Posted on by Ken Kremer

Orion Crew Capsule Targeted for 2014 Leap to High Orbit

The Orion Exploration Flight Test-1 (EFT-1) is scheduled to launch the first unmanned Orion crew cabin into a high altitude Earth orbit in 2014 atop a Delta 4 Heavy rocket from Cape Canaveral, Florida. Artist’s concept. Credit: NASA

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NASA is on course to make the highest leap in human spaceflight in nearly 4 decades when an unmanned Orion crew capsule blasts off from Cape Canaveral, Fla., on a high stakes, high altitude test flight in early 2014.

A new narrated animation (see below) released by NASA depicts the planned 2014 launch of the Orion spacecraft on the Exploration Flight Test-1 (EFT-1) mission to the highest altitude orbit reached by a spaceship intended for humans since the Apollo Moon landing Era.

Orion is NASA’s next generation human rated spacecraft and designed for missions to again take humans to destinations beyond low Earth orbit- to the Moon, Mars, Asteroids and Beyond to deep space.


Orion Video Caption – Orion: Exploration Flight Test-1 Animation (with narration by Jay Estes). This animation depicts the proposed test flight of the Orion spacecraft in 2014. Narration by Jay Estes, Deputy for flight test integration in the Orion program.

Lockheed Martin Space Systems is making steady progress constructing the Orion crew cabin that will launch atop a Delta 4 Heavy booster rocket on a two orbit test flight to an altitude of more than 3,600 miles and test the majority of Orion’s vital vehicle systems.

The capsule will then separate from the upper stage, re-enter Earth’s atmosphere at a speed exceeding 20,000 MPH, deploy a trio of huge parachutes and splashdown in the Pacific Ocean off the west coast of California.

Lockheed Martin is responsible for conducting the critical EFT-1 flight under contract to NASA.

Orion will reach an altitude 15 times higher than the International Space Station (ISS) circling in low orbit some 250 miles above Earth and provide highly valuable in-flight engineering data that will be crucial for continued development of the spaceship.

Orion Exploration Flight Test One Overview. Credit: NASA

“This flight test is a challenge. It will be difficult. We have a lot of confidence in our design, but we are certain that we will find out things we do not know,” said NASA’s Orion Program Manager Mark Geyer.

“Having the opportunity to do that early in our development is invaluable, because it will allow us to make adjustments now and address them much more efficiently than if we find changes are needed later. Our measure of success for this test will be in how we apply all of those lessons as we move forward.”

Lockheed Martin is nearing completion of the initial assembly of the Orion EFT-1 capsule at NASA’s historic Michoud Assembly Facility (MAF) in New Orleans, which for three decades built all of the huge External Fuel Tanks for the NASA’s Space Shuttle program.

In May, the Orion will be shipped to the Kennedy Space Center in Florida for final assembly and eventual integration atop the Delta 4 Heavy rocket booster and launch from Space Launch Complex 37 at nearby Cape Canaveral. The Delta 4 is built by United Launch Alliance.

The first integrated launch of an uncrewed Orion is scheduled for 2017 on the first flight of NASA’s new heavy lift rocket, the SLS or Space Launch System that will replace the now retired Space Shuttle orbiters

Continued progress on Orion, the SLS and all other NASA programs – manned and unmanned – is fully dependent on the funding level of NASA’s budget which has been significantly slashed by political leaders of both parties in Washington, DC in recent years.

…….

March 24 (Sat): Free Lecture by Ken Kremer at the New Jersey Astronomical Association, Voorhees State Park, NJ at 830 PM. Topic: Atlantis, the End of Americas Shuttle Program, Orion, SpaceX, CST-100 and the Future of NASA Human & Robotic Spaceflight

Posted on by Nancy Atkinson

Look, It’s a Moon Buggy! LRO’s Best Look Ever at the Apollo 15 Landing Site

Apollo 15 landing site imaged from an altitude of 25 km, allowing the highest resolution view from orbit. The Lunar Roving Vehicle (LRV) is parked to the far right, and the Lunar Module descent stage is in the center, LRV tracks indicated with arrows. Credit: NASA/GSFC/Arizona State University.

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A new image from the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter’s Narrow Angle Camera provides the most detailed orbital look ever at the Apollo 15 landing site on the Moon. The image of the Hadley plains shows the hardware left behind by astronauts Dave Scott and Jim Irwin and the tracks from the lunar rover.

