties of exploring space in person we can send machines to do the work. Which is exactly what NASA will be focused on in the next few years.

There is an amazing amount of work being done by space probes right now. Here’s a list of current space probes, both by NASA and other space agencies:

Mercury — MESSENGER
Venus — Venus Express
Moon — Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, Chang’e 2
Mars — Opportunity rover, Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, Mars Express, Mars Odyssey
Asteroids — Dawn (Vesta and Ceres)
Saturn — Cassini
Pluto/Kuiper Belt — New Horizons
Comets — Rosetta
Beyond — Voyagers 1 and 2
As a side note, Voyager 1 is the most distant man-made object in history, and the fastest space probe with a velocity of 38,400mph relative to the sun.

But that’s not the end of things. NASA plans two exploratory launches yet this year: Juno and Curiosity.

Juno is the next mission to Jupiter. The spacecraft will carry 7 instruments to examine the formation and evolution of Jupiter. Not only will this mission give insight into the formation of our own solar system, it will also shed light on the numerous extrasolar planets that are thought to be analogous to Jupiter and the other gas giants of our own solar system.

Juno will launch between August 5 and August 26, 2011 and arrive at Jupiter in 2016.


Due to advances in solar panel technology Juno will also be the first mission to the outer planets to use solar power, rather than a radioisotope thermoelectric generator. Each of Juno’s three solar panels are more than 30 feet long.

Curiosity (also know as the Mars Science Laboratory), on the other hand, will use an RTG, like the Viking landers before it. This will allow the Mini Cooper-sized rover to operate during any season and in a variety of weather.

As I mentioned above, MSL is the size of a Mini Cooper automobile. It’s by far the largest rover ever to be sent to Mars. Curiosity’s enormous size will allow it to carry the most robust suite of instruments and experiments ever brought to Mars. NASA has assigned Curiosity the tasks of determining whether life ever arose on Mars, characterizing the climate and geology (areology) of Mars, and preparing for human exploration.
Curiosity launches between November 25 and December 18, with a Martian landing in August of 2012.

Curiosity will weigh nearly a full short ton and, illustrative of the problems of a Mars landing, the Jet Propulsion Laboratory has come up with an ambitious landing scheme in which the rover will be dropped out of the sky by a crane. If all goes well, Curiosity is expected to explore the area around Gale crater for over two (Earth) years.

These two missions highlight the future of space exploration, both human and robotic, and point towards a promising future of exploration in our solar system and beyond.

Hail Columbia and the Heroes of STS-107
Brown – Clark – Chawla – Anderson – Ramon – Husband – McCool

Image above: STS107-735-032 — The STS-107 crewmembers pose for their traditional in-flight crew portrait aboard the Space Shuttle Columbia. From the left (bottom row, red team) are astronauts Kalpana Chawla, mission specialist; Rick D. Husband, mission commander; Laurel B. Clark, mission specialist; and Ilan Ramon, payload specialist. From the left (top row, blue team) are astronauts David M. Brown, mission specialist; William C. McCool, pilot; and Michael P. Anderson, payload commander. Credit: NASA


OV-102 Columbia prior to her final flight. (NASA photograph)

“She along with the crew had her life snuffed out in her prime. Just as her crew has, Columbia has left us quite a legacy….hail Columbia.”
    —Captain Robert Crippen (Pilot, STS-1)

I have a little bit more to say about this mission and tragedy than Challenger (and Apollo 1, from January 27) because on January 16, 2003 at 10:39 I was able to see something I had wanted to witness since I was a little kid: a shuttle launch. I learned about the crew—I was interested to find that Ilan Ramon, Israel’s first astronaut, even shared my birthday—and their science mission, and was even on the KSC tour bus with Rick Husband’s wife and kids.

Mission insignia of STS-107.

I’ll never forget a little girl’s proud voice saying, “My daddy’s the commander!” and wondering what it would be like to be a little kid whose daddy was an astronaut.

So February 1st will always be a very sad day for me; I remember seeing Challenger on television but I will always feel a personal connection to this crew and to Columbia, who were fated not to return to us.