“We like to look at the Apollo landing site images because it’s fun,” said LRO principal investigator Mark Robinson said at a briefing last year on LRO images. And these latest images are really fun, as look how clearly the lunar lander and the ‘Moon buggy’ show up! (Click images for larger views.) Additionally, we can basically follow all the movements of the rover and the astronauts during their 67-hour stay on the Moon’s surface in August of 1971.

See below for a traverse map of their rover travels.

Apollo 15 traverse routes sketched on an image from LRO. Visible is Hadley Rille. Credit: NASA/GSFC/Arizona State University.

Apollo 15 was the first mission to have the Lunar Rover, which allowed the astronauts to traverse far from the Lunar Module and explore much more local geology than the astronauts on the previous missions (Apollo 11, 12, 14).

“Not only did the LRV allow the astronauts to move from place-to-place at a lively rate of eight to sixteen kilometers per hour (five to ten miles per hour), but the LRV also allowed brief periods of rest that in turn helped to conserve oxygen,” said Robinson on the LROC website.

The goals of Apollo 15 were to sample the basalts in the region, search for ancient crustal rocks and explore a lunar rille for the first time – the long, narrow depressions in the lunar surface that resemble channels. Additionally, Scott and Irwin deployed the third Apollo Lunar Surface Experiments Package (ALSEP), which consisted of several experiments that were powered by a Radioisotope Thermoelectric Generator (RTG) and sent back valuable scientific data to the Earth for over six years after the astronauts left.

Details showing Apollo 15 LRV tracks, see traverse map above for locations. Credit: NASA/GSFC/Arizona State University.

Robinson and his team can figure out the details of what pieces of equipment are in each location by comparing what they see in orbital images to images taken from the surface by the astronauts.

One of the most commonly asked questions is if the flags left on the Moon are still visible.

“All we can really see is the spots where the flag was planted because the astronauts tramped down the regolith,” Robinson said last year. “I’m not sure if the flags still exist, given the extreme heat and cold cycle and the harsh UV environment. The flags were made of nylon, and personally I would be surprised if anything was left of them since it has been over 40 years since they were left on the Moon and the flags we have here on Earth fade after they are left outside for one summer. If the flags are still there they are probably in pretty rough shape.”

For two one-month periods last year (2011), the LRO orbit was lowered such that overflights of the Apollo sites were only 25 to 30 kilometers, rather than the usual 50 kilometers. These low passes resulted in NAC pixel scales near 25 centimeters, Robinson said. “LRO has a ground speed of a bit over 1600 meters (5249 feet) per second, and the shortest NAC exposure time is 0.34 millseconds, so images taken from this low altitude are smeared down track a bit. However, the smear is hardly noticeable and features at the Apollo sites definitely come into sharper focus. In this new low-altitude NAC image of the LRV, tracks are visible about half of the time, usually when the tracks are at an angle to the Sun direction, rather than parallel,” he said.

You can see the close-up images of the Apollo 12, 14 and 17 at a previous article on Universe Today.

Source: LROC website

Posted on by Amy Shira Teitel

NASA’s Going Green

he launch of the Phoenix spacecraft on a Delta II rocket in 2007. NASA is looking for alternatives to hydrazine monopropellant, used en route by Phoenix's navigational thrusters Image credit: NASA/Sandra Joseph and John Kechele

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NASA announced yesterday that it’s looking for new technology proposals using environmentally friendly fuels to launch payload. The space agency is hoping to move away from hydrazine, the fuel that currently launches anything that travels beyond the atmosphere from commercial satellites to private spaceflight and exploration probes. 

As a rocket propellant, hydrazine is great. It’s incredibly efficient, can be stored for long periods of time, has excellent handling characteristics, is stable up to 250 degrees Celsius (482 Fahrenheit) under normal conditions, and decomposes cleanly.

It also happens to be extremely toxic.

Shifting away from hydrazine would be a shift away from known environmental hazards and pollutants. There would be fewer operational hazards for those dealing with fueled rockets before launch. The change could also simplify the complexity of the rockets’ systems and, possibly, increase overall propellant performance.