There is heavy grief in our hearts, which will diminish with time, but it will never go away. And we won’t ever forget. Hail Rick, Willie, K.C., Mike, Laurel, Dave and Ilan. Hail Columbia.
    —Captain Robert Crippen (Pilot, STS-1)

More:
NASA Human Spaceflight Crew Memorial Page
NASA History Office Memorial
NASA Shuttle Mission Archive
Shuttle Columbia and Her Crew
Mars Rover Spirit Honors the Crew of Space Shuttle Columbia
And, eerily, you can hear the final Wake Up Calls for the crew (RealAudio .rm):

• Red Team – “Scotland the Brave” by The Black Watch and the band of the 51st Highland Brigade (for Laurel Clark)
• Blue Team – “If You’ve Been Delivered” by Kirk Franklin (For Michael Anderson)

Twenty-five years ago, on 28 January 1986 at 11:39 AM EST the Space Shuttle Challenger was lost with all hands. This was at the time the largest loss of any crew in the history of space exploration, and by far the first to be so public.

The 27th marks the 44th anniversary of the Apollo 1 fire, the 28th the Challenger Disaster, and the 1st of February the loss of Columbia and her crew. All great and daring endeavors carry a cost—these 17 brave men and women paid the highest price.

11:39:13.628    Last validated Orbiter telemetry measurement
11:39:13.641    End of last reconstructured data frame with
                valid synchronization and frame count
11:39:14.140    Last radio frequency signal from Orbiter
11:39:14.597    Bright flash in vicinity of Orbiter nose

Here’s a slightly updated repost of my original post from 2007:

In Memory of STS-51L and her Courageous Crew of Seven Heroes
McNair – Onizuka – Resnick – McAuliffe – Jarvis – Scobee – Smith

Image above: STS-51L Crew photo with Commander Francis R. Scobee, Pilot Michael J. Smith, Mission Specialists Judith A. Resnik, Ellison S. Onizuka, Ronald E. McNair and Payload Specialists Gregory B. Jarvis and Sharon Christa McAuliffe. Image Credit: NASA

We will never forget them, nor the last time we saw them, this morning, as they prepared for their journey and waved goodbye and “slipped the surly bonds of earth” to “touch the face of God.”
    President Reagan, Address to the Nation, January 28, 1986

The Rogers Commission, upon investigation into the cause of the disaster, concluded:

The consensus of the Commission and participating investigative agencies is that the loss of the Space Shuttle Challenger was caused by a failure in the joint between the two lower segments of the right Solid Rocket Motor. The specific failure was the destruction of the seals that are intended to prevent hot gases from leaking through the joint during the propellant burn of the rocket motor. The evidence assembled by the Commission indicates that no other element of the Space Shuttle system contributed to this failure.

More:
NASA’s STS-51L Mission Page
NASA’s page for resources on the Challenger disaster

On the 27th of January 1967 a fatal fire claimed the first American lives of space exploration. This was the first disaster NASA had to cope with that cost human lives. The victims were:

• Vigil Ivan “Gus” Grissom— USAF Lt. Col. and veteran of Mercury-Redstone 4 (“Liberty Bell 7″) and Gemini 3 (“Molly Brown”).
• Edward Higgins White II— USAF Lt. Col. and veteran of Gemini 4.
• Roger Bruce Chaffee— USN Lt. Commander and native of Grand Rapids, MI.

NASA formed the Apollo 204 Review Board, which determined the cause of the accident was a result of several different engineering decisions that went into the design of the Apollo capsule:

• The highly pressurized 100% oxygen environment of the capsule,
• Wear and tear and the placement of electrical wiring inside the capsule,
• The overabundance of inflammable velcro placed throughout the cabin,
• Buildup of static electricity, at least in part due to the nylon suits worn by the astronauts.

Despite these conclusions the actual cause of the Apollo 1 fire was never determined.

In my hometown of Grand Rapids, Madison Ave between 32nd and 44th streets was renamed Roger B. Chaffee Memorial Boulevard, as is the planetarium at the Public Museum.

While officially designated Apollo/Saturn-204 at the time of the fire, the widows asked NASA to rename the mission Apollo 1.

I sent this as an email to my friend Brad, but I’m posting it here because it’s an interesting round-up of some current space missions.

Planck/Herschel
http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/planck/
http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/herschel/
The Planck spacecraft will survey the entire sky and measure the Cosmic Microwave Background Radiation: the heat left over from the big bang. It, along with the Herschel Observatory, orbit the Sun-Earth L2 point.

The Herschel Observatory is a space observatory that covers the far infrared and sub millimeter wavelengths. It focuses on four areas of study:

• Galaxy formation in the early universe and the evolution of galaxies;
• Star formation and its interaction with the interstellar medium;
• Chemical composition of atmospheres and surfaces of Solar System bodies, including planets, comets and moons;
• Molecular chemistry across the universe.