The ALICE powered rocket before launch. Image credit: Dr. Steven F. Son, Purdue University

The benefits don’t stop there. Advantages on every level trickle down. “High performance green propulsion has the potential to significantly change how we travel in space,” said Michael Gazarik, director of NASA’s Space Technology Program at the agency’s headquarters in Washington. “By reducing the hazards of handling fuel, we can reduce ground processing time and lower costs for rocket launches, allowing a greater community of researchers and technologists access to the high frontier.”

Developing green propellants won’t be quick or easy. It will be a major challenge for NASA, particularly from a cost, schedule, and risk perspective. The agency has established the Technology Demonstration Missions Program at the Marshall Spaceflight Centre in Huntsville, Alabama to oversee the green fuel program. It will act as a bridge between laboratory confirmation of a technology and its use on a mission.

This isn’t the first time NASA has tried to develop green fuel. In 2009, the space agency and the US Air Force successfully launched a 9-foot rocket 1,300 vertical feet using a mixture of aluminum powder and water ice. The mixture, called ALICE, has been studied since the 1960s as an alternative propellant. The reaction between substances produces a large amount of energy during combustion and green exhaust products.

Environmental impact aside, fuels like ALICE could be manufactured on the Moon or Mars, negating the cost of sending propellants along as cargo on long-duration missions. This would be when designing long-term missions.

The winning aircraft - Pipistrel-USA, Taurus G4 - during its flight as part of the miles per gallon flight. (NASA/Bill Ingalls)

Aviation, too has been an outlet for NASA’s green fuel initiatives in the past. 2011’s CAFE Green Flight Challenge, sponsored by Google, had competitors in general aviation design aircraft capable of flying 200 miles in less than two hours and use less than one gallon of fuel per passenger. The first place winner of $1.35 million was the team Pipistrel-USA.com of State College, Pennsylvania used an electric aircraft that achieved twice the fuel efficiency required by the competition — they flew 200 miles on the equivalent of a half-gallon of fuel per passenger.

With this shift to green fuels, NASA hopes to partner with American companies to usher in a new environmentally friendly era of open access to space. The agency is planing to make multiple contract awards for green technologies with no single away exceeding $50 million.

Source: NASA

 

Posted on by Jason Major

The Moon Trees of Apollo 14

Apollo 14's splashdown in the Pacific on Feb. 9, 1971. (NASA/Ed Hengeveld)

On this day in 1971 Apollo 14 astronauts Alan Shepard, Jr., Stuart Roosa and Edgar Mitchell returned to Earth, splashing down in the Pacific Ocean at 21:05 UT (4:05 p.m. EST). They were recovered by the USS New Orleans, and returned to the U.S. by way of American Samoa. But the three men weren’t the only living creatures to come back from the Moon on Feb. 9, 1971… in fact, human astronauts were in the minority that day.

Al, Stu and Ed shared their lunar voyage with nearly 500 trees.

As Shepard and Mitchell gathered samples near their landing site in a region named Fra Mauro, Apollo 14 pilot and ex-smoke jumper Stuart Roosa orbited above in “Kitty Hawk”, the mission’s Command Module. It may sound like a lonely job, but he was far from alone. Within his personal kit were small containers containing 400-500 seeds, part of a joint NASA/USFS project to examine the effects, if any, of space travel on such organisms.

The seeds were selected from a variety of tree species: redwood, loblolly pine, sycamore, Douglas fir, and sweetgum seeds were all chosen to accompany Roosa on his 34 orbits around the Moon.

A control group of the same seed varieties were kept on Earth for comparison.

Stuart Roosa had worked for the Forest Service in the 1950s before becoming an Air Force test pilot and then eventually an Apollo astronaut. Being charged with the care of the seeds was a particularly symbolic assignment for Roosa, who had once fought wildfires as a smoke jumper.

Even though there was a mishap during the decontamination process after return to Earth, wherein some containers burst open and seeds were inadvertently mixed together, many of the seeds successfully germinated at Forest Service stations in Mississippi and California. The seedlings were eventually sent to locations around the country and around the world to commemorate the success of the Apollo program.

There was even a second generation, called half-moon trees.

A Moon Tree located outside Goddard Space Flight Center. (GSFC)

Many of these “Moon Trees” and their descendants still stand today. In some instances they are marked with a plaque or a sign… in others, no special marking denotes their significance. Those unmarked trees stand as silent reminders of an earlier and perhaps even bolder era of human space flight.

Me, Heather Archuletta, and Greg ___ in front of a 2nd-generation Moon Tree outside the Holliston Police Department in Massachusetts. (© Jason Major)
Me, Heather Archuletta, and Greg Riley in front of a 2nd-generation Moon Tree outside the Holliston Police Department in Massachusetts, Oct. 2013. (© Jason Major)

Read more about the Moon Trees on this page by David Williams of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center. And if you know of a Moon Tree that is not on Mr. William’s list, please contact him to have it included. Williams has endeavored to locate the whereabouts and status of these trees since 1996, as there had been no systematic records previously kept of them.

“I think when people are aware of the heritage of the trees, they usually take steps to preserve them,” said Williams in recollection of one tree that was nearly knocked down during a building renovation. “But sometimes people aren’t aware. That’s why we want to locate as many as we can soon. We want to have a record that these trees are — or were — a part of these communities, before they’re gone.”

Posted on by Ken Kremer

China Unveils High Resolution Global Moon Map

China Publishes High Resolution Full Moon map from Chang'e-2 Lunar Orbiter. Chinese scientists assembled a full moon map using images captured by the Chang’e-2 spacecraft with an an unprecedented resolution of 7-meters. Credit: China Space Program

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Chinese scientists have assembled the highest resolution map ever created of the entire Moon and unveiled a series of global Moon images on Monday, Feb. 6.

The composite Lunar maps were created from over 700 individual images captured by China’s Chang’e-2 spacecraft and released by the country’s State Administration of Science, Technology and Industry for National Defence (SASTIND), according to reports from the state run Xinhua and CCTV new agencies.

“The map and images are the highest-resolution photos of the entirety of the Moon’s surface to be published thus far,” said Liu Dongkui, deputy chief commander of China’s lunar probe project, reports Xinhua.

Of course there are much higher resolution photos of numerous individual locations on the Moon taken from orbit by the spacecraft of other countries and from the surface by NASA’s Apollo lunar landing astronauts as well as unmanned Russian & American lunar landers and rovers.

China unveils High Resolution Global Moon map from Chang'e-2 Lunar Orbiter
Credit: China Space Program

Chang’e-2 is China’s second lunar probe and achieved orbit around our nearest neighbor in space in October 2010. It was launched on Oct. 1, 2010 and is named after a legendary Chinese moon goddess.

The images were snapped between October 2010 and May 2011 using a charge-coupled device (CCD) stereo camera as the spacecraft flew overhead in a highly elliptical orbit ranging from 15 km to 100 km altitude.

The Chang’e-2 maps have a resolution of 7 meters, which is 17 times greater than from China’s first lunar orbiter; Chang’e-1, launched in 2007.

Global Lunar Map from China’s Chang'e-2 Lunar Orbiter. Credit: China Space Program

In fact the maps are detailed enough that Chinese scientists were able to detect traces of the Apollo landers, said Yan Jun, chief application scientist for China’s lunar exploration project.


Chang’e-2 also captured high resolution photos of the “Sinus Iridum”area , or Bay of Rainbows, where China may land their next Moon mission. The camera had the ability to resolve features as small as 1 meter across at the lowest altitude.

The satellite left lunar orbit in June 2011 and is currently orbiting the moon’s second Lagrange Point (L2), located more than 1.5 million km away from Earth.

Chinese space program officials hope for a 2013 liftoff of the Chang’e-3 lunar rover, on what would be China’s first ever landing on another celestial body. China’s next step beyond the rover may be to attempt a lunar sample return mission in 2017.

Demonstrating the ability to successfully conduct an unmanned lunar landing is a key milestone that must be achieved before China can land astronauts on the Moon, perhaps within the next decade.

NASA’s twin GRAIL spacecraft recently achieved Lunar orbit over the New Year’s weekend. The duo of probes were just renamed as “Ebb and Flow” – the winning entries in an essay naming contest submitted by 4th Grade US students from Bozeman, Montana.

At this time NASA does not have the funding or an approved robotic lunar landing mission, due to severe budget cuts.And even worse NASA cuts will be announced shortly !

Russia hopes to send the Lunar Glob spacecraft to land on the Moon around 2015.

Since the United States has unilaterally scuttled its plans to return American astronauts to the Moon’s surface, it’s very possible that the next flag planted on the Moon by humans will be Chinese.

Posted on by Irene Antonenko

New Insights into the Moon’s Mysterious Magnetic Field

Lunar Dynamo
Moon with cut-away showing stylized interior with dynamo and magnetic field lines.