The Kepler Mission
http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/kepler/main/
Kepler trails behind Earth in solar orbit. The Kepler telescope has the largest mirror of any telescope outside of earth orbit (1.4m, Hubble’s is 2.4m). Kepler is a planet hunter that’s permanently pointed to stare at a small part of the sky, but surveys a huge sampling of stars. Kepler’s goals are to:

• Determine how many Earth-sized and larger planets there are in or near the habitable zone of a wide variety of different types of stars.
• Determine the range of size and shape of the orbits of these planets.
• Estimate how many planets there are in multiple-star systems.
• Determine the range of orbit size, brightness, size, mass and density of short-period giant planets.
• Identify additional members of each discovered planetary system using other techniques.
• Determine the properties of those stars that harbor planetary systems.

Kepler’s preliminary results are forthcoming, but it will be a few years until we get much news from its observations.

The Hubble Space Telescope
http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/hubble/main/
Hubble is probably my favorite, because it does a lot of general astronomy stuff in the visible spectrum.
STS-125′s refurbishment of Hubble provided two new instruments and repaired two that had failed. We’re just now starting to see data from after the servicing mission in May. The school-bus sized instrument is still probably the single most important thing mankind has ever built to increase our knowledge of the physical universe. Hubble carries six instruments, most of which are self-explanatory:

• Near Infrared Camera & Multi Object Spectrometer
• Wide Field Camera 3 (covers the visible spectrum, near infrared & near ultraviolet)
• Cosmic Origins Spectrograph (measures the properties of ultraviolet light)
• Advanced Camera for Surveys (the premiere instrument, covers ultraviolet through near-infrared)
• Space Telescope Imaging Spectrograph

SOHO
http://sohowww.nascom.nasa.gov/
I’m frequently enchanted by the Solar & Heliospheric Observatory’s pictures of the sun. Mostly because from Earth you’re not supposed to stare at the sun and I’ve always wanted to. The Sun is the life-giver to our planet and the most convenient star we have to study. I really just can’t stop looking. SOHO is also the discoverer of over 1,500 comets, keeps track of sunspots, solar flares, and CMEs, as well as space weather.

MESSENGER
http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/messenger/main/
The MErcury Surface, Space ENvironment, GEochemistry and Ranging probe just flew by Mercury today. MESSENGER has given us the most detailed pictures of Mercury to date. The only other data we have is from Mariner 10, which flew by Mercury and thus only imaged about 1/2 the planet. MESSENGER flew by Mercury today (Sept 29) and is scheduled to enter orbit in March of 2011.

Cassini
http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/cassini/main/
The Cassini orbiter was launched 11 years ago and has been in orbit around Saturn since 2004. The primary mission is complete, and funding was secured for an extension through 2010. Cassini carried the Huygens probe that landed on Titan and has continued to return spectacular images of the jewel of our solar system. Most recently Cassini has been studying the rings during Saturn’s equinox with the sun.
Of interesting note is that shortly after Galileo discovered Saturn’s rings they vanished, no doubt confusing the fuck out of Italy’s favorite heretic. The reason for this was that Saturn was at equinox and the thin rings weren’t visible edge-on with Galileo’s technology.

New Horizons
http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/newhorizons/main/
New Horizons is the fastest-moving man-made object. Ever. It passed by Jupiter on its way to Pluto. It’ll fly by Pluto in 2015. The people working on the NH team are pretty god damned bitter that Pluto’s not a planet anymore. Once the flyby is complete it’s expected that the probe will go on to study other objects in the Kuiper belt. My name is on a CD on the spacecraft, which will leave the solar system by 2029.

WMAP
http://map.gsfc.nasa.gov/
The WMAP mission has taught us more about cosmology in 8 years than we’ve ever learned, ever. The Planck mission is similar and has higher resolution.

Voyager
http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/voyager/
The Voyagers are still working, amazingly 30 years after launched. Their mission now is to study the limits of the solar system, the drop off of the solar wind, and the nature of the boundary between our solar system and interstellar space. One of them will return in a few hundred years and nearly destroy Earth.

I’m getting kinda pissed about ipower & their lax security…

Does anyone have any suggestions on how someone can make their website rock-solid secure? This is privately hosted but somehow it still gets fucked with from time to time. Of course I can’t afford my own private server, so that’s out of the picture, but regardless the holes in this thing are bothersome.

Nineteen years ago (tomorrow) the Hubble Space Telescope was launched aboard Discovery on STS-31. The Hubble, as you should know, was a milestone for astronomy, and it’s still bringing us spectacular images from outer space today.

See some of these amazing images here.