Ever since the Apollo era, scientist have known that the Moon had some kind of magnetic field in the past, but doesn’t have one now. Understanding why is important, because it can tell us how magnetic fields are generated, how long they last, and how they shut down. New studies of Apollo lunar samples answer some of these questions, but they also create many more questions to be answered.

The lunar samples returned by the Apollo missions show evidence of magnetization. Rocks are magnetized when they are heated and then cooled in a magnetic field. As they cool below the Curie temperature (about 800 degrees C, depending on the material), the metallic particles in the rock line up along ambient magnetic fields and freeze in that position, producing a remnant magnetization.

This magnetization can also be measured from space. Studies from orbiting satellites show that the Moon’s magnetization extends well beyond the regions sampled by Apollo astronauts. All this magnetization means that the Moon must have had a magnetic field at some point in its early history.

Most of the magnetic fields we know of in the Solar System are generated by a dynamo. Basically, this involves convection in a metallic liquid core, which effectively moves the metal atoms’ electrons, creating an electric current. This current then induces a magnetic field. The convection itself is thought to be driven by cooling. As the outer core cools, the colder portions sink to the interior and let the warmer interior sections move outwards towards the exterior.

Because the Moon is so small, a magnetic dynamo that is driven by convective cooling is expected to have shut down some time around 4.2 billion years ago. So, evidence of magnetization after this time would need either 1) an energy source other than cooling to drive the motion of a liquid core, or 2) a completely different mechanism for creating magnetic fields.

Laboratory experiments have suggested one such alternate method. Large basin-forming impacts could produce short-lived magnetic fields on the Moon, which would be recorded in the hot materials ejected during the impact event. In fact, some observations of magnetization are located at the opposite side of the Moon (the antipode) from large basins.

So, how can you tell if magnetization in a rock was formed by a core dynamo or an impact event? Well, impact-induced magnetic fields last only about 1 day. If a rock cooled very slowly, it would not record such a short-lived magnetic field, so any magnetism it retains must have been produced by a dynamo. Also, rocks that have been involved in impacts show evidence of shock in their minerals.

One lunar sample, number 76535, which shows evidence of slow cooling and no shock effects, has a distinct remnant magnetization. This, along with the age of the sample, suggests that the Moon had a liquid core and a dynamo-generated magnetic field 4.2 billion years ago. Such a core dynamo is consistent with convective cooling. But, what if there are younger samples?

New studies recently published in Science by Erin Shea and her colleagues suggest this may be the case. Ms Shea, a graduate student at MIT, and her team studied sample 10020, a 3.7 billion year old mare basalt brought back by the Apollo 11 astronauts. They demonstrated that sample 10020 shows no evidence of shock in its minerals. They estimated that the sample took more than 12 days to cool, which is much slower than the lifetime of an impact-induced magnetic field. And they found that the sample is very strongly magnetized.

From their studies, Ms Shea and her colleagues conclude that the Moon had a strong magnetic dynamo, and therefore a moving metallic core, around 3.7 billion years ago. This is well after the time a convective cooling dynamo would have shut down. It is not clear, however, if the dynamo was continually active since 4.2 billion years ago, or if the mechanism that moved the liquid core was the same at 4.2 and 3.8 billion years. So, what other ways are there to keep a liquid core moving?

Recent studies by a team of French and Belgian scientists, led by Dr. Le Bars, suggest that large impacts can unlock the Moon from its synchronous rotation with the Earth. This would create tides in the liquid core, much like the Earth’s oceans. These core tides would cause significant distortions at the core-mantle boundary, which could drive large-scale flows in the core, creating a dynamo.

In another recent study, Dr. Dwyer and colleagues suggested that precession of the lunar spin axis could stir the liquid core. The early Moon’s proximity to the Earth would have made the Moon’s spin axis wobble. This precession would cause different motions in the liquid core and overlying solid mantle, producing a long-lasting (longer than 1 billion years) mechanical stirring of the core. Dr. Dwyer and his team estimate that such a dynamo would naturally shut down about 2.7 billion years ago as the Moon moved away from the Earth over time, diminishing its gravitational influence.

Unfortunately, the magnetic field suggested by the study of sample 10020 doesn’t fit either of these possibilities. Both these models would provide magnetic fields that are too weak to have produced the strong magnetization observed in sample 10020. Another method for mobilizing the liquid core of the Moon will need to be found in order to explain these new findings.

Sources:
A Long-Lived Lunar Core Dynamo. Shea, et al. Science 27, January 2012, 453-456. doi:10.1126/science.1215359.

A long-lived lunar dynamo driven by continuous mechanical stirring. Le Bars et al. Nature 479, November 2011, 212-214. doi:10.1038/nature10564.

An impact-driven dynamo for the early Moon. Dwyer et al. Nature 479, November 2011, 215-218. doi:10.1038/nature10565.

Posted on by Amy Shira Teitel

Remembering NASA’s Lost Astronauts

Credit: NASA.

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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.”

Source: NASA

Posted on by Ken Kremer

America’s Youth Christen NASA’s Twin New Lunar Craft – Ebb & Flow

Ebb and Flow - New Names for the GRAIL Twins in Lunar Orbit. 4th Grade Students from Montana win NASA’s contest to rename the GRAIL A and GRAIL B spacecraft. Artist concept of twin GRAIL spacecraft flying in tandem orbits around the Moon to measure its gravity field in unprecedented detail and unravel the hidden mysteries of the lunar interior’s composition. Credit: NASA/JPL Montage:Ken Kremer

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A classroom of America’s Youth from an elementary school in Bozeman, Montana submitted the stellar winning entry in NASA’s nationwide student essay contest to rename the twin GRAIL lunar probes that just achieved orbit around our Moon on New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day 2012

“Ebb” & “Flow” – are the dynamic duo’s official new names and were selected because they clearly illuminate the science goals of the gravity mapping spacecraft and how the Moon’s influence mightily affects Earth every day in a manner that’s easy for everyone to understand.

“The 28 students of Nina DiMauro’s class at the Emily Dickinson Elementary School have really hit the nail on the head,” said GRAIL principal investigator Prof. Maria Zuber of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, Mass.

“We asked the youth of America to assist us in getting better names.”

“We chose Ebb and Flow because it’s the daily example of how the Moon’s gravity is working on the Earth,” said Zuber during a media briefing held today (Jan. 17) at NASA Headquarters in Washington, D.C. The terms ebb and flow refer to the movement of the tides on Earth due to the gravitational pull from the Moon.

“We were really impressed that the students drew their inspiration by researching GRAIL and its goal of measuring gravity. Ebb and Flow truly capture the spirit and excitement of our mission.”

Leland Melvin, NASA Associate Administrator for Education, left, Maria Zuber, GRAIL Prinicipal Investigator at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and James Green, Director of the Planetary Science Division in the Science Mission Directorate at NASA Headquarters, right, applaud students from Emily Dickinson Elementary School in Bozeman, Mont. during a news conference, Tuesday, Jan. 17, 2012, at NASA Headquarters in Washington. Nine hundred classrooms and more than 11,000 students from 45 states, as well as Puerto Rico and the District of Columbia, participated in a contest that began in October 2011 to name the twin lunar probes. Credit: NASA/Paul E. Alers

Ebb and Flow are flying in tandem around Earth’s only natural satellite, the first time such a feat has ever been attempted.

As they fly over mountains, craters and basins on the Moon, the spaceships will move back and forth in orbit in an “ebb and flow” like response to the changing lunar gravity field and transmit radio signals to precisely measure the variations to within 1 micron, the width of a red blood cell.

The breakthrough science expected from the mirror image twins will provide unprecedented insight into what lurks mysteriously hidden beneath the surface of our nearest neighbor and deep into the interior.

The winning names from the 4th Graders of Emily Dickinson Elementary School were chosen from essays submitted by nearly 900 classrooms across America with over 11,000 students from 45 states, Puerto Rico and the District of Columbia, Zuber explained.

The students themselves announced “Ebb” and “Flow” in a dramaric live broadcast televised on NASA TV via Skype.

“We are so thrilled that our names were chosen and excited to share this with you. We can’t believe we won! We are so honored. Thank you!” said Ms. DiMauro as the very enthusiastic students spelled out the names by holding up the individual letters one-by-one on big placards from their classroom desks in Montana.

Watch the 4th Grade Kids spell the names in this video!

Until now the pair of probes went by the rather uninspiring monikers of GRAIL “A” and “B”. GRAIL stands for Gravity Recovery And Interior Laboratory.

The twin crafts’ new names were selected jointly by Prof. Zuber and Dr. Sally Ride, America’s first woman astronaut, and announced during today’s NASA briefing.


NASA’s naming competition was open to K-12 students who submitted pairs of names and a short essay to justified their suggestions.

“Ebb” and “Flow” (GRAIL A and GRAIL B) are the size of washing machines and were launched side by side atop a Delta II booster rocket on September 10, 2011 from Cape Canaveral, Florida.

They followed a circuitous 3.5 month low energy path to the Moon to minimize the fuel requirements and overall costs.

So far the probes have completed three burns of their main engines aimed at lowering and circularizing their initial highly elliptical orbits. The orbital period has also been reduced from 11.5 hours to just under 4 hours as of today.

“The science phase begins in early March,” said Zuber. At that time the twins will be flying in tandem at 55 kilometers (34 miles) altitude.

The GRAIL twins are also equipped with a very special camera dubbed MoonKAM (Moon Knowledge Acquired by Middle school students) whose purpose is to inspire kids to study science.

“GRAIL is NASA’s first planetary spacecraft mission carrying instruments entirely dedicated to education and public outreach,” explained Sally Ride. “Over 2100 classrooms have signed up so far to participate.”

Thousands of middle school students in grades five through eight will select target areas on the lunar surface and send requests for study to the GRAIL MoonKAM Mission Operations Center in San Diego which is managed by Dr. Ride in collaboration with undergraduate students at the University of California in San Diego.

By having their names selected, the 4th graders from Emily Dickinson Elementary have also won the prize to choose the first target on the Moon to photograph with the MoonKam cameras, said Ride.

Zuber notes that the first MoonKAM images will be snapped shortly after the 82 day science phase begins on March 8.

Ebb & Flow Achieve Lunar Orbit on New Year’s Weekend 2012
NASA’s twin GRAIL-A & GRAIL-B spacecraft are orbiting the Moon in this astrophoto taken on Jan. 2, 2012 shortly after successful Lunar Orbit Insertions on New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day 2012.
Credit: Ken Kremer

Read continuing features about GRAIL and the Moon by Ken Kremer here:
Dazzling Photos of the International Space Station Crossing the Moon!
Two new Moons join the Moon – GRAIL Twins Achieve New Year’s Orbits
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Posted on by Amy Shira Teitel

Who Owns Space History, the Public or the Astronauts?

The Apollo 13 checklist with Lovell's handwritten calculations. Image credit:

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Former NASA astronaut Jim Lovell came under fire last week when he sold a personal memento from his tenure with the space agency at an auction – the 70-page checklist from the famous Apollo 13 mission that didn’t land on the Moon. The sale has reopened the ongoing debate over who owns NASA artifacts and photographs, the astronauts or the public.

Apollo 13 commander Lovell with a model Lunar module. Image credit: NASA

In Lovell’s case, the checklist is so valuable because it contains Lovell’s hand written calculations he used to navigate the crippled Apollo 13 spacecraft after its oxygen tank exploded. That’s a pretty important piece of history for many collectors. Bids on the historic item surpassed $388,000.

But now NASA is questioning whether Lovell had the right to sell the item and profit from its sale. For now, the checklist – along with a lunar module identification plate and a hand controller from Apollo 9 sold by former astronaut Rusty Schweickart and a glove Al Shepard wore on the Moon on Apollo 14 sold at the same auction – is locked in a Heritage Auctions vault until the issue is resolved.

NASA administrator Charles Bolden released a statement saying that there have been “fundamental misunderstandings and unclear policies” regarding items astronauts took home from the Mercury, Gemini, Apollo and Skylab mission.

These “misunderstandings and unclear policies” aren’t new. Last summer, NASA filed a lawsuit against Apollo 14 astronaut Ed Mitchell after he tried to sell a 16mm video camera he used on the Moon. NASA claimed Mitchell was selling the camera illegally and sued the former astronaut for ownership rights. Mitchell countered that the camera would have been left on the Moon had he not brought it home. It’s been sitting in his personal safe since 1971.

Mitchell isn’t wrong in his self defense. In the 1960s and 1970s, NASA officials told the astronauts that they could keep certain equipment from the missions.

In 2002, former Flight Director Chris Kraft said that he approved the policy. Apollo astronauts were allowed to keep personal items that flew with them as well anything from the lunar landing module that would otherwise have been abandoned on the Moon. The astronaut had great freedom in choosing what they wanted to keep.

Rusty Schweickart during an EVA on Apollo 9. Image credit: NASA/courtesy of nasaimages.org

“It was generally accepted that the astronauts could bring back pieces of equipment or hardware from this spacecraft for a keepsake of these journeys,” Kraft wrote.

Since the end of the space race, collectors around the world have paid millions to own pieces of history themselves. NASA’s problem isn’t with these former astronauts keeping pieces of history for themselves, it’s when they sell these artifacts for personal gain that creates a problem.

Kraft’s 2002 letter doesn’t address whether or not astronauts have the right to sell their mementos. In its recent letter to the auction house, NASA insisted only the agency can approve such artifacts for sale.

Bolden said the ownership discussions will explore “all policy, legislative and other legal means” to resolve ownership issues “and ensure that appropriate artifacts are preserved and available for display to the American people.” The agency has agreed to work cooperatively with the astronauts to resolve what’s recently become a contentious issue.

Apollo 14 Lunar Module pilot Mitchell. Image credit: NASA

It is a bit of a grey area. The astronauts did the work, they trained for difficult mission and went to the Moon. But NASA footed the bill, and American tax payers funded NASA. The space agency argues that artifacts from the Apollo era should be available to the public. Everyone should be able to view and experience these pieces of one of the nation’s historic achievements.

Source: Yahoo! News

Posted on by Tammy Plotner

Tranquillityite – Moon Mineral Found In Western Australia

A mineral brought back to Earth by the first men on the Moon and long thought to be unique to the lunar surface has been found in Australian rocks more than one billion years old, scientists say. Image Credit: Birger Rasmussen

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When it comes to our natural human curiosity, we want to know if there’s something new out there… something we haven’t discovered yet. That’s why when lunar rock samples were returned, geologists were thrilled to find very specific minerals – armalcolite, pyroxferroite and tranquillityite – which belonged only to our Moon. However, over the years the first two were found here on Earth and tranquillityite was disclosed in specific meteorites. Named for Tranquility Base, site of the first Moon landing, tranquillityite was supposed to be the final hold-out… the last lunar unique mineral… until now.

Birger Rasmussen, paleontologist with Curtin University in Perth, and colleagues report in their Geology paper that they’ve uncovered tranquillityite in several remote locations in Western Australia. While the samples are incredibly small, about the width of a human hair and merely microns in length, their composition is undeniable. What’s more, tranquillityite may be a lot more common here on Earth than previously thought.

Rasmussen told the Sydney Morning Herald, “This was essentially the last mineral which was sort of uniquely lunar that had been found in the 70s from these samples returned from the Apollo mission.The mineral has since been found exclusively in returned lunar samples and lunar meteorites, with no terrestrial counterpart. We have now identified tranquillityite in six sites from Western Australia.”

Why has this remote mineral stayed hidden for so long? One major reason is its delicate structure. Composed of iron, silicon, oxygen, zirconium, titanium and a tiny bit of yttrium, a rare earth element, tranquillityite erodes at a rapid pace when exposed to natural environmental conditions. Another explanation is that tranquillityite can only form through a unique set of circumstance – through uranium decay. Rasmussen explains it’s evidence these minerals were ‘always’ located here on Earth and we share the same chemical processes as our satellite.

“This means that basically we have the same chemical phenomena on the Moon and on Earth.” says Rasmussen. And one of the reasons it has taken so long to be found is, “No one was looking hard enough.”

Image Credit: Birger Rasmussen
And exactly what does it take to locate it? More than a billion years old, the only sure way to identify tranquillityite is to subject it to a series of electron blasts. By exposing it to a high-energy accelerating electron beam, it produces spectra. From there “an elemental composition in combination with back-scattered electron (BSE) brightness and x-ray count rate information is converted into mineral phases.” According to Rasmussen’s paper, “Terrestrial tranquillityite commonly occurs as clusters of fox-red laths closely associated with baddeleyite and zirconolite in quartz and K-feldspar intergrowths in late-stage interstices between plagioclase and pyroxene.”

While it has no real economic value, terrestrial tranquillityite is another good reason mankind should try to preserve pristine regions such as the northeast Pilbara Region and the Eel Creek formation. Who knows what else we might find?

Original Story Source: PhysOrg.com.